The Case for High Pivot MTB Design, and How it Works
Singletracks Mountain Bike Podcast
Singletracks.com
4.7 • 574 Ratings
🗓️ 18 June 2024
⏱️ 41 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Colin Ryan is a Senior Development Engineer at Norco and was involved in the design of the latest Norco Optic trail bike which features a high-pivot design. Prior to joining Norco he worked at General Kinetics testing and developing shock absorbers for military and construction equipment.
- At a basic level, what problem does a high pivot design solve? Is there a certain type of riding that benefits from having a high pivot?
- What are the drawbacks to the design?
- Does a high pivot design improve longevity for certain components?
- With less chain wrap on the crank, are dropped chains an issue with a high pivot setup?
- How does the placement of the idler pulley affect performance? What about the number of teeth on the idler cog?
- Did moving from a traditional setup to high-pivot change the ride feel of the Norco Optic significantly?
- The decision to use a high pivot on a short, 125mm travel bike is a controversial one. Why do you think that is?
- The latest Optic is said to be lighter than the previous version. How much weight does the idler hardware add, and how did you manage to make the bike lighter overall?
- How is the intended use of the Optic different from the Fluid which has a very similar amount of travel (140/130mm)?
- What's next for high pivot mountain bike designs?
Cover photo: Matt Miller.
See the Norco Optic and other high pivot bikes from the brand at norco.com.
--Keep up with the latest in mountain biking at Singletracks.com and on Instagram @singletracks
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hear that? It's your big McDonald's hunger calling because the big arch is back and this time |
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| 0:20.1 | Hey everybody, welcome to the single tracks podcast. |
| 0:23.1 | My name is Jeff, and today my guest is Colin Ryan. |
| 0:26.9 | Colin is a senior development engineer at Norco, and he was involved in the design of the latest |
| 0:32.8 | Norco optic trail bike, which features a high pivot design. |
| 0:37.2 | Prior to joining Norco, he worked at |
| 0:39.3 | General Kinetics, testing, and developing shock absorbers for military and construction |
| 0:44.7 | equipment. Thanks for joining me, Colin. Yeah, thanks very much, Jeff, for having me. |
| 0:50.1 | So we're going to be talking about high pivot designs and high pivot bikes. And obviously, this is like kind of a new thing that's trending within the mountain bike world. A lot of people have questions about it. So let's start off talking about high pivots at a basic level. What problem does a high pivot design actually solve for mountain bikers? |
| 1:14.1 | Yeah. So, I mean, I guess to start off, we at Norco kind of, we've got years of developing |
| 1:21.0 | various different designs that would fall under that kind of high pivot class. And so we kind of actually like to think of high pivot bikes, not so much as like black and |
| 1:31.6 | white, you know, this is a high pivot bike or it's not, but more as a spectrum. |
| 1:36.1 | Okay. |
| 1:36.6 | And really what we're trying to do is have better control over the axle path of the rear |
| 1:41.1 | suspension and allow the rear axle to move a certain amount |
| 1:44.7 | rearward as it moves through its travel. And that's typically what gets associated with |
| 1:50.9 | the high pivot kind of term. And normally people associate that with an idler. And the idler |
| 1:56.4 | in most cases comes along with more rearward axle path but not always and i guess in terms of |
| 2:04.0 | the problem that we're trying to solve is we're focusing on controlling the axle path to match |
... |
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