Enduro mag updated their MTB brake shootout. tl;dr: Hayes Dominion or SLX
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Iāve wanted to buy the Hayes for like a year now. Never on sale tho lol.
re: bike weight: legit the difference between 30-32 and 35 (I got to use my carbon Sentinel frame once before I left!) is me pedaling the whole way up my climb at home or me getting off and pushing for a couple hundred feet. Also at such a low speed that extra ~3 lbs is something you are propelling against gravity every time you push on your pedals, so like 3lb reps dozens of times a minute. Thatās a lot of extra pushing.
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Look on eBay.
If you do it, upgrade to the thicc boy Hayes rotors too.
try it with a full waterbottle on the light bike and see if it actually hurts
Jan Heine is unfortunately correct here ā itās not the weight of the frame that is mattering here but what that extra material is doing to keep your bike from being biomechanically pleasant to pedal as a system
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your not doing 3lb reps for 3lbs of extra bike weight. levers and gears and all that. but lighter is nicer for the tough stuff.
crusty mechanic where I bought my first real mtb used to walk over to his bridgstone and grab the bottle out of the cage and dump it out in the sink anytime anyone said anything about bike weight in his presence.
Itās certainly the easiest way to communicate my point about what that weight is doing on the bike when ridden up a steep enough grade tho. Same thing the first 30-odd lbs is doing but now it is 3 lbs more every stroke.
Speaking as a Clyde here, Iām glad to have the extra 3+ pounds with the stiffer frame, through axles, thicker stanchions, wider rims, etc. all adding up to a bike that doesnāt feel like itās constantly whipsawing underneath me for once.
Bummer theyāre not better about making things appropriately lighter for smaller riders.
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Iāve shaved no weight with compromises. My experience speaks to replacing an XL alu frame with a carbon one of the same model. All other parts the same. I assume the carbon bike is stiffer.
Yes but did you know which bike you were riding?
in saying āweight doesnāt matter anymoreā i didnāt really mean that lighter isnāt nicer. just that a 32 lb bike with nice suspension rides great. a 29 lb bike with the same suspension would be nicer to ride, but iād wager a 32 lb bike with better suspension would be better than that 3lbs
Yeah, I find low 30lb to be no issue, but high 30lb gets to be noticeably sluggish. Might be fun to try to build the heaviest bike that still ārides light.ā Thereās a chance Iāve already got it with my dumb gas pipe Monocog, a >29lb single speed.
nah, rear suspension makes every bike ride lighter atmo. a 33lbĀ± aluminum bike with a half decent fork and shock is amazingly capable in TYOOL 2019, let alone 5 years later. we really are living in a great time for mtbs.
not to say your monocog isnāt fun af. all mtb is fun. but getting on my relatively modern 2019 29er 130 bike was a fucking revelation that unlocked so much of the trail i never would have touched
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I mean, Iāve got a almost 1 hr uphill that Iāve ridden back to back on the same bike with only the frame being different and it was quite noticeable. I could probably see it in my HR if I looked at the rides on Strava but it was so apparent that I didnāt even think about it. I donāt know why this is so hard to believe. I think it is a little bit weight and a little bit better ride quality on the carbon. Shaving that much weight in just the frame alone is a pretty extreme case though, isnāt it. These aluminum Transition frames are tanks. Weāre not talking about going from a Surly to a nice steel frame.
Handling characteristics also different maneuvering the bike going downhill. Heavier frame slightly more planted but lighter frame easier to throw around.
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I went and checked my Strava rides around the time I did one ride and you canāt really tell anything lol. But one issue is Iām not racing up the hill so the efforts arenāt consistent. Another issue is that in winter the rolling resistance of the surface can vary widely. Shrug!
Relax Iām just joking about blinded experiments
the shape of my hydro hose makes me sad. any ideas on working a kink out of it from being rolled up in the package? is it a bad idea to shoot it with the heat gun?
Well Iām just sitting at my desk waiting for the next time I can ride!
Thatās why perceived effort is not as good of a metric as power or time.
Iām waiting for the day that Jan buys a bicycle riding robot to finally prove his tires are the best.
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I have a couple strava times with my gravel bike vs road bike going up the climb to my house.
If i had enough spare time, it would be good to know how much my gravel bike is slower due to
- rolling resistance of slightly knobby tires and larger tire with less air pressure
- weight (havenāt weighed the gravel bike, guessing itās 24-25 vs 17.5-18 for the road bike)
- aerodynamics (probably nill going uphill)
- drag of the dynamo hub
- weather conditions
i.e.
Aug 2022 on road bike: 169 watts, 36:33 moving
Aug 2023 on road bike: 161 watts, 36:03 moving
Sep 6th on gravel bike: 170 watts, 44:23 moving
Dec 30th gravel bike: 170 watts, 45:21 moving
iām guessing itās the tires, since thatās the one thing kind of unchangeable on the gravel bike
However, if riding bikes is for fun, then the reverse is true.
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