I have been watching discussion about how bike geometry has changed over the years. It's incremental and hard to see over time. Anyone have some good examples of the first production 29ers (especially hardtails) geometry? What have been the biggest changes that make a modern xc/ trail 29er more capable?
What they did on the first few generations of 29ers, especially the FS bikes, was simply extend the chainstays to fit the front derailleur in there. So you ended up with goofy 18"+ long chainstays, on a bike that was ALREADY more stable because of the bigger wheels with more gyroscopic stability, so by doing this, they handled more like a truck. I'm not kidding, some were 18.5"! IMO, it was lazy engineering waiting to see if the "bubble" caught on.
The Karate Monkey was one of the early "normal geometry" bikes that had what I consider to be "normal" sized chainstays. Anything around 17" + or - .25" or so is fairly normal IME and will handle decent in this respect. Specialized eventually came up with the solution on the E-29 with a special derailleur mount, but at the same time 1x drivetrains took over and the problem went away. It took a LONG LONG time though for these manufacturers to make 29ers with what I consider to be "normal" geometry.
Although there is more that defined them than just the chainstays, I felt like this was the biggest factor and avoided the FS 29ers for years until they did something about it.
What I don't see is a need to go very slack on a 29er, the wheel naturally resists wheel-catchers and drops better and going too slack also turns it into a truck IME. If you are endoing a 29er, you need to buy some skills. Making the wheels heavy also gets out of hand fast, due to how far that weight is from the hub. That was the primary reason I dropped the E-29, too lethargic with rubber and build worthy of DH, but go to the other extreme, my 29er XC Race bike and it's a hoot where you can pop off all sorts of stuff that's just not possible with bigger heavy wheels. I think this is one area where we have gone a little too far in some respects. I can ride a 66-65.5° bike uphill as long as the suspension does not squat a bunch on the uphill, but from that HTA, things get bad much faster when you go slacker and the 29er can get away being 1.5° or so steeper than the equivalent 27.5 bike without giving up anything in terms of it's DH-ability.
If I could only have one bike it would still be a 29er with a bit more travel than my XC rig, but since I have two FS bikes my 29er is for XC and I go slightly smaller wheels for more aggressive stuff. Not to say you can't ride something like an E-29er on aggressive stuff, it loves it, make sure you have some nice big downhills for it, lots of vertical.
