[Ian Collins]

saw on sicklines.com that fabien barel will be on mondraker for the subaru team?

fabien shreds, but why is he a glutton for punishment when it comes to bikes........he's been on that outdated kona for years, and now he's really taking it back to the future and riding this mondraker bike which is basically a 1998 intense M1......

when will fabien saddle up on a real dh bike?

i feel bad for the guy....

 

[cheetaprowlerDH]

ive never ridden the bike so i cant say for sure how it rides, but thats the first thing i said to myself when i SAW its FSR style link...

 

[black noise]

I don't feel bad for the guy, with 2 World's titles it doesn't sound like his bike could have sucked that bad. That "outdated Kona" was perfect for him, and it beat Sundays, Hondas, and V-10's pretty often.

And for the record besides looking at a picture has anyone here ridden the thing? I didn't think so. Barel would never sign a contract to ride a bike that sucked or in any way hurt his chances of being at the top of the podium.

 

[dexter]

the kona he was riding was not outdated. his had very aggressive geo and was spot on. the thing with the kona frame is it is designed for people who pedal their asses off and not for people who pump their bike through the rough. ask any one in the know and they will tell you that. and in all honesty just because the bike is an old suspension design does not make it outdated. oranges, sunns, turners, m1's, commencials etc are all outdated by that matter. just because there is new technology and new designs does not mean that they are good. i personally dont like the kona bikes but seriously people need to stop being idiots just because something isnt dw linked, vpp's, maestro, what ever the **** is going on in the back of my demo etc etc

 

[Ian Collins]

the thing with the kona frame is it is designed for people who pedal their asses off and not for people who pump their bike through the rough.

?????

are you kidding.....?

do you really think the designers at kona said.....okay, screw the people who pump down the course...(because obviously you have to do either one or the other....NO one pumps AND pedals, that's unheard of)...let's design a bike for people who STRICTLY pedal....

if you think they put that much thought into the bike, you're way off

additionally, how is it "designed" for these so called pedallers? what aspects of the frame give a "pedaller" the edge and inhibits the "pumpers" from riding it fast.....?

if anything that bike impedes pedaling......it pedals horribly

guys like fabien pedal and pump like hell everywhere anyways......

 

[bikenweed]

And for the record besides looking at a picture has anyone here ridden the thing?

I have. I spent quite a bit of time riding the new Kaiser, as well as the older Mondraker DH, FR, XC and BMX bikes. When I lived in Spain, I was only about a half-hour away from the Mondraker headquarters. All the Mondraker guys are super cool, and are really excited about producing cleanly designed, high quality bikes. A lot of what they sell is catalog picked, Taiwanese stuff, but they do have several engineers working for them. Mondraker's goal, at least in my eyes, is to bring high-quality bikes to the market at reasonable prices.

Oh, and the Kaiser rides pretty well. I made it through the medium sized dirt jumps at Whistler on my buddy's, and it also felt pretty good on the faster trails. A tad more nimble and springier than my Sunday, with a bit shorter of a wheelbase and a steeper head angle. The bike was light, rode predictably, and felt damn solid. Fabien will be fine.

 

[rosenamedpoop]

Ian have you ridden the new Stab?

The Kona you're describing is apparently no more. They listened to Fabian (anal tech geek supreme), now the bike is quite different.

Kona definitely earned a reputation for crap suspension design years back, but they've made radical changes in design functionality in recent years. It took me a bit to overcome my "Kona stigma", but the new stuff deserves a real second look. The geo alone on the 3 bikes over 6" travel sets them apart.

 

[cheetaprowlerDH]

I have. I spent quite a bit of time riding the new Kaiser, as well as the older Mondraker DH, FR, XC and BMX bikes. When I lived in Spain, I was only about a half-hour away from the Mondraker headquarters. All the Mondraker guys are super cool, and are really excited about producing cleanly designed, high quality bikes. A lot of what they sell is catalog picked, Taiwanese stuff, but they do have several engineers working for them. Mondraker's goal, at least in my eyes, is to bring high-quality bikes to the market at reasonable prices.

Oh, and the Kaiser rides pretty well. I made it through the medium sized dirt jumps at Whistler on my buddy's, and it also felt pretty good on the faster trails. A tad more nimble and springier than my Sunday, with a bit shorter of a wheelbase and a steeper head angle. The bike was light, rode predictably, and felt damn solid. Fabien will be fine.

nice, i personally like the frame, i was just commenting on the FSR...

i guess i was talking out of bad memories on an FSR and didnt really think before i posted... sorry for any bad remarks.

**no i'm not a linkage weenie, i actually prefer it simple because of how versatile it is**

cant wait to hear news from the '08 season on all of these guys and their company switches... *Minaar, Fabien, who else?*

 

[ire]

link or pic of the bike?

<edit> NM, that bike is fugly

 

[cheetaprowlerDH]

^^nevermind^^

link or pic of the bike?

2nd or 3rd post down
http://www.ridemonkey.com/forums/showthread.php?t=193283

 

[bikenweed]

HA 65°
SA 70°
TT 58.0 cm
CS 44.00 cm
WB 116.0 cm
BB height 36.9 cm

 

[bikenweed]

The FR bike isn't really the prettiest...

Enduro

BMX

 

[Spunger]

You know what's funny about all of this..........he'll still win on the bike, because it shows that it is more rider than the bike. It sure does look like a M1 rear end..........and how well did that bike do? Everyone jumped on the VPP wagon (intense & santa cruz mainly) but other companies still put out their proven designs, and still win with them.

After reading some articles in Dirt (think it was) Fabien knows what Kona was doing and they allowed him to design what worked. He's almost like a little Nico with how smart the guy is in suspension and bike design. I was pretty impressed by it.

 

[chris_f]

Since when was FSR a sh*te design? The main thing is how the bike WORKS, isn't it?

I mean, the V10 isn't pretty either, and nobody on here would call it slow, whould they?

I actually think the Kaiser doesn't look half bad.

 

[el-cid]

The Demos are still a FSR design. They still have the pivots in (basically) the same places, the shock is just driven a little diffferently than "typical" (i.e. that Mondraker, Titus, M1, etc) designs.

 

[xy9ine]

Kona definitely earned a reputation for crap suspension design years back, but they've made radical changes in design functionality in recent years. It took me a bit to overcome my "Kona stigma", but the new stuff deserves a real second look.

i've personally harbored a (unsubstantiated) distaste for konas, but the new stab actually sounds pretty serious (on paper, anyways; covering eyes). super low & slack. i'd (almost) like to try one out of morbid curiosity. its a bit of an underdog. nothing inherently wrong with the linkage actuated single pivot design (i don't hear people slagging commencal, turner, sunn, etc). it's funny people bag on companies that continue using a proven configuration for years, when they're all over new companies with similar designs. oh well. i'm sure fabien will still kick ass despite the antiquated horst/fsr technology.

 

[dexter]

granted a lot of the reason people bag on kona is due to the ****ty geometry of most of their bikes. the stab is really a fun ass bike to ride. guiding in whistler this summer i got to ride them from time to time and loved it but hated the feeling of trying to pump it through the gnar

 

[S.K.C.]

Ian have you ridden the new Stab?

The Kona you're describing is apparently no more. They listened to Fabian (anal tech geek supreme), now the bike is quite different.

Kona definitely earned a reputation for crap suspension design years back, but they've made radical changes in design functionality in recent years. It took me a bit to overcome my "Kona stigma", but the new stuff deserves a real second look. The geo alone on the 3 bikes over 6" travel sets them apart.

Yep - Fabian really did have a lot of input into what tweaks should be made to the Stab Supreme to make it a better bike EDIT: (He has a degree in engineering). I'm curious to see what ideas or suggestions he has for the Mondraker WC bike.

I'm guessing:

- slackened front end
- lower BB (mandatory - possibly with farm-plow attachment) :biggrin:
- longer WB (probably something around 46" to 46.5")

...and of course weight savings all around.