>>1625045firstly, correct me if im wrong, maybe there's multiple incarnations, but i thought the leaf spring at the joint between top and seat tube on these bikes was typically fibreglass rather than have the steel in the top tube flex
secondly, the problem with all these flex designs is that air damping achieves the goal of suspension way more simply than a carefully designed spring, across a wider range of conditions. When i say the goal of suspension i mean the whole schtick about having more resistance to movement the greater the impulse, i.e. spring hardness as a function of rate of change. To achieve good performance without a compressible fluid system you need to guess the conditions, i.e. rider weight, types of riding the bike will see, and carefully design some complicated system of springs to approximate the curve a simple pneumatic cylinder achieves with two variables - bleed and area.
also the old design that you originally commented on seems to be a rigid frame to me - the cables would be preloaded to great tension to take up the loads that would otherwise be seen as bending loads on the main tube. By fully surrounding the main tube it always acts in compression - this is kinda like how cranes work.
>>1625047in my opinion, these types of MTB's have just completely lost the plot. Suspension is for traction, not for your bottom. If you want a less bumpy ride, use big tyres with low PSI and come off the seat before you ride over a big rock.
Any frame flex style suspension fits in this meme category since it doesn't have enough motion to maintain constant traction over a bumpy surface.
Also i am not totally against frame flex - e.g. curved forks - a little bit of flex helps with preventing brittle failures and hard knocks. However taking it to this extreme is clearly too far to be pragmatic.
once again, all this is trying to avoid using an air cylinder which is literally perfect for the application.
