i just wish that all mtb dimensions were done in metric

what steerer would that be in that vid then – 1.5, “normal” taper or standard ?

whatever it is, the top end (where “you can really feel the difference”) doesn’t seem to move much compared to the inch or two the lower bit (and the major give in the steerer seems to be at the lower end/crown insertion which is no different to current tapered ones)

I’m missing something aren’t I ? 😳

It looks like I’m in a small club here, as I’ve no problem with a company trying something new – none of you have to buy it.

I like innovation, but I’m not a first adopter, so rarely waste my cash.

Yay, more cheap second hand frames that still fit all my kit with outdated standards.

Same as someone said earlier you fit taper fox floats 150 to your bike there still slight flex in the forward/ back of the stanction and in the legs on heavy cambers not the headtube.

They’re not standards, they’re proprietary designs.

You can’t fit ford parts to an audi engine, if you want high-tech high-performance bikes the same will apply increasingly as things develop.

There’s always adapter widgets available to side-step these things so don’t stress over them. Let’s face it most of these bikes are bought as 2-3 year purchases and by then things will have moved on and stuff wears out. It’s not worth worrying about it, or berating companies that are either trying to tie you into their product and / or making things a bit better somehow. It’s just commercial competition and the upside of it is in general we get better stuff.

true-ish jameso but,

I’d prob buy new 15mm forks if my bulbs would convert
I’d go 1×10 when I next replace my cassette if I only had to buy the shifter and not an expensive (and seemingly fragile shadow) mech too
(I’d go 1×9 if they did a decent 11or12-36)
I’d buy new hbars if all my stems weren’t standard
I’d like one or two seatpost sizes to choose from, instead of a dozen

Fine by me, as long as you can get a 1.25″ stem that will also take my new 35mm handlebars..

http://bikehugger.com/post/view/deda-35mm-handlebar-bigger-is-better…hehehehehe

Jameso hit the nail .the beration comes from companies year on year forcing their opinion and fashion on punters
After twenty odd years of watching companies change their mind , they told us last year this was the best but this year they changed it to be better….or did they just not have a **** clue to start with but prefer to call getting it right this year R&D call me a cynical engineer….

cpro, you should know, you never get the best design first time, things evolve don’t they. One evolution spawns ideas in a new area and on it goes. There are times when i think ‘you must have thought of that before / why did that take so long..’ but in any area of design there’s the balance between development time available and need to have a product in the market. £ gets in the way.

Scaredypants, I know how it feels. I have 15 and 20mm forks, taper and std steerers, 15mm specific wheels, a 20mm wheelset without adapters for 15mm to hand, it drives me fin nuts. But i’d rather have this than what we had before, 100mm QR axles.. I’d also rather we didn’t have 15mm as an option, 20mm is better and was already there. Thanks fox + shimano.. But that’s how it goes sometimes.

How much does it wind you up? Enough to get away from it all and ride rigid SS? I started riding my rigid SS again this spring when i had 2 bikes out of action due to not being able to swap parts between them – incompatible axles and forks etc. I carried on riding it, it was a great regular-ride bike once i got used to it. I saw a path and I like where it goes.

Sure, I can see that some standards are outgrown, for example bottom bracket shells could do with being larger and Post Mount disc brakes simply work better than IS, at the expense of a little extra weight if you run adaptors. Likewise, aheadsets were a good idea as were bolt through hubs, especially if your frame has modular replaceable dropouts. Win-win.

Bad ideas include flippy shifters, that needed new mechs to work properly, the constant piddling about with rear axle widths, the idiotic fixation with 15mm front hubs when 20mm already exists and does the job just fine.

A good new standard is one that can be easily accomodated without incurring massive investment. Right now, we’re looking at all the fork manufacturers having to tool up for a third size of steerer tube (fourth if you count Manitou’s 1.5″ tube) at considerable expense and confusion of the aftermarket customer. This seems like a massive waste of time when all frame manufacturers need to do is fit 1.5″ headtubes to frames and be done with it.

This will certainly stand against the prospect of me buying a Giant any time soon, I feel that strongly about it.

Will a lack of aftermarket stems be a problem?

onepointfive seemed to have a point, as single crown long travel forks were struggling. onepointfive was lighter and stiffer than 1.1/8th and tapered.

then tapered seemed to take over, now this. *sigh*. onepointfive also seems to be back in fasion as you can use an angleset to tweak your angles more..

Gears working the wrong way round? I stuck with low normal for years untill parts prety much ran out, it’s wayyyyy better than ‘normal’ gears as you can ‘crunch’ through 4 or 6 gears up the cassette when your in a climb, back off the power slightly and the spring moves it up one gear at a time. Try that with ‘normal’ gears and it just goes “kerthunk” or bends the mech and snaps the chain. OK so you could argue that people ‘learn to shift properly’, but that’s like people who still advocate double de-clutching in a full syncro gearbox, and heel and toe in a car with ABS*, utterly pointless and just causes more wear.

*yes it is, I’ve never found a situation on the (public) road where heel and toe was nececary to slow the car down without upseting the rear axle**, and bessides, how many cars have pedal boxes small enough to heel/toe properly these days? I can get my foot between the pedals in the Focus!

Refering to the 1.5″ tube thing, I think the argument is that 1.5″ is too stiff and actualy requires more material to keep the wall thickness reasnoble to prevent other modes of failure? Which is why oversize bars/stems are heavier than their standard counterparts.

**Having written that, most cars are FWD now so just easing off the brakes as you declutch would achieve the same effect.

If you go into a bike shop with a view to buying a 2013 Giant and say “Actually, I really like it but the stem is a tad too long for me” then the supply of a suitable replacement that isn’t branded “Giant” may be a problem.

Morons.

I’ve never had an issue with head tube / steerer tube stiffness on any of my bikes that wasn’t solved by going to a 20mm axle. If 32mm stanchion Fox forks had been 20mm bolt through a la Rockshox Pike in the first instance, we wouldn’t be farting around looking at means of stiffening a fork by adding extra material at the steerer tube.

Emotions run very deep about new standards here.

I’ve never had an issue with head tube / steerer tube stiffness on any of my bikes that wasn’t solved by going to a 20mm axle

Are you sure? 20mm axles stop the fork twisting due to the brakes or arround rocks, but they dont stop it moving ftron to back. They have a moderate impact in stiffness longtitunanaly (sp?) as both the ‘fork’ and steerer contribute to this (for the sake of argument you can’t twist a steerer tube).

Pikes practicaly had a solid steerer tube at the bottom, so arguably that had as much of an effect on stiffness as the 20mm axle over the similar chasis/travel of the revelations.

As anecdotal evidence – CK headsets were particulalry bad at scoreing the steerer tubes as they flexed IIRC? And my Manitou minutes flexed the steerer so far under braking it rubbed the inside of the headset inserts!!!!

I’d like wider MTB hubs – 135 F and 150 R as standard. That would make sense.

BB30 is ok, but why not use the 54mm ID of a Bushnelll EBB or similar? Niner were close there with thier ‘standard’.

Taper steerers are as much about bigger weld / join area from a wider HT and DT as they are about the fork stiffness. Same for BB30, join area as well as bearing sizes.

think the push for bigger headtube dia has a lot to do with the join ability to the increasing size of down and top tubes as well as all the new shapes

So is there actually any after market forks with the larger taper?

Aftermarket forks!! There are’nt any chuffin’bloomin’flipin aftermarket stems!!! 👿
Says the man with 5k of tcr sl he can’t ride because there are no stems till JANUARY!!!
….not strictly true as syntace f119’s fit but I can’t find any to buy…and they are 3 times the price of a giant one.

What length are you after? Dunno if you saw my post, but I’ve got an unused F119 here.

Thanks njee but its a 115mm I’m after (I’m not picky or anything!!).
And I’ll probably get the carbon one aswell 😯