I have 2 hard tails, a nuke proof scout 29er and a board man mtb pro 29er

the nukeproof is much more modern geo but it’s heavier and the fork doesn’t lock out fully (yari)

the boardman feels faster on anything other than the descents

Now theoretically if the nukeproof weighed the same, had the same tyres and a lockout fork would it be as fast?

I’d say no as geo makes a difference to climbing and as you spend longer climbing than descending not being optimal on that makes more of a difference. Also lock the Yari out and your locked in a much slacker position than the boardman.

Do people actually bother locking out forks?

Do people actually bother locking out forks?

On the XC bike yes on anything smooth where I was hammering it

I lock out forks and shock for the road to and from the trails, but I just leave them open all the time off road.

I lock out my forks wherever I can. If its flat double track/firefroad or climbing and not technical then I’m probably locked out.

Tonight’s race is almost 1000m single track climbing, I’ll be locked out for probably 90% of that with certain short sections work better with the forks open.

As far as geo, I’d have said steeper ha will be faster uphill all being equal but the new spark and my slack scale hardtail throws all that up in the air.

Perceived speed is also a factor here.

I ride rigid fork as where I live and ride there really is no point in suspension.  If I had it then it would be locked out almost 100% of the time.  I also have a bike with 73 degree angles as again where I live it it great.

I don’t bother with lockouts. IME, if you run the same tyres and can get your saddle and bars into a comfortable position for climbing, there won’t be a lot of difference on road climbs of more than 20 minutes or so because you need to stay seated and conserve energy. If you have a really slack seattube angle and can’t get the saddle far enough forward, that can make climbing difficult, but the rest of it comes down to tyres and getting the stem lenght and bar height sorted out. A really heavy bike will obviously cost a bit of time, but a difference of a pound or two doesn’t really affect things much IME.

My PArkwood ‘feels’ faster than the T-130. Strava tells me, it’s not really. There’s very very little in it between them.

…biking with my biking pals: we all have more than one bike and we always show up with one or the other bike for our tours. And then we discuss where to go.

Depending onto this decission: you will quickly see who picked the right bike and who not.

And what we always learn: there is no perfect bike for “everything”. And guess that’s part of the fun – or?

I didn’t know the Scott spark was 66degrees yet it’s rated as really fast… sounds pretty awesome