2023 XC Bike & Equipment Thread

Bontrager tires have done nothing but let me down! The ones on my last fuel ex looked like the should have boat loads of grip, yet managed to have nothing in both wet and dry.
The “tubeless ready” team edition tires that came on my Boone leaked the entire way around the bead on both tires. They lost grip if there was even humidity in the air…

I don’t know about XC, but for cyclocross, I don’t think there’s a single trek sponsored team running their tires.

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The chain is another 3 watts minimum

There’s no on paper here the sram cassette is better than the garbaruk and worse than the shimano for shifting, but, the x series sram cassettes last 4 ever.

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Also the commenters on pinkbike are dumb, pirelli MTB tires are good just nobody uses them and they don’t bandwagon them because their favorite bro rider isn’t on them, they are far and away better than bontrager. Also people are hating on the name scorpion but ok with schwalbes names? Puh, lease, that’s all I have to say about the pirelli thing.

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While true, this is trivially easy to mitigate. The SRAM chains last much longer than Shimano so there’s your training chain, then swap to YBN or similar for racing.

Exactly what I do

Could be, hard to say. I had fairly worn out 11-speed xt groupset that I upgraded to a new 12-speed groupset (also xt) and there was definately a notable improvement. But I bet some - or most - of that improvement was becouse of the worn out cassette, chain etc.

Still, I wouldn’t ditch a perfectly working 11-s groupset either. I was actually going to buy a new 11-s cassette and chain from my LBS but they had the m8100 groupset laying around that was taken from a new bike and offered a suberb deal on that. Got the whole ordeal for 200 euros :person_shrugging:

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My LBS was quoting early March for those when they were first released. As of last week, they didn’t have any in stock yet. They do have a mountain of BC40s all of a sudden though…

That’s a stupidly awesome deal. I’d go for that, too, in a heartbeat. Congrats! I have M8100 brakes on my bike, and they are solid. I do miss not having Servowave, though, which my 10-year-old XT brakes had.

The Factory Team is already riding EVOs with lockout. It’s just a matter of time before that becomes the norm

Hump

Seems they are also sponsoring the Cannondale team.

Hump

Hi,

I went down an even more exotic way and went with an INGRID 10-48 cassette on my SRAM speced Epic Evo. Actually the sound when shifting gears is different (a more metallic click-like sound compared to Eagle sprockets) but so far it hasn’t skipped a beat. I went down this route to save on weight (it was a weight-weenie project) and to get away from the huge jumps of the Eagle cassette.

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I have Spark RC Pro 2019 and I’m about to order Spark RC Evo 2023 and I’m interested if someone upgraded from old to new spark and how new compare to old?

the Smith helmets are super light and you can get a more enduro type offering that is lightweight. I run the Trace for XC/gravel and the Forefront 2 for DownCountry/Trail riding.

Smith had 30% off helmets for a long time, not sure if it’s still on.

Update: just checked and 50% off. Good deal imo: https://www.smithoptics.com/en_CA/p/helmet/forefront-2-mtb-helmet/E007223L45155.html?gclid=Cj0KCQiA54KfBhCKARIsAJzSrdqpDKBWIzyJrT7lR8l1XyHujMoIUB6jGaUAwDfqnBzelNcsKJxd_JgaAoeGEALw_wcB

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FYI smith helmets don’t test very where in safety.

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yeah, you’re right. I’m surprised how variable some helmets from the same manufacturer can be. I was looking at mtb helmets and specialized have the top performer but also some of the lowest ones.

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How often do they update the list?

make sure if you use that list you match the model exactly. I was looking at the Smith Forefront and it’s pretty bad. I have the Smith Forefront 2 (with MIPS) and it’s not in their list. I’m a bit concerned now about what I have but it’s also not the same helmet. At first I thought it was - just make sure you got an exact match.

Also - how safe does something have to be to be ‘safe enough’? that’s gonna vary to each rider. I know if there was two helmets close by in terms of safety rating but the slightly poorer performer looked better (in my opinion) I would definitely choose it for aesthetics. To each their own.

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I was looking at that list the other day (before it popped up here) and I got the impression when I started looking the helmets up that it must have been a ~2021 list.

They didn’t have a few of the POC helmets at all and some didn’t score as highly as expected. Plus some of the models don’t appear to have been available for a few years.

I’ve picked up a POC Axion for training.

I actually had a hard crash last Friday so my poor Octal is destined for the bin (and my shoulder still aching suggests my A-Races may be in jeopardy :disappointed:). I’m now not sure what to do for racing and have been looking at other options. I’m leaning towards an Omne MIPS, but it doesn’t show up on the list.

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VT started doing this testing since 2011, so some of the helmets they have on there are a bit older. I think they probably don’t have the money to go buy every helmet on the market, so there are always going to be some gaps. If there is one theme to take from their testing, is that having MIPS is needed to take out that rotational component of a crash. There’s still some questions to me as to these lab tests being different from real life, as there’s no hair on the dummy, and every outdoor crash is different. I still pick something toward the upper part, as it feels like a safer bet than just picking on looks.