[quote=motorbacon][quote=Mr. Bear]Looks like I found my 2012 race bike, Kona is bringing back ti frames…
Pre-prod 2012 Kona Raijin, 44mm ht, BB30, sliding drop outs w/ der hanger or SS dropouts
Sexy, but wait a little for their production to ramp up and knock out the first few frames. Their new Honzo frame has been a total fuck up. Lots of early/pre production frames were sold and were all sorts of messed up.[/quote]
Messed up how? This one will probably be OK, since it’s made by Lynskey. Unless Kona just totally fucks up the geometry for the first round of bikes, which seems kind of unlikely.
The first few batches were shipped out with super long chain stays, like an inch longer than advertised, different length/weight yoke (mount for chain stay) and weighed almost a pound and a half more than the later production/non fuck up frames. And also, what jackass makes a 33 lb stock build hardtail?
From what I gathered, seems like some early/preproduction frames got mixed into the later run. Who knows.
I mean, it’s a 29er hardtail with a 68 degree head angle, a 120mm fork, a 50mm stem and 29" (I think?) bars. This is not an xc bike. It’s a big, burly all-mountain hardtail for big motherfuckers in rough terrain. As such, it looks like fun, once you get it to some gnar worth shredding. AM hardtails are just heavy. My chameleon was like 31lbs at its porkiest, and that was a medium aluminum 26" frame. It’s just how it goes when your shit needs to be burly first and foremost.
No, it was the way Motorbacon said, they honestly mixed a big batch of early prototypes with gaspipe tubing and outdated geo in with their regular builds. They’ve been swapping out people’s bikes for real to get them the right frame. It’s on MTBR if you’re curious.
That sucks, I really like kona and hate to see them make such stupid fuckups when they’ve got a winning design like that.
In a few years time when I’m hired on and can get back into downhill I’m probably get a Kona Operator. Nice solid single pivot bikes at a price point that’s more or less unfuckwithable
The Honzo and Raijin are coming from different sides of the planet, so I doubt there would be similar production issues.
Granted it’s coming off the same Lynskey production floor as Salsa’s El Mariachi Ti and Selma Ti, but can do either SS or geared, which the Salsa’s can’t. I’m sure the price will work out to about the same. A similar Lynskey is about the same price too. I wish it had rockers like the Selma Ti instead of the sliders though.
What you don’t see, because of what the video is focused on (that a FS bike can climb reasonably well) is that there are sections of all of those trails besides the first one that have 2+’ drops. That said half of my friends have 0 problem riding a hardtail around here.
I’ve got a ridgid and I just honestly find that a full suspension is more fun in just about every situation for me. For starters if it’s properly setup I find they corner much better even on fairly buff singletrack that could be ridden on a cyclocross bike if one were so inclined.
Fuuuuck, looks so rad. We’re all super techy slow shit up here, but I can’t really complain since a lot of people have far less than I do, and my trails are within a mile and a half of the city core.
