What's wrong with Boost?
- Thread starter Sandwich
- Start date
In defense of cycling engineers, weight is far less of a concern on a moto than and MTB. That frees you up to run all kinds of adapters and what-not, and achieve more strength through alternate means (adding material instead of changing geometry). Not that that addresses Boost shenanagins, but it's worth noting.
My issue with Boost is that it's a viable solution to an entirely made up problem. Wagon wheels flex, you know that, I know that, Trek knows that. It's been fine for the last decade, there have been wider options that could have been fanagled to combat the issue for a decade, spoke counts have been steadily shrinking over that same period and now the industry is moving towards a smaller wheel that largely fixes the issue with zero effort or new parts standards.
The real advantage of boost is the ability to run wider tires, but that's a fairly dubious advantage. I ran Gazzalodi 3.0s on my Stinky 9 back in the day (not proud of it, but it happened), and even with a puny 135mm hub, never had an issue with clearance, definitely had a lot of issues with unsprung and rotational mass though. No reason a frame, especially in this 1x11, BB95, carbon-fibery world we live in can't accommodate a 3" tire with 142mm spacing.
What trek has done is created a "new" standard that means companies have to gamble on implementing. Yeti has taken the bait, and Rube was racing a wider rear end a couple weeks ago, and I've seen a few other 148 rear ends here and there. For the smaller manufacturers, it's a serious gamble, adopt a standard and risk having a bunch of un-sellable inventory and wasted R&D because the standard imploded, or risk losing sales if the standard catches on.
TL;DR: FUCK BOOST
Spenduro has opened the doors to a whole new breed of plebs with dripping wallets.
At this point it has little to do with logic or engineering, and everything to do with pumping out random new junk coupled with half-arsed marketing knowing that people will line up to buy anything you throw at them.
I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing, but things may take a few years to settle down again. On the bright side some actual developments also seem to be happening, you can get a lighter bike for a given strength these days, a lighter fork for a given torsional stiffness, and I predict the bigger sales will bring in bigger paychecks and thus more competent engineering and manufacturing resources over the next few years.
Unfortunately you can also watch while your local gnar trails get replaced with carefully paved highways that don't actually make use of any of the technology being implemented, and I think that's a bigger problem than boost148 for a lot of people.
At this point it has little to do with logic or engineering, and everything to do with pumping out random new junk coupled with half-arsed marketing knowing that people will line up to buy anything you throw at them.
I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing, but things may take a few years to settle down again. On the bright side some actual developments also seem to be happening, you can get a lighter bike for a given strength these days, a lighter fork for a given torsional stiffness, and I predict the bigger sales will bring in bigger paychecks and thus more competent engineering and manufacturing resources over the next few years.
Unfortunately you can also watch while your local gnar trails get replaced with carefully paved highways that don't actually make use of any of the technology being implemented, and I think that's a bigger problem than boost148 for a lot of people.
shhh the 8" travel DH bike is dead. It's being replaced by beach cruisers with 5" wide farmer johns.
funny you say this. i just navigated my way over to bike rumor. what's the first article i see? the co-founder of IMBA advocating for e-bikes on bikes trails. not only that, here's the first picture included:
yes. that's the co-founder of IMBA, almost literally paving a trail.
Can I negative star something as that dirt compactor thingy for trailwork needs negative?
And that's the real reason. It's not consumer based. It's incumbent mfg. trying to push out smaller mfg. because they know that the majority of bike mfg. costs are fixed costs.
Bump.
Wait, I mean BOOOST!
Seems like this is taking hold. The new pivot Mach 6 released today has boost dropouts, and so does the new DeVinci Troy that's coming out.
Wait, I mean BOOOST!
Seems like this is taking hold. The new pivot Mach 6 released today has boost dropouts, and so does the new DeVinci Troy that's coming out.
Not just boost drop outs, boost drop outs that don't even allow for a mid-fat tire to fit, new Pivot has a max tire clearance of 2.4", my 2002 Kona Bear fit a 2.7 for christsakes, 2.4s would fit on my 1997 Super V.
Are you building a 27.5+ bike or something? I don't think anyone's even making a 2.7 tire for a normal 27.5...?
2.7 tires are illegal.
No, my point was that Boost, the new hub standard that would allow us to run all these "awesome" mid-fat tires is being used to allow us to run a whopping 2.4, same size as virtually all 15 year old XC bikes could with a 135mm QR.
Thus proving the futility of the Boost standard