No other topic has occupied the mountain bike world as much over the years as the desire for riding comfort on a hardtail. Even in the early years, when suspension and disc brakes were not even considered, mountain bike pioneers such as Joe Breeze, Gary Fisher and Keith Bontrager asked themselves how to design a frame that was laterally stiff but comfortable in the direction of impact. They experimented with thick and thin tubes and extravagant frame shapes. The alchemists from the bike Middle Ages were working on new steel and aluminium alloys. Titanium, scandium and carbon were hailed as miracle materials. But the stories of the great differences - if they existed at all - bordered on the esoteric and were never measurable.
Then came the fully. The traditional frame builders disappeared into oblivion or became suspension specialists. The suspension took care of comfort. From then on, there were only three goals for the frame: It had to be stiff, stiff and stiff. The hardtail became a sideshow - a dying breed for those who refused to innovate, beginners or, at best, racers. But the dead live longer. The hardtail is experiencing a renaissance. This is due to the great leaps in development in carbon technology in recent years. Frame weights are plummeting, with extremely high stiffness and durability values. And, if you believe the engineers, carbon frames can be built very comfortably despite their high stiffness values.
Comfort on carbon hardtails - marketing gimmick or real measurable values? To find out, we have included a new test rig in our laboratory test procedure.
Read all about the comfort test in the free PDF download.
