A Cutaway Full Face, a New Rack, & a New Enduro Tire - Interbike 2018

Have you been around long enough to know what the IRC Missle is? If you weren't, it was one of the few downhill-oriented tires that were available back in the late 1990s, although it's thin sidewall inserts wouldn't even pass for enduro rubber these days.

IRC never disappeared - although they might as well have when talking about burly mountain bike rubber - but they're back now with this stout looking, 2.6'' wide tire that was on hand in both 27.5'' and 29'' diameters. Weight, prices, and even the tire's name are all still on the TBA list.




IRC isn't keen to share anything besides photos at this point, but it's clear that the yet to be named tire is aimed at the all-mountain and enduro crowd, and it looks to have a mid-weight, reinforced sidewall made for exactly that type of use. What do you make of it? Can IRC make a comeback and challenge Maxxis and Schwalbe's relative stranglehold in most parts of the world?





Don't have any friends to ride with? Me neither, and apparently I'm not the only one as Küat is bringing a $219.95 USD one-bike version of their Transfer rack to the market, appropriately called the Transfer 1. The idea is for it to be a relatively inexpensive, simple rack that doesn't stick out from that back of your car by five feet.

The Transfer 1 is a tray-style rack, even if there isn't a full-length tray, with the front wheel slotting into a U-shaped holder that'll work with everything from 23mm road rubber to 4.5'' fat meat. The rear wheel goes into a rotating holder that uses a ratchet strap to hold it in place.




The Transfer 1 is a mostly bare-bones unit, but it does still fold down to allow access to a rear hatch, and of course it folds up flat against your car when there isn't a bike on it. Küat also includes an adapter to go to a 2" receiver, or you can ditch it if you have a 1-1/4'' hitch. One thing it doesn't come with is a locking system, but Küat does offer an integrated lock upgrade, or you could just go pick up a burly cable lock or length of chain and be done with it.





Much like suspension, helmets are tricky because the important stuff is pretty much hidden from view. Thank God for cutaways, though. You're looking at a sliced open Kali full face that shows off their Nano Fusion shell, which kinda sounds like it's from a NASA science lab. It's actually an in-molding process that joins acrylic self-healing foam and carbon nano-tubes with the shell, though. In simple terms, all that means is that Kali has used a different density foam, one that they say "dissipates energy more efficiently and in a smaller volume than any other material on the market,'' in places on the helmet's shell that are likely to make contact with things that don't move, like the ground.

Nano Fusion is also a multi-impact material that's said to allow for a thinner shell, which in turn should mean that the helmet is applying less leverage to the rider's head and neck when it hits the dirt, rocks, or trees.




Kali is big on technology, but it's not a stretch to say that their helmets have looked, er, of lesser quality than some of the competition. That's a shame given that Kali has long been doing some neat things to help prevent head injuries, but we all know that isn't all that matters. Brad Waldron, the main man at Kali, was well aware of this and they're now running much nicer colors and graphics, have visors that actually match, and are finished better all around.

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Reviews and Tech Kali Protectives Interbike