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I can't believe you're openly talking about Mike's Secret Stuff in a forum!!! Now everybody knows!
Well, Brosnan IS impressive. And so is Loic. And Finn. Everyone’s jumping to conclusions about electronic suspension after a single race. The entire season will tell if this is noise or signal. The five riders up top could been the top 5 no matter what. Great race, but we didn’t see anything special. Dak threw down a heater. Yup, he’s capable of that. Brosnan, Finn, and Loic put down better times. Yup, they’ve done that before. Loic stomped everyone and looked like a textbook doing it. Yup, he’s done that without electronics, too.
You could argue that Luca being back in the mix actually speaks against the advantages of electronics - he’s struggled the past couple years but did awesome against riders with an “unfair advantage”. The splits demonstrate that lockouts didn’t have an advantage where you’d think they would. And anyway, riders have made magic on the motorway without electronics. I don’t know why it never gets mentioned, but in 2017(?) Marcelo Gutierrez made up 5 seconds on the motorway. Crazy, right? Nobody pulled that trick off with a lockout. Pretty rare anyone pulls back time like that, anyway.
tell me electronics are better when they sweep the podium all season on unexpected riders.
Wasn't Luca also running electronics during the race? He was during practice.
I think Loic and Finn are great examples of "better" or at least for them "faster"
Ohlins isnt marketing whatever it is that team Spesh is using, so you wouldnt think they be under pressure to run it. Id say both those riders are after any possible margin available, with budget and backing to make it happen. Whether its "better" for everyone is up for debate. Whether it makes the difference in the end, also up for debate, but you would think "they" think its better/faster.
The FA stuff, maybe some pressure from the sponsor/marketing dept, maybe none of it does anything, maybe its placebo, who knows.
electric lockout tech seems like an obvious upcoming thing from the big manufacturers. Would like to have one myself especially on my big rig (overforked / sprung megatower)
The FA stuff on "enduro" bikes seems like a great idea to me, but I think a manufacturer that designs a bike around the system, to exploit the benefits, and free up the constraints on sus design would be the winning combination. I think adding it to an existing platform is just a half measure, and youll still have the compromises built into the frame/sus kinematics from the design.
the DH platform seems pretty limited, just by the numbe of DH bikes sold, and the premium level you think FA would command.
Actually, what about an FA purpose designed trail bike, so it exploits all the advantages of the potential climbing performance of FA, and can then design the sus kinematics purely for the decent. I really should figure out how to build bike frames...
Your trail bike idea exists. It's called the Trance X Advanced Pro 29 1 with Fox Live Valve. Plots show anti-squat sitting below 100% in most gears, making it a good candidate for active damping.
@smelly Luca was on the electronics and had his best result (or one of them) in the past couple seasons. DAK was the only one on the podium without electronic lockout. And all of the racers with electronic lockout made the podium in both mens and womens elite races.
I've heard from someone who was in Fort William, working alongside a couple Flight Attendant athletes and they're VERY stoked for the advantage that it gave them on that track, but they're not going to be publicly chalking their success up to tech, vs their riding. How much advantage it's giving the riders can be debated. I think it's VERY reasonable to suggest a savings of 1-2 seconds on that track. It's fair to say Vali doesn't win that race without it--she finished only 0.56 seconds up on Nina.
Additionally, to the people who keep noting that all of the electronic lockout racers didn't hold all the fastest splits on the motorway: That's not the point. The point is, they maybe went a second faster than they would have without the lockout. Just because they have the lockout doesn't mean they automatically are the fastest on the motorway--it's not that much of a benefit haha.
I'm going to guess the VAST majority of people in this forum have never raced XC at a high level and have been in a sprint and know the power loss of even un-locked 120mm of suspension. Every time we come to the final lap, we lock out the bike to save the 'half second' in the final short sprint to the line. It's noticeable. Can't imagine the savings on a 200mm bike with a coil shock.
I just don't think the data is there to conclude that lockouts helped on the motorway. Riders were tucking as much as pedaling, and heavier riders seemed to fair better. Its likely that speedsuit-gate had more of an impact.
I would be open to the idea that a lockout allows you to optimize your suspension setup for the rough and chunk, and not trying to find a compromise between that and the motorway, hypothetically giving you a faster time in the middle (chunky) section.
Data being data, time will tell if lockouts have an effect as you'll see more riders using it placing higher than before. Way too early to tell if it does.
Did anyone ride the last gen Scott Ransom? Its Twinloc reduced the air chamber volume of the shock instead of firming up compression to both increase ramp up dramatically and reduce travel (Cannondale had some bikes that did this too but they had crap geo so it doesn't count). To my mind this would be more effective at creating a 200mm travel DH bike that can be enjoyed pumping down a green trail or hitting super lippy dirt jumps made for dirt-jumpers. Since pretty much all bikes over 130mm travel have ~64 degree HTA anyways, geometry adjustment is less necessary.
Daprella was on the electronics.
The data is there, it's just that there's only a handful of people who are privy to it.
I ride a Genius from that generation, which has the same shock just at 185 mm rather than 205. I'm fairly sure the remote on the Nude T/TR adjusts both the spring and the damper, while the Nude TR has the extra lever on the air can for independent external adjustment of the spring between "linear" and "progressive".
And the Twinloc is the reason I still own that bike. It isn't an XC bike and it isn't an enduro bike, but it can do almost everything within that range. The Scott implementation from that generation however is very limiting in turns of damper tuning, having only external LSR. The idea of remote control on otherwise fully tuneable suspension has my attention and like bike_futurist above I would also love my enduro bike's coils to have the option, as long as it doesn't compromise anything.
It's been bugging me for a while, where I'd seen that Specialized prototype design before. I know Ancilloti did something similar, but Paul Brodie just put out a YouTube short on a bike he built as a younger man. And it's a mullet too!
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/OHOEnqzxaCI
That bike was super cool, I love when it pops up every so often. But 26/24 mullets were terrible
I still remember my 2002 Bighit DH getting caught up on everything and I was trying to figure out what I was doing wrong until I got my A-line the two years later. Those 24" wheels were bomb hole magnets.
Just so you know, you argument is invalid as you keep moving the goal posts.
First it's, lockouts saved so much time on the flat.
I referenced the actual timing of the athletes with lockout and the race timing and it's sector 2 that decided the race, followed by sector 3, sector 4 and 5 are both so short and the timings so close it didn't make the race at all.
But now you make an argument that can't be disproven, that the athletes were faster than they would have been. Well maybe, we can't disprove that but again, sector 2 won the race.
Nobody is doubting the gains that CAN be made by electronic lockout, but it's certainly not a game changer. But you can't make these sweeping arguments that the podium was stacked with them because of it, you can't prove it.
I would argue it's no surprise that Specialised and Canyon riders are on the podium, they're two of the most professional teams with strict and efficient off seasons and new bikes at the cutting edge and track side timers to help them pick lines. Lockouts, maybe it helped, but the timings say it didn't actually matter.
Is it time for a “lockouts and such” thread
That Twinloc system on the Ransom is a really cool way to make the bike more lively and a legitimate reason to have an extra lever on the bar.
I think whats cool about the Flight Attendant stuff is the way it can be autonomous AND rider activated. While the system is made to be always reading the trail and adjusting, I imagine on a downhill bike the riders are using the manual override function to acheive exactly what youre talking about. In my experience the Trail mode made a 170mm enduro bike feel like a 130mm trail bike, so much that I left the system in override most of the time and switch it back to auto mode when things got rougher. Doing that to some of these more stuck-to-the-ground feeling downhill bikes seems like a huge advantage by making them feel more like a park bike for pumping and jumping.
That design has been around for ages, it's not like it has been something that Specialized suddenly brought up again. Funnily enough, I watched that video of the 69er yesterday, such a cool bike.
So exactly what tyre wiz does?
or sks
I actually bought one of the Fox Float X Gemini shocks to go on my Bird. It's got a remote activated air valve that basically blocks off the outer air can sleeve, effectively it's like dropping in a bunch of volume spacers at will.
It might be that my bird is already too progressive for the shock but I did'nt really notice any appreciable advantages to running it closed bar not getting full travel.
I replaced it with a Kitsuma Air which apart from just being a better shock full stop ,I found the lockout lever much more useful.
Which Bird?
Aether 9. It was supposed to be my 'xc' bike so the shock made sense.
It's morphed into a mini enduro bike as my local riding is pretty gnar.
With what the Aeris AM and 9 became I fully expect any updates to the Aether (imminent given the sales of the current one?) will bring it closer to what the AM9 was.
I'm not sure what changes they'd make apart from a UDH.
There's not anything I'd change tbh. Longer CS maybe as it is fashionable right now. Personally I like them short but my local riding is tech, mega steep and not super quick.
Whats your thoughts on this:
Tune your suspension only for sector 2, dial it there, don't compromise on anything else, then the buttons firm things up for the end of the track? Most others had to compromise between these two severely different parts of the track, slowing them down in sector 2?
electronic suspension discussion topic created here - https://www.vitalmtb.com/forums/hub/electronic-suspension-discussion (you're all welcome to start these yourselves. if they're good topics, i'll homepage them).
#gizmos
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