By: Andrew & Lucinda
“It is a very good one and I find it very useful to go downhill and uphill” – Lucinda
By: Andrew
It’s a long story. Well, it’s actually a short story. This stealth-routed, 125mm travel, PNW 27.2mm dropper post was always supposed to be a team review effort. First I’d put a pile of hours on it as a gravel-groad-commuter-ATB dropper post. Not a necessity for the application. But handy, especially when riding around with a big backpack and a rack fully loaded with a cooler and all the beach trimmings. Well, and also especially when the rider is prone to finding themselves negotiating greasy single track on their Schwalbe 700x40c Awesome Alvin tires.
Then, once Claire’s next bicycle, Nina’s old Chromag Sakura, was ready to go with a fresh 44mm head tube and slacker head tube angle we would move this Rainier over and she would run with it from there. Easy? Then we picked up The Clairebarian’s new-to-her 2020 Samurai and that plan went straight out the window.
{Cover photo: Gavin & Lucinda}
[Aside]
So where is that beautiful green Sakura? If you follow WZRD Emma on the ‘gram then you might have had a sneaky peaky of Nina’s custom rigid fork. After it receives some attention from the Ape Art Department and Em pops some rack mounts on the frame it comes back to start a new life as an everything-but-mountain bike.
We’ll move most all the parts over from her Surly Straggler, so Claire and I are very much looking forward to that bike build in the spring. Mike Truelove welded this one in 2012/13 so right around when geometry started rapidly progressing to where we are today. Perfect for its fresh purpose.
[/Aside]
This isn’t just any PNW Rainier post. I mean, it isn’t just any 27.2 PNW Rainier post. This post came to me unpackaged through their excellent PNW-Cycled program. I won’t spill a bunch of words about PNW-Cycled here, but rather I’ll redirect curious parties to the many paragraphs I wrote about it during my brief tenure at BikeMag. The piece in question is called Deriving Worth from Warranties.
I don’t know how many hours the post had on it before it was reconditioned and sent my way but it was faultless during my time riding it and continues to thrive, smooth & tight, under the next product tester tackling it. This won’t be our last update but we’re far enough along that I’ll say here if you need a 27.2mm dropper post I don’t think you can beat this one at US$200. Okay, there’s currently one on PNW-Cycled for US$170.
*{Drewitors note: every time I mention Slickoleum I get at least one message asking where to grab some. I always buy it from my friends Pope Jimmy & Co. at SuspensionWerx.}
Anywho, so, yes, the 125mm PNW dropper did a fantastic job for me riding around town and to and from work, and on the light trails where I take my fully-fendered Waltworks V1. The 80mm gravel dropper I was running is perfect with my feet on the pedals but loaded up at a light, or to chat, the 125mm drop is an improvement.
This Rainier has the same consistent and relatively smooth action that combined with PNW’s reputation for quality and customer experience make their posts one of the best values in the bike industry. And, that’s part one complete without a single surprise. Boring really. Sorry.
But, in a sea of good dropper post options, this one is certainly worth writing about. Particularly with the shortage of good & budget-friendlier 27.2 dropper options and the plethora of grom rigs and older bikes that are a dropper post, and sometimes an exit hole drilled in the seat tube, away from game-changer goodness. I’d still love to see a 150mm version for all the Kona Units out there getting the rigid snot ridden out of them, but in the meantime, here’s Rainier.
But, just as Claire’s Chromag was clearly meant to be, the grom-trail experience is now an exciting double feature. I installed it, without so much as lubing the main seal, on our friend Lucinda’s sweet Nukeproof Cub Scout and she’s putting the miles on it for MEATengines.
This is Lucinda’s first dropper post experience and she picked up the motions and the benefits right away. It’s also the first, of hopefully many, words she’s written for ME. Someday when I’ve fully lost the plot and spend my days wandering the forest arguing with trees and writing/performing original ballads about sections of rock armouring (I know, none of this is hard to imagine) my little dream is that The Clairebarian and her friends will keep it keeping on, so call this the foundation.
So, the following is how it’s going and we’ll touch base in late spring or early summer to follow up with how the 27.2 Rainer is holding up. I expect a properly boring “it’s still great” so we’ll have to lean on Lucinda to provide some colourful context in qualitatively measuring how much it has changed her riding experience.
I’ll finish my thoughts with a link to this beautiful bike-packing piece that Gavin and Lucinda put together a couple of years ago. Bicycles are amazing (and for many situations, having a dropper post makes them more amazing).
By: Lucinda
Until recently I had never ridden with a dropper post on my bike. I wanted one but it was hard to get one. Now I finally got one just after I got my new bike. It is a very good one and I find it very useful to go downhill and uphill. I even find it useful on flatter trails full of roots and rocks where I can put it up and down by small amounts.
What I first rode with my new dropper post was climbing up the fire road on Fromme and descending bobsled having ridden so much more efficiently. I also rode a bit of upper griffin. I rode the roots and rocks on the bottom; also the roll-down. It has helped me gain confidence on steeper rocks; and also more technical parts of trails.
I am now able to ride so much more quickly because I do not have to stop so much between trails. It is really fun to see which position is best for riding downhill and for riding uphill.
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