HopeHope had their first-ever 35mm carbon bar on display at the show. They acknowledge that they're a bit late to the party with this one but claim they didn't want to simply push something out that would be too stiff and therefore uncomfortable.
Hope have used a new laminate for the bar that is layed up in their Barnoldswick factory to provide strength where it's needed most, allowing the rest of the bar to have a bit more flex. In fact, they believe it even surpasses the compliance of their 31.8mm bar.
It comes in 800mm width only for now and Hope are recommending it be used as an all-mountain bar, however, they claim it also surpasses many DH specific bars in strength.
SDGA year after we saw
a 3D printed version, SDG had a finalised version of the Bell Air 3.0 to show us. It's a saddle with 25 years of history in the sport from being the first-ever kevlar mtb saddle to this version we see today.
The Bel Air through the ages from the first iteration to Peaty's GT saddle to the leopard print years.
The saddle has a shorter overall length than before and it is made with a new lightweight injected foam, combined with a hidden undercut relief and a nylon glass fibre base bridge for added comfort.
Four price points are available, largely depending on the rails you go for. The steel version weighs 318 grams and costs £53.95, the lux-alloy version weighs 236 grams and costs £79.95, there's a fuel colour option of the lux-alloy that costs £99.95 and then a super-lightweight carbon railed version that weighs 181 grams and costs £179.95.
SDG also gave us a sneak peek of their Thrice grip that is coming in April. Weighing just 39 grams per grip and with three different textures to maximise grip and comfort, it's a very tempting offering when it retails at just £16.99.
FidlockFidlock have redesigned their twist release water bottle and showed it off for the first time at Core. It has a removable mud cap, a valved nozzle and is made from a less rigid plastic than the old model. The magnetic bar is molded into the bottle in the manufacturing process so there's no danger of it coming loose.
The German brand is also moving the manufacturing of the bottle back to Europe. Concerned at the air miles they were racking up shipping bottles from Asia, they've now found a factory in Italy that allows them to produce the bottle for a similar price.
Also new is the toolbox that can fit on any bottle mount using the same system. The box is waterproof, including the zips, and should have enough capacity to store enough tools to get you out of trouble. Be warned, it might get mistaken for a battery if you stick it on your downtube though.
We also saw a prototype phone holder from Fidlock. This uses a combination of magnets and suction cups to secure your phone and allows them to make a case that is barely thicker than a standard one.
MaguraMagura had their new 220mm rotor on display. It draws some inspiration from certain motorcycle rotors where the metal is allowed to expand as it heats up, which should increase stiffness after prolonged braking.
220mm rotors are now fairly common in downhill with Troy Brosnan first debuting one at Lourdes in 2017, in fact, Galfer athletes such as Baptiste Pierron now have access to 246mm rotors.
EnduraWhile this may look like a separate jacket and pair of trousers, it is actually all one piece of clothing. Endura's onesie is designed to eliminate builder's bum without you looking like you're entering Chernobyl and they have updated it this year to provide riders with a bit more movement. The back panel that joins the trouser piece and jacket is now bigger so riders will be less restricted when they're in the attack position. The best thing about this is when you get back to the car after a muddy ride you can take it all off in one and everything underneath should be dry and ready to go.
FabricFabric now offers flag saddles for over 40 countries, here are the UK versions.
Dumb...
When someone comes to the table with these "innovations", they should be beat with a 35mm bar that is compliant and told to try again.
I went back to Renthal (also partly for the intelligent clamp design of having one side with no gap. So easy!) after trying Chromag, RaceFace, and Specialized alloy 31.8 bars, and none had the same feel as a good ol' alloy 31.8 FatBar. It might actually be close to as stiff or even stiffer than the RF & Spesh, but it just damps away little buzzes so much better than anything else made of aluminum.
Though I did just see a titanium 31.8 bar and THAT sounds like an awesome way to spend some bucks.
Has to do with younge's modulus of elasticity... a structure's stiffness goes up with the cube of its cross section width...so in the case of a handlebar (or axle) being a round tube its the diameter we're concerned with.. going from 31.8 to 35mm increases the stiffness about 46%. Now going down from 20 to 15mm dropped the axle stiffness about 68%. The thing is though... fork axles are relatively short compared to handlebars... and there's a lot less leverage trying to flex an axle compared to your shoving your upper body weight against the ends of a 800mm handlebar. Its the move to wider and wider handlebars which drove the move to increasing the bar clamp diameter.
When forks had smaller diameter stanchion tubes, the axle diameter played a bigger role in the overall fork stiffness but as those numbers increased (remember the original Boxxer DH fork, the first that had a 20mm axle had 32mm diameter uppers in 1997... which is the same as many single crown XC forks were using by 2001 through to the switch to 15mm axles) forks no longer needed the maximum diameters of axles to be "stiff enough" for the application. The only forks today which really suffer from a 15mm axle diameter are things like the Rockshox Bluto fat bike fork, where the hub spacing is 150mm and Rockshox unfortunately is still only using 32mm uppers on the thing (when they really should have gone to 36mm).
Also when the move to 15mm thru-axles happened, it was originally to be a better alternative to hubs with standard open QR skewer dropouts which had 9mm axle ends and a thin 5mm diameter skewer rod to apply the pressure to squeeze the dropouts together. This was being done on the same 100mm width dropout spacing (20mm downhill hubs used 110mm spacing) that most non DH forks used. Most actual downhill forks today are still 20mm axles, but they've largely gone to the boost hub (which sets the spoke flanges and more importantly to this discussion, the hub bearings further apart on the axle both of which combine to increase the stiffness of the wheel). Its the in-between fork types like all-mountain and longer travel trail bike forks where a brand might go 15mm instead of 20mm.
The 36 (and 40 I think) axle system is so much better than the typical 15x110 squeezy type. The legs are allow to float until the pinch-bolts are clamped, which means the legs don't get pinched in or spread out _at all_ even on a hub with terrible width tolerance.
For regular mountain bikes, as far as "standards" go which were adopted by more than a single brand... dropout spacing has been 9x100 open dropouts, 9x110 open dropout (boost), 15x100 thru-axle, 15x110 thru-axle (boost), 20x110 (non-boost), 20x110 (boost) and that's basically it for forks, and for frames we had 10x135 open dropouts, 10x141 open dropout (boost), 12x135 thru-axle, 12x142 thru axle, 12x148 thru-axle (boost), 12x150 thru-axle, 12x157 thru-axle (non boost) and 12x157 thru-axle (boost).
But its only been boost standards shaking things up recently. Its now a solid 30 years since rear hubs went 10x135 open dropouts and that is still in production and usage (as are forks/hubs for 9x100). Now as far as disc mount offsets go, fronts have had their own lateral offset different from rear hubs since about 1999 and that still holds true today. But because the first real mainstream "production" fat bikes were using rear hubs for both the frame and fork, the early fat bike forks had to adopt the rear hub disc mount offset. As the market expanded and fat-specific front hubs were being produced by more brands, makers decided to adopt the same front disc offset as other mountain bike forks used even as they were going different ways for axle interfaces.
Thus for forks we have 10x135 open rear offset, 10x135 open front offset, 15x135 thru axle front offset, 15x142 thru-axle front offset, 10x150 open front offset, 15x150 thru axle front offset. The 15x142 in particular was a Salsa pushed development for carbon rigid forks that was adopted by only a couple other brands and instantly made obsolete when Rockshox pushed out the Bluto fork with the 15x150 spacing the same year, and Salsa up and abandoned it after only one model year. For rear hubs we've had 10x135 open, 10x170 open, 10x190 open, 12x177 open, 12x197 open. Now the thing is...that all happened in only ten years.
Road bikes for a long time were 9x100 and 10x130 open dropouts and that was it... but when discs came there was a transition period where some road/cross/touring frames were being made in 10x130 and others were adopting the mountain hub standard of 10x135. Then there's been the mounts (flat mounts were a road development, although partially based on the old hayes specific 22mm flat mount in concept, they kept the wider bolt spacing similar to 74mm post mounts), and the axles we've seen 12mm thru-axles adopted in back like mountain bikes use... but for forks there's been both 15 and 12mm thru-axles and the later has emerged as the dominant standard for "road" groups because as I said in my earlier post... its "stiff enough" for the application. But there are some gravel/touring/bikepacking bikes made which rely completely on mountain group parts which still use the 15mm diameter front axles. The Salsa Fargo and Cutthroat for example both run the 15x110 boost pattern in front but in back the Cutthroat only comes 12x148 but the Fargo which has alternator dropout plates can be run 10x135 open, 12x142 thru or 12x148 thru depending on which plate set you mount.
I know many component manufacturers did not agree with the engineering rationale behind the change (there is none), but were forced to go that way because of market forces.
What is all that front & rear offset junk? isn't that part of the dropout and uses the same hub for each?
However, it is pretty gross how marketing can truly rule over engineering. OEMs are only doing 35mm in house (for no reason except that it's new and different), so aftermarket has to also make 35mm or it seems like they're forcing you to buy extra parts to upgrade or repair those OEM parts: Got a new 31.8 handlebar for that recent Trek/Spesh/whatever? Need a new stem too!
Front/rear offset junk... you had the answer already...
"as is x150 and x157 (non-boost; super boost moves the brake rotor and may not fit on x150 or x157 frames depending on the brake mounts)"
The distance the brake rotor mount flange on the hub is from the brake mount on the frame is different than for forks. How different ? 5mm more inboard. Thus you can adapt rear disc offset hubs to front offset forks (by putting a spacer behind the rotor and using longer bolts) but you cannot do the opposite.
Oh also... and I forgot to mention this earlier... the correct front open dropout 135mm standard established by Surly, Salsa, 9:Zero:7 and others is for 10mm axle ends. But some late to the fat bike party brands went with smaller 9mm diameter ends and fork openings in order to re-use/re-purpose parts from their OEM in-house part inventory/sub brands. Now the consequence to that is if you have a bike with a 10x135 fork... a 9x135 hub/wheel WILL fit, but even with a properly tightened QR skewer the wheel can twist back and forth in the dropouts. But a 10x135 wheel won't fit into a 9x135 fork without taking a file to open the dropouts out more.
And that's just the imperial measurement system.... the british currency system up to the point they fully went Metric in the 1960s would confuse the f*ck out of anyone today who aren't past the age of retirement.
Manufacturers need to start getting creative with bottle shapes. People are always complaining that such and such a frame doesn't fit a water bottle inside the front triangle. There is space, but not the right shape to fit around some suspension designs, typically the ones with the horizontal shock that meets the middle of the down tube.
There is still a large space in front of the shock and behind the head tube junction. All we need is a bike frame specific triangular bottle shape and a fidlock interface. It would look kind of like a petrol tank. A bike bottle is just a bit of blow-moulded plastic. It would be no harder to make than a round bottle. They could even include one with every bike sold that fits perfectly, and add $10 on the cost of the bike. It would only cost them an extra $1 to make.
I... Well... No, no I can't. Someone, please, help?
I'm not sure this is an overly patriotic place to put a flag.
Being able to talk so much trash without even making a point is quite impressive.
I am happy that Fidlock has found an Italian partner. Less money to the CCP. Although the Italian government is kind of getting into bed with the CCP so maybe I spoke too soon. Maybe it's a Chinese owned factory in Italy that employs only Chinese workers. That's how it can compete on price.
No "Northern Ireland" flag?
I for one am happy to see the re-unification of Ireland starts with the mtb saddle industry.
Next year I'd like to see the "United Celtic Kingdoms" saddle
One day your prints will come.
You mean like 2009 right?