Calvin27
Eats Squid
Little bit of a rant more than question. But looks like the who thru axle thing is kind of going backwards nowadays. I'm on the hunt for a XC bike for general duties and noticed that all the sub $2k bikes are qr axles, some of them are even boost-qr. Are they really that hard to make work? The frames can't be double the price to make and no one seems to sell a thru axle hardtail anymore in the 100-120mm range that is a bit more budget oriented. Seems like we made a bit of progress and then everyone just decided to go back to qr. Then you have folks like trek who only have thru axles on their top of range xc procalibre and everything else is qr. Spesh has a few offerings but start at $3k, usual suspects giant and merida you're looking at carbon XC race bikes, cannondale has a trail SE/SL for $2k+ and so does norco. Cheapest I could find is the marin team 1 for $1600. Was it just me or was it a few years ago when you could still buy budget bikes/frames with thru axles?