MTB Set Up Articles

The Ultimate Mountain Bike for you does exist! It just arrived today! Not just any bike, the Bike I have Waited Two Decades for!

2019 is a great year to be a mountain biker! The industry is finally making bikes that are safer and more fun to ride than older bikes. Usually, year to year bikes don't change that much, but in 2019 the industry as a whole is catching on to some design ideas that...

As I mentioned in my last post, I love what 30 years of practice and modern mountain bikes allow me to do!

So what exactly do modern bikes allow us to do? Well, one of my readers summed it up well,

“Hi Gene!

Enjoyed your musing on old vs. new mountain bikes. I’m 47 and my first bike was a 1991 Bridgestone MB-Zip which I raced in the 90’s NORBA Expert Class.

I tend to not be overly nostalgic about those old bikes, particularly about the reliability, maintenance, and number of crashes. My steel Bridgestone frame literally snapped in half …

Modern mountain bike geometry is so much safer too! The long, low and slack geometry I have been preaching about since 1999 or finally available for mtbs designed for all purposes of bikes. There are now cross country race bikes with slack head angles now, making descending much more fun and less scary while having no affect on most climbs (especially when combined with steep seat tube angles).

Just because an mtb pro (or a bunch of pros) uses a piece of equipment doesn’t mean you should make the same choice. Why not? Well, there are several reasons and I will give you some excellent examples.

A student of mine emailed me accusing me of being crazy for riding plus-sized tires. His argument was that Jared Graves and Richie Rude (two World Champion Enduro racers) tried plus tires and didn’t like them. My first question to my student was, can you corner as well and as confidently was World Champion racers? To which he replied, “well, I’m much better after your camp and I have been doing the cornering drills but no, I’m not that good.” Well, plus tires give me the confidence to corner much faster and aggressively than narrower tires I told him. Wouldn’t you corner faster if