Suntour NCX, another mismatch for me.

[Avg_Joe]

I rode both of my bikes with the Suntour seatpost this weekend, and actually thought about this thread. Just some random musings:

On my Rad Rover, which is an upright riding position, the NCX is bouncier and requires more preload to smooth out. However, it's not so bouncy that it throws me around, just bobbed more than I cared for. But once preload is set, it was a smooth ride, and only the most egregious hits caused any bobbing (talking 4" diameter exposed tree roots).

On my Vado, which is more of an active/sport riding position, the NCX with slight preload is extremely smooth and predictable. I also flipped the top mount around to negate the inherent rearward offset of the NCX (see: https://electricbikereview.com/forums/threads/whats-not-said-about-suntour-ncx-seatpost.48561/)

Not a mechanical engineer or anything, but it seems to this novice that when rider weight is positioned directly above the parallelogram, you wind up with 1) duh, more weight directly on the spring (increasing the need for preload or a heavier spring rate if beyond the parameters of the stock spring) and 2) the sport position is pushing the parallelogram rearwards with lighter weight on the spring, hence less preload (same spring rate in both seatposts).

 

[Taylor57]

I weigh about 165 and I have to hit a pretty big bump or jump up and down pretty good to feel my NCX travel much. I ride mostly on bike paths and sidewalks and an occasional dirt road...

 

[Jason Knight]

Or its because it does work for a lot of people. Something can work for most people and not work for you without it being a massive bike industry conspiracy or everyone else falling for propaganda.

Fair enough. A lot of that attitude of mine stems from my day job bleeding into my off time. I deal with marketers and advertisers who DO blatantly lie to the public all the time, as well as "developers" using mind-numbing asshat rubbish like bootstrap, tailwind, react, angular, and so forth, where every single claim of merit made about them is in fact a bald faced lie. They sucker people with these lies, who in turn come to me when they get dragged through the courts over it.

So I tend to think "marketing scam" when I see the same failings. Thing is, that's just what marketing is, scam or not. Those seven propaganda techniques work, whether a product, agenda, or intent is disingenuous or not.

I see that same language, same techniques, and same attitudes, I can't help but think it's the same type of scams I've spent the past decade and some change fighting against that have saddled up my clients and taken them out on Mr. Toad's Wet Wild Ride.

 

[jabberwocky]

I personally think all suspension posts are kludges, because its a niche product that doesn't attract a ton of development money and solves a problem that is generally better solved some other way. If you really want effective suspension you buy a full suspension bike, which have way more travel and shocks with proper compression and rebound damping circuits. But thats just my opinion, and I've known people with various suspension posts they really like.

I will say I have a Kinekt 2.1 on my non-electric gravel bike and like it ok, but it basically just takes the edge off. Its a linkage post and does have some rearward movement but definitely a lot less than the Suntour/Thudbuster style ones. Its very short travel though (35mm). I got it after developing some back pain doing gravel events and just wanting something to even out washboard vibrations. Once I got spring tension figured out it works pretty well for that. Only complaint is every time I get on that bike I spend the first hour glancing at my rear tire because I forget about the post and keep thinking its going flat.

So I tend to think "marketing scam" when I see the same failings. Thing is, that's just what marketing is, scam or not. Those seven propaganda techniques work, whether a product, agenda, or intent is disingenuous or not.

Bike companies collectively spend a ton of money on marketing to convince you to buy stuff that, if we are being honest with ourselves, we don't really need. A product can be heavily marketed and still be a reasonably good though. Part of living in the internet age is sorting through the marketing crap to figure out how to spend your bucks.

 

[Jason Knight]

Do you mind if I ask your weight?

176 and dropping. I'm rather proud of that these days since 12 years ago I was up over 280, and at that time getting a simple 3 speed cruiser helped me get rid of 50 of that. Hit a plateau at 230 I couldn't get below, but then a nice case of COVID helped me get down to 200. Mobility problems stopped me from riding until I got the e-bike, and realistically that's what got the past 24 pounds of weight off in the past year.

My goal is my old "fighting weight" of 160, which is still a bit heavy at 5'4" tall, but acceptable. Sadly I've not gone out in four days since I sprained my ankle, and I'm really not sure when I did that. I probably did it in one of the "oh crap I'm falling off the bike" moments from that seatpost, and then walked around on it for a day because I have this nasty habit of not noticing when I'm in shock. Not the first time. 24 years ago shattered my right elbow to what the doctor described as "a bag of peas" and used it for three days not realizing anything was wrong other than some "mild pain" Of course writing off the fever, nausea, and dizziness as "unrelated"

I really think that my short stature and bad back are more contributors to the problems with most of the gear that works for other people.

Along with allergies. I'm allergic to latex and the dye used in blue denim, so it wouldn't be a surprised if the reason spandex stuff itches, scratches, and causes a rash is just that; allergies.

It really seems like most everything that "works" for the majority of people is for me little more than getting punched in the face. It's hard to be "nice" about that when it causes actual harm.

 

[jabberwocky]

I will say, my opinion is that marketing in the bike world is rarely "convince people to buy a crappy product that doesn't work". Its almost always "convince people to pay a premium for an adequate product that works the same as what other companies make at half the price".

 

[ElevenAD]

Tell me, are all the ones with these fancy mechanisms so terrifying to ride? I just tried it for a 4 mile ride, was going to be 20 but I turned around because for me it's utterly and completely unsafe. It felt like it was going to throw me off the bike within the first 50 yards, and I went down twice! I've not been that scared out and about riding since I tried a noseless saddle! I was glad I was out in my full armor for once!

That 50mm of travel is just plain in the wrong direction. When the seat is being pushed UP into you the force should go back the direction it's coming, not be deflected backwards sliding the seat out from under you! Every stupid "little" bump (I'm in Keene NH, there are no small bumps) it felt like I was falling off the bike! Crossing the college campus alone, a spot with a lousy 1" drop and phwee face-first into the bar stem I went. Glad I moved the display on my Aventure to the side instead of the stock center position... and that I didn't come down crotch-first on the top-tube. And praise be for Aventon's "step-over" being what most other brands would call a step-through.

I've been riding a cheap $34 "Catazer Exo Form" 40mm dampened spring loaded post for a little over a year, and it is not only a more comfortable ride for me, it's so much safer and that 40mm feels like twice the USEFUL travel of the goofball overengineered mess the Suntour NCX is. At least it directs all the movement on the axis of motion instead of deflecting it rearward for Christmas only knows what!

Is this because I'm an upright rider in a wide seat with cruiser bars with my weight distributed across the whole seat, instead of on those wafer thin ridiculously narrow "I have to wear a nappy for comfort" seats in the back-breaking crotch-rocket lean so far forward it hurts your neck to look straight ahead position?

I thought it looked ridiculous from an engineering standpoint. But then I say the same thing about the "sit bones" BS, the notion that what side (ass or seat) the padding is on makes a lick of difference, or any of the other overpriced marketing scam nonsense that seems to be so hot and trendy, preying on the gullible and ignorant.

Sorry, but this thing reeks of scam artists exploiting "but it looks fancy" and hoping placebo does the rest.

My smoothest most comfortable bike is fitted with a noseless saddle and a Suntour, never felt like I was gonna fall off the bike lol, try adjusting the seatpost to your weight.

 

[AHicks]

I weigh about 165 and I have to hit a pretty big bump or jump up and down pretty good to feel my NCX travel much. I ride mostly on bike paths and sidewalks and an occasional dirt road...

Maybe too stiff? It SHOULD bottom on occasion, letting you know you're using all of the available suspension. If you're riding aound on just the top half of the available travel, that's a waste of perfectly usable suspension. Same deal on the front forks....

 

[Jason Knight]

I personally think all suspension posts are kludges, because its a niche product that doesn't attract a ton of development money and solves a problem that is generally better solved some other way.

Sounds about right. Also why to me it feels like so many of the claims -- and designs themselves -- are more hoodoo-voodoo than fact the fancier they get.

I will say I have a Kinekt 2.1 on my non-electric gravel bike and like it ok, but it basically just takes the edge off.

And that's about what my cheap amazon one does. It just softens the blow of a real impact and smooths out vibration over washboard-like areas. I know that given the current state of the south-bound Cheshire Rail Trail between Keene and Troy, I'd not take a non-suspension bike on it even though its' allegedly MUP and prepared. It's one of those trails that's supposedly maintained, but between washing out, flooding, and tree roots having other ideas about it, it ends up some vintage "Elmer Fudd" despite it being flat and wide for most of the distance. I've seen a few guys on road bikes brave it and all I can think is "you poor, poor fool"

I actually use it as the test to see how well all the bolts on a bike are dogged down.

Only complaint is every time I get on that bike I spend the first hour glancing at my rear tire because I forget about the post and keep thinking its going flat.

Hah, when I first got my Aventure I did that a lot with the front tire. Sometimes when you get going the front fork would compress and it would feel like a flat. It's a lot better now that I swapped out for a double-shoulder fork with 120mm of travel instead of the stock 80mm, though that I can adjust it a lot stiffer than the stock one is a likely contributor.

Fun part is I had ridden that double-shoulder fork for about a month and only ever put about 30mm of travel on it. Took it on that path I just mentioned, hit a nasty bump I couldn't even see, and bottomed out all 120mm! That would have been hell without the front suspension.

A product can be heavily marketed and still be a reasonably good though.

As I said, my day job has badly coloured that. I see the marketspeak double-talk and endless bullshit bingo, then trying the product and having it not work and in fact do the opposite of the claims?

Part of living in the internet age is sorting through the marketing crap to figure out how to spend your bucks.

And I try to do that by listening to what actual people are saying on forums like this, but a half dozen or more times now what people are saying seems both the opposite of reality to the point of sounding outright delusional, and led me down the path to failure.

It's reaching the point where if certain people in the "community" talk up something, I know to do the exact opposite. Especially those who seem to want to say "screw the poorf***s" but know better than to use said phrase. There seems to be a lot of cultish effete elitism in "bike culture"

 

[Mango1234]

This sentence:

I will say, my opinion is that marketing in the bike world is rarely "convince people to buy a crappy product that doesn't work".

reminded me of this suspension seatpost:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07F7TWLR6/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

it is comically bad.

 

[jabberwocky]

I've seen a few guys on road bikes brave it and all I can think is "you poor, poor fool"

Hah! A while back I used to lead a mountainbike ride at the local trail system, between my work and my home. Generally I'd commute home, swap the road bike for the mountainbike and ride back out to lead it, but occasionally I'd be late leaving work and I'd just ride there and lead the ride on the road bike. Its doable, but not what I'd call pleasant. 23mm tires at 120psi have very little traction on dirt and rocks. Very good bike handling and line selection practice though! You can't just plow through things like you can on the 160mm travel trail bike.

Fun part is I had ridden that double-shoulder fork for about a month and only ever put about 30mm of travel on it. Took it on that path I just mentioned, hit a nasty bump I couldn't even see, and bottomed out all 120mm! That would have been hell without the front suspension.

My old Turner downhill bike had 180mm of travel and generally was hard to bottom, but an appropriately big drop would do it! I could feel the fork gently smack bottom every time on that one.

There seems to be a lot of cultish effete elitism in "bike culture"

There is, for sure. But honestly, there is in almost every dedicated "culture". I'm also an avid woodworker and its striking how similar the discourse can be in woodworking groups and forums.

 

[tomjasz]

I just wasn't expecting so much of the travel

Wrong spring choice.

 

[jkvt]

I don't have much to contribute here, but Angular (not AngularJS) is not rubbish

Carry on...

 

[Jason Knight]

I don't have much to contribute here, but Angular (not AngularJS) is not rubbish .

Oh, it is. It's a pointless kohlerye redundancy to using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript properly, that suckers you into a deeper buld process (possibly in cases where there shoudln't even be one), client side scripting only solutions flipping the bird at usability and accessibility (which is why every client I've ever had using it or React tend to end up in court for US ADA, UK EQA, etc), and reeks top to bottom of being CREATED by people who don't know enough HTML, CSS, or JavaScript to be using web technologies in the first blasted place.

At BEST it's a monument to 1997-style development. At worst such beheyme chazerei it makes you write twice the code you need to that relies on ten times the code you should even have, whilst deepening your stack, making everything harder to maintain, harder to debug, and flipping the bird at every single good programming practice of the past 40 years!

Though I will say that on its own its not as bad as bootcrap or failwind, so long as you aren't using it for anything OTHER than crapplets where accessibility, usability, or other such web-facing concerns actually matter.

I swear, the next time I deal with a bank or public utility where they're being dragged through the courts for people not being able to pay their bills because of goofball crapplets and "accessibility, what's that" websites and they're using Angular? Boots are being applied to backsides! Because I've had it with ignorant, gormless, halfwitted "framework" developer putz and schmendriks who aren't even qualified to flap their damned yaps about the most basic web technologies!

Sleazy predatory scam artist dumkopf dross peddled by gonif. There's a reason machers like Wathan, Otto, Havery and Abron are little more than snake oil peddling pishers.

Bottom line? I've never since I first encountered Angular seen anything done with it that was worth a flying purple fish. EVERYTHING built with it being harder to build, harder to maintain, more expensive to host, and flipping the bird at UX and Accessibility compared to what just using HTML, CSS, and JS as intended could deliver. EVERY claim of merit assigned to it is a bald faced lie preying on those who haven't learned enough about the underlying languages to even have a valid opinion on the topic.

P.S. Good job poking the bear.

 

[tomjasz]

jeebus, relax. Stature doesn’t have to mean angry.

 

[flyingjack]

jeebus, relax. Stature doesn’t have to mean angry.

Silly me, and I thought this was a ebike forum.

 

[knightrider]

Tell me, are all the ones with these fancy mechanisms so terrifying to ride? I just tried it for a 4 mile ride, was going to be 20 but I turned around because for me it's utterly and completely unsafe. It felt like it was going to throw me off the bike within the first 50 yards, and I went down twice! I've not been that scared out and about riding since I tried a noseless saddle! I was glad I was out in my full armor for once!

That 50mm of travel is just plain in the wrong direction. When the seat is being pushed UP into you the force should go back the direction it's coming, not be deflected backwards sliding the seat out from under you! Every stupid "little" bump (I'm in Keene NH, there are no small bumps) it felt like I was falling off the bike! Crossing the college campus alone, a spot with a lousy 1" drop and phwee face-first into the bar stem I went. Glad I moved the display on my Aventure to the side instead of the stock center position... and that I didn't come down crotch-first on the top-tube. And praise be for Aventon's "step-over" being what most other brands would call a step-through.

I've been riding a cheap $34 "Catazer Exo Form" 40mm dampened spring loaded post for a little over a year, and it is not only a more comfortable ride for me, it's so much safer and that 40mm feels like twice the USEFUL travel of the goofball overengineered mess the Suntour NCX is. At least it directs all the movement on the axis of motion instead of deflecting it rearward for Christmas only knows what!

Is this because I'm an upright rider in a wide seat with cruiser bars with my weight distributed across the whole seat, instead of on those wafer thin ridiculously narrow "I have to wear a nappy for comfort" seats in the back-breaking crotch-rocket lean so far forward it hurts your neck to look straight ahead position?

I thought it looked ridiculous from an engineering standpoint. But then I say the same thing about the "sit bones" BS, the notion that what side (ass or seat) the padding is on makes a lick of difference, or any of the other overpriced marketing scam nonsense that seems to be so hot and trendy, preying on the gullible and ignorant.

Sorry, but this thing reeks of scam artists exploiting "but it looks fancy" and hoping placebo does the rest.

 

[tomjasz]

Yikes! I’ve been on my NCX for 3-4 years. Works perfectly on my flat foot frames. Properly sized springs and correct install for the win. I’m sorry it didn’t make you happy, but the flurry of insults wasn’t needed…

 

[knightrider]

I ride them on all my bikes. Next best thing to rear suspension on hard tail mtn bike. Mimics natural movement on proper suspension. Straight up and down springer post are like pogo sticks. Wide saddles don`t seem to work for me as they do for you. To each his own.

 

[ireneesankey]

Tell me, are all the ones with these fancy mechanisms so terrifying to ride? I just tried it for a 4 mile ride, was going to be 20 but I turned around because for me it's utterly and completely unsafe. It felt like it was going to throw me off the bike within the first 50 yards, and I went down twice! I've not been that scared out and about riding since I tried a noseless saddle! I was glad I was out in my full armor for once!

That 50mm of travel is just plain in the wrong direction. When the seat is being pushed UP into you the force should go back the direction it's coming, not be deflected backwards sliding the seat out from under you! Every stupid "little" bump (I'm in Keene NH, there are no small bumps) it felt like I was falling off the bike! Crossing the college campus alone, a spot with a lousy 1" drop and phwee face-first into the bar stem I went. Glad I moved the display on my Aventure to the side instead of the stock center position... and that I didn't come down crotch-first on the top-tube. And praise be for Aventon's "step-over" being what most other brands would call a step-through.

I've been riding a cheap $34 "Catazer Exo Form" 40mm dampened spring loaded post for a little over a year, and it is not only a more comfortable ride for me, it's so much safer and that 40mm feels like twice the USEFUL travel of the goofball overengineered mess the Suntour NCX is. At least it directs all the movement on the axis of motion instead of deflecting it rearward for Christmas only knows what!

Is this because I'm an upright rider in a wide seat with cruiser bars with my weight distributed across the whole seat, instead of on those wafer thin ridiculously narrow "I have to wear a nappy for comfort" seats in the back-breaking crotch-rocket lean so far forward it hurts your neck to look straight ahead position?

I thought it looked ridiculous from an engineering standpoint. But then I say the same thing about the "sit bones" BS, the notion that what side (ass or seat) the padding is on makes a lick of difference, or any of the other overpriced marketing scam nonsense that seems to be so hot and trendy, preying on the gullible and ignorant.

Sorry, but this thing reeks of scam artists exploiting "but it looks fancy" and hoping placebo does the rest.

Sorry for picking up the thread, I'm now looking on ebay for suntour NCX because my friends recommended it, but now after reading here it seems it's not as good as it looks, so is it worth this purchase after all or not?
Because I am also a college student and I would like to have a healthy lifestyle, moreover, I have already done several writings about it, by the way with the help of this source https://graduateway.com/essay-examples/healthy-lifestyle/ I manage to do this quite well; now I am thinking of opening a course of my own for students and schoolchildren who want to have a healthier lifestyle but don't know where to start. Besides this I need a team of more people, if anyone would like to help me it would be very nice, this will happen online, i.e. you can work from home, this will make the work much easier and besides this I think it will be very interesting and a good experience.