Why are there still no 200mm+ Enduro bikes?

good question. interested to see what everyone says. _Lan, i'm adding a link to your bike check here b/c it's so rad!
https://www.vitalmtb.com/community/Lan,51029/setup,40252

Nice effort on that bike!

While I'm the first to suggest "more travel" for the less-than-real pros out there, I do feel 200mm+ is a bridge too far, at least in North America.

What you gain in forgiveness and your ability to take the straight line just about anywhere, you give up in finding speed through pumping terrain features. Plus, with that much travel, doubling certain features can be a challenge. Out of saddle sprinting efforts, too, are penalized.

All that said, depending on your style it may just be the ticket! As I've blabbered about in the past, for us less-than-real-pro riders looking to have fun racing the more burly events, more travel makes a lot of sense. We aren't going to get a contract from some pro race team, so staying off the ground and having fun is really the end goal. A bike with more travel gives a rider more margin for error and is easier to ride at the end of a 14 minute stage (or similar).

Regardless, rad bike!

To Jeff's point, I think 200 mm is a bridge to far.

In order to realize a 200 mm enduro bike, I think suspension technology would have to advance to the point where, forks/ shocks could change suspension travel 30-40 mm, on the fly, without effecting frame geometry or spring rate.

Adjustable suspension in the past had to suck down through travel to achieve lower travel (when desired) which changes frame geo and fork/ shock spring rate.

Size of impact.
Enduro races just don't have the same amplitude of trail obstacles as they tend to be relatively less sculpted

My homemade DH bike has 63' HA and 76' SA. But the seat post is 27.2 and I don't think anyone makes a dropper post long enough for my 2 meter stature.

Liteville used to have a bike with 200mm travel that you could pedal up the hill. It was liteville 901 mk1, now I see 901 mk3 is pure downhill bike...

Great Job! And yes, I always question why not more!

I believe it may happen, but we will have dual crown forks first, then we might see travel creep upwards.

The guy who designs/machines Cascade Components links has his Nomad at 190mm rear (DHX2 coil) with a full 200mm Boxxer WC up front. He pedals it everywhere.

Absolutely, current suspensions are able to handle more travel especially with climb switch and whatnot. I'm sure people who say it's too much are not riding their DH bike enough.
I would definitively something with a bit more negative travel then some good support to keep it playfull then some bottomless plushness when going big.
Having more travel/sag is a much better option than the marginal gain in traction a spring might have over air.
The hard truth is that it is more difficult to squeeze more travel in an efficient pedal platform.
Most 29er designs are stuck at 140mm of travel unless they move their pivot way higher like in this example.

Correct me if I'm wrong about this, but...is there any fork left on the market that's a single-crown ~200mm travel fork?

Just a few years ago, there was a whole class of single-crown, longer travel forks built on a bigger chassis...for instance, the Rock Shox Totem. There was a whole class of longer-travel bikes all under in the Freeride paradigm. That has all gone away.

I think the deeper cause of the disappearance of the market segment was the move to primarily-carbon bike frames. The "modern" geo is basically nothing except a hack that takes an XC-bike back end bolted onto a DH-bike front end geo. The industry was telling everyone to get "one bike", and that one bike could now be a super expensive $10K carbon "do-it-all" machine that would appeal to virtually any bike consumer for any usage at all. The value proposition of the "quiver bike" seemed to click in a lot of riders' minds. And a lot of people around me have been sucked into a constant stream of buying and replacing carbon bikes in search of something elusive that doesn't seem to be delivered in that concept.

(I think there are a lot of very real compromises in what's being sold right now...IMO the pendulum has swung so far towards one extreme that the geometry of bikes is less of a limiting factor than the suspension and overall "built" strength of components. Bikes are too wimpy for their handling characteristics now.)

Bike companies used to make a whole range of products, now they have really small line-ups. A few manufacturers use the exact same super expensive carbon mold to make a whole line of bikes, simply swapping the metric shock for long- and short- shocks to differentiate the products. (Noooo...there's no compromise there.)

If you really, really think about the 35/36mm-stanchion forks that are on the market today, if you set them up with the recommended sag, you will bottom these out with 4X the rider weight applied. They have a pitifully small range of bump handling. If you go to 20% or 15% sag, and you go a couple extra tokens past what the "max" is, you can get them to take ~5X the rider weight at bottom out.

Here's an engineering paper about the 40mm single-crown RS Totem. Among many other details, it DOESN'T hit the bottom out on 5' drops to flat, which is remarkable given my not very similar experience on trail-build forks in recent years:
https://sci-hub.tw/10.1080/19346182.2008.9648466

For a point of reference, the weight on the fork at a 1.5m drop to flat is 5X the rider weight. That's the upper limit of the spring rate for 35mm air chambers, see above. (The old forks actually could handle much larger forces!)

This isn't just damper or air volume stuff, it's the whole design of the freeride fork product category. The fork in question cleverly uses the "hang time" to preload the lower air spring for big hits. The other engineering going on in the product is also pretty insightful...I'm not sure if there's really anything on the market "like this" right now.

Over in the real world, I'm currently rebuilding a trail that is an old Freeride/stunt trail. It was made out of some super nice cedar, back in the day. There's nothing really wrong with any of the structures, but the trail was so abandoned that I've been largely just removing deadfall...at least 50-100 trees have been lying across the trail. 10 years of neglected maintenance. Talking to people in my local community, the general consensus is that people are truly interested in riding this trail and reworking / dumbing down some of the stunts, but the view on this trail was rather surprising as I started to investigate it more. The big take-away from these conversations is that the main reason this trail got abandoned is because "the bikes couldn't take it any more". Person by person the idea has kept coming out saying that the "do-it-all" bikes simply can't REALLY handle the trail.

That has had me re-evaluating my thoughts on bikes/equipment quite a bit.

A couple of years ago when I was "in between trail bikes" I took an old Freeride bike up to Whistler and Squamish. Simply added a dropper post and took it on the trails. It was amazing how easy/manageable a lot of the hard lines became under the super stout bike with really DH-level suspension. It sucked pedaling a 40# bike around, but pointed down it made my buddies feel too slow and cautious to have fun to ride with...

Then I got my "new" trail bike and I found the trails became a lot harder again on my next trip. My suspension was clanging off the bumps stops and the brakes felt worked, etc. I am starting to feel like we're all "underbiked".

If you're doubting any of what I'm saying, go look at some YouTube videos of Enduro riders hitting tech. Not talking flow trails. Look for gnar. Watch in slo-mo, frame by frame and look at suspension travel. Fairly mild bumps will have the heavily tuned pro riders' bike near bottom-out. The suspension gear is just so wimpy.

So yeah. Someone would be able to build a longer-travel Enduro rig frame, but it'll suck when you build it up with what's available for components.

Couple of those still can be seen in Mallorca with the group I usually ride. Very capable machines, and with the right components, under 15kg. The only "but", they are 26. But #26aintdead

I personally see all these various niche disciplines, like XC, Enduro, DH, Gravel, etc. as just frames designed to optimize the experience that each type of tire delivers.

What do you see Enduro tires as? Are you optimizing the chassis around it? No point in calling it Enduro, if you feel like the tires are being overwhelmed and you instead run DH tires; people say the same about XC tires on gravel bikes, that there's no point in the frame you change the tires.

This is the perspective I see others having, when they say this is "too much" to be called Enduro. They're seeing trail bikes that can be ridden on DH tracks, while perhaps others are seeing pedal-able DH bikes that don't need shuttles/lifts. Still, gotta be optimized for a 1/4 HP human motor, else you start wandering into pedal-assist territory, which is its own ethical minefield.

My take is that most enduro bikes still spend the majority of their time pedaling up, be that singletrack or a fire road (where tons of travel, dual crown, ect. doesn't hinder you as much) If you're hitting a shuttle day, then you're bringing your dh bike.
That being said I do actually like this new crop of "super enduro" (Spesh Enduro, Slayer, Superfoxy, ect) bikes popping up, because they help it make sense for someone like me (2hrs from a bike park, not many shuttle options) to own a big travel monster. I'm not racing dh, I want a dh bike with 12 speed and a dropper. Totally think theres a market for that, except....enter E-Bikes
E-bikes are gonna distract everyone from this (including me, my next bike will have a motor) and we're gonna go for "short" travel (~150mm) again in order to get the poppyness out of the extra weight. I'm experiencing this deciding between the 165mm 27.5 Decoy an d the 145mm 29er Decoy. Spent a good bit of time on the longer travel and spoiler alert, its planted, and thats it. (not saying thats a bad thing for riders that want it)
Not interested in getting in an E-Bike debate here. It makes a ton of sense for someone like me with tons of backcountry trails that have little to no shuttle options and riders.

You lost me at "harsh EXT" not sure of its possible to use those words in the same sentence..

My main bike is Nicolai G1 with 175mm and a 200mm fork.
I think the 29er rear wheels negates the need for another 25mm of travel.
Its basically the bike i wished existed for the last 20 years. Id rather have a high quality 175 rather than a "good" 200.

Yeah I'm kinda same.
My bike started with a Fox X2 and it was way harsh.
I changed to EXT Storia and it's easily the plushest shock of the last 20 years - by miles

@NF-31 - interesting take.

It sounds like you really want "freeride" bikes to make a comeback, no? I feel fairly confident when I say you are an outlier in that regard. Those bikes really disappeared because nobody wanted them. They were too portly to really go ride up a hill or pedal for long periods of time. DH bikes also got a lot lighter, so if that's what you wanted, you might as well go that way.

I see more choice in the market now, than ever. To the point I sometimes am unsure what direction to point someone. I am not aware of one company using the same molds for various models, either.

You are focusing on a fork test that I don't think is a representation of the market. Most people aren't hucking to flat. That isn't what they are asking for out of their suspension. They are looking for the suspension to ultimately help control the bike. I am positive my Lyrik or 36 far outperforms with respect to this task compared to the Totem of yesteryear. As far as the uber pros using their travel at speed in the gnar, well...isn't that the point? Isn't the idea to use the travel when things get rough and gnarly? Why have it, otherwise?

Outside of racing, I think most people are realizing they are actually *over biked*. Most trails don't require 160mm+. Most people have more fun on a 130mm bike. Most people like to find transition and like to be as smooth as possible.

Two suggestions...

1) The poster's bike would work really well as a freeride bike.
2) Go watch a BMX video if you want to see what is really possible with *no* suspension - the real wusses here are us! Our equipment is more up to the task than I think we realize.

This same argument is happening in reverse right now in the comments for the "Test Sessions: Five Slack, Short-Travel 29ers" review. Over there someone is complaining that the test bikes are so heavy, so why even bother buying a short travel bike? "If it's going to weigh the same as an enduro bike anyway..." blah blah blah.

TRAVEL NUMBERS DICTATE MORE THAN JUST PEDALING EFFICIENCY AND BUMP ABSORPTION.

Even if a long-travel bike is light and feels "efficient" pedaling up a gravel fire road, it's going to ride like shit on a flattish pumpy trail. Long travel bikes are built to carry speed. Big travel absorbs forces and creates traction. Those qualities are great on a steep downhill track, but horrible on a flatter trail where you have to generate speed constantly. The squishy travel absorbs bumps, but it also absorbs your body inputs to generate speed.

One of the local trail spots in Portland is Sandy Ridge. There's a long, smooth asphalt climb to the top, followed by a bunch of IMBA spec trails cut into a rocky PNW hillside with litte patches of dirt on the way down. The descents are kinda rough and rocky, but they're really flat and, even worse, the geniuses who built the place covered every smooth section of trail with abrupt, speed-killing "pump" bumps. You know, for "flow." There are a million switchbacks, all of the berms are too tight, and you carry no speed out of them. I hate riding there, but I do all the time because... I'm an idiot.

To ride Sandy Ridge fast, you have to pump like crazy. It feels like I'm rowing a boat when I ride there. Even if my long travel bike pedals up the paved road "efficiently," it stills feels like I'm dying a long death riding down Sandy on my big bike because it bogs down on every pump bump and mutes every opportunity to build speed. The bike absorbs all my effort. By contrast, a short travel bike pumps up to speed quickly and helps me motor across all the flat bullshit. A bike like a Tallboy or an Optic would be perfect out there: meaty tires that won't flat, geometry that can go fast, but short travel that I can pump up to speed like a dual slalom bike.

This is the reason we happily "fork up" with 140 forks on 120mm bikes. Long travel rear ends significantly rob speed on mellow terrain, but longer travel forks don't. This is also the reason you see every enduro pro landing in the 150-160mm rear travel number and not riding 170-180mm bikes even when they're available. Apparently the pros have concluded that the trails in the EWS are mixed enough (steep mixed with flat, smooth mixed with rough) that the tradeoff for more travel is too great.

good to see TeamRobot back at it!

I'm pretty sure all of the RMB Enduro riders will be on Slayers this year. (170/170).

is there a big difference btw 180 and 205mm at the rear? I doubt I will feel it, I would agree that triple crown forks make huge difference going downhill, however on the rear anything 160+ has no difference, just use more tokens in case of bottoming out

"Incorrectly tuned EXT"

@ jeff.brines

"It sounds like you really want "freeride" bikes to make a comeback, no?"

No, that's not it at all.

So my only point is that I want to be able to buy a single crown DH bike with the pedal clearance to pedal up technical singletrack, and I want to be able to run a dropper on it. I happen to think that Enduro bikes are not that.

In my comment, I pointed out that one particular freeride fork would actually change spring rates when it detected "hang time" before a hard landing and this allowed a larger range of dropping forces to be managed without compromising trail handling.

Recently I watched this video from Steve at Vorsprung. He was asked the question of the best rear shock on the market...and he called out the Fox DHX4. Which is a 10+ year old freeride shock no longer being made. That particular shock has a lot of cool tech inside it. High and low compression, rebound...plus 3 layers of bottom out protection/adjustment and progression/ramp tuning, so you could widen the range of forces it could manage.

If you think all the bike suspension tech has gotten better and better in the last ten years, how do you explain his comment? What do you think he was really talking about? Like, shocks today have climb switches and compression dials. So what was his point? He wasn't talking about features, obviously. What quality was he really talking about?

10 years ago, I could buy a dual air fork and change the actual progression (range of forces) with an air pump. (This could be done independent of sag, spring rate or initial bump feel! It was determined by the end-user.)

Imagine a different analogy here. Suppose we were talking about handlebars instead. Lets say that every part of my bike would take a 10 foot drop to flat, except for the handlebar. Every time the bars bend. Would you agree that this is a problem with the engineering for someone, somewhere? If that was the situation with handlebars, would it make sense to make any of the other bike parts even more burly? The bars are setting the limit, right?

If you geek out on suspension a little, the media constantly talks about air shocks having "small bump feel, mid-stroke support, bottom out resistance". These are mutually exclusive on air shocks. You'd get brain damage from reading a lot of the reviews. Some of the manufacturers started running negative progression linkages as a "hack" on these shocks. Riders have been slapping coils on these air-shock specific linkages. The system is SEVERELY broken when everyone is hacking every other thing to try to make stuff work.

I'm curious. Have you ever taken a DH or Freeride bike down a double-black DH tech trail? Do you think the suspension is an important component in the overall package?

Your comment about BMX bikes is interesting. The trailhead for my local DH trails is 2 doors over from my buddy's place. He's a former nat'l level BMX pro rider. Used to have a tricked out van and go around the country doing comps and demos. Towed a big set of ramps on a trailer (until he hit a McD's drive through with it). Anyhow, for a point of reference, he cannot ride ANY of the natural tech in the trails here. He jumps manicured dirt jumps like a demon, but he cannot take natural cliffs or drops at all, which is what we have on every trail over here.

Correct me if I’m wrong beings I’m not much of a park but, are some of the park trails marked as dual crown forks only. I had heard that Mammoth has trails marked like this?

So my original thought was especially because there’s sooo many 160mm+ travel Enduro bikes out there and a lighter duty 15mm axle dual crown would be the perfect park bike tool.

I never saw trails marked for triple crown, however saw trail marked for mandatory fullface and body armor, which makes more sense to me;

Fox shock from 10 y ago is the most tunable, not the most advanced shock

Take a ext built for a completely different bike, maybe but mine is perfect, noticeable better than my ttx.
Also wheelbase vs amount of suspension travel, Lately im thinking’s wheelbase > amount of travel for everything without massive hucks in it...

Hi,
I ride what I call a downduro bike: nickname: Francenvinci Wilsonstein.
2012 Devinct Wilson aluminum frame 26" run mullet 27.5 > 26
Boxxer team 27.5 with AVY damper
Cassette: 11-34 10 speed
Chainring: 28 tooth Absolute Black oval
Dropper post: Reverb 125mm (need more mm but wont work with interrupted seat tube)
Tires: MM SG 2.35 x 27.5 and MM DH 2. x 26 (CC f&r)
Everything else is pretty standard mid 2010's DH stuff
The bike is slow, but it can be ridden without a CARE IN THE WORLD

Could't you just up your spring rate for these kinds of rides on your "big bike" so you don't get robbed as much? Not saying its going to be as good as a tuned shorty but its an alternative that is free as long as your not running a coil.

You could just go across the street and ride your big bike too.

Correct if i'm wrong wasnt there a term called "super enduro" was lightly used not long ago

To my memory it covered enduro bike in the 170/180mm and 180/180mm enduro bikes ?

I do believe my own AluTech Fanes 5.0 with 170/180mm falls into that category.

And unless the trail is continuously steep downhill tracks i must agree with other here i see no benefit in going for the big travel bikes.

if on the fly travel adjustment with out compromising all the other aspects of the bike was possible to such an extent that you could go from 150-200 front and rear in an instant yes it would be beneficial other than that i really think the cons of a big travel bike results in more lost seconds that what can be gained from the pros of such travel