Amused by the recent thread about bikes you would never sell, I have been biking since the days of rigid forks & 130mm stems, since things moved on to decent suspension (air) & 90mm stems have things really moved forward in the HT stakes?
I know the current trend is longer with a shorter stem & wider bars, but the reach is the same right?
So if a bike fits it fits, quicker steering just means you don’t have to anticipate quite so much right?

Tell me the benefits again?

Cheers.

Main benefits are for manufacturers to sell more kit…saying that, a very good rider can ride anything on any bike, so without doubt, the ‘all-new-and-improved’ stuff can help improve a ride for someone who doesn’t have all the skills.

I’ve clearly not improved over the years of riding as I seem to be riding the same stuff on a 2000 90mm 26″ hardtail as fast as a 2015 130mm 650b full bouncer. I appear to have gone for a skills compensator and then decided to keep riding the lines I was riding on the hardtail rather than making proper use of the suspension travel.

In this case, I suspect I’ve completely disproved my myth of ‘all-new-and-improved’ and just made it something for the bike manufacturers to sell new stuff for!

Some tweaks/changes have made improvements though, so it isn’t all just marketing hype.

2unfit2ride – Member

I know the current trend is longer with a shorter stem & wider bars, but the reach is the same right?

Generally not… increasing reach is very Now. (and remember that while widening bars doesn’t change reach it does affect effective reach), My main bike today has nearly 2 inches more reach than my 2010 full suss, and tbh it’s one thing that I would just say is genuinely better.

Hardtails do seem to be lagging behind, though- I had a look for big 29er hardtails a while back and lots still seem to be pretty short.

I find my more moden HT comfortable, particularly for a long day, stable at speed and likely to make the manoeuvres I want. Most noticeably the brakes are brilliant, and modern tyres are so supple and grippy.

Riding our old paper round bike – old Rockhopper – I find it harsh, flighty and a handful at speed. Brakes are crap, tyres are harsh.

However, it still gets me up and down things.

Tell me the benefits again?

I’ve said this before but:

I have from 2007 a top notch XTR equipped 21.5lbs FS XC race bike. When I had it, I thought it was the best thing ever to ride. I hadn’t ridden it for a long time when about 18 months ago I got a fully rigid steel 29er that weighs 26.5lbs. I started using a local rocky loose climb about 5 mins long to test myself. It was hard to clean at first but after a while I got my time down to 5.05 on the rigid bike.

One dry day I thought I’d dust off the XC race bike and smash all my times, cos it’s such a good climbing bike. Had to change the bars though because the previously perfect 610mm bars and 105mm stem felt bloody weird. Anyway first time up the rocky climb, rather than smash my time I couldn’t even clear the first section. Took me three goes. And I was a minute slower by the end of it.

I did get some PRs on the rest of the route though, so the 26er is quicker in some places, but it’s hard bloody work on the rocky bits, despite being FS.

I didn’t think the wheel size would make much difference, maybe a few seconds on some stuff, but on the rocks the difference was shocking.

Interesting, if I need to change trajectory in a hurry I tend to lift the front wheel & hope the tyre grips, maybe that’s just because I like reading the “what tyres for” threads 😉

Two main differences for a new HT are proper size wheel and the fact that they are designing some compliance into the rear triangle.

Bikes are becoming longer my 2013 full sus had reach of 409 and a 35mm stem, my 2015 full suss had a reach of 457 and 35mm stem, my 2016 full sus has a reach of 460 and 35mm stem. One thing that doesn’t suit me is super short chainstays I think it makes the bikes less stable and therefore harder to push to the limit. Low BB is an interesting one if you ride anywhere with lots of rocks it’s a liability but holy shit they rail corners over smoother single track.

The most sorted bike I’ve ridden recently was the Nukeproof Mega 290 but I have to say my BMC Trailfox is pretty good once you get it setup right.

The trail in question btw is straight – it’s just loose rocks, and the issue is that with super light 26″ wheels was that when I hit one the bike would just stop, instead of rolling over it.

My other 26er with more travel and much heavier wheels isn’t as bad tbh – I can pretty much clear the first bit with more effort than the 29er but I get tired on the kick half way up.

where do all the old bikes go?

mickmcd

where do all the old bikes go?

Old bikes don’t die, they just get cranky.

I’ll get me coat…

Not saying it to be controversial but long reach is like short stays, it can work well but it’s not always better. There’s a lot of things I like about a bike that is no longer bb to bar than is the min needed and some would say that current bikes are at that point. Subjective stuff. Inch or so feels like a big change but it’s not that much once you adapt. Depends though.

How has stuff changed

Main benefits are for manufacturers to sell more kit.

Lazy answer 😉
I currently ride a sub 30lb bike that will take a beating, to get a bike like that 10 years ago I would be sacrificing weight or strength or both.

Geometry, long travel bikes used to rely heavily on dual position or travel adjust forks, the modern equivilent seem to have cracked the angles to get long travel and climbing sorted, bar width? bit of why did everyone thing 650-680 was suitible for everyone? Wider bars, shorter stems, slacker HA’s have changed bikes.
As a few of us commented a while back we are now riding trails that we would once have put down as DH bike only on trail bikes comfortably.

Saying that though there is an unhealthy obsession with numbers these days, I’d love to see some proper blind testing where people are told the numbers before or after a test ride and see how many think they are right or blame the numbers (hell even make up some of them 😉 ) If you picked a bike and told somebody it was x,y,z on trend would they enjoy the ride more or if you told somebody after??

Re: Jameso with regard to BB to handlebar.

This is the thing that defines how a bike feels out of the saddle and hammering it on the pedals. The on-trend bikes (geometron) seem to miss this fundamental point, while the more conservative ones feel better in this regard. The winch up and plummet down mindset I understand, but how many bikes for us mortal folk don’t get pedalled towards the techy stuff?

Personally, I’ve found the biggest benefit of wider bars (with shorter stem), is better leverage. I find riding rock gardens and ruts easier because I can hold the line a lot easier. I went from 680 bars to 740 and noticed a significant difference.

Nothing.

Apart from weight, geometry, crap suspension, they were based more on road bikes the older they were, not up to the job structurally, crap brakes, harsh rides, less grip….

That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy riding them, it’s just now its the terrain I ride that worries me, not the bike I ride down it.

Last summer I went back up to North Wales & hooked up with a couple of mates I’ve ridden with on & off since the ’90s.
We rode some trail centre stuff at Llandegla for a bit then headed out onto some trails that I’d personally not ridden since about 1998-99. Remembered as techy, natural as can be trails, which were a challenge bitd on my ‘dale hard tail with 50mm ‘travel’ Headshok, Sub 130 bars (in purple, nach, with bar ends) and v brakes.
We were worried that they would be rubbish to ride on our modern bikes. (mix of 27.5 & 29 wheeled 5-6″ travel on trend suspension bikes) but we were delighted to find the trails were still awesome fun to ride.
We were miles quicker though and arrived at Llangollen at the ride midpoint far earlier & far fresher than we ever used to, even though we are all 18 years older than last time.
We repeated this excersise the next day at the Long Mynd with the same conclusions.
The modern bikes were just so much betterer than our old ones, geometry, suspension, reliability of components etc…
Whilst ‘old school’ bikes were often (& can still be) awesome many of the changes have made riding funner, easier and faster, what’s not to like?

I tend to lift the front wheel & hope the tyre grips

What tyres for thin air?

Amused by the recent thread about bikes you would never sell, I have been biking since the days of rigid forks & 130mm stems, since things moved on to decent suspension (air) & 90mm stems have things really moved forward in the HT stakes?
I know the current trend is longer with a shorter stem & wider bars, but the reach is the same right?
So if a bike fits it fits, quicker steering just means you don’t have to anticipate quite so much right?

I think that the point is that even if the reach is the same on a modern bike the wheel base is longer. In particular the front axle/contact patch is further forward relative to the riders C of G.

In theory this makes you less likely to go over the front

As the pace of technical innovation slows to a crawl, by far the greatest advances have been in applying new standards for rear hub widths, cranks, fork bolt through axles, wheel diameters etc.

None of these have recycled from pre-existing standards that were as good or better for the job required, therefore the industry deserves our contempt more than our cash.

What’s wrong with them?

Nothing they’re as good now as they were then 😉

As far as tech goes, new stuff is mostly awesome, lighter, stronger, crisper and generally more reliable. There are some places where I think we’ve gone too far, or gone too far for the average user at the expense of compatibility or longevity/serviceability, but overall the kit is better, and incredible value at the cheap and mid-range end. There are still some gems of old kit that either hit the sweet spot of simplicity vs performance vs reliability vs ergonomics that I will pick over modern alternatives, but they are few and far between.

As far as geometry goes I’m very much of the opinion that modern long-low-slack isn’t better, but is better for modern style riding.

The modern bikes have opened up terrain that was previously only accessible to the very skilled or very stupid, or has increased the speed and safety at which we can ride that terrain.

But for ‘just normal XC’ riding a lot of it is superfluous, and in some cases sub-optimal, if you’re playing in bike parks, all about shredding and racing Enduro then you can’t get better than current modern bikes.

If you’re a cross-moor adventurer off on big days out with a varied mix of surfaces then older style MTBs (or even modern gravel bikes) can still be much better all rounders.

The thing is the media is so focussed on the new and trail centres and Enduro and such that unless you’re one of the ‘just XC riding’ people you kind of forget there’s more to MTB than what you see in the mags or TC car park, and even if you are one of the ‘just XC riding’ people you don’t bump into as many people on a ride as you would in a TC car park so all the thousands of older bikes still in use are almost invisible to some degree.

It really does come down to priorities, and there are some places and some rides I much prefer an old school 90s bike on, others where I want my squishy slack modern thing and wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Then again there’s something to be said for sometimes taking an inappropriate bike out for a ride and having a giggle that way too 🙂

/thread.
amedias has pretty much summed up everything.

Although I will say this …
You get used to riding what you have. I used to DJ on a 90’s xc bike with 580mm flat bars, odyssey sharkbites, a 46T chainring with massive rock ring over it and a 130mm I beam stem. It never held me back.
Ditto when I saw the light and bought a BMX it weighed a quarter ton, and had incredibly narrow and short bars. Remember when BMX’ers used to put grips on the bends of bars to hold them even more close together? And yet it never felt wrong at the time. But put me back on one of those bikes now and I’d feel nervous riding even a small jump. So I guess you adapt to what you have to make it work.
Part of me wonders which areas of modern geometry are in the same arena. I’m looking at you super long reach.

I’m looking at you super long reach.

I’ve been on a reach journey over the last year – it’s been interesting. One thing I’m pretty certain about is that height is a rather deceptive number for judging bike fit – I think shoulder to hip length is the one that matters for reach and armspan has an effect too (possibly in the opposite direction to what you’d think!)

Anyway, I’m 5’10.5 tall, have a 6’2 armspan, and have fairly long legs (maybe 33″). Here’s what I’ve been riding in the last year, with the reach at 20% fork (and 25% shock on the Spitfire) sag.

Soul 140 – reach = 403mm
Spitfire low reach = 419mm
Spitfire high reach = 429mm
Zero AM130-2 reach = 458mm
Zero AM140.5 reach = 450mm

Apart from the last one, all running 50mm stems. The Soul had a 710mm bar, the Spitfire has varied between 710 and 800, the Zero between 740 and 760.

I was concerned that the Zero AM with 130mm fork and zero lower stack -2 deg headset would make my Spitfire feel too short of reach and too high of BB but I wanted to find out how more extreme geometry would feel. But each time I got back on the Spitfire I felt it fitted better. I do prefer the longer fit of the Spitfire when it’s in the high setting (with 740mm bars anyway) and the angles and BB height work great for natural singletrack, but the low setting is killer for steep stuff and uplift (especially with 800mm bars).

After 6 months odd swapping between the two bikes I came to the conclusion that that Zero AM was too low of BB and too long. Last week the headset was swapped to a -.5 deg headset with an external lower cup, the fork extended to 140mm and the 50mm stem swapped to a 35mm one.

It’s only had a brief test like this but it feels way better – head angle a bit steeper, seat angle a bit slacker, reach a fair bit shorter (mostly helped by the shorter stem), wheelbase shorter, bottom bracket higher – it’s basically back to the stock geometry, just a fraction slacker. It’ll have a proper test this evening…

If you care, these are the BB heights at sag:

Soul 140 – BB = 334mm
Spitfire high – BB = 319mm
Spitfire low – BB = 307mm
Zero AM130-2 BB = 294mm
Zero AM140-.5 BB = 303mm

And these are the head angles likewise:

Soul 140 HA = 68 deg
Spitfire high HA = 66.6 deg
Spitfire low HA = 65.6 deg
Zero AM130-2 HA = 65.4 deg
Zero AM140.5 HA = 66.2 deg

Can you tell I think about this stuff too much? 😉

I use what looks like an old school bike (rigid, 71 degree head angle, longish stem) and there is nothing wrong with it, it is perfect for the normal XC riding I always do.

However, I do not have;

old school brakes (rims brakes are rubbish in mud and wet compared to discs)
old school tyres (tyres with tubes are rubbish compared to tubeless)

Take advantage of the advances where advances actually matter to you (for me tyres and brakes) leave the rest alone (slack geometry, suspension forks)

My ones all broke

If you’re a cross-moor adventurer off on big days out with a varied mix of surfaces then older style MTBs (or even modern gravel bikes) can still be much better all rounders.

Nah – I reckon 29ers are far better for that use case – as are plus tyres. Or both.

Off-road drops are a nice option to have too. And of course disc brakes are a vast improvement for every bike.

When I looked for my 29er I specifically wanted one with an old style steep HA – most were 68 or less but mine’s 71, and I like it like that. Not intending to do anything steep on it.

Had a decent test last night. Really bloody good. Fast too!

If you’re a cross-moor adventurer off on big days out with a varied mix of surfaces then older style MTBs (or even modern gravel bikes) can still be much better all rounders.

Nah – I reckon 29ers are far better for that use case – as are plus tyres. Or both.

[/quote]

No way I’m gonna drag plus tyres round 70-100km ride with significant road and gravel/fireroad sections, but each to their own 😀

When I looked for my 29er I specifically wanted one with an old style steep HA – most were 68 or less but mine’s 71, and I like it like that.

that’s exactly my point, you didn’t pick a modern long low slack bike, you picked one with appropriate geo for the job, by ‘older style MTBs’ I didn’t mean it specifically had to be actual 80s or 90s MTB, I meant normal conservative geo, which some old school bikes have, but so do some modern ones, hence the gravel/adventure/old style MTB commment.

where do all the old bikes go?

Beijing?

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHQG6-DojVw[/video]

that’s exactly my point, you didn’t pick a modern long low slack bike, you picked one with appropriate geo for the job,

The HA might be steep but everything else is modern. It has a 70mm stem and 660mm bars, but the biggest thing is the 29″ wheels of course.

No way I’m gonna drag plus tyres round 70-100km ride with significant road and gravel/fireroad sections, but each to their own

That’s why I haven’t gone for plus on my 29er. Tempted to downsize tyres but then I have road interspersed with quite rocky trails. Then again I have got 30psi in the 2.4s so I might as well go smaller.

I was riding a 2005 Reign out in the Alps this summer. 90mm stem, 760mm flats, but also 2008 55 forks at 160mm. My pal kept saying the bike was holding me back and I should get something with modern geometry, but I don’t think the angles were too far from his Transition Suppressor. The forks on my Reign were originally 140mm, so the extra length slackened the HA a bit.

There’s no two ways about it, a modern fork would be WAY better, perhaps some Pikes. The 55s were VERY rattly and creaky too. That did psych me out a bit, but the 2005 frame was totally fine, and for the riding I do 26″ wheels are ideal.

If you’re a cross-moor adventurer

I am

off on big days out with a varied mix of surfaces

Yep

then older style MTBs (or even modern gravel bikes) can still be much better all rounders.

Rewind a few years I was still (happily) beating myself up on a Caad3 26er with Vs, Headshok and Mary bars. Big Apple 2.35s improved the hardpack summer days and I was mostly happy but always looking for something somehow more all-day comfortable yet faster too.

This year my dreams came true and have not looked back. Molgrips pretty much described it: 29er, drops, bigger tyre options. Disc brakes help too.

Only one thing wrong with old school bikes. They cannot take wide tyres.

Except the Surly 1×1.

Gravel bikes are good all rounders, but they are crap when you get to any fun parts (fast up and down single track with drops, jumps, tight corners, manual sections etc,.). I used a gravel type bike for years and moved back to an MTB for that reason, I was missing out the fun bits for the sake of making the non fun bits faster.

Its in nobodies interest to prove your old bike is better than a new one.

Just ride what you’ve got, you will have the same amount of fun.

I think the problem is terminology.

As the likes of trail parks and bike specific trails have evolved, the requirements to be able to enjoy them have changed. Bikes you use for jumpy stunty stuff benefit from the modern innovations and with the introduction of plus size tyres and reintroduction of wide rims can only get better for that. Once centrally mounted gearboxes become de rigeur, they will approach their final form.

Old school really describes the sort of bikes used for actual cross country riding* and they don’t really need most of the recent mtb innovations or geometry changes. You can ride most of that sort of cross country stuff on a 1900s bike if need be (I’ve done it). However lighter materials, disk brakes etc are not something we want to go back from. The old name ATB (All Terrain Bike) is probably better than old school. Gravel bike is probably good for the rigid versions.

In the end the ultimate limitation for a bike is the human bit, and humans have shown themselves capable of riding all sorts of “wrong” geometries.

I think the main thing is to give any new bike you try a decent chance, especially if you’ve been riding your old one for some time. When i got my Dune, which is v long and slack compared to my 2012 zesty i’ve been riding for 4 years, it felt very very different, and i went slower at first.

Fast forward 6 months and i’ve learn’t how to ride it, adapted and now it’s the zesty that feels weird to ride!

In the end the ultimate limitation for a bike is the human bit, and humans have shown themselves capable of riding all sorts of “wrong” geometries.

+1

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWy5xX3-e3U[/video]

In the end the ultimate limitation for a bike is the human bit, and humans have shown themselves capable of riding all sorts of “wrong” geometries.

Partly that is true but in other ways the bikes did hold us back, Warner’s quote about old school dh bikes and not knowing if the bike would make it down the run. The option of super heavy tyres or ones that punctured.

with the introduction of plus size tyres and reintroduction of wide rims can only get better for that. Once centrally mounted gearboxes become de rigeur, they will approach their final form.

Still hoping that the plus thing just crawls off and dies… What’s actually wrong with modern tyres and suspension that adding 2″ of unhampered puncture prone travel will fix?

Accu, that’s a modern geometry frame with 27.5 plus tyres and wide rims 😉