The Pinkbike Podcast: Episode 108 - Behind the Scenes at the Value Bike Field Test

 Not getting into bike industry sales pitches, but for what its worth.... "Quiver" was definitely first used in "action sports" referring to a necessary selection of surfboards. Which is definitely legit, being that different breaks/conditions warrant different boards. This term definitely dates back to the 1990's in the surf world and likely goes back way farther. Quiver is a valid term in bikes, boards and planks because of various conditions, locations and objectives. And with all due respect we all know Robin Hood probably invented the term.

 @JDFF: nahh I'm in team stable

 I definitely have a quiver of skis and it is necessary. More and more on with mountain bikes though I have been able to do pretty much everything I want on a 160 - 170mm Enduro bike.

 @Mr-Gilsch:

High five. I say we go all in on these horse metaphors.

May as well use some of the outside $$$ to rename bike categories to horse types. Here’s a few examples

Downhill bike = Destrier
Trail Bike = Gelding
Strider Bike = Shetland Pony

 @jmsjns: Haha! @mikelevy I'd love to do a podcast about the worst clichés in MTB - all the crap we say ourselves included.

 @henryquinney: Added to the list.

 @mikelevy: so a podcast version of this? youtu.be/kW7xzBC-qa0

 @makripper: very serious

 @makripper: r u angry

 @makripper: need a hug?

 @waldog: he’s probably goodnow that hr blew his quiver clear outta the water

 @makripper:

You seem a bit upset, have you euthanized any horses lately?

 @makripper:
I don't think you understand how words and their definition become part of the accepted language. Basically if enough people use and understand it, it becomes accepted.

 Expept for France, they have a government body that controls the language!

 I thought it referred to a bike that could most easily destroy an archer while out riding. Quiver killers will therefore vary somewhat by location and use of compound bows

 @henryquinney: Anything quiver related is annoying but I think the worst is “confidence inspiring” or “inspires confidence”. The most overused terms and they somehow apply to everything. And now “acoustic” and “analog” bike is being thrown around and they so unnecessary and cringy. Bikes were around first and don’t need to be renamed. We already call the new electric ones E-bikes, so can’t we just leave it at bike and E-bike?

 How a Mountain of Bikes ???

Pretty funny tho and also, quoting @milekazimer “its just riding bikes” so as a metaphor, it works. Im fine if it goes away but given there 681 other mtb cliches in the verbal quiver ( !!! ) at PB and mtb-culture wide Id have have to say…

In the meantime - hang in there, lets regroup, powwow, reach some conclusions, think outside the box, and at the end of the day it'll be a win-win situation - failure is not an option and you've tone granular and earned your chops on this low hanging fruit

 @ak-77: yessss

 @IMeasureStuff: What's their stance on "downcountry", do we know?

 @IMeasureStuff: le ordinateur !

 Hearing you guys talk about life threatening thing on the trails.. here in the UK the worst we get is a slightly miffed squirrel!

 Pretty much what I was thinking. Seems MTBing whooooshed right over his head.

 @maddog39 @DBone95 - He was mostly joking, but it's harder to get that across when there's only audio and no video. And to be fair, I've had many bikes that didn't light a fire under my ass to go riding, even though I know full well that it's not about the bike I'm riding.

 Palmer is always like that, OG PB staff is def a cut above

 @mikelevy: We’ll said! I’m for sure watching all these field trip videos when they come out so I’m excited to see his thoughts on everything. Cheers

 Palmer passed for me - his bust about getting full sus as a hardtial dunked (and I loveHT). Its just words, opinions, talking, chatter, and banter - its ok. He’s a rider, he rips and he says things. Not a biggie…

 Yup, we've got four hardtails and we'll be comparing them to each other.

 @mikelevy: Super stoked to watch it..... and for the love of all that's holy, please don't use the words "beginner's bike" when talking about them!

 @DBone95: Agreed, saying "beginner's bike" feels like I'm talking down to new riders or about the bike. Far prefer 'value bike' instead.

 @mikelevy: Sweet.... can't wait to watch and read the tests. As you can imagine my frame up Lizard build is far from cheap and that's being polite (please don't read this wife) but when compared to a carbon framed full suspension bike with similar components, it's a down right bargain.

 Dude: one of the best points / comments ever here - hardtails teach u to take the best line for hardtails. A top 10 of all time in my book.

 Great point! I have the hardest of hardtails, a gravel bike. Very little translates over to riding my Status.

 You're hearing it bc people have thoughts and say those thoughts and that is OK. Its just a conversation and you should disagree and post that here - thats further conversation and thats great. Its not about who's right and wrong. He's not saying Exterminate Hardtails and Their Riders - he's saying he doesn't like em and a form of cable routing. Not a big deal. People have opinions, as do you. But agreed: if Palmer really hates hardtails then most of his opinions about the ride are less relevant. Other PB staff make up for it

 @Mtn-Goat-13: If it's an op ed piece yeah. But these are NOT good takes for someone reviewing bikes. Ya know every reviewer has a slight bias. There are times when I enjoy Levy's bias towards short travel downcountry bikes, and there are times I don't. I really like Kazimer's reviews. Obviously he leans more downduro and often says a bike could use a little slacker this and 10mm extra that.

But Palmer didn't come off like a person who can clear his lens to look at things objectively, despite it being written off as humor.

It's also one of the reasons they seem to go somewhere different because PB often got shit for riding budget bikes on some of the gnarliest (and wettest) terrain near their home, when that isn't quite relevant to the majority of MTBers.

I hope to be pleasantly surprised by Palmer's review, unless his version only goes to beta and not PB, but those takes were just not something I want to hear from a reviewer. Particularly specifically a budget hardtail test... Like... f*cksake. Let this guy do the 5k-10k full sus tests if he can't be bothered to run a tube in tube or a magnetic tool cable routing. A LOT of us budget bikers are doing our own maintenance. Because of the cost of shop labor. And that needs to be understood when reviewing budget bikes.

 @lepigpen: Word & Ok, that makes sense. I was getting sidelined by varying opinions but -ok. Im also doing 99.9% of my servicing too so Im def on that page - in fact, I may love diddling w/ my bike as much as riding it.

Also, being experimental I have done nearly everything I can do: coil vs air, mullet, full 27s (on a 29 “only” frame), fork travel changes, various carbon parts, chainrings, upgrades & swapouts and even riding 180mm fork on a “max 160mm” bike - and yet I still up my personal times (speed measure only) constantly no matter what the change and I'm always having fun. Recently my fastest times ever on a few rugged/chunky DH segments was on a hardtail (which I usually ride only in mellower terrain). Point being: all the opinions & comments are only that: hens cackling in the yard.

Ultimately it all comes down to just loving to ride, experimenting some, listening to expertise & shunning or embracing it and maybe becoming the placebo.

I dont welcome nihilistic / nuclear commentary but I definitely want to think about ideas that rub me raw.

Palmer doesn't have to like hardtails and Id rather know he hates or dislikes them than for him to be either an expert or insincere. That being said there's no actual HT expert at PB is there?

Cant speak to the budget v. baller thing but to say that it was me, Id have taken a low to med range bike, tested out then upgraded over time (like any PB reader would) to hit that sweet spot where it shreds but aint dentist or boomer-bike. At each stage, comparison various actual gear a rider would naturally upgrade into over the years, compared & test in ways most of us wouldn't be able to do in a normal timeline - some of it is great and some is hype. This would be an awesome natural budget / baller comparison in my view

Anyway, sorry for the thesis, just ranting

 @Mtn-Goat-13: Fact is I very rarely get rubbed the wrong way by PB staff. If they say something I personally don't agree with, I don't care. Like Kaz can be a fan of overbiking some times and Levy balances him out with his underbiking appreciation and each person will have their biases. I often like learning about their biases in order to absorb more concise information from PB reviews. Such as, if Levy says a bike is inefficient... I know he is just being a whiny baby and embarrassed that he was using a lockout lever And if Kaz says a bike could be a little slacker I know he is just living in a whataboutism world where he takes the bike on more and more local trails.

But taking Levy's valid question of, what hardtail would you get for 2k, and having a humorous attempt at highlighting his distase for hardtails and not having an answer? Like sure, make the joke, get your hees and has, but ideally go on to answer the question... What the hell is he on a field test for if he's happily missing opportunities to serve the reader? And the mechanic take was... I have a LOT of opinions on people who say shit like that and I won't go over them. But let's just say a person who ONLY rides full suspension bikes and ONLY goes to a shop to have a bike fixed sets a really bad tone for a bike reviewer, and it sets an AWFUL tone for a reviewer doing value bikes testing. And I'll admit I've never heard of this dude beforehand so the idea of bringing on a dude who apparently wasn't vetted for hating hardtails for a hardtail test... Yuck. That sucks. I wish Henry Quinney went. Just the right amount of criticism! I can imagine him saying...

 Hey, I thought he came across a bit buffoon-ish too FWIW.

 @lepigpen: Word, good enough. I falsely imagined I was talking to a snowflaking word-and-idea Nazi that didn't like other opinions but - you clearly have substance to back it. Good enough. Funny about Levy & Kaz as well and I guess this is in part why I like them.

I liked a lot of Palmers work via Bike Mag and other than the 'screamed like a girl' - which my daughter immediate Showed the Hand b/c when its family bike events here, its the boys that whine like bitches climbing while the girls just keep it steady and its the Land of Woo's) but - yeah, I hear ya. Anyway - all the best, good notes. Discussions via words on a screen are just inferior to conversation, that's for sure.

 @lepigpen: rubbed me the wrong way too, came off super entitled. And was probly discouraging to all the riders trying to try this out for 1500 or kids that think their hardtail is cool af.

 @7imothy: Confused - this was just one comment (and a f*cking funny one, and I love my HT) - Kaz also said he's not riding HT's nor are they his goto, Alicia hasn't shopped for one in years and Levy "only rides them on special occassions like this" (more or less) and the whole exchange told me that HT's are not at all on the PB forefront which is hardly new, but all of it was funny.

But more so - based on what you're saying, Kaz, Levy & Alicia are (all of whom are riding more $10s of $1000s in gear in a month than most of us will ride in our lives) are entitled - its not really just a tone of voice. Seems kinda like the ultimate entitlement in that regard, if we're talking entitlement, not to mention probably $250K or more in bikes these guys have prob collectively bought & owned over the years. That's great & all - if I had that kinda bling$ I'd do it too, but I buy & upgrade a bike over 5-6 years and move on...not in my budget. I didn't feel the smarm.

 cool. what does one do in Hilda? agriculture?

 @jamesbrant: yup. Farm with my parents and my wife. Just grain, no cows. Cows are way more dangerous than snakes!

 My buddies on a Process 134 with no complaints for New England singletrack riding.

 Any decent bike these days doesn't need a lockout. Just leave it open and ride.

Also, at 5' tall (and 120 pounds), I am always listening out for bikes my GF can ride. Right now she is on a 35 pound 170mm bike, not ideal for long epic rides.

 I'm similar and my only bike now is a custom steel hardtail ($5k ish build). It's flat here and the bike is perfect for all my local trails. There must be a load of other riders out there like this.

 @tremeer023: *cyclingtips

 It's also more interesting to us. We love riding fancy bikes, of course, but they nearly always work well. Not so with budget bikes - there's always more to talk about with value bikes.

 @mikelevy: I know PB is probably sick of hearing suggestions for the next “Budget vs Baller” series (if you guys ever do another one), but how about using a typical starter or first bike (perhaps something from this value test?) as the starting platform? You alluded earlier that value bikes typically have a weakness or two. It would show two different paths to upgrading your bike as you get more serious about the sport, and give you an opportunity to explain why one might want to upgrade each component and what makes an expensive part different than a budget upgrade (and the stock OEM part too).

 @MB3: Agreed! Have been wanting to see an actual budget-to-baller conversion over time, that is - getting the budget bike w/ a good frame, testing as is (w/ video / commentary) & then adding components over time (testing / commentary each time) not so that it necessarily ends up as a $7-10k bike, but just upgrading w/ various parts likeanynor most of us would do to get it “just right” - so its like a budget to baller evolution over time

 @Mtn-Goat-13: “Budget to Baller”… I like the sound of that!

 Same here. If someone doesn't say hello back, I like to go hard with the hi haha

 I pretty much always say "Hi." when passing or being passed out on the trail, but I'm a soft-spoken dude. Between my naturally quiet voice, full-face helmet, and being winded, I would bet that a lot of people don't even hear it and are probably thinking, "What a dick."

 Some folks have to take the yuppie group ride for their shop every week, some may be going through hard times, some just don't wanna chat or say hi.
Maybe just consider that they don't want to instead of assuming that they are somehow worse people.

Sometimes I say hi and other times I just want to be left alone. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 Some people are introverts (like me). I don't want to socialize. I rode 6.5 hours yesterday 100% solo and didn't talk to anyone*, it was glorious.

*Saw one guy with a flat and asked if he needed help.

 @JSTootell: There's a huge difference between "not wanting to socialize" and just being a rude dick. I ride 97 out of 100 rides alone as I too don't like to socialize while riding, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about someone passing you head on on a double track 5 feet apart, or me pulling over on a single track, getting me and my bike out of the way so the downhill rider can pass and as they go by me not so much as a thank you or response as I say "there you go, good morning".... There's a big difference between the 2 and some people are just miserable, self absorbed, rude pricks.

 @DBone95: "I will slow or even stop and yell"

"some people are just miserable, self absorbed, rude pricks."

 @JSTootell: Treat others how they treat you. I live by it and it works great.

 It’s definitely good for us to get out of PNW bubble.

 @mikelevy: Mike come to Laguna Beach for Summer field trip. Ocean views, and tacos and margaritas after every ride. Why would you say no to this?

 The timing and setup is completely different. Its like jumping on a bed vs jumping off the floor, the steps are the same but execution is different.

 @RonSauce: no, they really aren't.
I'm a coach and teach this on a daily basis.
If you teach someone to bunny hop differently because they are on a DS bike or beause they are clipped in then you're teaching them bad habbits in all forms of jumping.

 Not this time - Matt Beer put his hand up and did it for me

 @mikelevy: he pulled the needles from your posterior or he did the impossible climb???

 I hate myself but that's whole other topic.

 Just wait until the Marin and Commencal videos… my bad haha

 Excellent idea. We’ll do exactly that in the VBFT wrap-up podcast in a month or so. Thanks!

 The only reason for it is if the frame was made too many years ago and it hasn't been updated. All of our hardtail test bikes have a 12mm Boost rear end.

 In theory a QR rear “axle” is perfectly fine since it’s not the supporting member. The end caps and the actual hub support load.

 @mikelevy: that’s good to see!

 @mariomtblt: I know that but they always seem to rattle loose eventually

 @Sambikes11: LOL yeah, we’ll have to wait 10 years when QR are an innovation again

 You mean the low end Shimano 4 piston brakes? Those are pretty hard to find at shops right now, probably because so many bikes come with inadequate brakes to start with.

I’ve been looking to upgrade the brakes on my kid’s bike for a while now, and can’t find them anywhere., and I’m not willing to spend too much on something he’s going to outgrow. Starting to consider going with the MT 200’s, but they are only 2 piston and I have no idea if they are good enough for serious biking.

 @MB3: magura mt5. Great brake.

 @sspiff: ah, my bad. I have to say that I’m almost completely unfamiliar with the Magura products. They are almost never mentioned in bike reviews, as not many companies spec them. And I haven’t seen many people compare them head to head with the Shimano and SRAM equivalents.

 @MB3: Always liked them, but the ergos can feel a bit weird.

 I have MT5s and they are good, once you have got them bled well, for the first few weeks they seemed to need bleeding after every ride and now they are good. If Magura could update the lever they are onto a winner, as Mike said above the ergos are a bit weird, and they do feel a bit different.

 I don't know about today, but my Cannondale in 2015 came with Magura brakes.

 Added to the list for the next episode.

 I think I’d want all the wheelbase and all the tire for when it’s rocky and loose, but good question for a future pod. Added to the list.

 It's what we were all thinking haha

 The question should've been "if you were looking to get a hardtail as a second bike, what would you look for in one". Hardtail as a second bike is amazing. Hardtail as an only bike, less so.

 @mikelevy: Can Palmer get verbal PB host comment gold for one of the funniest lines ever in PB podcast history ??? I feel like my nee job will be to go thru every episode and pluck the gold nugget comment into a master list of lessons for us to pontificate (esp since so many people prob hated that one!)

 Yeah, it’ll be a link to aliexpress

 For sure, we'll hit on that in the reviews and roundtables. Some of the brakes are so bad that there's surprisingly little initial bite, enough so that we have to change how we're riding. Granted, a newer rider might be going a bit slower, but they can still use real brakes.

 @mikelevy: yea that’s fair. Perhaps a bit of they don’t know what their missing. My guess is you guys (maybe not Kaz, lol) are smashing these bikes harder than the people buying them.

 If they're riding on the current crop of green flow trails that are being built everywhere to make riding "accessible" to newcomers, then yeah, they'll need good brakes. The speeds these trails allow by being so wide and smooth can quickly bite a newcomer if they get a little out of control.

 @mikelevy: it’s not a good value if the brakes suck bad enough to hold the rider back, just saying …

In order of value:
Consistent shifting with wide range
Supportive suspension with decent damping
Good brakes

Things that ought to be optional:
Dropper post
Carbon anything

I’d rather have a fixed post than crappy brakes.

 @nurseben:
I'll actually argue those need to be rearranged like this:
1. Good brakes - even those singlespeed butters want good brakes, and mountain biking without brakes isn't really a thing.
2. Consistent shifting with wide range
3. Supportive suspension with decent damping - I'll take a fully rigid bike if that's what it takes to get brakes and gears and I'll bet most riders would. Remember there are ways to solve the rigid ride such as plus size tires.

Whatcha think?

 @nurseben: As someone with crappy brakes and a dropper post, I'd rather have a dropper than good brakes... Maybe I am still appreciating any disc brakes thinking about the rim brake days though. Dropper post was life-changing.

 We all now scream “ALHONGA!” when we’re out of control on the trail haha

 Your downvoters must not be familiar with Santos. Or generally how there are some sweet trails in Florida, despite the flatness of the state.

 We’ve done a video about buying used at similar prices (at the VBFT from Sedona a few years ago) but we could definitely do more of that stuff. Noted!

 @shedsidechuck I recognize the difference as I wear them too. I'm referring to the ones who look at me like I'm a tumble weed and can't be bothered to waste their energy with a smile and a hello as we pass by in the middle of nowhere. It's usually only 1 every few rides, but that is 1 too many.

 I sometimes wear headphones while riding as well, and I understand that means that I'm in my own zone and don't hear other people. But this was much different - nearly every rider we saw on the trail rode straight past us without the slightest acknowledgment and despite us obviously saying hello and being friendly. Odd place.

I know that I'm often an a*shole in day to day life, but almost never when I'm on the bike

 @mikelevy: I'm bummed to hear you guys didn't get a great vibe from Tucson MTBers. In general, I find us to be pretty friendly, although there are definitely those who are too focused on their strava times. I'm curious what trails you guys rode in the TMP.

 @sdudash: definitely find it depends on where you are riding in Tucson. The more XC trails you definitely see that Strava segment look in the eye and they don't even acknowledge your existence. On the other hand, at 50 year or Mt Lemmon, often I stop for people climbing and they end up stopping for a chat.

 @sdudash: i guess I'm not really stopping for climbers ever on Mt Lemmon. If I did it would be in amazement

 @Trailfingers: I've seen some folks climbing Bugs. Mind boggling, really. But we did stop for them.