Field Test: 10 Trail and Enduro Bikes Hucked To Flat at 1,000 FPS

 I asked for it for Christmas, hopefully I don't get it

 Pity the fool who had to install a single cush core.

 Get the Pedro's DH tire lever and your worries are gone.

Still easier than fitting a Stout 24" onto a Mag30

 @z-man: f*ck me i still have nightmares about that

 @z-man: reading that comment just brought back back memories, terrible memories, memories that I thought I had buried deep down in my psyche, never to be brought up again.
You sir, are a magnificent bastard

 @z-man: some things are meant to be forgotten

 @z-man: 100%

 @z-man: Those who know..... ^ this!

 Dorps to fault are no laughing matter.

 Poles=drama

 Yeah man was thinking the same thing, I swear this new crop are flexing less

 The enduro bikes for sure. Those Fox 36s look noodly as can be for this test though.

 @gafoto: No kidding. I’m ordering another Zeb for my other bike. No more Noodling around

 @gafoto: I'm not seeing as much difference in fore/aft flex on the forks as expected though. Looking at the Slash, which landed quite a bit front-first (which I figure should cause less fore/aft flex) it seems to flex a fair bit. Definitely how it sunk into its travel progressively and slowly at the end without bottoming looked really good though!

 Also seems like the ramp was bigger in previous editions. Didn't they jump over Levy's car in one?

 @gafoto: Didn't look like a notable difference in fore/aft movement in the sequence of Stumpy -> Shore which had the 34, 36 and 38 back to back.

 Not coincidentally bikes have also gotten a little heavier in general past few years? My 17' Transition Patrol was stock at 29(ish)lbs....good luck finding a 130-160mm bike sub 30 these days......

 @freeinpg: This is very true. With the move to 29er wheels, Zeb’s, 38’s, wide rims, giant cassettes, etc. a 32 lb 160/150 rig is pretty good.

 @gafoto: all the forks flexed a ton, seems to be the nature of telescopic forks, sadly that hasn't translated into greater acceptance of better fork designs.

It'd be fun to swap in a Shout and see how it fairs.

 @gafoto: That is what I noticed too. Definitely some noticeable flex.

 Yup and most of them are 30lb+ bikes.

 @shredb4dead: as long as it doesn't have the stiction like one one on that trek has because it actually looks bad at the end of the stroke.

 @freeinpg: revel rascal

 @shredb4dead:

 @shredb4dead: 32 is more than pretty good. 32 is what the 12k versions weight. i think 34 is the new norm, and 35+ for mid range spec. put DD or equivalent tires and it's almost impossible to get lower.

 @bruvar: which makes sense as the forks get longer

 Wouldn’t it be cool if Pinkbike put a 32 a 34 a 36 and a 38 on the same bike and did a hack to flat too see the difference obviously travel would be different but it would still be good

 @shredb4dead: Yeah I watched this in .25 playback speed a few times looking at the alignment of the arch to the stanchions, and except for the Zeb, they all seemed to flex quite a bit when the front tire first hits before the stanchions compress and straighten them back out, surprisingly so on those bigger foxes.

 @ccrida-pnw: wait so your saying the zeb is stiffer than a 38

 @Ooofff: From the videos, you can clearly see that the Zeb had less than the Fox forks in the huck to flat. Perhaps just the angle of the landing or maybe the mechanics of the construction. I'm thinking it is not the stanchions.

 @nurseben: you need dual crown USD design if you don't wanna see flex... with a single crown no matter the legs diameters you'll always have flex at the crown.

 @RulezmanSuspension: The flex was not at the crown, it was at the seals where the stanchions connect with the lowers. You can see a noticeable angled kink at the seals.

 @freeinpg: Yup and I think over 30# is lame personally. I'm on a HD5 with a 36 and it's just 30#, barely. Good enough.

 @kpickrell: the german and the spec look to me the most flex in front

 @nurseben:

What is the better fork design, and why won’t Fox or RS make one?

 @Ooofff: -that would interesting

 As will the rider's musculoskeletal system in 20 years' time.

 @hllclmbr: not necessarily better but the one he’s talking about is a linkage (like the trust message) I assume. The geometry doesn’t change anywhere near as much and there’s no stanctions so it’s a lot stiffer as the other parts are like bigger. It’s hard to explain but if you have a look there’s like very little places were it could flex

 @Ooofff: Yes, but is that a good thing? Flex is often engineered into structures.

With basically limitless budgets, many of the top DH race team run aluminum rims, and some run crazy low spoke tension, for the sole purpose of achieving wheel flex, for what they perceive as better tracking.

A carbon rim could be both lighter and stiffer, yet they choose not to go that route.

Why?

Maybe stiffness isn't the ultimate goal in ceatin instances, right?

 You also need to keep in mind that this is only one kind of impact that the fork sees. The majority of the time the front wheel is impacting an object (rocks, roots, tracking the ground) where it needs to move up and back. This is more or less in line with the angle of the fork so it is able to telescope with very little binding or flex.

Even if the fork bends in a huck to flat, you're not going to notice a huge difference between that and a linkage fork. If the telescopic fork is just as good under every other condition you're not going to see too many people wanting to completely redesign the front end of a bike to run a linkage fork. The real argument for a linkage fork is more about being able to maintain front end geometry at full compression.

 @nurseben: maybe because of hucking to flat is not happening so often while riding

 @hllclmbr: source?

 They really do @gafoto:

 @freeinpg: Huck to flat is to blame, no one will want to have broken Pole incident

 @freeinpg: 170mm Scott Ransom with a 36 is sub 30lbs

 I thought the exact opposite about the Stumpjumper. That flex looked sketchy af

 @nurseben: enter the EXT ERA. Would be cool to see how it faired.

 @RulezmanSuspension: maybe not so with an ERA.

 @beaugnar:
They need to hurry up and make a 27.5 of that fork. I’m almost to the point of only considering bikes the ext would work well on!

 @blackthorne: bruni spoke about this when he was a guest on the gmbn podcast

 @hllclmbr: yep engineer at bike manafacture uses an off the shelf program. Moto GP and Indy use proprietary programmes to understand where to transmit the energy and absorb it.
Bike manafacture s talk about stiffness as if it's the holy Grail. Flex is needed but never discussed in the bike industry.

 @jcg2: I would be afraid of snapping a bike that light. That was my first passing thought when I read this comment. Then I remembered that a friend of mine DID snap a Scott Ransom last year, and he doesn't ride nearly the trails I ride.





@Sshredder: I can't tell you how often I think about designed in flex when I have my bike leaned over trying to track rough trails. How did Casey do it on that old Duc?

 @JSTootell: Casey had one of the worst handling bikes on the grid and rode the thing freaking sideways lol. Similarly Crutchlow commented about Marquez's lap data saying he has the front tire locked/sliding for about twice as long as any other rider on the grid. Stoner was also quoted I'm guessing during qualifying at a particular race saying "I'm not going that fast yet. I haven't even started pushing the front tire." Both of those guys are able to legitimately ride the bikes at 110% of what the bike is logically capable of.

 @friendlyfoe: It was beautiful watching him slide that Honda though before retiring.

 @JSTootell: I have heard that thought before and it is understandable. I would be interested to know if they break at a higher rate than other enduro frames. I know that is a good explanation other brands use to explain why their bikes are not as light as Scotts but don't know if it is valid or just the only comeback they have. I am 160lbs and ride hard trails, big drops, etc and I have not had an issue. But that is only me so really doesn't mean much.

 As a separate test maybe, but you won't get pole failures if the rims go first...

 not sure how Jason feels about that one

 Dumber test riders would definitely be a plus for this application.

 Jason, right foot forward - MY MAN !!

 Or some hipster rigid steel bike like that dude who just rocked one in that enduro race?

 Wanna volunteer as the test pilot?

 ...when it snaps in half, pick yourself up off the ground and yell at the camera, "ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?!"

 The Huffy Oxide full-suspension bike. $188 bucks. The commercial is great. They are hitting drops. Lol. Someone posted the link before me, but it is worth posting again.

www.walmart.com/ip/Huffy-27-5-Oxide-Mens-Mountain-Bike-Dual-Suspension-21-Speed/165678463

 @tacklingdummy: two of the reviews:

(5.0) out of 5stars
Perfect size, perfect frame, perfect suspensions!

(5.0) out of5stars
Everything you want in a sub $200 bike and more
September 15, 2020
Verified purchase
First, there are people on here that said the frame is small, that the rear suspension doesn't work, etc. Don't know what they are talking about, the seat post tube is 19" so that makes it a large frame bike and the step over in the middle of the top tube is 30". The rear suspension is adjustable, but there is very little travel, so the best thing to do is just tighten up the rear spring as firm as it can go, lift the rear up and you'll get a few more turns. This bike is a steal for the money, it's only $15 more than the Genesis Vilotti but it offers so much more. The MicroShift Trigger Shifters use a nice dual thumb lever, the little one for upshifts and the larger one for downshifts and it shifts spot on. I don't use the front derailleur so I can't say anything about it, as I just leave the chain on the middle chainring as I prefer a 1X setup, but the 1 time I checked the Sun Run front Derailleur when I was setting up the bike out of the box, it was spot on. The rear Shimano Flat Face needed some fine tuning but after 3 or 4 cycles going through all the gears the cable stretched and you can dial it in without needing any further adjustments. The grips are nice. The handlebars are really wide, I haven't measured them, but they are on the wider side, had to turn them sideways to fit through a 24" door opening. 24" is 732cm, so they are wider than 732cm. The seat is actually comfortable for a small racing style seat, I would compare it to a Gavin Gel Saddle. It has a threadless tapered headset. It has a nice 4 bolt stem. Love the front and rear 160mm disk brakes, just needed to align the caliper (2 Allen bolts on top, not the ones on the side that hold the caliper on the bracket) and straighten the rotor just a bit cause it was rubbing on just 1 small spot. The big 27.5" double walled wheels come with decent 2.125" wide tires, I've only had 26" wheeled bikes, so I need to get used to this. The Hubs, Freewheel, Headset and Bottom Bracket bearings spin forever, so Huffy must have upped their assembly on this one a lot more than other bike. The bottom bracket uses Allen Key bolts, not nuts. It's amazing that you get so much for so little, but there are a couple of cons. It has heavy steel frame. The pedals aren't the best, but they work. This would probably handle some mild downhill trails, but I wouldn't use it for anything but street and light trails.

light trails here we come! 7320 mm bars? the future is now!

 @willsynnott: this is glorious. Someone seems to really be an expert on a trying to sound like an expert.

 @Glenngineer: Naw it all checks out. You gotta catch up man, 7000+mm bars are the only way forward. lmao

 Oh yes. We need a "10 Joey/Walmart Bikes Hucked To Flat at 1,000 FPS" field test.

 @pr0rider: I mean, they already had a trek in this one

 Came here to say the same thing! I want to hear which one felt the worst and which ones felt easier to handle with the bottom out.

 I was intrigued by this in previous slow motion tests. I think though it is probably more to do with the rider being active in the bike + rider suspension system.

There is an automatic bend of the knee when you land, but by the time you react to the ground contact, the suspension is halfway through its travel - the reduced load when you eventually bend means that momentarily the compression slows or stops, until the riders weight "catches up" when they have used all their bodies natural suspension. Then you see full compression of the fork and shock as full rider weight is applied to the bike. You can see it in the forks too, but it correlates with when the bars are weighted obviously. I doubt anyone could be aware they were unweighting the bike during compression though, and you would never notice without the high frame rate.

I suspect that if you could somehow repeat the test with a rigid dead weight, the compression wouldn't be stepped.

 * body's, before anyone pounces!

 I was noticing the same. Makes me think damper designers are putting in bottom out protection so you don’t think “I’m bottoming this thing out all the time,” but it really looks like most of them blow through the first 80% of travel quickly (too easily?). Made me think the shocks are not going through the travel linearly like they ought to. Would be cool to see some nicer/different shocks in this test (EXT, PUSH, etc.).

 @erikkellison: They mostly just rely on the increasing spring rate of the air spring. None of those shocks had any kind of hydraulic bottom-out protection.

It's interesting that some of the cheaper fox shocks (DPX2) seem to start rebounding immediately, in one case it was enough to cause a little "hop".

 that's consequence to the rebound of the tyre.
The tyre bottoms out and rebounds super fast halfway the compression of the suspension. The pause in the compression of the shock correspond to the second compression of the tyre, when Jason's weight is compressing the tyre again (takes less force) instead of the shock.

 @iiman: What this guy said. They've got 35 psi in the tires. You can see the tires rebounding half way through the suspension stroke.

 @Sreyno:
Compression damping is the rebound damping on the tyre. If it pushes into the stroke like this in two steps, one time even kicking back into the riders legs, compression damping is woefully off.

 Also, maybe for next time they can find a nice piece of grass/dirt to land on so that only 25-30 psi is required? Would be way more relevant

 @getonyourbike: I was also referring to the rear shock, I don't think flex/friction makes that much of a difference there. But tyre rebound sounds plausible.

 @friendlyfoe: will Sreyno's popular hypothesis have been disproven by the time next year's superslomo jump-to-really really-flat expo rolls around?--no

 @friendlyfoe: Brilliant

 I noticed this too but not all did it - the odd one out with high pivot and coil shock was smoothest. I think this may rule out half of what is hypothesized so far, but I'd happily discuss it. I wonder if air shocks with certain damping circuits are the main reason. Perhaps it's also rider fore-aft weight shift on landing?

We need a full on scientific experiment here!

 @gmt: is the tyres. The only bike that doesn't do it is the Acto5, but only because by the 2nd compression of the tyre the shock is already bottomed out (likely a linear linkage + coil)

 @iiman: so what we need here is more normal tire pressures to allow CushCore to dampen tire rebound like it was designed (the rebound dampening inherent to CushCore is real, and fixed (inherent to the material), so too much spring pressure (tire PSI, in this case) overwhelms rebound, and you see the effect here. Would be better to have slower tire rebound so that the tire ultimately maintains consistent downward pressure on the dirt, providing optimal grip. These videos show this setup is not optimal. You shouldn’t need to run such high tire pressure to prevent rim damage on an enduro bike. Either your tires are too flimsy, or rims too weak.

 @iiman: This is a great observation...and then more than a week later PVD writes "There is very little discussion on this in the PinkBike thread. Commenters on PinkBike are generally morons. They can’t see what is right in front of them." (www.peterverdone.com/huck-to-flat)

 @adrianjensen84: hehee, can't get more PVD than that

 seat stays definitely deflected a considerable amount

 @conoat: as intended.

 Which is not necessarily a bad thing though. A bit of Flex makes for comfort and traction.

 The new suspension design they are using is supposed to flex. It's not a FSR design anymore.

 @BeerGuzlinFool: yeah, I know. That's what I was getting at, I guess I didnt use enough words. lol

 @gripitandpucker: yep

 Weird flex but ok

 Do you actually find that bikes bounce that bad on one? I have a crappy tray style rack that I want to replace and was thinking about getting a NS rack.

 I'd like to see the EXT ERA fork in there as well.

 @FUbob: maybe add a Fox 40 as well for comparison

 @FUbob: that's what I'm saying!

 That's what I noticed almost immediately as well. As the suspension goes through its travel, the chain goes slack then the derailleur begins to do its job as the cassette rotates back under the pull.

 You can really see how the Cush Core inserts doing their job.

 Was hoping to see a chain hit the ground. Ibis missed it by a hair. Close second by Trek followed by Propain. Norco distinguished itself by leaking some Stans though.

 @fpmd: You know I noticed that too, so I went back and watched again like 5 times, and when the bike comes into frame that "Stans` stain" is already there before the bike hits the ground.

 @Trophycase: inertia is a hell of a drug

 Just get a fully rigid bike. Little flex there. Lol.

 I don't think the Stumpy would have survived a bigger huck...

 @bmxsnox
www.youtube.com/watch?v=qw_lpUnqytY

Not huck to flat but a bunch of slow motion of the trust fork. Definitely has rollover capability that a traditional fork can't match

 And thats with the front landing first too.

 zeb is one of the hardest fork to bottom out

 It looks like the bouncing is caused by the air pressure of the tire. Im not an engineer but my guess is the Slash did not transfer the forces properly and so the tire was bouncing a lot.

 I'm curious as to what you look for in this. What factors do you base your buying decision on? Flex? Bottom out resistance?

 @HeyBaumeister: I figure it's the best way to see how the frame reacts to extreme load. You can see how some of those pivot designs blow right through, then divert the forces into other parts of the bike. It's something that the manufactures don't show and there is no graph that can show what is going on compared to a video.

I'm pretty sure when Jason is bitching about his wrists, it's because of all the out takes they do to try to land the bike flat. It's bro science, but I really feel it's the best non-subjective comparison on the market.

 I thought the same. For all the claims that the Zeb is x% stiffer than previous stuff it still flexed a fair bit.
Maybe compare it to a Fox 40 or Boxxer in a huck2flat video as well?

 @CustardCountry: if I recall correctly, RS claimed an increase torsional stiffness only.

 It’s also how the bike lands and how the rider is weighted, when doing big bucks your more likely going to put the force through your legs which means it’s pushing more on the rear. Another reason why manufacturers put more travel at the front is because we ride downhill so there’s going to be more weight on the front.

 What you think you saw happening to the P-Train wasn't the head tube flexing. It looks like that under compression, because the rear-end has a backwards wheelpath, thus increasing the wheelbase and tilting the front-triangle rearwards. This slackens out the HTA dynamically through compression and makes the HT look like it bends forward (, although it doesn't).

 @BenTheSwabian: watched again. you're 100% right. my bad.

 Obviously

 I watch at normal speed first, then .75 and I will be going back to watch it again at .5

 And derailleur stay still!

 The rear wheel will hit the seat-tube first, but it's close. Of course neither will happen as the damper bottoms out first as seen in the video. I'd recommend a harder spring btw. Propain spring-recommendations are too soft.

 For me it was a Christmas present.

 I don’t know about weak... but yes, I don’t expect to use all of my travel on a 3ft drop (on a big travel bike). Seems the pressures are too low for this rider.

 About 3-4 feet judging by the start of the video

 Do a Big Box store bike competition. Walmart vs Canadian Tire vs Sportchek vs ...

 Yeah he wasn’t doing thay

 you thought the nomad was gonna break? So dramatic. Watch the older huck to flat videos, you'll piss your pants

 I can assure you that no front brakes were grabbed upon landing.

 @jasonlucas: How high was the jump?

 @joshfrandsen: And how high was the jumper?