098 - A technical look at Norco's mountain bike design approach. (Guests: Norco R&D Engineers - Colin Ryan & Kirk McDowall) - Mountain Cog

Episode Transcript
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Josh (00:18):
so you know that, uh, last week I was riding, uh, you know
, out here kind of, yeah, Icould kind of head into three
bridges or whatever, and I wentover the bars.

Dane (00:30):
Yeah.

Josh (00:31):
And I kind of landed in a giant cactus bush, okay, and it
got me thinking like you know,like what type of plants should
you avoid when you are ridingAny?

Dane (00:43):
idea.
I mean spiky ones.
It's an ambush, that's what youshould try to avoid.

Josh (00:50):
It's an ambush.
That's the plan, that's reallybad.

Dane (00:53):
These don't ever get better.
It isn't, no, they don't.
I mean the dad joke.
What's.
What do you think a dad joke'sdefinition is?
I don't know, is it supposed tobe good?

Josh (01:08):
That's what I want to know .
Or is it supposed to be bad?
It's supposed to be bad.
It's supposed to be bad design.
We kill it.
So we're killing it then.
So so, uh, it's monday nighthere on the mcp.
We're fresh off of the sedonabicycle festival.
Yeah, got to talk to a lot ofcompanies.
I don't think you guys werethere, norco wasn't up there,
were they?

Dane (01:18):
uh, I don't remember seeing you.

Josh (01:19):
Usually I would go by were you guys, were you guys at the
Sedona Bike Festival, do youknow?

Colin Ryan - Norco (01:23):
I'm not sure if we were at Sedona this
year.
We were last year.

Dane (01:26):
Yeah, I remember last year because I actually saw the new
optic there and the new FluidVLT and I bought one of each.

Josh (01:39):
But we're here with some of the outstanding talent from
Norco Bikes, and they were justtelling me they're both out of
Vancouver.
Oh nice yeah not too far fromtheir headquarters.
Would you guys care tointroduce yourselves?
Maybe we can start with you,Colin.

Yeah, sure, yeah.
So my name's Colin.
I'm one of the developmentengineers at Norco and we kind
of split our engineeringdepartment into production
design R&D.
Split our engineeringdepartment into production
design R and D.
Uh.
So I work on more of the R andD side of things, mostly
focusing on suspensiondevelopment.
Uh.
So that includes uh, developingkinematics for our full

(02:15):
suspension bikes, doing somemule test work on new projects,
uh, working with our suspensionsuppliers on custom shock tuning
and then kind of finalcomponents, working on our ride
line set of guides nice yeahright on over to you kirk yeah,
so um, I, as colin explained,also worked on the development

(02:36):
side of our engineering team.

Kirk McDowall - Norco (02:38):
Um, I've been with arco for for three
years now and um before that.
Um was kind of full-time intodownhill racing um for a number
of years, you know, through um,through while I was in school
and stuff like that.
So, um, a bit of a differentsort of background, but um, yeah

(02:59):
, it's tied well into workingwith narco um where I can kind
of do my engineering stuff but,you know, also do test riding as
well.

Dane (03:07):
So I do so.
Do you guys think, that are youboth?
Are you both downhillers?
I?

don't really get on the downhill bike
because definitely not as muchas kirk does.

Dane (03:17):
What's your weapon?
What's your weapon of choice?

uh, I've been a weapon of choice.
Right now, I don't know if wecan talk about it just yet.

Dane (03:25):
Oh well, no, you don't like disclosing like in the
short travel stuff these days.
Oh, I think I may know whatyou're talking about.
Uh, so okay, and then, um, yeah, cause I'm I'm an old
downheller and uh, I don't knowif that got me into suspension,
uh, you know, or if it was theother way around getting into
suspension got me in a downhill.
I couldn't tell you which onecame first, but uh, but I was

(03:48):
listening to another podcast,with kirk I believe, and uh,
they were talking about the, uh,the downhill bike, uh,
production.
I can't remember.
I think it was blister orsomething, so and that was that
was really interesting to tohear how many times you guys go
through mules.
You know, build something up,just run through it, and I think
from what I heard on that bike,you guys are still developing

(04:10):
it it's you don't even know ifit'll ever go into production
the way it is, but you're justtrying to make it a pure race
bike.
Is that about right?

yeah, that was probably a little over
a year ago, I guess, when we didthat podcast, and I think even
then we're still tweaking awayat things on the on the download
bike for the race team side,but finally are also starting to
steer that ship towards theproduction bike as well.
So that's going to be cool.

Dane (04:34):
What do you think is the hardest thing to nail down when
you're dealing with that?
I mean, are you fighting riderfeedback with what maybe
computer models do, or is itjust trying to get speed?
And I mean I can't imaginethat's easy to get all of those
different riders opinions andtry and figure out which ones
make the biggest difference frommy end.

It does feel like, you know, going
through this process, it doesfind, or it does seem, that a
lot of the riders kind of findthemselves in a similar area and
we do sort of tend to steer inthe same direction yeah, yeah, I
think that's pretty true.

I don't know if that's just a case of
the riders that we work withover the course of this project
or how adaptable this bike is.
It lets us test, um, differentelements of the suspension and
geo and isolation and reallykind of zero in on the ideal
numbers.
But we do, yeah, kind of seemost of our riders converging on

(05:30):
really similar settings.
And we've been working on thisbike for, yeah, I guess this
will be coming into our fourthseason if we include the season
we did testing the mule withkirk.
So over that time we've we'veworked with quite a few
different riders, probably close, close to 10 between
development and race team andthe fact that everyone seems to
sort of converge on very similarsettings within a little bit of

(05:53):
adjustment kind of suggeststhat we're getting close to
zeroing in on some of the idealcharacteristics.

Dane (06:00):
That's awesome.
I mentioned before we startedrecording, I just set up my
optic, so this is the new opticwith the high pivot.
I'm excited about it.
We have you know, pay-to-playis what we call it.
You have to climb everywhere inorder to go down.
The terrain, though, can bereally rocky, square-edge,

(06:21):
volcanic, really sharp rocks,and so the optic coming in at
120 in the rear.
I believe that's correct.
Is that right, uh?
so 125, 125, thank you.
And then uh, it's uh, but it'sa high pivot and so when you
look at it it looks like youknow what you see on the world
cup downhill races.

(06:41):
You know, you've got this bigidler sitting up high and the
chains routed over the the idlerand comes down onto the chain
ring, and so it has this look ofthis long travel kind of trend
you know, but it's only 125millimeters and we've we've had
actually difficulty getting ourcustomers to kind of wrap their
head around that.
Yeah, totally, and so so.

Josh (07:01):
so maybe it'd be good to orient our listeners.
I think you guys have foursuspension platforms, if I have
that right the, the VPS, vps, hb, hvp and HVP six.
Do I have that right?

Yeah, yeah, for the 25 lineup, I guess
it'll be kind of two mainproduction layouts and then the
HVP six that we're using on thedownhill bike, the, the range
was that high virtual pivot orhbp layout and that's kind of
spawned the, the downhill bikelayout.
But uh, but yeah, on theproduction side of things for 25

(07:36):
it's mostly going to be our bpsor like our horse link layout,
and then our bps hp, which is avariation of a horse link layout
with a higher colin kirk, couldyou take us through like
explain a variation of a horselength way up at the higher
Colin?
Kirk, could you take us throughlike explain each one of those,
like how they work, what thedifferences are between them,
and then like what bikes they'reon in your in your lineup?

(07:57):
I think at the heart of kind ofour approach to suspension
platforms is is Axlepath really.
And so Axlepath is just howyour rear axle moves relative to
the front triangle as yoursuspensions compress, and really
our approach to differentsuspension platforms is trying
to tailor AxlePath to theterrain and the intended use of
the bike so you can tune indifferent amounts of what we

(08:20):
call rearward AxlePath, of whatwe call rearward axle path,
which allows the back wheel tomove out of the way of kind of
square edge hits as terrain getsrougher and allows you to
maintain speed and control onmore demanding descending trails
.
And so that's kind of as youmove from our short travel bikes
that use the BPS layout withoutan idler, with a more

(08:41):
conventional axle path, intokind of the more demanding
applications, things like thesight and the optic, all the way
up to downhill.
We're introducing progressivelymore rearward axle path to try
and manage those rougher, higherspeed, chunkier kind of
descending trails so.

Josh (09:01):
So, as I understand it, more rearward axle path is
better in things like rockgardens.
Would that be a fair assessment?

yeah I mean that that's the idea behind it
is um when your rear wheel hitssomething in the trail, uh, your
suspension is.
The force that's acting on yourrear wheel is not just trying
to compress your suspensionvertically, it's also um kind of
tugging on the rear wheeltrying to slow the rider down.
And so if you can allow therear wheel to move backward to

(09:31):
some degree, um, you can helpthe rear suspension manage those
uh kind of square edge hitsthat aren't just trying to move
the wheel up but also backward,um, and that just allows you to
carry momentum, uh gives you agreater sense of control and
confidence, as, as you're ridingkind of rougher uh and higher
speed trails.

Josh (09:51):
So, dane, for you know, so we have a.
You know we're, we're a rockymess here in Southern Arizona.

Dane (09:56):
We live in rock gardens.

Josh (09:58):
And so, um, you know, that kind of tells me that this
might actually be a perfect bikefor our terrain here in that
you know, it's going to handlethose rock gardens more
effectively than a bike thatdoesn't have that.
That same suspension Can it?

Dane (10:13):
can it first ride on it?
So far?
That's what I'm experiencingthis bike.
Just my first ride on it.

Josh (10:19):
It was amazing how pedaling efficient it was, so
yeah so is that something youguys have dealt with like
customer perception based on thelook, and, and how are you
helping to educate the customersthat maybe that, maybe the look
isn't what they should focus on?

yeah, I mean that that's definitely a
challenge that we anticipated.
Going going to this hype thatlay out with an idler on both
the optic and the sight.
We do get that question quite abit, which is why we try and
bring it back to high.
Pivot bikes aren't necessarilyall.
They don't all perform the same.

(10:56):
Much the same as we think ofhaving varying amounts of
vertical suspension travel, youcan have varying amounts of
vertical suspension travel.
You can have varying amounts ofrearward axle travel or
rearward axle path as well.
So in the case of somethinglike the Sight or the Optic,
they do have more rearward axlepath than a conventional

(11:18):
horse-linked design wouldn't runon either.
But it's not so extreme.
It's definitely not taken tothe extreme that you would see
on a demo bike.
So we're trying to kind ofstrike that balance between a
bike that still feels reallyintuitive when you're cornering
it off, jumps, um, still handleslike a conventional trail bike
but at the same time we're ableto just take the edge off of all

(11:39):
those square edge hits as youare riding through kind of
rougher trails and just enhancethe sense of confidence when
you're descending.
And then, yeah, one of thethings that we've tried to talk
about with these bikes, to sortof dispel some of the myths
around idler bikes being lessefficient to pedal, is what
we've done with idler location.

(11:59):
So it's quite well hiddenbecause our industrial designers
have done a good job of kind ofhiding the idler inside the
chainstay.
But the idler is actuallylocated separate from the main
pivot and we did a lot of workin the fuel phase for both these
bikes, moving the idler aroundto tune what we would call the

(12:20):
anti-squat or kind of how chainforce interacts with the
suspension, all with the goal oftrying to make these bikes
pedal really well, um, and inline with what you would expect
from a trail or so.
Um, that's one of the things welike to talk about.
When people you know think ofidler bikes as being inefficient
is, actually you have this kindof unique tuning feature by

(12:43):
being able to locate the idlerum separate from all your other
kinematic points.
That lets you fine-tune how thebikes pedal to a greater degree
than you would even get with abike that doesn't run.
So it's actually in some waysan advantage rather than a
disadvantage can.

Dane (13:00):
Can we touch on a couple things?
Uh, so I, I, um, our listenersamazing.
They're all over the world, 66countries, yeah.
So, but one of the things thatI struggle with as a suspension
guy, a bike guy who's been doingthis a long time is there's a
lot of new terms that have comeout in the last few years and
I'm hoping cause you guys areprobably the ones coming up with

(13:20):
these terms, so I'm hoping youcan help me throw some
definitions out to kind of helppeople kind of understand them,
including myself.
So some of these things.
You know, I was joking on adifferent podcast about
kinematics, so we found outkinematics is just the
relationship of the suspensionagainst itself, and it's kind of
an easy word to say asuspension system, if that makes

(13:43):
sense.
And so the other one is thatI'm struggling with because I've
got old terms and these are newones are anti-squat and
anti-raise anti-squat andanti-rise are similar terms but
kind of deal with two differentscenarios on the bike.

They both relate to what happens with your
rear suspension when you'reeither accelerating or
decelerating.
So when we're accelerating onour bike, it's when you're
pedaling, and what happens whenyou're accelerating is you
create what's called your bodyin the massive.

(14:20):
Your bike creates what's calledan inertial load, so it creates
a load that wants to oppose theacceleration or try and keep
your body stationary.
And the result of that isyou'll increase the amount of

(14:41):
load or weight over the rearwheel and decrease the amount of
load or weight over the rearwheel, um, and decrease the
amount of load or weight overthe front wheel.
Uh, and so if you weren't doinganything with the rear
suspension to try and counterthat, you would feel that as
what you talked about in pedalbob.
So, uh, you put some power downthrough the cranks, you start

(15:04):
to accelerate, your body wantsto stay stationary, creates that
inertial force that transferssome load to the rear wheel.

Dane (15:11):
Your suspension has to counter that increased load over
the rear wheel and so itcompresses okay so, and so hold
on, I'm going to do a little bitof translation while we're
talking so yeah, um, so whatyou're saying is, as you push
the pedal down, your body andyour force is almost trying to
make the bike do a wheelie whichpushes the back end down, or or

(15:34):
your cranks down more andsquats the bike.
Is that, is that a fair?
Yeah, I think that's not a badsummary of it.
And then when you stop loadingit, it wants to come back up,
and then when your next legcomes down and does the same
thing, it squats it.
And that's why we get this kindof in the old school way we
used to call this pedal bob,because you would get this kind

(15:55):
of up and down feel as youpedaled, as your body kind of
get loaded the bike and unloadedthe bike.

Uh, yeah, through the pedal?
Yeah, is that.
And that that's kind of theunique thing about bicycles,
that's a little bit differentfrom some other vehicles is, um,
the way that you accelerate,you, you generate um power.
You don't generate um power ortorque, uh, constant, at a
constant rate at the cranks,yeah, um, as we all know, you

(16:23):
know, we generate, or the mosttorque, um, at a certain point,
our pedal stroke, and so you getthis really like cyclic kind of
nature to it.
And that's where the bobbingcomes from, is it's not just the
bike squats while you'reaccelerating and then it stops
when you're no longeraccelerating.
You're constantly going likeaccelerate, decelerate, um, and

(16:44):
it just creates this kind ofcyclical, like pedal bob
sensation which a lot of peoplewill perceive as being
inefficient.

Dane (16:55):
It'll feel like it's kind of just sapping all your energy
with yeah, we'll get feedbackfrom customers that way, like,
oh it's, you know it's bobbingup and down, and then, as a
suspension guy, I've got to goand figure out if I can do
something with the suspension tocounteract that.
Whether it's, you know, likewhen they produced a pro pedal
back in the day to kind of calmdown, uh, shocks, or now you

(17:16):
have a trail, a trail switch onsome of the shocks and and so
they try to overcome it, andthen you so you guys are are
using I'm assuming you're usingthe design of the suspension to
get rid of that, rather thanrelying on the shock to do it
how you locate your suspensionpivots.

You can tune in a certain amount of what
we would call anti-squat tocounter the suspension
compressing when you'reaccelerating, and that's purely
just done by.
Forget about the shock for asecond.

(17:56):
It's just how you've locatedthe pivots relative to one
another and relative to thechain.
There's a balance because yourshock can also do some of the
work.
That's where things like climbswitches come in.
When you close your climbswitch, it increases your
Typically it's your low-speedcompression damping.
Sometimes it'll do some thingsto rebound as well.
You can lean on the shock alittle bit for some pedaling

(18:18):
support.
So generally it's trying tofind the right balance, because
there are some drawbacks togoing too far with anti-squat or
relying on it too heavily tocreate an efficient pedaling
feel, and so that's kind ofthat's where the mule process
comes in.
For us it's trying to feel outwhat that balance should be on

(18:39):
on a bike to make it pedal theway we want it to but at the
same time make it descend theway we want okay so, colin, I've
heard you talk previously aboutyour attempts to try to like
measure pedaling efficiency andhow difficult it is to like do
that in a quantitative way, andso you had said rider perception
previously.

Josh (18:57):
So even if the pedaling is very efficient, if the rider
feels like it's inefficient,that's a problem for you guys.
And I'm interested in Kirk'sperspective, like from a
pedaling efficiency perspective,like, are you helping to give
perspective to Colin and teamand yourself on the perception
of efficiency?

The mule- phase for this bike actually
predates my time at Norco, butone of our other test riders,
riders and colin worked reallyclosely together to run through
all this stuff and he's reallygood with the the feedback as
well.
So at the stage that I joined,this bike was kind of like that
more suspension tuning stage.
So we're kind of um, you know,tuning what lockouts or climb

(19:42):
switch modes look like on theshocks.
At the same time we were alsodoing some like idler and idler
efficiency work, so trying outdifferent idler tooth profiles
to try and make the bike pedal.
It's most efficient.

Josh (19:56):
I mean, is it?
Is it really a problem wherethe suspension design is
actually providing an efficientpedaling platform, but the rider
says this doesn't feelefficient?
I mean, do you guys deal withthat?
Is that something likelegitimately that you're dealing
with?

Yeah, we were just talking about this
earlier today that I think youknow we'll not a data
acquisition on the bike andwe've done some testing where
we're just like climbing a roadand looking at the data and, um,
you know, trying to see thatpedal bob in the plot of, like,
the rear shocks, uh, action,we're always going to combine

(20:33):
sort of the rider's feedback andthe data and not just look at
one or the other okay, so you're.

Dane (20:41):
So you guys have are using data acquisition to kind of
take out the feel and get moreof just the numbers.
That helps you kind of identifywhat's actually going on where
the feel doesn't dominate whatyou're doing.
Is that fair?

Josh (20:54):
It's actually a really hard problem to solve.
Yeah, you can't actually testfor pedal efficiency.
I don't think.
Correct me if I'm wrong, guys.

At least in our experience, it's pretty
tough to do outside of a labsetting.
I mean it depends how youdefine efficiency.
But with the site mules what wetried to do is do testing where
we had different idlerconfigurations that would vary
anti-squat across a fairly widerange, and then run a power

(21:22):
meter and measure for aconsistent average power over a
certain segment, the time tocomplete that segment, thinking
the setup that does it in ashorter amount of time for the
same applied power is going tobe the more efficient setup,
it's going to be the one thatgets you up the hill quicker.
But then ultimately we realizedthat if you're applying the

(21:45):
same amount of power at thecranks, you're going to, you're
going to get there in the sameamount of time, but all other
things like rolling resistanceand stuff being equal.
So really what you need tomeasure is how much energy the
rider is outputting to generatethat power at the cranks, and
that's where the that's where itbecomes tricky to to measure
outside of a lab setting.
It's, um, yeah, the the energyoutput from the rider.

(22:07):
I think when we really broughtit back after that testing we
thought well, ultimately youknow our customers aren't doing
this and trying to to measurewhether a bike is or isn't
efficient.
It's it's how they perceive it.
And I think, to bring it backto the point you were talking
about, dan, like relating riderfeedback to what we measure in

(22:29):
data acquisition.
I think in that scenario, aswell as you know, any other time
we're testing with dataacquisition, we're not just
driving our direction entirelyoff of data, just the same as
we're not driving it entirelyoff of rider feedback.
A lot of times it's trying totake what the rider's feeling
and we work with developmentriders that have great ride feel

(22:55):
and good feedback and look atwhy they're feeling that by
digging into the data.
So it's really not a one or theother approach.
It's trying to learn why therider is feeling something so
that we can either get rid ofthat feeling if it's something

(23:15):
that they're, if it's a negative, or we can more quickly get to
that feeling in the future ifit's a positive so.

Dane (23:24):
So one of the things I felt on my first ride that I I
was paying attention, I wastrying to to feel things.
You know I wasn't just ridingyeah and um.
So the terrain I was on wasreally lots of square edge, real
rough, um, lots of climbing,but not super steep, you know
and then a little bit ofdescending.
It's not an area where I couldget real real long descents on.

(23:46):
That's the next thing that Iwant to do with this is take it
down some gnarly stuff.
But I noticed a little bit of.
I feel like I could feel therear end move backwards a little
bit and the bike actually, whenit hit a square edge, almost
the end move backwards a littlebit and, and the bike actually,
when it hit a square edge,almost the bottom bracket drop a

(24:06):
little bit.
I don't know if that's a fairthing to say, but it but it
didn't slow me down and I don'tknow.
It's a weird feeling.
It was different feeling, forsure, than the bikes that I'm
used to riding, which areusually horse links or DW links
and usually those you hit anobstacle and then it's over.
You know you hit it and youover.
This one kind of went backwardsbut didn't slow me down, and it

(24:28):
was kind of.
I don't know if that feedbackis at all useful to you or if
it's something that you're usedto hearing, but is there a
little, a little bit of a like adip down in the frame as you
hit obstacles Does it drop thebottom bracket a tiny, tiny bit?

Not something that I've necessarily
noticed, but yeah, we'd have to.
We'd have to back to back test.

Dane (24:50):
Yeah, do you think my brain is thinking that that axle
is going backwards and so it'sjust making that up, which is
very possible?

I wasn't going to gonna say anything, but
yeah, yeah, that's okay, that'sokay, because that's what I'm.

Dane (25:07):
I'm out there literally trying to feel a difference, and
so is my.
My brain may be coming up withit.
What I did notice is who givesa shit.

Josh (25:15):
You didn't slow down well.

Dane (25:16):
So, yeah, that's what I.
That's.
What I did notice is I didn'tslow down and I didn't have any
pedal issues.
The other thing that's what I,that's what I did notice is I
didn't slow down and I didn'thave any pedal issues.
The other thing that I noticedis that one of the hills that I
ride is called lost arrow, andit is super technical as far as
like repeated uh rocks andthey're not.
They're pretty rhythmic, so youcan get in front and wheels

(25:38):
dropping into like little holesat the same time, and it's
really difficult to climb thishill without dabbing, and I made
it up no dabs, so I was pretty,pretty proud of that.
So the traction was really good.
It didn't.
None of those square edgesstopped my momentum.
That was what I did notice.
So, in fact, if anything, thefront fork was more likely to

(25:59):
stop than the rear.

So, yeah, yeah, that's cool, I, I, that's
one of the things I really likeabout.
I ride the site a bit moreoften than the optic, but you
know, pretty similar layout,just a little bit more travel.
But yeah, one of the things Ireally like about that bike is,
uh, how it climbs on.
Uh, kind of more techy stuff,like the scenarios and, like you
said, if you're coming off ofanother bike, um, I've found

(26:23):
that when we first startedriding the sites and I would
climb up a trail, I knew prettywell and go like, okay, this is
normally the spot where I gottajump off here on this climb and
it, you know, yeah, just atotally different feeling and
the amount of traction that hadthe climbs I was able to clean
that would normally make it up.
Um is, yeah, maybe notsomething people think of, or

(26:46):
it's not the first thing peoplethink of when they see a high
pivot bike like that but no, Ithink that's what we're in the
shop.

Dane (26:53):
I think that's probably our biggest barrier and one of
the reasons that I got this bikeis to help help people.
You, you can tell people theycan read a magazine, they can
read a lot of stuff, but whenyou're relating that product to
the trails they ride, it reallyhelps them understand if what
that bike's going to do.
You know, and one of the thingswe do on the sales floor is we

(27:14):
ask people what their favoritetrail is.
You know what's your best trail, what's your, what's the trail
that you want to ride the most?
And that gives us a lot ofinsight as salespeople on what
bike is going to kind of fittheir needs the best, and this
one has been one of those,that's.
You know.
You want to say Bug Springs,which is a big hit, descending
shuttle run, but I got to tellyou I think this is going to be

(27:39):
the number one star pass orsweetwater ride bike, which is,
you know, uh, tons of squarehits, not necessarily a ton of
downhilling, but lots oftechnical climbs and, and a lot
of people, I think, abandonthose trails because they get to
where they just can't get up,those techie climbs, and this
bike, I think, would help themdo that.
So at least that's the firstride impression.

Josh (28:02):
So you asked two questions before and we covered the
anti-squat right.

Dane (28:05):
Yeah, anti-rise, anti-rise .

Josh (28:07):
Yeah, maybe you could help us explain that, how braking
impacts that, and so on.

Dane (28:13):
Yeah.
So what's a layman's term forwhat's going on with the bike
when you talk anti-rise?
Brake, dive, brake, dive in thefront?
What's a layman's term forwhat's going on with the bike
when you talk anti-rise?
Brake dive, brake, dive in thefront?
Or is it brake, like you putthe brakes and then your seat
comes up, kind of like the oldKlein mantras, where it launches
you?

So I mean, I guess when I'm talking about
it I'm thinking your weightshifts forward and so your fork
compresses and you take someweight off the rear.
Okay, your weight shiftsforward and so your fork
compresses and you take someweight off the rear, which can
be, you know, prettydisconcerting feeling if you're
jamming on the brakes onsomething steep and you're
getting pitched out the frontdoor.
So, yeah, um, anti rise uh is,I guess, uh, very similar to

(28:54):
anti squat, but kind of workingin the opposite direction.
So, um, just the same as whenyou accelerate, your mass wants
to stay stationary.
As a result creates a forcethat increases the load over the
rear wheel.
When you hit the brakes, you'retransferring load to the front

(29:14):
wheel, which is why your yourfork will compress.
Sometimes it feels like you'regetting pitched over the bars a
little bit.
So anti-rise is what we can dowith the rear suspension to uh
to try and counter that.
So a high level of anti-risewould imply that the rear
suspensions, um, it's resistingthe rear suspension, um, moving

(29:36):
to a more extended position inits travel, so it's trying to
hold the suspension down.
And if you have quite highlevels of anti-rise bikes, like
our old downhill bike, the OramHSP.
It's a good example of this.
It would actually kind of squatinto its travel when you hit
the brakes, and there's somepros to that in terms of how

(30:01):
they preserve geometry.
When you're hard on the brakesthey don't get rid of that
sensation of being pitched overthe bars, but there are some
drawbacks.
So when you're holding thesuspension down into its travel
with high levels of anti-rise,you're not allowing it to
recover after uh kind ofsuccessive hits, um from things

(30:23):
that you're hitting in the trail, um, so it can kind of pack
down and uh, that's where, uh,you sometimes hear the term
brake jack, which is really justyour suspension isn't able to
independently move to track thetrail surface while your brakes
are applied, and so it's notdoing, as an effect, as
effective a job at isolating therider from all the kind of

(30:46):
rough impacts.

Dane (30:47):
Wow, that's.
You know the way you explain.
It is amazing because it makestotal sense.
You know, when you're goingdownhill your weight shifts
forward.
It would unweight the rearsuspension, and so you guys are
actually trying to counteractthat, but then you've got to
balance that with not going toomuch, so no wonder you know,
these suspension designs are socomplicated as far as, like

(31:09):
moving, one little thing canreally change a ton on the bike.
So is the brake position.
So I've heard with some peoplewhere if you put the brake on
the chainstay versus the seatstay, that can affect um brake
jack, like in the olden days wehad floating disc brakes, you
know, and I think that was toget rid of that right to try and

(31:32):
allow the wheel to float andthe rear suspension not be a you
know how.
So you guys are trying tofigure out how to do that
without having a floating discbrake, I'm guessing definitely
talk a little bit about floatingbrakes, because they might be
making a comeback, but uh, I'veseen some stuff.

I saw a couple patents the floating
brakes I think originally cameabout when a lot of suspension
designs, uh, were still singlepivots or like a linkage driven
single pivot and really thatmeans that the rear axles
mounted generally to thechainstay and that chainstay is

(32:07):
directly connected to the fronttriangle and so the rear axle is
just rotating around.
The main pivot layouts likehorse layout came about and
really one of the goals withthat was decoupling your brake
force and your suspension bymounting the rear axle to the

(32:28):
seat stay in this case, and theseat stay is not directly
connected to the front trianglein those designs.
Instead of being a single pivotlayout, it's what we would call
a virtual pivot layout wherethe point the rear axle is
rotating about is kind ofdefined by the chainstay and the
upper link and how they attachto the front triangle.

(32:48):
That gives you some freedom todefine different levels of
anti-rise and run.
I think originally with thehorse link layouts it was to
lower anti-rise relative to someof the single pivot layouts
that were used at the time, sokind of make braking and

(33:09):
suspension more independent.

Dane (33:11):
Okay, and then one of the things, Kirk, is, you've got a
lot of history in downhillracing, in downhill racing, and
so is there a way that you canhelp us understand what some of
these terms would do on the onthe bike, what you may feel on a
track or or something like youknow?
Um, I think, with my job isalways to take some of this
technical stuff and then tochange the wording so that I can

(33:33):
kind of relate it to mycustomers.
Uh, if that makes sense, and soa rider who's um, feeling
something may not know how toput it into words Like you guys
have world cup athletes that aregiving you good feedback.
What is the?

you know, what is something an average
writer going to feel when they,when they want to see something
like this, either go away oryeah, it's an interesting one
and I'm happy to let Colin fieldthe suspension because he's
pretty much like a walking, he'sthe wizard, he's amazing.

Dane (34:03):
But man, I you know, like he's so good at telling us I
mean we could design a bikeafter talking to him, but like
there's a lot of people that areriding and have no idea what's
going on, you know, and so howare they figuring out this stuff
?
So like, what are you feelingon the bike as it pertains?

to downhill anti-rise is the most
interesting one because, kind oflike colin said, there's
advantages and disadvantages.
Um, when you're down the racing,like the feedback that we can
get on the on the high pivotbike is, I guess, having only
ridden a high pivot bike for thefirst time when I joined norco
three years ago, my impressionwas kind of that it worked quite

(34:43):
well when I was descendingbecause it's not loading the
front wheel and you can likedrag rear brake.
I'd drag rear brake quite a lotwhen I'm riding down and, um, as
you can sometimes see by myblue pads and rotors, but you
can actually use that braketrack to sort of kind of like,
you know, keep your bike on theplane you want it to be and not

(35:05):
load the front wheel.
So that's, that's a really coolone.
Yeah, something we're gonna diginto more here as, uh, yeah, as
we do a little more enterprisetesting.
But as well, feedback that youraverage rider might feel is
just that it feels like a bikecould feel stiff under braking
and it's sometimes hard todiscern.

(35:26):
I think for me as well, like,is that stiffness because the
shock is too soft?
Or and it's actually likesquatting too far down in the
travel and, like Colin said,you're getting kind of packed
down.

Dane (35:37):
Right, Almost almost a bottom out, but it's steady.

Yeah, yeah, or or like if it's because
there's actually too muchweight on the front of the bike
and there's not enough weight onthe back.
So I'm sure as a tuner Dane youkind of get some of that
feedback as well.
And sometimes I think, like alot of things you know, feedback
can sort of doesn't always giveyou the exact direction.
There can be like almost twoopposite ends.

Dane (36:16):
The lens of every rider is different.
Right question is as how?
How do the average people, youknow um, take what they want out
of a bike and then kind offigure out what bikes fit their
needs?
So like, for instance, one ofthe things that I'm hearing from
you is like uh, if it's, ifyou're starting to lean on the
brakes on a descent and you'regoing pretty fast, if the rear
end is starting to lift up, youmay get some skipping over the
tops of stuff and maybe not stayplanted I guess planted is a

(36:36):
good word that I hear a lot andum and so like having that
suspension, feel like it's stuckto the ground, like those are
terms that we use all the timelike that's something that I
like when I race.
I like a very differentsuspension than when I go to the
bike park and so like my racebike has got much slower
suspension, much slower rebound.

(36:57):
I want to be stuck to theground.
I actually don't mind if I packinto a corner a little bit and
keep, keep low, cause it helpsme, you know.
Basically berm around thatcorner better.
But when I'm at the bike parkeverything's gotta be pretty
springy low amount of rebound,damping and bouncy so that I can
get more air, so um, so thoselittle terms and stuff.

(37:20):
So so if I've got a bike that'sgot, um, you know, anti-rise
properties, is it going to havea more planted feel?
Is that something that I'mgoing to probably see more?

it's going to depend a lot yeah I'm just
going to say it's like I thinkone of the things that keeps us
going with the suspensiondevelopment stuff is it.
It's so hard to attribute like afeeling to any one particular
thing, like there's so manydifferent variables, kind of
knobs to turn when you'redeveloping a suspension layout,
that, um to like, attribute thatfeeling solely to something

(37:55):
like anti-rise is kind of toughto to do.
That's definitely where the dataacquisition can come in to help
us when we're developing a bike.
Anyway, if the rider is feelingsomething, then being able to
go in and look at things likesuspension position, velocity or
any number of other things thatwe might bring in, depending on

(38:16):
what we're interested in, andgo oh okay, I think you're
probably feeling this becausethe suspension's reacting in
this way.
That's usually how we approachthings, at least at the
development level.
When it comes to the consumerside of things, that's really
where our setup guides come into try and guide people.
Uh, once they've bought ourbike and they're trying to set

(38:39):
it up for themselves and thetrails that they're riding to
guide them towards a setupthat's going to work well for
them and the way that they wantto use our bike can.

Dane (38:47):
Can we talk a little bit about that, because I, I don't
want to get too dwelly on thesuspension stuff and I got to
tell you that ride line ispretty cool tool on norco's
website and, uh, I was.
I was really impressed.
I was kind of pessimistic guyswhen I went to do this, because
I've seen apps and stuff come upwith each bike and stuff and

(39:08):
the amount of data they give youjust to set up.

Josh (39:10):
It even told me what bar width so maybe, uh, either colin
or kirk, you can take usthrough ride a line for our
listeners.
Explain, explain what it is,how do you get there and what's
it used for?

I can tell you how it came about, maybe,
and then, uh, kirk can maybetalk about, like, how it looks
in its current form, becausehe's, uh, he's been doing all
the educational stuff for itride.
A line came about actually justa bit before I started at norco
, but it was kind of born out ofus seeing that we would send

(39:42):
bikes out for review with mediaor out with, you know, customers
and we get kind of mixedfeedback on a bike that we
thought was really good, kind oftried to dig into why that was
and realized that a lot of timespeople are setting the bikes up
quite differently from how werode them and talking things
like suspension setup, but alsojust things like cockpit so

(40:05):
there's a selfish reason why youguys developed this.

Josh (40:07):
You're like you guys are setting our bikes up wrong and
we're getting bad reviewsbecause of it, so we're going to
show you how to do it Right.

I think it's.
Yeah, I don't know, I don'tknow if I'd necessarily word it
that way but I think it was liketrying to make sure that people
, uh, people, uh, experiencedour bikes the way that we
intended them to.
That's how I like to think aboutit.
So that that's kind of the goalwith ride aligned is,
regardless of your height, yourweight, body positioning on the
bike, we want you to experiencethe bike in the way that we've

(40:37):
experienced it when we'vedeveloped it.
And I think bike setup issomething that a lot of times
gets overlooked.
And I think it gets overlookedsometimes because it's kind of
mystifying to a lot of people,especially as you buy a higher
end bike.
It has more adjustments andmore things to turn, but if you
don't know what each of thoseknobs does, you can take a bike

(40:58):
that's supposed to performreally well and make it perform
kind of shitty.
So that's where RideAlign waskind of born out of.
It started in kind of theversion one of the setup guide,
so we did that for 2020, I thinkwas the first model year with
sights and optics that we did.
That, got really good receptionto that and then also collected

(41:19):
some really good feedback onhow we could improve it.
And so a couple years later, uh, we came out with a second
version of ride align, which isthe one that we're running.
Now that's has some additionalfeatures.
It's kind of changed the waythat we do things like how soft
or firm your bike is, made itless about asking the rider, uh,
what their skill level was, andmore about getting them to ride

(41:41):
the bike and give us feedbackon how it felt and giving them
the right tools to kind of tuneit based on what they were
feeling.

Dane (41:47):
Yeah, that when I set it up initially it asked me it
actually asked me where I'mcentered on the bike.
So it had was it, is it called,recommended set a center, like
it had it a little bit fartherbehind on my optic than center,
you know yeah.

Josh (42:05):
So you're talking about rider position?

Dane (42:06):
Yeah, rider position, and I actually stuck it more forward
.
I don't know why.

Josh (42:10):
Because you ride more forward.

Dane (42:12):
Well, I do, I do it more forward, I don't know why.
Because you ride more forward.
Well, I do, I do.
Like you've even commented thatI sit on the bike more and I
actually corner, you know, fromthe seat more.
I don't stand as much.
But I also knew the ride that Iwas going to do, particularly
that day, was going to beclimbing and and tiny descents,
very short ones, so I wasn'tgoing to be like doing a long
descent, so I didn't.
I wanted to get kind of bias ittowards the middle.

(42:33):
But then, uh, some of the othersliders that I didn't play with
were um, what's, at thebeginning you do your weight
first.
The first sliders are.
I didn't mess with those at all, I just put my weight in and
skip to the next one.
But, uh is, can you change your?
Is it aggressiveness thatyou're changing, or is it
terrain type, a suspension feel,trail, grip, trail type?
Okay, see, I'm gonna go playwith that you're changing.

(42:53):
Or is it terrain type, asuspension feel, trail, grip,
trail type?
okay, see, I'm gonna go playwith that, you know because,
because I want to see you knowum what they do and if my
settings will change or berecommended versus what norco
says.

Just that's what I recommend to
people is to just leave.
Leave the sliders probably intheir default position, unless
you have a really strongpreference for your first ride,
and then if you come back andyou find that like your shock
feels way too soft, then youknow you might adjust the rider
position to be further forwardand ride.
A line will split out some setsthat give you a more balanced
position.
Or, yeah, if you find it waytoo soft then you can change the

(43:31):
feel slider as well.

Dane (43:34):
How does the ride line figure out your bar width?
Because it didn't ask me myshoulder width or anything like
that.

They're meant to be starting points
rather than like really rigidvalues, and definitely in the
case of bar width, we're makingan estimation, I guess, of your
body geometry based on heightand weight, of your body
geometry based on height andweight.
It's one of the challenges ofyou don't want to overwhelm the
customer by asking for too muchinformation but at the same time

(44:00):
you want the setup to beaccurate.
So it's trying to find how canwe do as much as possible with
as little information aspossible, and so we've got some
kind of test rigs that we'vedeveloped in our lab to look at
things like rider weightdistribution and body position
on the bike, to try and learnhow we can take things like
height and weight and make someassumptions around how that

(44:22):
person's weight is going to bedistributed on the bike or, in
the case of bar width, whattheir kind of average shoulder
width would be and what a goodstarting point in terms of bar
width would be.

Josh (44:31):
It's pretty amazing.
I mean, you guys are onlycollecting six data points, if
I'm seeing this right Suspension, feel, trail, grip, trail type,
weight, height and your riderposition.
Do I have that right?
Are those the six?
And then obviously, the bikethat you're on.

Dane (44:44):
Well, yeah, how dependent is the bike?

It's all done specific to the bike.
Okay, kirk does to the bike.
Okay, kirk does a lot ofbaseline testing, so he can.
He can talk about how we arrivethis baseline.
But as far as taking it fromkind of the ride test and then
transferring that into a setupchart, that kind of feeds this
setup guide goes, yeah, it's allspecific to the bike.
We generally will have abaseline that's developed from

(45:10):
one of our test riders and thenwe put it into an algorithm that
we kind of developed behind thescenes that will calculate
settings for a range ofdifferent rider weights and
different heights on differentframe sizes and then we'll go
out and check to make sure thatthat's accurate by getting
riders that are either at thelight or short end of the size

(45:34):
range or vice versa, the kind ofheavier, taller end of the size
range, we'll get them to ridethose settings, give us feedback
and make sure that we're in agood place.

Dane (45:43):
Have you thought about making this interactive for data
collection?
Where a rider can do the ridealign.
A rider can do the ride align.
I, I maybe you already do and Ijust didn't notice it.

Josh (45:53):
Um, but where they do the ride align and maybe then you
share their results, or maybeshare feedback, or are you
collecting the, the, the inputfrom the riders, and using that
to help in your data analytics?

We.
We do some stuff, I guess, withthe like high level things,
like the majority of peoplesetting one of these sliders
towards one end.
That tells us, okay, maybe wedidn't quite get our baseline
right, maybe our recommendedsettings are a bit firm because
everybody seems to be settingthe slider towards the soft end,
and then we can adjust fromthere.

(46:28):
So we'll look at things likethat, or the sizes that people
are purchasing based on theirheight.
We'll give us some informationon where we should potentially
go with sizing future.
So we'll use the data forthings like that.

Dane (46:41):
I put my height in and it kind of spit out a size, and
then it made me want to click onthe button, and so I could have
gone and changed that to somedegree, like with the new bikes,
and so I could have gone andchanged that to some degree.

Like with the new bikes, we've got five
sizes and the intention there isto have more overlap so that
more people have the option tosize up or size down.
Okay, so, uh, we won'trecommend you know, if I'm six,
two, I'm not going to getrecommended that size one
because, no matter what we do,we can't set the bike up for you
.
But but yeah, if you'resomebody that kind of falls in
the middle of two sizes, we'llallow them to pick one of those

(47:18):
two sizes, and we do actuallytweak the settings just a little
bit based on which size they'vepurchased.
Okay, how interesting.

Dane (47:25):
Why is reach?
Because it doesn't take intothat account.
Why has that become thedominant number that people are
talking about?

Bike fit's complicated.
Yeah, people are the dominantnumber that people are talking
about like it's complicated.
Yeah, people are, although youknow you can be the same height
but, like you said, you couldhave somebody that's all torso,
no legs, short legs or you knowother way around, all legs,
short torso, and they'reprobably going to be comfortable
on bikes that are sizeddifferent.
And I think reach is just, it'sa number that people have

(47:52):
grabbed onto as coming as closeas possible to kind of being one
number that summarizes howthey're going to fit on a bike.
But bike fit can't really besummed up into just one number.
What you're talking about welook at seated and standing fit

(48:15):
fit.
So we have.
Although our geo chart may notlist these numbers because
they're not really commonly used, they're not going to
necessarily mean anything topeople.
Yeah, we'll look at things like, uh, the distance between the
bottom bracket and the handlebar, um, so that sort of spread
between your feet and your hands, similarly, from kind of the
center of the seat and thehandlebars seat in your hands,
and we'll look at things likethat to give us a better idea of

(48:37):
how all of these geo numbersare going to result in a um, a
fit both seated and standing,okay.

Josh (48:46):
Well, I got to tell you, man, I think the ride line
system is amazing.
I do, I'm not aware of anyoneelse that's got anything that's
it's anywhere near as as good asthis.
So kudos to you guys for forpulling this together and yeah,
it even came up with tirepressure.

Dane (48:59):
That's amazing, and I set my tires at that pressure and
didn't change them.

Josh (49:02):
So which is which is great yeah I do have a question on
the, on the extremes.
So I was playing around with ittoday and you guys can probably
see I'm I'm not a small guy andI broke your tool with my
weight.
It said, hey, you can't setthis bike up that heavy.

Dane (49:21):
You're not allowed to ride a Norco, you're not allowed to
ride this particular model.

Josh (49:24):
Okay, what are the extremes that you have?

in the tool .
It's not necessarily the samefor every spec and we shouldn't
make the distinction to that.
The ride-align tool if you'reoutside of the weight range,
we're not saying necessarilythat you can't ride our bike, of
course.
What we're saying is we want tostand by the setup that we give
you and if you're outside of acertain weight range we don't

(49:49):
feel like we can confidentlyrecommend settings that are
going to work well for you.
So that that's just subtle kindof distinction.
A lot of times it's driven offof uh suspension spec we can do
things to, and generally it'spressure in your fork, in your
shock or or spring rate ifyou're a coil shock.
Um, that's usually where you'regoing to max out and we can do

(50:11):
things with the kinematics andthe rear suspension to control,
uh, what pressure rider needs torun relative to their weight.
But in terms of the forks we'rewe're more tied to what our
suspension partners will top outat on pressure.

Josh (50:28):
So I need to go talk, we need to go talk to Fox, dvo,
rockshox and be like listen,there's heavier riders out there
, guys, let's, let's, uh.
But to give you an example,let's get up the 260.

Dane (50:38):
So I I pulled up my settings, I took a picture of
them.
So it said for my shock setupto put in 252 air pressure yeah,
what's the max on that?
350 usually.
I haven't checked the vivid,but most the time it's 350 on
most rear shocks, and so I haveplenty of room to go.
And there are some brands.
We sold a couple brands wherewe ran into the problem where

(50:58):
you couldn't put enough airpressure in them.
In fact I think Intense was oneof them, one of the first
generations X2s.
They only went to 250 and theyhad to do a recall on the air
slave and I think that was 2014,15, somewhere in there.
So the leverage ratio will havea lot to do with that.
So what, what do you think yourleverage ratio?
I want to say it's a little onthe high side, is that?

fair.
I guess high and low is maybeall kind of relative.
I guess I I think on the sitein the optic, but you're seeing
a lot of brands, I think,converge on pretty similar shock
strokes relative to rear wheeltravel.
Yeah, so I think we're not theonly ones that have learned that
the high leverage stuff doesmake it really difficult to set
bikes up for heavier riders.

(51:43):
We definitely had that strugglewith the previous generation
site.
We ran a shorter stroke shockfor the same amount of wheel
travel, so as a result, we hadhigher leverage.
Yeah, that means that you needto run higher shock pressures
for the same amount of fieldtravel.
So as a result, we had higherleverage.
Yeah, that means that you needto run higher shock pressures
for the same rider weight.
So we had trouble supportingheavier riders on that bike, and
that was one of the things thatwe wanted to improve on with

(52:03):
the new site especially, butalso with the new optic.
We thought there was room toimprove.

Dane (52:08):
Yeah, this is a.
Is this a 185 by 55?
It's a 50.

Josh (52:17):
50?
Is a?
Is this a 185 by 55?
It's a 50, 50, okay.
And then, uh, am I going to runinto problems when I turn it
just for our listeners, when ityeah, yeah, yeah, this guy loves
to overstroke every bike.
He has what would you say aboutdane overstroking his?
Yeah?

Dane (52:28):
I, I haven't done anything , I just got it today.

Josh (52:30):
So I played with it.

Dane (52:31):
Usually I think that's a bad thing I'll usually cycle the
suspension and see if I haveany interference.
So, uh, I don't know if youguys have done that yet.
So because usually 185 I've got185 by 55 is lying all over the
place.

Josh (52:44):
So, uh, that would, that would be I can already tell the
answer by looking at colin'sface right now.

Dane (52:50):
So he's like listen man if we wanted it to be 55, we would
have made it if we go away fromthat and to what colin was
talking about, a, the leverageratio.
So like a lot of bikes at 120,I'm seeing it like 40, uh,
stroke length like a 190 by 40,you know, uh, so and so this is
a long, this, this shock I seeon other brands on much longer

(53:11):
travel bikes.

So we're somewhere, um, between three and
3.1 kind of starting leverage,which is, yeah, I would say it's
pretty middle of the road.
We definitely played around at3.2, like on that site that I
was talking about.
That starts to give youtroubles in terms of shock setup
.
But low leverage can also bechallenging, uh, especially
around compression tunes, yeah,and getting something that's

(53:34):
light enough, uh, for thoselower leverage breaks to not
feel too firm.
So that's kind of how we endedup, in sort of that middle
ground yeah, yeah.

Dane (53:42):
And so if it's low leverage and you have a really
light rider, you may just it.
It may always feel harsh andit's hard.

Josh (53:48):
You have to retune I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you guys
to change subjects a little bit.
You guys had Greg Menard joinyou last year.
How has he influenced orimpacted, or is you know,
messing with, your designprocess?

The Optic is his favorite bike.
Really Speaking of Optics,that's cool.

Josh (54:08):
That's it.
That's all we get.
The Optic is his favorite bike.
That's it.
That's all we get.

Yeah, but no, I do.
I do think he he challenges usto achieve really high standard.
That's, that's kind of his.
He's the goat, he's demands thebest of himself and his
equipment and everything.
So it's been pretty cool.
Like you know, obviously, justjoining within the past year.
He's kind of just seeing someof our new bikes coming out and
hasn't been super involved earlyin the development of any new

(54:36):
bikes that are coming out yet.
But he's been pretty stoked oneverything that we've we're kind
of rolling out here, so that'salways feels good.

Dane (54:44):
I felt the same thing when I when he first got on the
downhill bike and didn'tinstantly hate it and it's like
I always wonder if some athletesare a little more too picky
than others, you know, and someare easier to deal with and some
aren't, you know.

Josh (55:00):
Yeah, calum, what's Kirk like?
Is he too picky or is he alittle easier?

to deal with.
Yeah, kirk's, uh, no, kirk'sexactly what you want A
development writer, I think.
He's like always open to totesting, like always open to to
testing some new theory doesn'treally come in with any, you
know kind of biases, pretty opento doing blind testing which
some riders are super keen on.
But, um, you know, I thinkmaybe sometimes for kirk it's uh

(55:23):
, it's hard to separate theengineer from the test rider
part of it which, uh, you know,I find challenging myself, but
I'm not usually the one that'shaving to give all the really
nitty-gritty details on the ridefeedback.

Josh (55:37):
so yeah, kirk, do you have like numbers running through
your head while you're riding?
Like, oh man, if we justincrease that by two millimeters
, I wouldn't have felt thatright there I think, yes, I
don't know.

Sometimes it's been almost bad for my
riding because I'll just be,I'll just go for a ride on a
weekend, and I'll realize thatI'm just not even thinking about
riding, I'm just totallyanalyzing, I'm thinking about
the bike or whatever I'm like,dang it, I, I missed that whole
ride, yeah, yeah yeah, but yeah,I do think that's kind of
important.
That's why it's important for meto do some of the testing.
Blind is because sometimes Ijust um, like we were saying

(56:09):
earlier, dan, confirmation biasor you, if you know, if you know
too much and you go riding andyou know what it's supposed to
do, then it's pretty hard toconvince your brain to be open
minded.
So I think that's that's why Ido like doing stuff blind, just
to remove that.

Josh (56:26):
Well, hey guys, we really appreciate you guys taking some
time to talk with us today.
I got one final question whatare you guys excited about?
About the future in Norco?

Like what's getting you jazzed?
I'm always excited about thedownhill team but I'm also very
excited about e-bikes.

Dane (56:41):
Oh, yeah, yeah we haven't talked about them at all.
No, and they have one of thebest, in my opinion which one's
the best.
Well, keep in mind I'm biased,confirmation bias.
I like light bikes, but theirnew fluid vlt is one of my
favorite bikes ever.
Like it's.
It's a killer bike, you know, II want to ride the new one
that's coming out, um, but uh, Ilike lightness in a bike.

(57:01):
If it's lighter and that thingis stock around 40 pounds, it's
awesome uh, so we interruptedyou though.

Josh (57:07):
Yeah, yeah, so, so you guys are you guys are excited
about the e-bikes.
Tell us more.

I'm on the same page.
I love the fluid vlt and, yeah,ourgen Sight VLT coming out is
going to be just really rad.
Just a big e-bike fan ingeneral.

Dane (57:21):
Yeah, it's weird how many people say that.

Now, it's crazy In terms of things to get
excited about at Narco.
Yeah, definitely downhill bike.
It's exciting every time a newseason starts, especially with
the rider roster that we've gotfor this season.
Um, we just wrapped up a testwith some of the riders last
week and, um, yeah, it's justcool to see how the team's kind
of coming together already and,with all these kind of new faces

(57:46):
and stuff, it feels like we'resetting up for a really good
season.
So that that's definitelyexciting.

Josh (57:50):
But uh, everybody, everybody's healthy right now.

Everyone except except for eris
unfortunately had that crash athardline, so she's oh, that's
right, yeah, recovering fromthat one, but we're hoping that
she, you know, recovers quicklyand can get back on the bike
soon and um, but otherwise, yeah, everyone's in good shape and
training for for the start ofthe season, which is not too too
far off.
So that's exciting.
But maybe, instead of sayingI'm excited about e-bikes

(58:17):
although they're tons of fun toride I kind of think that you're
going to see people complimenttheir e-bike with a light, short
travel pedal bike.
To me, that's kind of what Iwant.
I don't want to fully switchover to an e-bike, um, but I
want those two differentexperiences.
Like, if I'm going to go for apedal, I want it to feel like

(58:38):
light, snappy, efficient and uh.
So we got something cominglater this year that kind of
fits the bill for that.
I've been spending a lot of timeon that bike and that's that
one's definitely got me excited.
So tell us a lot about that.
He can't.
I know, I know, I think.
I mean, I think, if you look atour, our model lineup, it's, uh

(58:59):
, there's, there's definitely acouple bikes that are pretty
long in the tooth, so I thinkit's probably pretty obvious
which one's getting an update.
Um, there's a couple spy shotsand stuff out there, so it's
gonna be good.

Josh (59:08):
Does it have an idler?

Dane (59:11):
no, I mean maybe I don't know, I don't, I don't.
I mean maybe I don't know, Idon't know.
What do I know?
I don't know anything?

Josh (59:16):
All right guys.
Do you have any final thoughtsfor our listeners?

I think it's been cool to chat with you
guys, being based in Arizona,where I personally haven't got a
chance to go down and ridethere.

Dane (59:31):
You sent Arthur down here.
We did.

I got to meet him.

Dane (59:34):
He's a he's a great guy I get to.
I got to meet his dog check outhis last week yeah, his his
custom um camper that he builton his truck that was pretty
cool, so very cool guy he.
Uh, I told him that we weregoing to have a podcast with you
, so he was nice to me, so butyou guys need to do more testing

(59:54):
down here.

Uh, I kept telling, telling him we can show
him some really good trails, soyeah, yeah, we should
definitely do that, yeah, but,uh, it's cool to to chat with,
you know, people that are in adifferent market and kind of
riding quite different trailsfrom from what we're riding and
get your feedback on our bikesbecause, um, you know, we
obviously do test trips, likearthur's been doing for the last

(01:00:17):
week or two, to try and branchout and test the bikes in
different environments and makesure they still work well there,
but we do do most of our ridetesting in bc.
So it's always interesting tous to to talk with um people
that are riding them indifferent areas and just see how
they're working.
Yeah, so it's been really goodto to get a chance to talk with
you guys and kind of put theword out about norco, I guess to

(01:00:39):
a different audience than theyhave heard of us in the past
yeah, I, I love this format tolet people know about products.

Dane (01:00:48):
I feel like norco's been around forever which they have,
you know but I still strugglesometimes letting people know
about the brand.
I'm always curious why thathappens.
Well, I'd say don't be afraid ofthe idler.
No, no, and I'm gettingfirsthand.
I mean, this bike is going tobe in the shop ready for
customers to be able to take outtoo.
It's not just my bike, I'll letpeople to ride it, but I'm also

(01:01:10):
going to be talking about itfrom a firsthand standpoint so
we can overcome some of thosebias you know, that people have
when they look at it, yeahexactly Right so well, guys,
thank you so much.

Josh (01:01:21):
Really appreciate the time this evening.
Um, yeah, man, I'm, I'm stokedto try one.

Dane (01:01:26):
Yeah, it's pretty cool.

Josh (01:01:35):
So maybe those guys to drop off an extra large for you
to try.

Colin Ryan - Norco (01:01:37):
That'd be good.
Just got to get that weight.
You just got to lose weight.

Dane (01:01:39):
I just got to stop eating cheeseburgers right, I'm sure we
can find something that'll workfor you, right?
Thanks guys.
We really appreciate it, thankyou.

All Episodes

098 - A technical look at Norco's mountain bike design approach. (Guests: Norco R&D Engineers - Colin Ryan & Kirk McDowall)

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}098 - A technical look at Norco's mountain bike design approach. (Guests: Norco R&D Engineers - Colin Ryan & Kirk McDowall)