Part of their hesitation in slimming down the chain stay, or making it solid, (á la Seigla) is that you eliminate the possibility of running a shift cable or electronic wire through it… With the prevalence of AXS, one could argue that its a worthy tradeoff, and we’re already seeing some of the big companies ditching mechanical compatibility, and I’m sure more will follow suit, especially if Shimano ever gets around to offering something similar.
Yeah, nixing the cable routing would be fine with me (especially if it allowed a bigger ring). Specialized did it on the new s-works Epic 8 frame (both for shifting and dropper) to save weight. They left the cable routing for the non-sworks frame, but I think they only sell one lower end evo model that you can buy with mechanical shifting.
I am guessing this isn’t as easy as you think it might be. There is always some trade off. It is already a tight space to balance tire clearance, chainring size, suspension movement, suspension performance, weight of the frame, and geometry of the frame. And if there a compromise to be made in any of those, why would you make that compromise when there is very little need/demand for rings 40 and above. You are talking about super niche use cases here that these bikes are not designed for. Even the pros generally only go up to a 38 on real XCO courses.
Yeah, but a bit part of the theme of this thread is using a MTB for “non-mtb” applications. We aren’t talking about needing bigger chainrings for XC courses, it’s the gravel and mixed surface stuff where a 38 can be a limiter.
I’ve done quite a bit of gravel racing on my FS MTB and there are only 2 things that I consider significant limiters - Aero position with flat bars (the primary discussion here focused on drop bars to address that) and gearing. A 38 works OK on some gravel courses, but it’s far from ideal on others (even for amateurs without crazy FTP’s). I’ve never done big sugar before, but have ridden/raced a lot of the gravel around Bentonville and I know there are sections where I’d be much better off with a 42 or 44 compared to a 38.
All good. But you suggested that it was a no brainer for OEMs to allow 40+ chainrings. I was just suggesting reasons why it isn’t a no brainer. There is likely a tradeoff that 98% (made up stat) of XC bike buyers wouldn’t want.
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With some creativity, you can get a 44 on an epic HT
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Keegan Swenson’s Drop Bar Santa Cruz
Awesome! Feels like I time warped back to the early 90’s when custom steel was everywhere. I love that aesthetic.
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Anybody try a drop bar MTB for cyclocross?
I’ve used mine for cyclocross. I liked it.
I wrote about it on another thread:
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Nice. I wonder how much is due to the suspension over the tires. Our course yesterday that got me thinking was incredibly bumpy and rocky. Just having suspension I feel like could have taken a minute off your lap time. Especially after 5 laps of getting shaken like you were operating a jackhammer. Not to mention probably 40-50% was on single track or the bumpy fields. Just soaking up the bumps and rocks would have saved so much energy and fatigue.
For those two 2023 races that I did with the drop bar MTB, I had a rigid fork installed. Those courses weren’t bumpy, so I don’t think suspension would have helped for those particular races. Another CX course that I race on though has a fast bumpy downhill section, and when I used my hardtail MTB for the 2022 race (prior to my drop bar conversion) I was a lot faster on that bumpy descent, gaining about 5 seconds over other riders on traditional cyclocross bikes, who really struggled. My local CX league doesn’t have bike/tyre restrictions, so anything goes. So I think you’re right, on certain cyclocross courses suspension would help and might be faster overall, and I would put the suspension fork back on for some courses.
Even without suspension though, I think the wider tyres helped a lot. Some previous testing I had done, on a smooth grass field, showed that my wider MTB tyres had much lower rolling resistance on grass than my cyclocross tyres (see my blog post here for more details).
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