Why Isn’t Bike Sizing All The Same? | GMBN Tech Show 300

In this week’s GMBN Tech Show, Neil Donoghue and Owen Coutts ask the question, why isn’t all bike sizing the same? In the news, we take a look at the new SRAM Powertrain, speculate about some potential prototype brakes from Hayes, question why Merida’s new 130mm trail bike is called the ‘120’, and show that it is possible to attach a baguette to your MTB. Plus we answer your comments from last week’s show.

⏱️ Timestamps ⏱️
00:00 – Intro
00:25 – News
04:44 – Topic
08:49 – Comments

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coming up on this week’s Tech show SRAM delvins the e-bite world with their long-awaited motor Powertrain and we’ve got some spy shots of some new breaks from Hayes we’ve got another new bike from Rita two bikes in two weeks wow and we discuss Merida another bike brands related we discuss why bike sizing isn’t the same across well all the brands my e-bike alerts but yes this is big news SRAM have a new motor so it’s actually called the powertrain and I’ve heard holistic mentioned a few times here because it’s not just the motor it’s the motor the battery speed sensor Bridge display and how it works with their existing uh access pod controllers so the Pod controls do the gears as you’d expect and they also do a dropper post on the left top left does your mode so you have two modes on this range and rally keeping it simple however you can completely customize what those two modes do with the app but also the right hand control that does your gears also can turn the automatic shifting on or off so sensors on the bike will adjust with your Cadence it’ll change the gears for you super interesting obviously we have seen Shimano with the xtdi 2 have a similar system although this obviously is completely wireless using the SRAM ecosystem and we’ve got the moment we’ve got three bikes launched with them we’ve got new proof megawatt propane a transition two battery options six thirty watts and 720 Watt hours should I say plus additional 250 watt hour range extender the motor is actually in partnership with Bros so this is kind of one of those um you know hardware and software kind of deals where they’ve decided what software goes on this thing 90 new meters of torque really interesting you’ve also got a code shift on there as well so without pedaling you can change gear and it will spin up the chainring for you oh nice very handy now we’ve got the haze prototype brake ours Race by Andreas Kolb uh if you’ve seen running a new break over the weekend at Snowshoe gloss red levers not purple no disappointing because purple is the old school why is it a good color um yeah it is not just different colorway it looks like a different lever shape as well so yeah quite quite a different setup really from what we’ve seen before still on black calipers apparently though so maybe it’s just a new custom lever although interestingly he raced on the standard black break so I wonder what happened there it makes me think maybe there’s a lot of crashing guys again maybe they’re you know they’re in limited Supply and he may be crashed and broke them I don’t know I’m speculating why would you race on breaks you didn’t practice it no not ideal I’d say watch this space anyway on to Marita we talked about their 160 last week and they have a 120 uh which they’re saying is a jack of all trades bike which kind of makes sense it’s aluminum uh decent price points in these bikes actually the 300 model is 1900 pounds or 2280 Euros which is cheaper it does go up from there to the Top Model 700 is 3 100 pounds 3 700 euros it’s not a 120 as the name suggests travel well it’s actually one Thirty mil travel front and rear interesting uh the frame actually uses a p Flex uh Flex day suspension design 29er 66 degree head angle 78.5 degrees C angle claimed weight is 15.1 kilograms for a medium size so kind of you know decent price point aluminum they’re not going crazy on the weights it’s uh you know those the sort of numbers 66 degree head angle looks like a good you know fairly short travel trailer looks fun even if it is over traveled for its name interesting I’m Marina doing that we announced their new 160 last week with the FR should I say it was actually a 171 mil travel so you can get caught out when you’re buying really let’s check small print but you’re getting more for your money in a way because you’re getting more travel isn’t that the psychology behind the name maybe it’s better value it’s a new kit from one up components the EDC pump for tube strap that are actually using those spare bottle cage mounts that you probably can’t fit while it goes on yep what do we have Owen we’ve got the EDC inline pump mount they’ve also got a new pump as well uh and then they’ve also got a tube strap which um yeah is holds lots of other gear you can put tube on it you could put CO2 obviously levers because they’re always handy if you’re trying to change a tube um if you’re running tubes or if you’ve got a big flat um other thing that’s fun is apparently you can run a baguette with them so yeah I’m not sure about that I think it’s going to bend but I like the way they’ve used it are they hinting they may have a new Rider running for one up with the baguette visuals who knows Frenchman maybe in Canada you think so wouldn’t you that would be my guess right now we’re into the topic show why isn’t bite size in all set which I think it’s a valid question because you have to look through the websites for this you know sizes and geometries and people have different size mediums add the fact that not all manufacturers use that same sort of scale of small medium large extra large they have things like short longer longest specialize out of s one two three so lots of bikes now go off kind of reaches and lengths rather than sizes and this comes from the kind of the latest and greatest longest lower slacker geometry because back in the day it was all off inches wasn’t it back in yeah I rode an 18-inch bike and why was that Owen well we were basing our starting off road bikes and we’d base the seat tube used to be sort of square with the top tube so you get an 18 inch that would be a seat tube but it’ll also be a top tube measurement so it’s kind of you could gauge one off the other whereas now we’ve got reach and stack together to work out the bike geometry okay so what we’re going to do is take a look at some of these bikes on the market CA mediums come pair and actually I think it’s quite interesting it’s got two bites we’ve got the Canyon Drive a new proof gigger which are kind of at either end of the spectrum on this the strive is actually is quite a big medium our new proof gig is kind of a more conservative medium both the 29ers uh new proof does have slightly more travel at 170 whilst Cannon is 160. so let’s take a look at the mediums right the reach now this is the one that I always got if I’m if I’m getting a new bike new fifth Giga is 455 for medium which is kind of conservative but about my number I’d say and I always feel like I’m average height I should ride a medium yeah cannons Drive 20 mil longer four seven five which is a pole size it is I think back in the day you might be able to like switch from a let’s say like a 70 to maybe a 50 ml stem but now a bike’s coming with a 50mm stem as stock it’s kind of hard to to lose the the length there as well rarely do I swap a stem lens now I kind of like so go for a reach measurement and that’s that’s my my size wheelbase this is quite a big one again it’s similar though Sim story new a 1241 Canyons Drive 1262 so 21 mil longer standover Heights Counterstrike is bigger again stack interesting new proof Giga 622 mil and Canon strive six three four millimeters so it’s not as tall on the front so it’s it’s only maybe a handlebar slightly different handlebar and you’re there or even bar roll for that much depending on how Wild you get your bar wrong so what I do uh is go off the website so they have their Rider Heights I find it’s quite interesting kind of have a sliding scale normally if you’re kind of near the edge of a medium you might want to choose a large so uh the rider height new brief recommend for medium is one six seven to one seven seven so actually I’m 178 so I’m just outside of medium they tell me Canon say one seven two to one eight five so it’s pretty big actually but the good thing about this box now is that even if you want to choose a longer bike people do like longer bikes I do actually quite like a a longer wheelbase super stable but actually people like uh or Bayer have something like this called they’re Steep and deep so basically the Deep means that the kind of standover is low so you get a big insertion depth on the post so even if you’re a shorter Rider you still get enough insertion to be able to get the sort of standover height for that bike so you can kind of now pick your bike as you like the the reach and an end and the thing I suppose yeah and I guess it allows for so I’m fairly sure I’m only like 172 but I’ve got really long legs so my leg length and saddle height is basically the same as Rich who’s a lot taller than me but I guess that’s the other fat yum yeah oddly connected but I guess that’s the other thing that you can do when you’ve got different seat tubes length and you’re able to put in a longer drop you can do that whereas previously old measurements and yeah when you had a relatively High seat tube per the larger in Excel sizes you were kind of limited yeah and I’ve done the kind of the opposite I’ve got bikes that are maybe slightly too big and then I’ve actually had to drop the seat post extension like I’ve made a 180 post into a 160. space it danks otherwise the saddle’s too high so yeah you kind of you’ve got much more freedom nowadays I think to choose your size of bike because the standover it doesn’t seem to be much of a problem anymore okay so into the comments from last week’s show we talked about the best mountain bikes for beginners uh Brad VDB says I love my polygon Cisco D5 take this one because my old 26 inch bike frame broke so I transferred all the top shelf bits I had onto that bike onto that frame to make it an even better bike well I do that Frank swap yeah yeah good idea and you get the best of both worlds my first mountain bike this is from BK 1015 maybe that’s that’s another famous Beaker isn’t it maybe it’s the same one first man bike was an early 90s specialized rock copper I loved it until until somebody stole it that’s yeah that’s less good um I’d buy the current model if the if I was in the market for an entry level hardtail there’s some Brands out there some other brands out there with really nice offerings too so that’s interesting yeah loads of rockhoppers out there uh ripter says one important detail you missed out it was a various cycle schemes uh they can offer up to 42 off a sale price of a bike with a GCI presenter I see there’s lots of sort of tax incentives so we did miss that we talked about last week so yeah you could get yourself a bargain as well I can use a cycled work schemes I mean that is UK specific but I feel like they’ve got something similar in Ireland as well and maybe you’re maybe you’ve got them as well we should do more research that’s my hat your hair looks great oh now let’s get into a pretty impressive bike Vault this week two banging ones starting with Chris in New York and we want to ask Chris what he does for living first which is very nice but check out the tools very neat the whole flipping range of part tools spares as well very organized volume space is going on this is impressive slightly less organized in that toolbox but that’s amazing look at that yeah keeps going basically bench wow uh you’ve got spares there as well yeah yeah like it looks like there’s brake pads it’s flipping cool I love it actually and it’s okay tidy as well so those must be a big question though has he painted it or is it epoxy well we had the conversation last week and actually people got involved people epoxy had more recommendations than polishing the concrete okay easier you can choose to whatever all right there you go if you’ve got more comments stick them in the in the comments below moving on to Ryan in Vermont two East Coasters this week uh who rides a Marine Alpine Trail XR uh Hey guys love the videos I want to show you my almost done biker it’s not even finished actually part of a pretty big garage this area is focused on working on bikes and hanging out it does almost look like there’s a bar here as well that’s very nice I want to see that voice I don’t know what brand that voice is but it looks really good doesn’t it it all looks really good I mean Super impressive bike caves this week it’s gonna be hard to beat those but definitely get involved Samuel’s in link is down below and we’ll check them out next week anyway next week we’ve got brownie Merida 140 it’s actually 150. actually that’s a joke I don’t know that no I think it is yeah is it I don’t know uh David thanks for watching and get involved with the comments and send stuff in via the uploader and we’ll catch you soon