are you saying you couldn’t break traction with the brakes on these bikes, on any surface?
No, well, yes to the non-bedded in one. But the others either did or likely could. But *not on pavement*. What I am saying is none of these bikes come close to what my blade 2.0 could do.
As a practical example, I tested some pavement downhill where I bombed down at 35-40 mph following a car. And I realized if that car stopped relatively quickly, there is no chance I could stop that bike at the same rate. On my blade 2.0, the downside was I had to be a bit careful about over-braking. The plus side is I could always stop that bike faster than any previous bike I have ridden.
I think what I am “used to” is *always* being able to break loose. what that means is you have reached your absolute limit in stopping power given the context of the situation. But, my concern, is I need to haul *near* the bike limit to a halt from 40mph on pavement fairly quickly. Think, not hitting a deer. That actually almost happened on the trail the first day. It’s kind of a regular event around here. See the attached photo from the trail rides on thursday. this is just as common on roads.
If these were demo bikes (especially if new) it's likely they weren't bedded in at all (or properly).
As mentioned, one of them was not bedded in. I only road that one around the parking lot. All other bikes were part of the rental fleet. I do suspect one of them was nearing the end of the pad life.
You'd think brake performance would entirely depend on the brake pad composition.
Nope. There are a lot of factors. Check this out:
https://enduro-mtb.com/en/best-mtb-disc-brake-can-buy/
Yesterday I spent most of the day riding a different rented fuel exe. 2 of the 5 bikes I have ridden had the SLX which I didn’t know at the time. Those are the two I pointed at with the best braking performance. I didn’t know what brakes they had, just from my ride feel. (Actually, 3 do, but 1 of the three was the non-bedded one, which happens to be the one I am likely to buy with modifications). I do like the feel of the slx brakes.
Yes, the brakes are “sufficient” for all but the fastest pavement downhill purely from my past experience.
Bombing downhill on this bike is incredible. The stability is awesome. I can’t wait to put XC race or other faster rolling tires on it. The ability to mostly ignore common road imperfections actually creates greater safety. I would choose to go to harder to deal with surfaces to avoid issues/people/idiot drivers on the main line. I was on a road with traffic pulling up behind cars, and I realized the shoulder was essentially a flat trail and just bypassed about a quarter mile of traffic. Was I supposed to? Probably not, but man, the bike can just go wherever. I even started ignoring curbs (at least going down, haven’t done any up curb hopping yet).
I assume this speed stability is coming from the wheelbase primarily. And obviously the suspension and knobby tires allows me to just go on most surfaces. But there was a cost. I did a few windy bits on the local paved bike trail. And I simply wasn’t getting comfortable with the hardness of turns at 20mph. In fact, the garmin was warning me about them and I started taking it seriously. I assume this is partly due to the agility lost from that same wheelbase. I feel like I would have blown through these on my sirrus X.
The bike was awesome. I took 5 separate rides for a total of 18 miles during the day. Technically, 4 rides, but garmin massively messed up on navigation due to its utter incompetence with maps around here so I biked an extra few miles on that which actually had to become a separate trip to get the garmin to unfuck itself. I am getting massive numbness in the hands and will have to focus on fit. The bike had just enough power for me to go up a mile of 8-12% grade without dying (I think it averaged 9% which is fundamentally similar to hills around me). And, in reality, I probably had more in me, as I never hit the dreaded “you are in the lowest gear do nothing” gear change attempt. I genuinely have no idea where I was on it. I maxed the highest gear routinely, but that wasn’t an issue for me. For all that riding, I used less than 20% of the battery (didn’t actually check). I turned off the assist (by holding the down button) for a lot of the riding. None of the milder stuff needs any assistance. And since there is no shuttle effect, using the higher motor power has zero thrill value. Making me prefer to use the minimum necessary (which again, on anything less than 5-6% grades for short time is none).
The reach is quite long. But at the same time, I have never felt my legs be in such a good power position. I was routinely pushing 300-500 watts according to the bike (which I am a bit skeptical about). Granted, I’ve been lifting and biking since my last bike that had a power meter. So maybe this was natural gains? Who knows. Whatever it was felt great. *AND* I am starting to love a dropper seat. Gotta figure out how to get the radar on this bike.
I am looking at whether sizing down to a small makes sense this is the medium sirrus X vs medium fuel exe:
https://bikeinsights.com/compare?ge...e8ea8f0805001baaeb1a,66ad7eb527d9fa001ad14d63,
Note: you have to swap the tire size from mm to inches in the editor for the tire size to get it to look right
All I can say is the vibration through the handlebars and the position on both road and trail leaves my hands numb very very quickly. Since the stem is already pretty short on the fuel, it seems like sizing down to small may make sense?
This bike shop is weirdly a bike shop and restaurant. And, man did I appreciate that. After the first two rides I had chicken fingers and a local beer. And no one cares that everyone is sweaty off a bike.
If I solve fit, this is my future bike.
