I totally see your point. On the one side I love to see brands like Ibis speccing DVO. But they often do so on entry level bikes.
There's this company here in Germany, Radon, offering pretty reasonable entry-level bikes but also pretty good ones. I would say they are on the same level as Canyon but prestige-wise lower. Anyways, they also spec DVO on their Trail-HT. So the one bike most people will get, if they want to get into the sport seriously. And while I really respect that and believe that they offer great products, it has to be a nightmare for someone trying to find someone to service that fork. And if they don't find someone, their fork will deteriorate and they loose fun in the hobby, you see my point.
Same with Hayes Dominions, great brakes, I just put them on my banshee. But finding replacement parts for them here in Europe is a nightmare beyond any imagination. So much so that every time barbs or hoses become available, everyone rushes to the forums and tells everyone about it. When traveling in Europe with anything but SRAM, Shimano, Magura or Hope or compatible Brands like Trickstuff (and in Italy Formula I guess) one always has to carry enough pads, etc.
I wrench a lot on my bike and got pretty comfortable doing pretty much everything myself, while also breaking some stuff in the learning process. This is just part of the hobby for me. But that's also a reason why I think that it's all the more important for smaller brands to offer **high quality** service manuals and videos. Everyone and their mother has made a how-to-bleed-Sramano-Brake Video. But when trying to service my Formula Selva I'm dependent on the videos the brand is offering (which are luckily pretty good).
March 27, 2024, noon - LeLo
I totally see your point. On the one side I love to see brands like Ibis speccing DVO. But they often do so on entry level bikes. There's this company here in Germany, Radon, offering pretty reasonable entry-level bikes but also pretty good ones. I would say they are on the same level as Canyon but prestige-wise lower. Anyways, they also spec DVO on their Trail-HT. So the one bike most people will get, if they want to get into the sport seriously. And while I really respect that and believe that they offer great products, it has to be a nightmare for someone trying to find someone to service that fork. And if they don't find someone, their fork will deteriorate and they loose fun in the hobby, you see my point. Same with Hayes Dominions, great brakes, I just put them on my banshee. But finding replacement parts for them here in Europe is a nightmare beyond any imagination. So much so that every time barbs or hoses become available, everyone rushes to the forums and tells everyone about it. When traveling in Europe with anything but SRAM, Shimano, Magura or Hope or compatible Brands like Trickstuff (and in Italy Formula I guess) one always has to carry enough pads, etc. I wrench a lot on my bike and got pretty comfortable doing pretty much everything myself, while also breaking some stuff in the learning process. This is just part of the hobby for me. But that's also a reason why I think that it's all the more important for smaller brands to offer **high quality** service manuals and videos. Everyone and their mother has made a how-to-bleed-Sramano-Brake Video. But when trying to service my Formula Selva I'm dependent on the videos the brand is offering (which are luckily pretty good).