Sunday, April 18, 2010

See Otter?

Not a typo...see?

Heh! ...anyway...what have i been liking at Sea Otter? Apart from Team Giant's kelli and carl taking the wins in the super D, the edge stuff is sweet. Tubular 29er rims at 290g each. Road wheelsets at just under a kg and a few wheels laced to industry nine hubs/spokes.



All good stuff. I want them to make a fork with a tapered steerer, though DT's new offering at mid 500g looks to join the niner fork in being hard to beat for the rigid/xc dream build.



Shimano's 10 speed - dyna sys: well it makes sense. The video below from pinkbike is worth a watch.



IF's lefty/bb30 bike is beautiful - as you might imagine.



Rock shox not only have a rumoured 140mm 29er fork, but a neat guide for hydro cables to route through the head tube. You know, for when you bust out a tail whip off that gap jump.



Remarkably simple...



Updated: rockshox 140mm reba for 29" wheels. [pic from 2TurnersNotEnough.]



Things ive scratched my chin over have included Crank Bros who continue to confound conventional wisdom by producing a stem that has not one but two wedges - one for bar, one for steerer. It will be interesting to see if it gets the ok to use on carbon steerers, and if the tolerances are up to scratch. My guess is they wont be and we're going to see the same story as with the pedals and droppable seat posts: frequent breakages and rebuilds.



[pic from bikerumor.]

Talking of which Kind shocks have some new droppable seat posts - even one in 27.2mm diameter - which as singletrack world point out, is achieved by moving the gubbins out of the post itself.



Though the larger diameter looks better.



Rumours abound of a Rockshox and an x-fusion seat post dropper....

More as it strikes me....

6 comments:

brant@shedfire said...

>I want them to make a fork with a tapered steerer,

I'll see what I can do. A friend of mine just got a new "carbon machine" as he calls it.

What length/rake were you thinking?

dRjON said...

interesting!
if i had my druthers? 465 a-c with about 50mm offset....there or there abouts....

hows the arm?

brant@shedfire said...

470 x 47 should be ok?

Might do 15mm through axle too.

Shoulder sore. Nerve damage causing sore thumb is worst bit, well apart from not riding of course.

Shaggy said...

Gutted you couldn't make it over to Sea Otter:-(

Also it's a shame the Shimano guy didn't mention the change in architecture they've got going on...

davechopoptions said...

Crank Bros QC questioned? Well I never!

davechopoptions said...

Change in architecture sounds like it's going from a 1:2 actuation, and going towards Sram's 1:1.
Can't see them doing 1:1 though as they'll be accused of ripping off Sram (though no-one ever seems to have a go at Sram for ripping off HG cassette profiles and doing a shit job of it....)