People are being sold bikes that are great for racing/racers people who ride day in day out jimjam not for people who ride 1 or 2 or three times a week on a variety of terrain from fire roads to fort william all on the one bike. Aaron gwin runs his suspension hard and goes faster for it, I am not as skilful or strong so a coil sprung bike with a longer wheelbase etc will flatter my lack of skill and enable me to do road gaps etc, doesn’t mean people are using the wrong bike (there is no wrong bike really as long as it’s fun for you). Bikes should flatter peoples abilities not the other way around as most of us only get a couple of rides in a week and want to enjoy them as much as possible.

robd – Member

People are being sold bikes that are great for racing/racers people who ride day in day out jimjam not for people who ride 1 or 2 or three times a week on a variety of terrain from fire roads to fort william all on the one bike. Aaron gwin runs his suspension hard and goes faster for it, I am not as skilful or strong so a coil sprung bike with a longer wheelbase etc will flatter my lack of skill and enable me to do road gaps etc, doesn’t mean people are using the wrong bike (there is no wrong bike really as long as it’s fun for you). Bikes should flatter peoples abilities not the other way around as most of us only get a couple of rides in a week and want to enjoy them as much as possible.

I don’t disagree rob, but when I said inappropriate in the above I meant typically a guy who buys a cheap hardtail, takes it to dh track, nothing works. He sees a guy on a dh bike flying past, decides to buy a full sus. Buys a cheap XC full sus. Still doesn’t work, in fact it’s worse because it’s got xc angles, light tyres, narrow bars etc. So he fits wider bars and shorter stem and bumps up the pressure and wonders why he has no grip and keeps going over the bars….that kind of inappropriate. I used to see it all the time. And whilst that may not be the op, that’s what his post reminded me of.

If you like coil fine. I dallied with air sprund 160mm bikes 6-7 years ago. Promptly declared them to be shit and built a coil sprung sx trail. Problem solved. Except I couldn’t ride it anywhere.

My current 160mm Ghost is Air front and rear and absolutely trounces any coil sprung bike I’ve ever owned. It can do anything that I have the balls to do, damping is not the issue. The best thing is I can flick on some pro-pedal and some lsc and go for a 40 mile xc spin, or I can open it up, drop some pressure and take it downhilling. So I’ll not be going back to coil in a hurry.

“Gwin and Remi amongst others choosing air shocks over coil for dh tracks like Lourdes”
A lot of results are to do with the rider – wasn’t Steve Peat winning local early races with 1.5″ tyres on a hardtail? Also, that Lourdes result was enough of a unexpected result that FOX took out full page results in the mags. This is the same FOX that provides a one-off prototype coil shock with a lockout to the reigning male Enduro champ too.

“being in a bike shop and pretty much once a week you were guaranteed to encounter someone with all of the OPs complaints”
So, the obvious conclusion is that we’re all wrong?

My experience might have been really unusual and soz for text walls : ) but I’m on about a nearly £3k new bike from 3yrs ago equipped with rockshox monarch that blew its seal and left me out on the trails with 5hrs ‘riding’ to do as it clunked heavily on fully compressed. Even before that when it was running ‘OK’ hitting rocks would just pinch flat a crazy amount of times with anything less than pinging 45psi – the transformation of ride after swapping to a coil shock was honestly like a brand new bike. I was reading a review of another bike recently & their justified gripe was the rockshox air fork blowing the seal totally off the lower stantion mid-ride. I’m not disputing that sussed out air shocks esp with a negative chamber can perform well – but even if the only rationale for coil was that at ‘failure’ you weren’t faced with a looong walk home then it’d justified to take into the hills – but my feedback of – ok not brand new kit but 3yr old stuff was the step up in performance was incredible!

“Current full suspension bikes are sensational”
No doubt.

“With correct maintenance most will go on for many years.”
Not so convinced about the second bit – for a start it’s pretty likely even basic stuff like size of wheel axles will have ‘evolved’ forcing buying the whole thing over again. But sure, as the sport moves more towards snowboarding with resorts and infrastructure in place then it’s still a much cheaper hobby than some other alternatives – a buddy of mine windsurfs and has all sorts of sails/boards for different weather – most of which he just runs for a couple of seasons and then replaces.

Did you buy a Sunn Shamann from CRC?

The distinction with motosport and mountain-biking is really significant – on a pushbike the engine pressing down on the pedals is bound to squish the suspension – unless it’s de-activated a bit with a ‘platform’ or lock-out. That sort of thing might be ideal for firetrack climbs or competitive xc with wins happening uphill.

Interesting that the only air rear shocks for motorbikes that FOX lists are for mini-moto bikes. Seems like the coils must perform better for them to justify the extra racing weight. I get that for bicycle racing an extra pound might make a podium difference – but for trail riders, maybe folk would like better performance and durability instead? It all seems a bit topsy-turvy for now, 29ers not generally viewed as burly trail machines – and 160mm enduro rides equipped with cushioning to land doubles rather than deal with natural obstacles – ok so I don’t jump but I’d have thought it’s pretty average what I want a bike to do.

What I’m suggesting is that a ~110mm coil bike left fully open might be perfect for a big slice of trail riders – that way the suspension can really help with traction climbing and out in the hills the ups might be just as rocky as the downs.

“1x transmissions”
Having a narrow/wide at the front with a clutch rear mech is brilliant – fan here for sure and it makes a lot of sense. But I used to run a 22/36 (0.61) gear and that’s welcome late in the day compared to 30/36 (0.83) stock gear on current Oranges – OK possible to select a 30/40 (0.75) on their website but not enough to get rolling on a steep tech climb. If they can’t spec a 28/45 (0/62) at point of sale then it’s just missing the needs of trail riders a bit. Sure – get fitter legs etc! But it’s always ultimately going to be the reason to have to get off for a steep and then tricky to get rolling again. To be honest I’d be happy to run something like 24/45(0.53) thru to 24/10(2.4) on a 1×10 setup – I’ve not found the need much to spin out big ring gears on tech descents.

Not so convinced about the second bit – for a start it’s pretty likely even basic stuff like size of wheel axles will have ‘evolved’ forcing buying the whole thing over again.

this isn’t happening though, is it?
1 1/8th forks can be fitted to any current frame with the use of correct headset parts. how long have ‘oversized’ headtubes been around for now? my mate had one on his scott 55 that he’s had for as long as I’ve known him – over 9 years.
6 bolt rotors aren’t suddenly obsolete.
pro 2 hubs that came on my 2009 5 are now on my 2013 5 with adaptors readily available.
you can still buy cartridge bbs if you want, but later standard HT2 will fit.
yes, you’re going to start to struggle to find high spec, cheap, performance forks with 1 1/8th in a year or two, but you would have had to have bought pretty poorly in recent years to not see that these were going to get phased out.

yes, bikes are changing, and it’s possible that some of the new standards are going to fall by the wayside – 26″+ as used on the surly instigator I don’t see going very far for instance, but by and large i don’t think it’s half so much of a problem as you’ve built it up to be.
i’d be pretty confident that if you bought a 27.5 5 now you could still be riding it in 10 years if you didn’t break it or break yourself. relatively mainstream, adopts the sensible improvements we have around now.

“Gwin and Remi amongst others choosing air shocks over coil for dh tracks like Lourdes”
A lot of results are to do with the rider – wasn’t Steve Peat winning local early races with 1.5″ tyres on a hardtail? Also, that Lourdes result was enough of a unexpected result that FOX took out full page results in the mags. This is the same FOX that provides a one-off prototype coil shock with a lockout to the reigning male Enduro champ too.

I never said Gwin won because he had an air shock.. merely that he chose to use it which says something for how capable it is. And it’s hardly a shocker that a company makes an ad because a pro rider wins a race on their item?

And with the enduro coil shock, that’s likely because enduro stages can be 15 minutes+ compared to around 4 minutes for a dh track so you’re much more likely to get heat build up affecting the air pressure.

I’m not pretending to be an expert but I’m sure the pro DHers are, and they’re increasingly turning to air.

“Did you buy a Sunn Shamann from CRC?”
y – inappropriate bike selection. Crazy bargain price of £799 & the sense that as a 42yr old timid trail rider after long days out in the hills, a marathon xc style bike would be more than enough for me.

hitting rocks would just pinch flat a crazy amount of times with anything less than pinging 45psi

tbh though…buy better tyres? There are some shockingly thin side-walled bits of crap that have no place on a bike. But, there’s also very capable rubber out there that won’t perform badly at all. Last time I burped any amount of air was just shocking riding from me, nowt to do with the tyres.

alsolofty – Member

“Did you buy a Sunn Shamann from CRC?”
y – inappropriate bike selection. Crazy bargain price of £799 & the sense that as a 42yr old timid trail rider after long days out in the hills, a marathon xc style bike would be more than enough for me.

Crazy bargain or cheap for a reason. CRC bought up stock of those when the company went bust. I used to try and talk people out of buying them because they were a flexy horrible mess, tarted up with nice parts. Lean the bike over and put your foot on the pedal and you can see the whole bike flex like a coke can. It also had very XC race focused angles, not something I would see as playful or versatile.

I put it to you that this statement, and maybe all of your post….

there’s not a single decent mountain bike that meets my fairly average needs available to buy in the shops yet.

…..is skewed by the fact that you bought a very poorly made bike that was unsuitable for your needs.

Which is unfortunate. If you’d gone to an lbs and spoken to someone who understood your needs I don’t think you’d be in the same situation or be feeling the same way.

“the pro DHers are, and they’re increasingly turning to air.”
It’s quite a (popular) niche style of riding tho – there’s lots of flat-out pedally sprinting at every opportunity in-between trickier sections…do they run them with a switch to flick to gain a few extra seconds?

Are the runs really only1/3 of the duration of an Enduro descent? How come the downhillers don’t ride down the whole hill then?

So all manufacturers are wrong and from the other thread all the general public are wrong.

As a media studies graduate I’d have thought an engineering graduate would be able to think outside the very narrow “everything is shit” line

I like this thread, some valid points from all concerned.

Firstly you need to dismiss the one off air shocks Fox are making for Gwin to race with, they’re not production ready or available to you or I….likewise the one off coil Fox fitted to Graves bike for the last EWS race shouldn’t really feature in the discussion, these are racing prototypes that may or may not make it to the shop floor.

I’ve been vocal in the past re. the advantages of coil forks, up until a few months ago I was running a TFtuned coil sprung Sektor that was bloody ace….smooth on small bumps, no bottoming out on tough stuff and stunningly reliable….I just couldn’t see the appeal with air forks that leak, require inflating, regular servicing etc….

That said I did rate the performance of a Fox RP23 that came on a Saracen Ariel I owned a few years ago…the Float-32s it had were dire but that’s a different story….the shock was very good.
So when a ‘cheap’ Revelation SoloAir came up recently on Wiggle I took the plunge, I didn’t want to replace the Sektors but like a numpty I’d cable tied brake hoses to the crown steerer and caused some unsightly wear…new forks were needed and 26inch stock seemed to be going cheap.

The Revs have been great, easily as good as the coil spring Sektors out on the trail, I can’t comment on longevity yet but I have taken them on XC type runs around the local woods and uplift days all over the place…just play with the pressures and away you go….it’s got me thinking.

My next bike is going to be a DH bike and I’d thought I would do the usual coil shock and perhaps get flashy with some titanium springs in the fork but now I’m not sure…seeing how good these new Revs are and how good the RP23 from four years ago was I think I’ll probably go frame only and build it with whatever DH air stuff is on the market at the time….realistically with a recent house move this is probably a year or two away, if I was building one now I’d probably still use a coil shock but air forks.

I wouldn’t go as far as to say I’m a convert but I welcome the additional choice, air suspension is definitely bridging the gap to coil stuff for gravity type riding.

(You can keep tubeless tyres however!…far too much faff, I’m a serial tyre swapper so breaking beads, cleaning up sealant, playing with compressors etc isn’t for me. Thanks to Snakeskin and Exo sidewalls I haven’t pinch flatted in years and can happily run 25psi all day long).

deviant

Firstly you need to dismiss the one off air shocks Fox are making for Gwin to race with, they’re not production ready or available to you or I….likewise the one off coil Fox fitted to Graves bike for the last EWS race shouldn’t really feature in the discussion, these are racing prototypes that may or may not make it to the shop floor.

Gwin’s bike

and the Float X2 on sale.

Granted, Gwin may have custom internals but twas ever thus in terms of what elite riders and racers have access to.

“buy better tyres?”
Well I tried eh – honestly the fattest I could squeeze into the back of that bike was a Maxxis Advantage 2.1″

“a very poorly made bike that was unsuitable for your needs”
No disagreement from me! : )

“coloured by the fact…”
No doubt, but one useful insight from the whole experience was that, the rear shock itself & mounting hardware really let me down and it was totally transformed switching to a coil. So can you imagine if that boost in performance was coupled to a frame that went in a straight line – ideal! – except there’s still not a single rear coil ~110mm bike on the UK market.

Are the runs really only1/3 of the duration of an Enduro descent? How come the downhillers don’t ride down the whole hill then?

Not sure if trolling but I’ll bite.

The whole hill will have loads of boring featureless fields and access roads….can’t really say I’m interested in watching that. The course designers usually take the most technical 3-5 mins of a given mountain and race there, it makes for good viewing for spectators, good racing for competitors and good TV coverage….also short sharp courses allow good line-of-sight marshalling for medical/safety reasons….15 minute long Enduro stages don’t have that.

except there’s still not a single rear coil ~110mm bike on the UK market.

Thats because no one wants an off the shelf short travel coil sprung bike in big enough numbers to make it worthwhile.

160mm bikes these days are almost as good as 120mm was just a few years back so why would anyone go for less when more is always better?

Also an Air spring can be made to suit 95% of the buying public, no shop wants to carry umpteen different spring rates in umpteen different sizes and umpteen different materials just to find out the one they gave you in the shop isnt what you want on the trail.

You could easily build one up from a frame no too dissimilar

In lots of ways you’re right, there is a space for a durable, not weight obsessed mid travel, suss bike that has decent angles and a robust build, off the top of my head:

Bird Aeris, DMR Bolt, Orange 5 all fit that bill pretty effortlessly, and have great support and back-up, are customisable enough by the dealers, or manufacturers, and will do what you want.

But having looked at the Sunn you bought, TBH what were you expecting?

edit

Well I tried eh – honestly the fattest I could squeeze into the back

It’s not all about the size though, it’s also about how the sidewall’s been constructed and what rubber’s been used on the tread.

except there’s still not a single rear coil ~110mm bike on the UK market.

That’s because there’s little or no demand for one. The type of riding “most” people want to do on short travel bikes involves lots and lots of pedaling. So light weight and good pedalling traits are desirable in this category. Air is preferable for both of these. You need to go to 160mm + to start seeing bikes where the climbing/descending bias is tipping towards descending before descending becomes enough of a priority that riders will forsake the lightness and adjustability of air for the compliance, grip and resitance towards overheating that a coil provides.

Most of the time what people want isnt necessarily better.

Great discussion here. Tagged for reference.

That’s because there’s little or no demand for one.

This. By the time you have a designed a bike primarily around reliability and fitted a coil shock to it, there is absolutely no reason to restrict it to 110mm travel, so why would you?
The requirement for durability and ability to hammer rocky descents will require solid wheels and tyres and by the time you’ve fitted the wheels off a 140-160mm bike, you have something that pedals pretty much like a 140-160mm bike. The actual amount of travel at the rear wheel is much less important to the feel at the pedals than the tyres the bike is fitted with.
I’ve always reckoned that it’s often most accurate when deciding what bike to buy to start by picking the tyres you need / want to run and get a bike that will suit the tyres.
After all, it is usually the tyres that are the limit on the capability of the bike, and either one of running heavy duty tyres on a light, flexy frame or running lightweight, fragile tyres on a burly long travel frame is just saddling yourself with all the disadvantages of either end of the scale.

I’ve always reckoned that it’s often most accurate when deciding what bike to buy to start by picking the tyres you need / want to run and get a bike that will suit the tyres.

I like this thinking, don’t 100% agree but I do like it

This. By the time you have a designed a bike primarily around reliability and fitted a coil shock to it, there is absolutely no reason to restrict it to 110mm travel, so why would you?

Just to say I’ve got a Turner RFX with 5″ and 6″ travel plates and I prefer it in 5″ guise – it’s more playful but still enough travel to soak up most of the hits. Its also rock solid and hasn’t needed so much as a bushing change since I’ve owned it.
Oh and it’s got a vanilla RC coil shock with a Ti spring.

I like this thinking, don’t 100% agree but I do like it

I don’t 100% agree either, but it’s sometimes a good sanity check, i.e if you only need lightweight tyre casings, you don’t need a 160mm+ travel frame.

Just to say I’ve got a Turner RFX with 5″ and 6″ travel plates and I prefer it in 5″ guise – it’s more playful but still enough travel to soak up most of the hits. Its also rock solid and hasn’t needed so much as a bushing change since I’ve owned it.

Turners are the epitome of reliable robustness at the expense of the last word in lightness and would be well worth a look for the OP. As to the bike being nicer in the shorter travel setting, that’s often the case, or at least bikes often feel best set up quite progressive so they don’t use all the travel all the time. It’s probably fair to say though that an RFX set-up for 5″ not 6″ is still essentially a longish travel trail bike and probably, better suited to the OPs requirements than what he has.

Oh and it’s got a vanilla RC coil shock with a Ti spring.

That’ll feel lovely I bet. I’ve had the air shock on my Enduro tuned to feel much more coil like and it’s a big improvement.
I reckon in many instances when folk compare air shocks to coil, and conclude they like coil better, they are actually comparing shocks set-up for pedalling (air) with those set-up for descending (coil) and preferring the descending biased set-up. You can have an air shock valved to feel that way too.

Bikes are always a compromise. Luckily I have 3 mountain bikes in my collection after many years of riding. A hardtail for mud and larking around on with 140mm revs. Light but fun. Aluminium SC Solo 140mm air shocked bike for playing on dry trails. Carbon Nomad with Ti Coil Dhx rear and 170mm Lyric forks.
The nomad gets used in the mountains and climbs very well too for a long travel bike. I like coil shocks on it as in terms of reliability and maintenance they are a lot better than air and I ride it in remote locations. I agree air forks are much improved in terms of reliability , however still not quite as good as coil shocks in that you tune and forget. I have never broken a coil spring apart from on a pace fork in the bad old days.

I use dropper reverb posts on my full suss bikes but make sure I have spare seat posts handy when away, as I have found reverbs are still far too unreliable especially in very cold weather. No way would I want a reverb stealth and have all the faff of taking that off. Press fit bottom brackets also seem a retro step to me as is internal cable routing which is really a time trial aero thing.

My shorter travel air shocked sc solo is way more playful and “pingy ” than the nomad which with long travel coil both ends is almost like a dh bike on the way down. For exploring new trails the Nomad is much more forgiving when things go wrong, but the solo makes even fairly tame trails fun as the short travel encourages you to jump everything .

I use dropper reverb posts on my full suss bikes but make sure I have spare seat posts handy when away, as I have found reverbs are still far too unreliable especially in very cold weather. No way would I want a reverb stealth and have all the faff of taking that off. Press fit bottom brackets also seem a retro step to me as is internal cable routing which is really a time trial aero thing.

You read my mind.

On a remote ride with out the chance of nipping back to the trail centre carpark id use a spring loaded Gravity Dropper seatpost every time….or not bother and manually raise and lower accordingly.

MTBs are getting like cars where there is so much tech stuff that can go wrong and leave you in the lurch on a decent ride.

Agree with your thoughts on internal cable routing, mechanics hate it so why are we doing it?!….style over substance yet again, driven by the marketing dept and lapped up by posers.

Agree on pressfit BBs too, simple money saving for the manufacturer who no longer has to spec a threaded tube and ensure it all works, just weld in a smooth tube as the BB which may or may not have the right tolerances and may or may not squeak like a bugger when used….seems to be entirely pot luck as to whether you get a good one!

Oh how the engineering dept must have laughed when the marketing guys at Spesh presented the idea of a flippin’ lunchbox in the downtube of the new Stumpy….and how quickly the smiles must have vanished when they realised it was a serious suggestion.

Seriously, bikes should be simple.

Give me good quality suspension, good tyre clearance, brakes that could stop a runaway train and build it from something that wont break within the first few years of abuse.

I can happily do without internal cable routing, stealth droppers, pressfit BBs etc etc….its probably why i like hardtails so much.

cheers for warm welcome & great posts all : )

I just re-read thread and made a tally…I make 5 counts of riders with both air & coil experience choosing coil and 2 counts of riders with experience of both picking air rear shocks

I was half sure I’d also read about an Spec.Enduro rider posting about preferring with a Oilins(sp?) coil rear shock but can’t see that post now (deleted?)

Also, it seems like the 2 counts of choosing air over coil were on 160mm travel bikes.

So, on the face of it, it’d be interesting for a magazine (hint!) to run a test, setting up some trail bikes with both types of shocks and seeing how folk get on. I’m not really expecting most mainstream mtb mags to pick up on a topic like this – it’s dawning on me that rather than unbiased reviews they’re mostly just paid advertorials from manufacturers.

“160mm bikes these days are almost as good as 120mm was just a few years back so why would anyone go for less when more is always better?”

Hmm…the chit-chat about the 2015 Banshee Phantom via bikemag.com is worth a listen:
2015 bible of bike tests – banshee phantom

Thanks for the other tips – but I’m still coming back to the 29er, 105mm travel Phantom (with probably a coil shock) as close to ideal for wild-trail, all-day riding. I’ve read somewhere else about riders having tried 160mm bikes but then coming back down in travel again.

Team Robot has quite a good rant about coil sus on his blog, making the point that 95% of people are riding around with the stock coils fitted which don’t suit their body weight.

Air is easier for both the supplier and the consumer.

(And Im writing as someone with coils front and rear).

I’m completely meh about tubeless, so I use tubes. No scam there.