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I am curious to try my FlareMax in mullet form. I find the backend quite cumbersome on corners.
Unfortunately I've so far failed to find anyone locally with a 27.5" microspline rear wheel local to try out so I think I'm going to have to drop £400 on a rear wheel and tyre to try it out.
Keen to hear people's thoughts before I conduct this expensive experiment.
Can’t you just use a wheel with an XD driver and 12 speed SRAM cassette to test?
Unfortunately all of my friends are rather sensible and running 10 or 11 speed.
If it's your first 'longer' bike they do take a bit of getting use to.
What travel fork are you running?
As a try-out, it'd probably be cheaper to buy a microspline freehub for a borrowed wheel, give it a try, and if you don't like it / and even if you do, flog the freehub on eBay. I'm very happy with my FlareMAX as is, but then I've never ridden it in mullet configuration. Be interesting to hear what you make of it.
Unfortunately all of my friends are rather sensible and running 10 or 11 speed
YOu know it'd still work well enough for a bit of a test...
he's in East Anglia.
Oh .... that's a bit further than I hoped...
yeah i only know as i have a set of DMR V11s and he was asking about them, so i'm posting them off to him today.
he’s in East Anglia.
Then my experiences of riding one in the Tweed Valley are probably not that relevant...
Have you mulleted a bike before OP?
Admittedly hardtails but I have with both an NS Eccentric and my Cotic BFEMax.
It's quite a subtle difference, at least to a bodger like me. I found on the NS it was overall better as it helped slacken the head angle a bit and made the whole bike feel a bit more comfortable on slow/steep things*. On the BFEMax I found overall I missed the slight zippiness compared to full 29 and went back to that (I think the BFEMax's extra length v.s. the Eccentric makes the benefit of smaller rear wheel less pronounced).
Either way IMO you're into "marginal gains" territory. Well worth a play if you have a wheel handy but there's no way in the world I'd personally spend 400 notes to try it 🤷♂️
* Sort of thing where the rear axle being a bit higher feels significantly worse, exacerbated by shorter/steeper bike.
I have ridden mullet before. But it was 26/24" so going back a bit!
Yes first long bike. As soon as I get to anything fun I immediately think it's too long. I'm slap in the middle of a medium size, but so far have yet to be convinced by long geometry. Probably not helped by switching between a 29er and a jump bike.
At the moment I'm thinking it would make more sense to buy a secondhand 27.5" bike and see what prefer.
I mulleted a Solaris Max while I waited for a rear wheel repair. Other than noticing on the first ride that I had forgotten to adjust the saddle tilt I really didn't notice a huge amount of difference.
That said, it was a plus tyre in the rear which would negate some of that wheel size difference.