single pivot felt like much more...

norbar · Aug 7, 2016

A badly designed virtual pivot bike will feel bad. A well designed SP bike will feel good. That is all. A virtual pivot gives you more options but you can achieve a lot with a single pivot.

Plus a lot depens on the shock and how it is tuned. If you rode on the bike only for a while and couldn't play with the shock it's hard to judge the bike. I know some testers complained about some shock options on the SAM blowing through the travel. Supposedly it was to be fixed.

norbar · Aug 7, 2016

saruti said:
actually it didn't blow through the travel. is was great. except for the parts when I used the brakes....
I probably need to find me agood bike that dowsnt lock the suspension when hitting the brakes, and has its LR same as the Focus...

To be honest active suspension under braking isn't the highest priority for many designers. Especially that unless you have to brake in horrible places it's still better than super active rear while the front end dives while you brake. If that was your biggest issue than I have to say the bike must have been pretty decent.

Jm_ · Aug 7, 2016

Much of the horst-link/vitual pivot design effort was focused at trying to rectify a system where the front chainring size varied from as little as 20t to as many as 48t, this caused extreme variables in terms of squat produced by pedaling action. 1x systems have now made this far simpler and single pivots can be just as good as, or better than, the "virtual" systems. The common themes seem to be decent pivot placement and rate-control via linkage. With these you can end up with a bike that gives up nothing. There can still be advantages to virtual systems, but 95% of the industry doesn't know what the F they are doing with these and they usually end up with something that makes compromises in one or more areas.

Specialized did an excellent job in the 90s and 2000s of convincing everyone that their horst link had some kind of kinematics that were unachievable by means of single pivot. Then Turner had to change to SP when Tony Ellsworth got an ICT patent threatened to sue him and it was revealed just how little difference in pivot point and arc difference there was. Many people actually preferred the SP versions of Turner's bikes because they didn't squat as much under power on the climbs. They gave up nothing in bump absorption and all other areas. Specialized even had people convinced at one point that their suspension had a "vertical" path.

Sandwich · Aug 8, 2016

saruti said:
yes. it was really good. made me think differently about single pivot bikes...
but I ride very rocky terrain so.. active under braking is important to me.

What bikes are you coming from, specifically? DWs and horsts can ride very differently depending on design.

I've found that braking performance is one of the least important characteristics of suspension design. I used to be all about "Active under braking" but found that the "packing up" caused by brake squat isn't really a problem, and that the change in geometry under hard braking can be worse. In fact, the ability of the rear end to more easily initiate a drift can help steer when things get fast or tight. I'd also like to point out that many times, the difference between a single pivot and dw link bike, at least in terms of braking characteristics, can be pretty minimal, with only like 10% difference between the two.

As for the single pivot, many times there simply isn't any "magic" involved- a well designed bike is going to ride like a well designed bike, regardless of how many pivots it has. The Evil that I ride now shares many characteristics with multi-pivot bikes, just with a little less finesse, and I think that almost everyone agrees that the following and its brethren are really nice riding bikes.

Happymtb.fr · Aug 9, 2016

saruti said:
my all around bike is a yeti sb66c. I know its not the best under braking. but it still better than a single pivot.

It depends on which SP you're considering. If you look here http://linkagedesign.blogspot.se/2014/10/yeti-sb6c-275-2015.html you will see that the Orange Alpine has a slightly lower AR value than the sb66c

norbar · Aug 9, 2016

Sandwich said:
What bikes are you coming from, specifically? DWs and horsts can ride very differently depending on design.

I've found that braking performance is one of the least important characteristics of suspension design. I used to be all about "Active under braking" but found that the "packing up" caused by brake squat isn't really a problem, and that the change in geometry under hard braking can be worse. In fact, the ability of the rear end to more easily initiate a drift can help steer when things get fast or tight. I'd also like to point out that many times, the difference between a single pivot and dw link bike, at least in terms of braking characteristics, can be pretty minimal, with only like 10% difference between the two.

As for the single pivot, many times there simply isn't any "magic" involved- a well designed bike is going to ride like a well designed bike, regardless of how many pivots it has. The Evil that I ride now shares many characteristics with multi-pivot bikes, just with a little less finesse, and I think that almost everyone agrees that the following and its brethren are really nice riding bikes.

This. The active suspension under breaking does feel nice but not when you hit a hole in your braking line and get thrown on the bars.

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single pivot felt like much more...

saruti

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norbar

KESSLER PROBLEM. Just cause

saruti

Turbo Monkey

norbar

KESSLER PROBLEM. Just cause

saruti

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Jm_

sled dog's bollocks

Sandwich

Pig my fish!

saruti

Turbo Monkey

Happymtb.fr

Turbo Monkey

norbar

KESSLER PROBLEM. Just cause