sysrq

Is there a reason why frames with suspension and large triangle space aren't made anymore. Seems like suddenly after the only frame with proper rear rack Taut Terrain Panamericana got discontinued then other manufacturers also started to make frames with small triangles.

rsbob 

A guess: Save money on material?

soyabean

To reduce inventory. A big lesson learned during the decade-long bike slump that was pre-covid.

A lower frame allows smaller riders. Larger riders just use a longer seatpost.

soyabean

When it comes to full suspension bikes, it's just so much harder to separate the rear from the rest of the frame, while keeping it strong and safe.

Gone are the days of those weird experimental bikes like Specialized Big Hit, only to be copied into BSO bikes years after.

Iride01 

Probably because there aren't a lot of people demanding them that are willing to pay. Maybe at some later time, they'll be the trendy thing.

cyccommute 

Except that’s not the way that bike manufacturers work. The 2023 Rockhopper Comp comes in 5 sizes from small to XXlarge. The 2008 Rockhopper Comp came in 5 sizes from 15” to 23”. The frame selection is the same pre- and post-covid. Geometry has changed slightly from 2008 to 2023 but not significantly.

Arrowana

Haven't heard of Tout Terrain before, but the Panamericana looks great. To bad finding a used one looks to be a challenge.

If the goal is to have a full suspension frame where the rack is directly attached to the front triangle, Reise & Muller have a few e-bikes like that. https://www.r-m.de/en-us/bikes/delite-models/

If the goal is just to have cargo mounted to a full suspension bike, Old Man Mountain makes racks that can attach to many full suspension bikes. Or you could look into saddlebags and handlebar bags. Or put the cargo into a box and lash the box to your handlebars and stem with a dead inner tube. Or find a Wal-Mart quality full suspension with a URT frame and horizontal dropouts, they will easily accept most standard rear racks if you get a set of extra long set of rack stays.

If you just want a full suspension with a larger front triangle, look into bikes from the 90's. Or talk to a framebuilder.

CrimsonEclipse

(checks price)

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
no
BAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAA!!!
no

Ironfish653

The reason is that it's a very poor idea to attach a cargo rack to the rear triangle of a full-suspension bike. Mounting a rack to the suspension increases what's known as unsprung weight; which leads to poor performance, and increased wear and tear on the suspension components.

There are plenty of seatpost mounted/ Brindle racks in the bikepacking space that could be sufficient for use on an FS bike

What is the goal/ intended use case? Or did you just see an uncommon design that appealed to you, and wondered why there weren't more like it?

The Panam is .... interesting. It looks very niche solution ,and like it probably weighs a ton.

PeteHski

To be fair the Americana rear rack is actually attached rigidly to the main triangle and then the suspension is attached to the rack. So in this case the rack is part of the sprung weight.

To me it looks like too much of a servicing hassle for a touring bike. Does an off-road touring bike really need rear suspension? The market would suggest not.

daviddavieboy

I would say no as well. I have a Trek 920 and when I use 2.8" tires aired down is is very smooth off road. It is only when I am descending a little too fast that it gets rough and sus would help. I have a rear rack as well but so far I have not needed the extra storage as the longest tour I done with it was 2 days.

big john

Freaky.

Ironfish653

The OP talking about rear racks and "Triangle Space" I was thinking about how most modern suspension designs, the stays don't get much above the line from the rear axle to the head tube.

I guess the OP is looking for a frame -mounted rack, rear suspension, and an unobstructed, level Top Tube main triangle; off-the-shelf. That seems a very specific ask.

I could think of a couple ways to do this; classics GT's LTS and the first gen FSR designs come to mind, but the Pan Americana seems to really be doing it the hard way. If there is a specific benefit it provides or a condition it's trying to avoid, I just don't see it.
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Maelochs

Tome the whole idea of mounting a rack on the rear suspended portion of an F/S bike is obviously a bad idea. Everything in the bags will get shaken and stirred ... and the constantly shifting load will put huge repeated stresses on the rack, bags, and suspension.

On top of that the suspension would need to be adjust harder to carry the weight ... sure, a long-travel big-hit rear suspension can handle another 40 pounds, but the weight will still affect every movement ... and while the suspension is designed to soak up hits, it is Not designed to handle the lateral forces the shaking and shifting would apply, which would weaken the bearings.

The reason F/S bikes are designed as they are is because .... they are designed as F/S bikes, the purpose of which is to go downhill or over big obstacles easily. If you are touring on tough single-track .... trying to do two-foot drops on a fully loaded tourer .....

Most touring bikes, even bikes designed to tour off-road, are not designed with rear suspension because the real point of rear suspension is to take big hits, like jumps, or slamming logs you are trying to jump, or to take the stress of high-speed downhill.

If you are taking jumps on a loaded touring bike ... why? If you are trying to rise very fast down steep off-road downhills on a loaded tourer .... why? And if you are on a loaded touring bike, you aren't bunny-hopping logs at speed ....

If you ant a bike that is fast off-road, get an MTB. if you want to Tour off-road, get a gravel bike with a suspension fork.

if you want to carry more on the back of a F/S bike than can be safely carried in seat-post panniers .... you have probably chosen the wrong tool for the job.

F/S MTBs are designed to ridden off-road over challenging terrain. They are goo d at that. They are not good at fast road rides in pelotons of racing bikes .....

You are asking "Why doesn't my tank ride like my luxury car, and why doesn't my luxury car have tank tracks." Wrong tools for the jobs.

big john

As mentioned the supposed benefit is the load becomes sprung weight. How much of a benefit that is would depend on the rider and terrain.
Obviously a niche within a niche. The market for this has to be tiny which I believe is the answer to the question in the OP.

cyccommute 

Everything in the bags is going to get shaken and stirred on a rigid bike to a much greater extent. Same applies to the shifting load. All of the touring weight in addition to the bike are unsprung weight in a rigid frame. The front and rear suspended weight on a suspended bike work independently so an impact isn’t likely to be transmitted to both parts of the suspension. On a rigid bike, the front and rear aren’t independent so the impact would have an effect on both the front and rear load.

There’s not much in the way of lateral forces on the suspension while carrying a load. You aren’t likely to be railing corners nor doing huge drops with a touring load.

It’s not my favorite thing to do but it is certainly possible. I’ve done it a few times. I’m not carrying panniers on a full suspension bike but the bike will handle drops just fine. It will even rail some corners if you really want to. It doesn’t sound like sysrq is looking for something to carry panniers. It seems to me that sysrq is looking from something to use a triangle bag for bikepacking.

Suspension does more than just take big hits. The front suspension does more for control of the bike than it does for comfort. One example is linear ruts. A rigid bike will drop into a rut but the bike has to counter steer to get out of the rut. The rigid fork keeps the tire against the rut and doesn’t allow for the needed counter steer. The most common result is to crash. A suspended fork still needs the counter steer but the movement of the fork will allow the edge of the tire to grab onto some imperfection of the rut and the wheel can climb up out of the rut. The result is far fewer crashes with a front suspension.

The rear suspension allows the wheel to push down into the ground and/or follow the ground more closely where a rigid bike would bounce over the same ground. The suspended bike will climb better and descend better even with a load.

While I agree that the ability to do jumps and bunny hops is not necessary, going fast down a rugged road can have benefits. If you can do 10 to 15 mph or more down a hill, you get to your destination quicker. I’ve done both rigid and suspended off-road touring. If the road is rough, suspension allows for a 5 to maybe 15 mph faster descent. That can be very important late in the day.

A “gravel bike with a suspension fork” is just a mountain bike with silly handlebars.

I No one has said anything about riding a full suspension mountain bike in a peloton. If you are going to ride a bike over challenging terrain, a rigid bike is the wrong tool. Even with wide tires with very little air in them are poor substitutes for suspension, either front or full. A rigid gravel bike has more place in a peloton than it does on a rugged 4x4 road or single track.

I’ve done 11 off-road tours here in Colorado. They are usually 3 day rides of about 60 to 120 miles. Most all of them have been on suspended bikes, either a soft tail or a full suspension bike, but I have done a few unsuspended off-road tours. It’s not something I relish doing again.

PeteHski

I agree, a very Heath Robinson solution! I'm not surprised it's heading the way of the Dodo.

cyccommute 

Depends on where you ride. I could do any of these on a rigid bike. I have done off-road touring on rigid bikes. I’d rather use my mountain bikes. If I want to make the ride harder I could always wear a cilice or put some nails in the saddle, but the ride is hard enough for my tastes.

Maelochs

I notice you don't have a F?S bike with a rack attached to teh rear triangle ... which is what this post was about.

A rack attached to the rear triangle---not the frame or seat post---would move with the suspension, with the wheel ... the frame and rider would move much less (hence suspension.)

Much as the stuff in the giant seat bag will get shaken ... they will be moving less and less violently than if they were attached to the wheel and swing arm.

I do not know of a manufacturer who makes racks to attach to F/S swing arms ... which is the point of the post. I think no one does it because it is not a good idea.

The one bike you show with a rear rack---maybe one of those Ti Moots with a flex-joint or whatever ... I notice the rack is empty and the load is in the seat bag. The other doesn't even have a rack (though the triangle" (swing arm) is large enough that some sort of rack could be attached with some stability.

Interesting to see your set-up ... but the OP was not asking about bike-packing set-ups, he wanted a rack on the swing-arm.

Maybe there is a market and he should get to work designing and building?

cyccommute 

I’m not entirely sure what this whole thread is about. sysrq is talking about triangles and rear racks. I’m not sure what sysrq is getting at. Is sysrq trying to use a frame bag, panniers, or both?

The amount of “shaking” is going to be a matter of degrees. Part of the reason for bikepacking bags is to hold luggage so that it doesn’t bounce around so much but it’s still going to get jostled. The ride on a full suspension bike isn’t riding in Cadillac Eldorado comfort with or without a load.

There’s a mess of them. Thule Tour Rack is one of the earliest. Others include the Aeroe Spider Rack, SKS Infinity, and Topeak has 3 of them…two for the rear and one for the front.

Yes, one of them is a Moots YBBeat. I bought it specifically for bikepacking. And I bought it specifically because it has rear suspension, although is it a relatively short travel suspension. The configuration of my load changes from ride to ride. You can see in the first picture that I’m using fork leg bags on the front suspension which is a fairly common way to carry stuff on a mountain bike. I’m not that much of a fan, especially in really rugged terrain. I wore holes in the bags on the trip that the picture is from. The trail in that trip was more of a suggestion of trail than actual trail. I was actually on a “trail” in that picture.

Although you can’t see them clearly, there are micropanniers on the bike in the last picture. Here’s yet another configuration that includes the micropanniers (really just two handlebar bags attached to a carrier) as well as the fork leg bags.




I probably wouldn’t put a rack on the Specialized but I haven’t bikepacked on it but once for a shorter trip. For longer trips, the Moots works better. The Specialized does have a larger triangle that will take a frame bag but not the size of the frame bag that the Moots can take. I have a smaller frame bag that works well for that bike and will still work on the Moots.


Again, I’m not completely sure what sysrq is asking for. The triangle has nothing to do with racks. Moots, by the way, still makes the YBB which as a (small) rear suspension and a large front triangle.

GamblerGORD53

OP has watched too many Mad Max movies. LOL. Get fatter tires if needed.
Alee Denham certainly didn't need bungee forks in the middle of desert in the Outback or Jordan.
His bike is a Rohloff14 Koga World Traveler and his GF had a Pinion Priority I think, that does have front suspension.

veganbikes

Obviously you know nothing and haven't ridden one to even know what you are talking about. If you know Huffies from Wally-Mart as your idea of a quality bike because you don't know any better then when you see something of actual practical quality that is well supported and will last a long time it is hard to swallow because you don't know any of that info.

There is a reason Reise and Müller stuff is more expensive, it is well built with good quality parts that will last a long time, it has good support from the manufacturer and from Bosch so it is a bike you can have for 10 years+ and it is still going. There is a reason I bought a Supercharger2 and it wasn't because I wanted to spend that kind of money but because I wanted a reliable durable bike I could ride daily and do minimal care on and have it serve me for many years to come. It is a blast to ride and had almost everything I wanted. You can get certain things on other bikes but to get that complete package is tough.

I get it though it is easier to laugh at what you don't understand then to actually ask questions and try and understand it. It is not a bike for everyone and it is not a cheap bike in any sense of the word but if you haven't ridden one and don't understand it you might want to ask some questions first before laughing like someone just farted and you are 4 years old and think that is funny.

urbanknight

My guess is that it's two-fold:
1) Mountain bikers mostly abandoned bottles and frame/seat bags in favor of hydration backpacks, eliminating the need for space inside the frame.
2) Riders like lower top tubes for better clearance should they need to jump off the pedals in a hurry.

Maelochs

As for the Main triangle .... @UrBaNknkight nails it. Smaller frames are stiffer, and lower top tubes let riders move around more ... and some bikes have the shock in the main triangle.

I thought he OP meant the rear triangle.

Dictatokerr

I've noticed that trend too. It might be due to a shift towards more compact, efficient designs for better handling and performance. Smaller triangles can make frames stiffer and lighter, but it's a bummer for those who need rear rack space.