Al parecer, despues de mucho insistirles, se ha decidido a sacar una bici con ruedas de 29"... Big Wheel Thinking no, not THAT kind of big wheel... no, not THAT kind of big wheel... Ever since the 29″ wheel rolled over the horizon in 1999, weve had people asking us to build 29″ bikes. At first, we were reluctant to go there because the infrastructure to build what we believed was a halfway decent mountain bike was nonexistent. There was only one tire available at first, and a relatively non aggressive tread pattern at that, the very few suspension forks available were abysmal, and wheels were not much more than touring rims and crossed fingers. After a few years, the quality of that infrastructure improved dramatically, and the number of people asking for 29″ wheel bikes grew. Meanwhile, weve been involved in a very intensive revamp of our entire line of bikes. First, starting in 2006, all our single pivot models were redesigned. Then, immediately on the heels of that, we launched our next generation VPP bikes, starting with the Blur LT, followed by the Nomad and culminating with this years spring introduction of the Driver 8 and our new carbon fiber bikes. There was also a new V-10 in there somewhere, and a new Chameleon, and a new Jackal, and the Stigmata cross bike. Bear in mind that our entire engineering department is six guys, and they do all the design, prototype building, machining and fabrication, as well as ALL our testing (and we test a hell of a lot more stuff than you can imagine), in-house. Weve been pinned. But weve also been thinking a lot about 29ers. A fistful of workers here ride and race them, our sales manager has been screaming for them, not to mention theres this guy who posts on mtbr.com all the time who just wont quit it with the email guilt trips. Those factors (well, maybe not the guy on mtbr.com so much. Yes, we mean YOU, davidcopperfield ) led us to spend a lot of time over the last year and a half building and testing and refining various big wheel mules. Big wheels have some really cool attributes, as well as some pretty unique design challenges. Given how much of a hard-on we collectively have for chassis stiffness, wheel flex and frame flex resulting from long frame tubes being torqued by big wheels were concerns for us. So was the challenge of packaging some decent suspension into a bike and still having a manageable chainstay and wheelbase length. There were also some unexpected differences in the balance of pedaling performance, acceleration and bump absorption that needed more consideration than we were used to with our current bikes. Anyway, we did a ton of research, ended up with something were really stoked about, and were going to make a 29er. Itll be out before Interbike, fingers crossed. Itll have VPP suspension. Itll weigh a whole lot less than some other bikes of similar configuration. Itll have kickass chassis stiffness, we promise you that. Some of you might say its about time. Some might see it as jumping onto the bandwagon. Were thinking more along the lines of hijacking the damn bandwagon. This bike is gonna rule, and for those of you whove been holding your breath, itll be worth every second of the wait. Keep watching this space, and well fill in details as we get closer to the launch. 104bronson Blog Archive Big Wheel Thinking
¿y para cuando un cuadro rigido rallyero? las de 29 en estados unidos se deben de vender bastante bien, aqui todavía somos un poco escépticos, a ver con que nos sorprenden porque bastantes marcas ya se están empezando a hacer su hueco en este segmeto.
Yo tengo una 29er. La Intense Spider 29 me parece una excelente bicicleta para marathon. Si sacaran los de Santa Cruz una Blur de 29" sería la rehostia. Ya tendría mi corazón "partío"...
¿Que tal va la Intense? A mi me encantaria probar una 29er, y el dia que me toque cambiar de bici, seguro que me lo planteo
