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Early Gary Fisher's Perspective on 29ers

1140 Views 12 Replies 9 Participants Last post by  evasive, 
BrianU
Something I found interesting that Guitar Ted posted on his blog this past Saturday.

g-tedproductions.blogspot.com

The Early Days Of 29"ers- A Gary Fisher Perspective

During a Fisher Bikes Press camp visit I was on in September of 2009, I was privy to hearing tales told by the famous Gary Fisher himself. ...
g-tedproductions.blogspot.com g-tedproductions.blogspot.com
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W
Really cool perspective.

I was working at a shop and racing during those years, and remember a lot of head scratching over 29ers! It was definitely something only a few shop weirdos rode back then. I think Surly also released a 29" frame and rigid fork pretty early on?
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stiingya
That third Ti prototype is a sweet looking bike even with bar ends! :)

I got to test ride a GF suger out at Hawes in AZ when they were fairly new. The experience swore me off 29ers for a VERY LONG time!! Flexy flyer and felt like gearing from a road bike!! :) In retrospect low priced 29ers during their infancy was just not a great thing.

Without big wheels I'm not sure geometry would have got where it is. But can you imagine an XL pole or geometron on 26 wheels... :) :) :)
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fredcook
stiingya said:
I got to test ride a GF suger out at Hawes in AZ when they were fairly new. The experience swore me off 29ers for a VERY LONG time!! Flexy flyer and felt like gearing from a road bike!! :)
Click to expand...
I loved the Sugar! Still do actually, and still have an '03 Sugar 3+ Disk (I bought it new in '03). When I'm in the mood for some fast XC zipping, I'll get on the Sugar. I receive offers to buy it every time I take it out...

I still remember the first Fisher 29'ers showing up in shops. Man they looked huge back then.
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Sparticus
…
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stiingya
fredcook said:
I loved the Sugar! Still do actually, and still have an '03 Sugar 3+ Disk (I bought it new in '03). When I'm in the mood for some fast XC zipping, I'll get on the Sugar. I receive offers to buy it every time I take it out...

I still remember the first Fisher 29'ers showing up in shops. Man they looked huge back then.
Click to expand...

'03 Sugar 3+ Disk. That's a 26 version isn't it? I rode a low spec 29er Suger and the wheels were flexy, the fork was flexy, and the gearing was too tall for me. I think early 29ers there was a huge gap between spec and performance. Low cost parts today are amazing. Might be heavier and not as many bells and whistles but they work great. Back in the day not so much...
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fredcook
stiingya said:
'03 Sugar 3+ Disk. That's a 26 version isn't it? I rode a low spec 29er Suger and the wheels were flexy, the fork was flexy, and the gearing was too tall for me. I think early 29ers there was a huge gap between spec and performance. Low cost parts today are amazing. Might be heavier and not as many bells and whistles but they work great. Back in the day not so much...
Click to expand...
Yeah, 26"...
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J
Not as old as the above bikes, but I'm on a 2011 Superfly100. I still love the bike enough that I don't feel the need to upgrade. Plus the frame was made in Waterloo WI.
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A
I had a Trek Sawyer. On of the first mainstream 29ers. Loved it and made the switch to 29ers as soon as possible.
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Jayem
The biggest problem with the early 29ers, and this really persisted with the FS bikes, is that to fit a front derailleur, they simply stretched out the chainstays to obnoxious numbers. There were a couple outliers, my Surly Karate Monkey for example, but the vast majority, and especially the FS bikes, were goofy as hell because the designers/engineers were not committed enough to find solutions to this problem. A few solutions came our right before the switch-over to 1x, but after that point it rendered this issue mainly moot. I'm not talking about 17 or even 17.5" stuff, I'm talking about the 18" and longer (there were lots around 18.5) stuff. Goofy bikes to ride. That and GF couldn't seem to design an FS bike that wouldn't crack in those days. All of this is what led me to hold off on an FS 29er for year and years...because it took that long for them to get it sorted out.
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Sparticus
Jayem said:
The biggest problem with the early 29ers, and this really persisted with the FS bikes, is that to fit a front derailleur, they simply stretched out the chainstays to obnoxious numbers. There were a couple outliers, my Surly Karate Monkey for example, but the vast majority, and especially the FS bikes, were goofy as hell because the designers/engineers were not committed enough to find solutions to this problem. A few solutions came our right before the switch-over to 1x, but after that point it rendered this issue mainly moot. I'm not talking about 17 or even 17.5" stuff, I'm talking about the 18" and longer (there were lots around 18.5) stuff. Goofy bikes to ride.
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Huh.
And here I thought long chainstays had become the rage.
Now I'm confused.
Again.
=sParty
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Jayem
Sparticus said:
Huh.
And here I thought long chainstays had become the rage.
Now I'm confused.
Again.
=sParty
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I've never been on the "super-short" camp, but I've experienced both sides, super short and super long. The 29ers I rode that stretched the chainstay to accommodate the pivots and front derailleur rode like crap, of course, there were plenty of other geometry issues involved at that time too, like HTA, STA and reach. to ben

And to be fair, GF did try to address some of this with the hardtails...but completely missed the mark with the FS bikes. It would have taken more exotic engineering to fit all this stuff together, but the 2014 Spec Enduro 29er showed it could be done, without pushing the chainstays to the next country. They simply had no will for a long time.

One if the big issues I had with this was that 29er wheels were already "more stable" than 26". The chainstays didn't need to be "longer than" 26" bikes due to this, to make them more more stable. If anything, they could be a little shorter. Then all of a sudden when you were asking for 17" chainstays you were asking for "short" stays...not "normal", since the "standard" had grown to like 18.5.
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evasive
Sparticus said:
Huh.
And here I thought long chainstays had become the rage.
Now I'm confused.
Again.
=sParty
Click to expand...
That was before front centers started to grow. Early 29ers had really steep HTAs to compensate for the available fork offsets (because most suspension forks used the same castings as 26” forks, so had the same offset). Intense had a Spyder with a HTA that was something like 72 degrees. A short steep front end and a long rear center wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea.
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