Learn it.

Pandemic.

It's spreading.
Bikes that use just about every possible piece of cycing I hate to be brought to life.This turd is made by some smug asshole from,I presume,the Northwest.It's got all the usual bits and bobs that drive so called "bike nerds" into a frenzy.First up its Ti.The snooty frame makers number one choice of tubing due to it's expensive cost and amzing capasity to ride like semi-cooked pasta.Then there's the fatbike wheels and tires.Now,I actually got to get handsy with a fatbike about 2 days ago.A sales rep from the largest cycling parts distro. in the US dropped a fully rigid aluminum Salsa off for us to pedal around and gawk at.Since I couldn't throw away all of my dignity and actually pedal the fucker around I did do the "pick it up to get a feel for it" test,let out a little giggle and smirk and polietly propped it back up against the box it was resting on.That was enough fatbike for my entire life.Anyway...bolted on up front is the ultimate suspesnion fork(trademark of Cannondale Bicycle Corp. and CSG Inc.),the Lefty(trademark of Cannondale Bicycle Corp. and CSG Inc.).I'm pretty sure you all know how I feel about Leftys(trademark of Cannondale Bicycle Corp and CSG Inc.).If not here's a few quick words that should sum it up,shit,horrible,awful,the worst.Now we come to the worst part.The fact that this shit pile is a soft tail.Yes.A soft tail.I fucking hate soft tails.Cool,it's got no pivots and you can get almost 2'' of travel from it.It doesn't have rebound or compression adjustment and what happens if you're extremely light weight,or on the heavier side of things?My point exactly.

Basically,I expect there to be some sort of "end of the mountain bike world" to happen soon.Which means i'll have to go run and hide in a bunker somewhere in the hillside of bumfuck nowhere with a stockpile of various WTB 26'' rims,multiple DH bikes,about 30 pairs of Point One pedals,and copius amounts of bars 760mm or wider.

2013 Avid!

Features of the 2013 4-piston XO.
A-Bleed port.O-rings in this will fail in a quick manner causing this to leak.
B-Fluid opening.This gets clogged with shit such as dirt,pieces of the brake hose,and o-ring bits causing the pistons to cease movement.
C-Polished piston slot.Probably sized wrong,so fluid will get through and work it's way onto the pads.
D-Piston O-ring.Will get eaten by the DOT 5.1 and leak.Ending the brake's life.Usually happens within 6 months,or right when you open the box.

Name change.

Yep.We're gonna go with the team name.The original idea for this blackhole of words didn't really pan out.
Carry on,nothing to see here.

Remember...

Selection.

These are all from this past weekend.
These are all good.
You should look at them.

Fairclough...approved.

XXIX.In American that's 29.Brendawg refused to run the actual number 29 on his jersey this season due to the fact he hates 29er's so much.

TEAM DUMPED! approved.

Hometown hero.

So World Cup #1 is in the books.Greg Minnar won infront of all his adoring fans in his home country.America's hero was in second and good ol' Sick Mick in third.Now as you all probably know I would of loved to see Gwin stomp everyone here again,but that didn't happen.Mr.Minnar was slightly over half of a second faster,and I was bummed.Not only because Gwin was beaten,but because I hate watching Greg Minnar ride a bicycle.There's no style,no movement,no looseness.Just old man,pencil upright,laser percision riding.It looks like shit and I can't stand to watch it.Yeah,yeah...I know he's fast but come on,look at all the young guns.Blenki,Fairclough,McDonald.They're all fast as fuck and ooze bike handling and style.

Basically,Minnar,learn how to throw a decent whip,take those stupid clippy pedals off,dip your heals and fucking get after it.Maybe then I can stand watching your race run replays.

Oh,and for those of you who need a visual...
Minnar looks like this-

While Kovarik looks like this-

See? Told you.

Get real.

Friends.

http://www.pinkbike.com/video/246626/
Good friend of TEAM DUMPED! and new signed Specialized rider Mr.Christian Wright's hardtail bike check.It ain't all a plug for all of his wonderful sponsers,though.He throws down some mean moves aswell.Watch this because this kid is probably better at bikes,scooters,video games,harmonica,and owning kick ass dogs than you.

Do one with your shiny new Demo,Christian.You wont...

Proto.

Oh man.It's that time of year again,World Cup season.Which means everyone's breaking out the whole lot of new shit.Couple of things that caught my eye...

http://www.pinkbike.com/news/scott-gambler-downhill-bike-prototype.html
The new Scott DH bike.Apparently it's not just a Brendawg special and the whole team is on them.At frist glance I thought it was some sort of futuristic chopper from hell with way too much linkage and awhole bunch of shit going on.On second look it's not that bad.Not anymore pivots than a VPP bike,a high main pivot which should eat the bumps up,clean lines and a low slung top tube.Not bad Scott,not bad.But i'm still kinda undecided.Word on the street is the team has only had roughly 2 weeks on the bike,though.So we'll see how they fair come Sunday.

http://www.pinkbike.com/news/Shimano-Saint-Prototype-2013.html
Oh sweet mother.There she is.The stainless steel Saint rear derailer.Granted it's in what appers to be early prototype stages seeing as it looks like it just got popped out of the CNC machine.Also,if you do a slight bit of detective work you can find some up close shots of the new Saint brakes,or you can be eagle eyed and look real close at the picture of Brendan's Scott up there and notice the new style Shimano levers,the 4 piston calipers,and the finned brake pads.Word on the street is there's a slim chance this lovely new line of boner inducing goodies will make their big debut at Sea Otter.A man can hope.





Approved?Still deciding.



are you F#*KING kidding me

Seriously, is this some kind of fucked up Canadian joke because its not funny. Please DO NOT ever do this. So ghetto and so pointless it blows my mind someone with a 4 thousand dollar bike would even come up with this sketchy ass bullshit. Leave it to Pinkbike

http://www.pinkbike.com/news/Tech-Tuesday--Make-a-Ghetto-Dropper-Post.html

I MEAN SERIOUSLY

If i see someone with this on their bike im going to slap them.

More shirts.

Possible ideas.I don't care if you don't like them.
More to come.

A reminder.

Something Evil.

http://2flat.net/2012/03/09/the-writer-knows-nothing-evil/

Unless you've been involved in this tiny little world of DH bikes about 8 years ago,or again about 3 years ago then you've probably never heard of Evil bikes.Evil bikes was an Eastcoast company started up by everyone's favorite suspension design guru,Dave Weagle.They originally started off making a chainguide because at the time of forming the company your chain retention choices were bleak at best.The forever shit Mr.Dirt Gizmo reigned supreme.They ventured off into making a couple of hardtail frames later down the road,aswell.There was the Sovereign which was billed as a do-it-all all mountain before all mountain exsisted frame.And one bike I would still wish to have in my stable to this current day.The D.O.C was a,at the time,lightweight skatepark and dirtjump based frame which was somewhat ahead of it's time.The centerpiece of this collection of frames was the,in my eyes atleast,crown jewl of the bunch.The Imperial.Twin top tubes that ran all the way back to the dropouts and a warranty that covered frame breakage if you ran a Harley Davidson fork on it.My 13 year old self wanted nothing more.Luckily for me,a close friend at the time picked a used one up right around the time they got scarce.So yes,I have thrown a leg over and ridden one of my dream bikes.Check another one off the list.

I mentioned the frames being somewhat scarce to come by up there,and that's because at a certain point Evil rebranded themselves as the company we know them as today.e13.They branched off into making more components and ditched the frame making.e13 produced beautiful,well thought out components at the time.Super light and ungodly durable chainrings.More chain guides,including dual-ring retention systems and the end all be all of guides the LG1.And a direct mount stem that still trumps 95% of the other direct mount stems available.e13 continued to grow and expand,as you can clearly see because,if you own a bike over 5'' of travel,you probably own a product from them.The Evil name was filed away somewhere,never thought to reappear,but that's where the story posted up top starts.The second comming of Evil bikes.



The original DH bike idea from Evil.The Empire.Circa roughly '02?



Couple of things.

Shirt idea.Blatantly stolen from Sensus.

You should know this by now.

Cranked.

http://www.pinkbike.com/news/Crankbrother-Kronolog-Adjustable-Seat-Post.html

If you ride a mountain bike,or any bike for that matter you probably saw atleast something about the new Crank Brothers dropper post today.Now,I rant and rave about pretty much any other dropper post besides Gravity Droppers.Why?Because Gravity Droppers just fucking work,and continue to work and then continue to work more.Where as pretty much every other up-y down-y post seems to shit the bed on a consistant basis.Crank Brother's makes it seem like their post is the final answer in adjustable seatposts by giving you a run down of all the "problems" it fixes.

- Robust simplicity-A Gravity Dropper literally has like 12 parts to it.How many does this fucker have Crank Bros?
-Mechanical design -Again,Gravity Droppers have been mechanical since day one.Nothing new here.
-Hydraulic feel-My Dropper feels damn smooth.I can push it down with pretty much a finger,I bet you you have to nearly lay on that piece of shit to get it to go down,ala a Reverb.
-Two-stage damping-Damping?Simplicity?Gravity Droppers run on a big ass spring and involve no air seals.
- Rotational stability-2 years slop free here.Plus,when it does get a little wiggly a new bushing is like,$6,from Dropper and take 10 minutes to install.
-Two-way locking-Uhhhh,yep.My Dropper does that too.
-Improved cable routing-You stole this from Gravity Dropper.
-Travel adjust-Why? 4'' is more than enough.No need to go more or less.
-Remote adjust-Ummmmm,isn't that why adjustable height seatposts are cool,cause you don't have to get off the bike to lower them?
-Stronger and lighter-Seat bounced and sit down landered my Gravity Dropper countless times,and i'm a portly little fuck.I also bet my Dropper's lighter.

So there.Nothing to see here.Move along folks and purchase the ultimate seat post.A Gravity Dropper Turbo.Besides,the Kronolog kinda looks like a lightsaber/dildo thing anyway.

  

Pretty much.

Dreams do come true!

http://www.bikerumor.com/2012/03/01/2013-shimano-unveiled-new-slx-group-road-and-cross-disc-brakes-11-speed-di2-alfine-more/
Remember awhile back I begged Shimano to make a mid-cage,Shadow+ SLX rear derailer?Well those fuckers must have listened.My hope is now a reality.

We dive into this lovely piece on Shimano's latest offerings with the shit I don't care about at all section.Scroll down about halfway and then we start seeing some good shit.I'm psyched to see they redesigned the cranks too,and also added another shot gun blast into the half dead body of the triple ring crankset by making an SLX double.Now all we need to do is get that other fucking chainring off and then we'd really be onto something.New shifter looks pretty good,reminds me of my beloved 8-speed XT shifter of years gone past.I'll probably be picking one of those up to replace my current first gen. SLX 10-speed dinner plate,oh I mean shifter.I-spec is for idiots because anyone who wants their shifter attatched to their brake lever should just go back to 1996 when that shit was cool,the brakes are the same as what's out now,front derailers should be shot and tossed into a shallow grave,and really...who the fuck cares about what you did to your front derailer to make it "better".It still makes a shitton of chain noise and can't keep a chain on if it's life depended on it.We end with a look at the new SLX hub and some new wheels,they're all 29'ers and unsealed so I lost intrest quick.

All I can say is if SLX is this dope,may God save our souls when the new Saint hits.Radiator fin padded,Ice Tech rotor having,four-piston dick rippers known as Saint brakes.Phew,hot damn.

Zach loves Shimano.You should,too.

This dude.

Chris Kovarik.
Drifting before drifting was cool.Flat pedals.Off the back.Plowing.
The fucking ultimate.