Anyone have anything they'd like to rant about?

[jm2e]

Is massive bushing play on a Fox 36 after 1 season a feature built into these forks? WTF?! I’ve swapped bushings once and it was a pita.


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Could be a long con to convince you you need a 38.


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[hick]

“One man’s annoying bushing play is another man’s spending $125 to get their bushings burnished”, lol

That thought had crossed my mind. No way I would ever have that done. Sloppy even faster? WTF?!

I’m skeptical that a 38 wouldn’t slop out just as fast…


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[bamboocoreONLY]

One season?
Send it back. It's their problem.

then wait a month for their crappy warranty process.

buy rockshox folks

[Roxtar]

then wait a month for their crappy warranty process.

buy rockshox folks

I've never waited more than a few days plus shipping.

[Roxtar]

That thought had crossed my mind. No way I would ever have that done. Sloppy even faster? WTF?!

I’m skeptical that a 38 wouldn’t slop out just as fast…


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I think you misunderstand what burnishing does.
It doesn't "wear" the bushings down. No material is taken away. It compresses the bushing material (of a too-tight bushing) to the exact size needed by the fork diameter.
It won't take a bushing oversize, only to the optimal size for the stanchion. If the bushing is already correct, the tool will just slide through, having no effect.

[XXX-er]

wait a minute I thot we hate rockshox and love Fox, did I miss a memo ?

[skaredshtles]

I've never loved Fox. The Fox forks I've had the misfortune of owning have been either underwhelming or simply crap. For the record - I've only owned a couple - a Fox 32 back in ~2010 and a Fox 34 in 2018.

[toast2266]

Rockshox and Fox go back and forth on who makes the better product every few years.

Currently I'd take a Pike over a 34 and Lyrik over a 36, but a 38 over a Zeb. And I'd take pretty much any Rockshox rear shock over the equivalent Fox.

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[evdog]

If you hold onto the good rockshox long enough you skip over the less good years and avoid inferior fox products altogether

[XXX-er]

I thot my 36 ( 5 yrs ago) was a little more plush and didnt respond as well to big changes in air pressure, the fox shock seemed fine

I think my Zeb ( 3 yrs ago) does respond better to varying air pressure, has better mid stroke support but maybe not as plush as my 36, the rockshox super deluxe leaked air right out of the gate but is ok after a rebuild

but without the memo I can't complain about any of it cuz IME the majority of this stuff works really well

even my lefty max with SPV was awesume

[Roxtar]

Fox?
Rockshox?

Who cares, there's a new Mezzer coming out!!!

[skaredshtles]

Fox?
Rockshox?

Who cares, there's a new Mezzer coming out!!!

[XXX-er]

i did like my Z-1

[rideit]

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/thot

[Boissal]

Fox?
Rockshox?

Who cares, there's a new Mezzer coming out!!!

A post in another thread alerted me to the fact that the Mattoc pro is currently on sale. I bought one to try as a replacement for a Pike ult I got used to but never really loved. On my first ride with the Manitou-recommended settings the bike felt like a completely different beast. Super planted and precise, really smooth in chatter, and super supportive all around, especially on slow square hits where the Pike would dive like a mofo and scare the piss out of me. I'm so pumped about the change, it's like a mini-Mezzer! Doesn't hurt that it's a touch lighter and looks completely dope with the polished arch.
All hail Manitou! All hail IRT! Shame on token-based forks, shame!

[Roxtar]

All hail Manitou! All hail IRT! Shame on token-based forks, shame!

Preach it, brother!

[hick]

I think you misunderstand what burnishing does.
It doesn't "wear" the bushings down. No material is taken away. It compresses the bushing material (of a too-tight bushing) to the exact size needed by the fork diameter.
It won't take a bushing oversize, only to the optimal size for the stanchion. If the bushing is already correct, the tool will just slide through, having no effect.

Consider me educated, thanks!




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[Andeh]

My rant: I want to get better at not being a sucker for marketing bullshit. When I built up my Heckler SL this winter, I put on one of those bougie 5Dev titanium chainrings because of all their claims about how it would have the durability of steel with the weight of aluminum. That's fucking bullshit. 600 miles later, it creaks like a honeymoon bed because the teeth are worn down already. I took it off and put on a proper steel SRAM one.

[Roxtar]

My rant: I want to get better at not being a sucker for marketing bullshit. When I built up my Heckler SL this winter, I put on one of those bougie 5Dev titanium chainrings because of all their claims about how it would have the durability of steel with the weight of aluminum. That's fucking bullshit. 600 miles later, it creaks like a honeymoon bed because the teeth are worn down already. I took it off and put on a proper steel SRAM one.

Titanium is an amazing alloy with very cool properties.
Resistance to wear isn't really one of them.

[Bunion 2020]

Seems fitting

Daily Montanan


Mountain bikers push to ride through the wilderness
Kevin Proescholdt

August 17, 2024 4:52 am

“Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed…” — Wallace Stegner

The goal of the Wilderness Act, now celebrating its 60th birthday, was to set aside a small proportion of public land in America from human intrusion. Some places, the founders said, deserved to be free from motorized, mechanized and other intrusions to protect wildlife and wild lands.

But now, a handful of mountain bikers have partnered with a senator from Utah to gut the Wilderness Act.

This June, the Sustainable Trails Coalition, a mountain biking organization, cheered as Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee introduced a bill (S. 4561) to amend the Wilderness Act and allow mountain bikes, strollers, and game carts on every piece of land protected by the National Wilderness Preservation System. Stopping these intrusions would take each local wilderness manager undertaking a cumbersome process to say “no.”

The U.S. Congress passed the Wilderness Act, and President Lyndon B. Johnson signed it into law on Sept. 3, 1964, to “preserve the wilderness character” of 54 wilderness areas totaling 9.1 million acres. Today, this effort has become a true conservation success story.

The National Wilderness Preservation System now protects over 800 wilderness areas totaling more than 111 million acres in 44 states and Puerto Rico, making it America’s most critical law for preserving wild places and the genetic diversity of thousands of plant and animal species. Yet designated wilderness is only 2.7% of the Lower 48, and still just about 5% if Alaska is included.

The protections of the Wilderness Act include a ban on logging, mining, roads, buildings, structures and installations, mechanized and motorized equipment and more. Its authors sought to secure for the American people “an enduring resource of wilderness” to protect places not manipulated by modern society, where the ecological and evolutionary forces of nature could continue to play out mostly unimpeded.

Grandfathered in, however, were some grazing allotments, while mining claims were also allowed to be patented until 1983. Many private mining claims still exist inside designated wildernesses.

Lee’s bill is premised on the false claim that the Wilderness Act never banned bikes, and that supposedly, the U.S. Forest Service changed its regulations in 1984 to ban bikes. But bicycles, an obvious kind of mechanized equipment, have always been prohibited in wilderness by the plain language of the law. (“There shall be…no other form of mechanical transport….”) The Forest Service merely clarified its regulations on this point in 1984 as mountain bikes gained popularity.

Unfortunately, bikers in the Sustainable Trails Coalition are not the only recreational interest group that wants to weaken the Wilderness Act. Some rock climbers, for example, are pushing Congress to allow climbers to damage wilderness rock faces by pounding in permanent bolts and pitons rather than using only removable climbing aids. In addition, trail runners want exemptions from the ban in wilderness on commercial trail racing. Drone pilots and paragliders want their aircraft exempted from Wilderness Act protections, and recreational pilots want to “bag” challenging landing sites in wilderness.

The list of those seeking to water down the Wilderness Act is growing.

Most of these recreational groups say they support wilderness, understanding how important it is when most landscapes and wildlife habitats have been radically altered by people. At the same time, they want to slice out their own piece of the wilderness pie.

Must we get everything we want in the outdoors? Rather than weakening the protections that the Wilderness Act provides, we could try to reinvigorate a spirit of humility toward wilderness. We could practice restraint, understanding that designated wildernesses have deep values beyond our human uses of them.

Meanwhile, in response to growing demand for mountain biking trails, the Bureau of Land Management invites more than a million mountain bikers each year to ride its thousands of miles of trails. And the U.S. Forest Service already has a staggering 130,000 miles of motorized and nonmotorized trails available to mountain bikers.

Do mountain bikers and others pushing for access really need to domesticate wilderness, too?

Let’s cherish our wilderness heritage, whole and intact. We owe it to the farseeing founders of the Wilderness Act, and we owe it to future generations.

Kevin Proescholdt is conservation director for Wilderness Watch, a national wilderness conservation organization headquartered in Missoula, Montana. This piece was originally published by Writers on the Range.

[smmokan]

As an avid mountain biker (and one whose livelihood depends on it), I'm OK with not being allowed to ride my bike in designated Wilderness areas. My only issue is when new Wilderness areas are designated that result in the loss of established MTB access.

[Abies]

I agree, although I do think there need to be other designations that bring most of the protections but some pre flexibility. There are some pretty new wilderness areas near me and all of the trails are completely overgrown and disused. Lower elevation mountains in a remote area so not a big draw. They could handle some more recreation traffic. The stuff around Tahoe? No way.


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[jono]

The obvious lie is obvious: the STC does not seek to open all Wilderness to mountain bikes. They seek to let land managers look at the environmental impact and decide where bikes are appropriate. If that was the law the balance of people who support new W designations would shift strongly in favor of more Wilderness areas, not less. And the bikers would follow the American tradition of pulling up the ladder behind them to prevent drones getting in.

In the meantime, National Recreation Areas offer better and more politically sustainable protection against all lasting environmental impacts than Wilderness. W gets you the right to kick other humans out.

Must we get everything we want in our effort to control others' behavior and experience? Kevin thinks so.

[ASmileyFace]

Trying to weaken the Wilderness act is such a weird thing to be proud of and support. I get the idea of creating more sustainable recreation and letting land managers make decisions on what is appropriate, but the Wilderness Act is one of the best things we've ever done as Americans. There are other ways to do this than allowing bikes in capital W wilderness.

[jono]

Trying to weaken the Wilderness act is such a weird thing to be proud of and support.

Agreed.

I get the idea of creating more sustainable recreation and letting land managers make decisions on what is appropriate,

Good deal. Strengthening the Wilderness Act is a good idea. Building support for more Wilderness by empowering nuanced decisions based on objective environmental impacts is probably not the only way to strengthen it. But it's better than lying, fear mongering and grift.

Edit for clarity: the Wilderness Act allows mining, road building and timber cutting as grandfathered in on most of the older W areas. If you want an example of why NRAs work better, look at the Sawtooth NRA, which included a lot of very valuable mining claims which were effectively removed from use by the SNRA. Wilderness designation would have allowed mining and the associated infrastructure to cut right through some of the most pristine parts of the lower 48. Not only did the SNRA prevent that, it did so with widespread support. And for 4 decades it left mountain bike trails intact whose users were such good stewards that congress and the grifting W trust funders eventually rewarded them by designating a Wilderness Area right on top of those trails. Because the trails and their users had preserved the Wilderness character so perfectly that the only logical thing to do was to protect that character from its occasional visitors--aka its strongest supporters.