The Pinkbike Podcast: What Loic Bruni is Hiding, OE Deals and Motocross with Öhlins' Terje Hansen
Art by Taj Mihelich
Why couldn't you ride Loic's bike? And why is your setup so bad compared to a World Cup Racer's machine? TJ explores the topic with Henry.
Note - During the first exchange you might hear some background noise (a small fan that we used on a hot day). The rest of the interview doesn't feature this sound.
Featuring a rotating cast of the editorial team and other guests, the Pinkbike podcast is a weekly update on all the latest stories from around the world of mountain biking, as well as some frank discussion about tech, racing, and everything in between.
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The PB pods in general are very enjoyable, without people talking over each other and interesting discussions
Anyway, I've come back, and am loving your style and general good vibe.
Thank you to all of you for doing it, it gets me through many a glum non bike related work day,
I think it's not that I didn't want to do it, but rather I was doing it out of a kind of sense of duty to keep my friend's project alive and well should he ever wish to come back to it, at a time where I was very very busy. In the face of that, I think I was overly sensitive to the criticism of not being Levy, while also people demanding a podcast every week. Quite frankly, I should have thicker skin by now. It just felt like a strange place to be in for a little while. That said, I've been able to change it around a little and make it more my sort of thing (we all have different tastes and Levy and I are no different).
My idea for the podcast though is that it should represent everyone at PB and I'm actively encouraging everyone to get involved. I don't want it to be the Henry-show, but rather a podcast that I produce (and often feature on) that features a wider variety of hosts, anchors and guests. I hope that makes sense. If we only had one writer on PB it would be strange, and I would love the podcast to have a few different flavours.
Here's to many more - cheers.
Now he is making a trunnion mount shock.
Don't feed the stupidity, just say no to trunnion!
There are still plenty of frame mfgs who don't use them.
His criticisms were a bit more nuanced than "trunnion bad". It can be designed around, but it makes designing in longevity more difficult.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9Lpxj9zVis&ab_channel=VorsprungSuspension
If Steve really followed his own words, he would just have designed a non-trunnion shock and let the customers choose that for frames it would work with. And then maybe even less mfgs would produce trunnion mounts.
Customers never demanded the trunnion mount, it was a decision made by the mfgs to make frame design easier.
Vorsprung doesn't have to make trunnion, they are not battling for OE spec with Fox and RS.
And there are plenty of companies that don't use it. Off the top of my head; Santa Cruz, Canyon, Rocky Mountain, Ibis, Nukeproof (RIP), Deviate, etc.
Don't get me wrong, trunnion deserves to be universally shit on, but not just throwing it at one person's door.
With damping, I suppose we’re talking about compression damping, and I guess both low and high.
Rebound damping I guess has to be less, quite open, to rebound with the lower spring rate.
I agree with you; Henry is the Troy Brosnan of Pinkbike
Only one thing where I kinda "disagree" ... The part near the end where you discuss locked out suspension for going upwards "It's a mountainbike - I don't care how it rides on tarmac"
For many mountainbikers, myself included, (don't know if that is a europe thing?) the vast majority of climbing I do is on tarmac and / or very nice / small gravely / fireroads. Grip is a none issue there. Efficiency is.
As soon as I'm on top of the mountain, and as I'm dropping into the trail (that would be faaaaaar to steep to climb it on a bike (or even on an ebike)) grip (and support obviously) gets very important.
What I'm saying is, a good (at my home (Austria, near the Alps) a very great) percentage (according to a recent local questionaire over 65%) of climbing a montainbike is onroad, not offroad - to approach the trails. Maybe thats one of the reasons why many people here prefer RS shocks over FOX? They lockout harder. And thats a plus around here for the majority of climbs ... as is a bunch of travel. So, pretty much Enduro (in a sense of efficient climbing and DH like shredding afterwards) ;-)
Anybody else agree or disagree?
I get your point that a motorized offroad vehicle needs good suspension to keep traction on uphill sections and therefore your conclusion, that a true lockout for mtb suspension does not make sense, makes sense.
But: Those vehicles you talked about weigh an awful lot more than a mountainbike. The driver of a Baja truck weighs a fraction of the vehicle itself and cannot do anything to the chassis to help it keep traction, because of inertia. That's why the truck needs huge amounts of suspension and clever damping.
With a mountainbike it's different. A mountainbike is about a fifth of the weight of the rider, on average, I'd guess. So the rider has way more inertia, but can also manipulate the bike in many ways in order to keep traction.
When was the last time you rode rigid bike, Henry?
It can be a quite rewarding experience
You ask really good questions and get very different conversations compared to a lot of other mtb podcasts/interviews.