Opinion Warning: I do not wish to offend
MTB geometry and bike design has become region-specific.
Often big brand bikes are good at a lot, but not the best for some locations.
Hardtails tend to magnify this maybe because rear suspension can mask some design compromises.
I ride around Oregon (Ashland & Bend) as well as Colorado (family in Steamboat).
The trails are different in each.
"As an homage to the EPOdays of yore- I'd find the world's last remaining pair of 40cm ergonomic drop bars.....i think everyone who ever liked those handlebars in that shape and in that width is either dead of a drug overdose, works in the Schaerbeek mattress factory now and weighs 300 pounds or is Dr. Davey Bruylandts...who for all I know is doing both of those things." - Jerk
Yes this is very true.
I have a 29x2.35 E13 on their right now, lots of room. I would say a true 2.6 would fit but a true 2.8 would not. I think geo is quoted with a 130mm fork and I have a 140mm but the BB feels higher than my sentinel. To the OP a Kona Honzo with a longer fork hits the numbers you want. If you want the slacker HA and stack height the extra travel won't hurt much, you can always run extra pressure or an extra spacer to keep it high.
I've been keeping my eye on a Honzo for awhile as a way to get back into mountain biking. I noticed the new ESD is now on the website. Slacker hta than the standard Honzo. Thoughts?
KONA BIKES | MTB | HONZO | Honzo ESD
Yuuuuuuuup.
edit: chainstays could be longer (he says about every Kona)
Got some cash
Bought some wheels
Took it out
'Cross the fields
Lost Control
Hit a wall
But we're alright
I am with chasea 417 stays with a 63 HA and a 525 reach on an xl does not sound balanced to me. The new normal version looks great for what I would want in a hardtail that wasn't built for XC racing.
That new honzo looks like an unridable hunk of shit.
Steve Garro, Coconino Cycles.
Frames & Bicycles built to measure and Custom wheels
Hecho en Flagstaff, Arizona desde 2003
www.coconinocycles.com
www.coconinocycles.blogspot.com
I’ve long wondered who the people are that don’t mind riding a hardtail that is the same weight as a full suspension bike.
It’s crazy the weight difference between a cheap and common “way strong” aluminum frame(4.2 poundsish) and a generic heat treated steel frame for the same use case(another 2.5 pounds or so).
A really nice modern steel “hardcore hardtail” made with high quality tubing ends up being pretty dang expensive, and the market limited enough that even in the UK(hardtail’s last stand), the both Stanton and Cotic have actually brought a bunch of their hardtail production in house- it seems like it’s become prohibitively expensive/difficult to book production time to use name brand steel in Taiwan in the minimum quantities that “hardcore hardtails” sell in.
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