We're living in the future now. 2020. What the hell?

Aluminium frames are cool again, high pivots are too. There's a polished, readily available linkage fork on the market. Bikes made for pedalling are north of 15kg. Coil springs are on trail bikes. Shimano have the weird hub standard and the halo drivetrain. 29 is the new big thing for the second time. Transition brought about the new fork offset standard. Hans Rey is off GT. Yeti are sponsoring freeride.

What is going on? I have no idea but I feel like it's just going to get weirder.

Weirder than that? I look forward to it.

Ive allways liked the way leading link forks worked, on motorbikes. My friends 1970's 125cc euro trrail bike had leading link suspension . Under braking they extend rather than compress, good for steep downhills or heavy braking , not so good on corners though. In the 90's there was even a conversion kit for dirt bikes to make normal forks act like leading link.
They allways looked like some steampunk suspension .
Its back to the future

:-)

This one definitely doesn't extend when braking. It's somewhat more supportive under braking at the top of the travel than a normal fork but still compresses slightly. The further into the travel you go, the more anti-dive it seems to get though, and it gets very firm through the mid/end stroke.

The high speed cornering is also probably the best thing about this fork!

Weird enough for a BOD on Vital, sweet.

Figured it was guaranteed given the oddness so submitted a couple pics that I took for this:
https://nzmountainbiker.com/products-re ... mpressions

Got a review of both the frame and fork in the next issue. I've been told to stick to a ~1500 word count for bike reviews but just for the Craftworks frame I ended up at 3140. Mostly me fawning over it whoops

AgrAde wrote:We're living in the future now. 2020. What the hell?

Aluminium frames are cool again, high pivots are too. There's a polished, readily available linkage fork on the market. Bikes made for pedalling are north of 15kg. Coil springs are on trail bikes. Shimano have the weird hub standard and the halo drivetrain. 29 is the new big thing for the second time. Transition brought about the new fork offset standard. Hans Rey is off GT. Yeti are sponsoring freeride.

What is going on? I have no idea but I feel like it's just going to get weirder.

I had a short spin on one of those and I found it a lot more subtle than expected. A lot of reviews really talk up the geometry differences, but this one wasn't an extreme case at all.

Motion who made the E18 fork have just gone bankrupt......

It took me a while to get used to it, and took me a while to find a setup that got the most from it. I like it in some ways and dislike it in others. I'm not sure I'd describe it as subtle, but it's definitely not "out there".

I’m not resurrecting the old post your roadie ride thread so hopefully no dirt only fanatics get too offended by the gravel/tarmac content of this post.

I don’t think I’ve posted any of my new rides since picking up a single speed Scott Scale about three years ago (and then promptly destroying my clavicle and AC so badly I needed almost two years of rehab). Since then there have been two N+1 additions to the quiver.

1. The gravel bike. An 8bar Mitte set up with mechanical Ultegra and 8bar’s own label 60mm carbon clinchers. Came with a Brooks saddle but that squeaked like crazy and I got sick of having to dismantle it and grease the rails all the time. So recently swapped out for a nice quiet but till comfortable Fizik something. The bike is a little on the heavy side but is now my preferred go to bike as it is fast and oh so comfortable. With my new commute being 30km each way, with bits and pieces of gravel to choose from along the way, it’s the perfect daily driver.





2. The weapon of mass destruction. A Canyon Speedmax with Ultegra Di2 and a DT Swiss ARC1400 60/80mm wheelset. I have been lusting after one of these for sometime but never had a legitimate reason to buy one. But now I have set myself the goal of doing Ironman NZ next year and decided that having the right tool for the job was going to go someway towards inspiring me to stick to my training plan. Then Canyon had a sale (and with supply possibly in doubt thanks to the germs floating around the world), out came the credit card, and six days later the courier was dropping this bad boy off at home. Next stop a bike fitter and then lots of kilometres in the saddle. It looks fast... hopefully I can do it justice!

AgrAde wrote:We're living in the future now. 2020. What the hell?

Aluminium frames are cool again, high pivots are too. There's a polished, readily available linkage fork on the market. Bikes made for pedalling are north of 15kg. Coil springs are on trail bikes. Shimano have the weird hub standard and the halo drivetrain. 29 is the new big thing for the second time. Transition brought about the new fork offset standard. Hans Rey is off GT. Yeti are sponsoring freeride.

What is going on? I have no idea but I feel like it's just going to get weirder.

And Trust is goneburger.

Dougal wrote:

AgrAde wrote:We're living in the future now. 2020. What the hell?

Aluminium frames are cool again, high pivots are too. There's a polished, readily available linkage fork on the market. Bikes made for pedalling are north of 15kg. Coil springs are on trail bikes. Shimano have the weird hub standard and the halo drivetrain. 29 is the new big thing for the second time. Transition brought about the new fork offset standard. Hans Rey is off GT. Yeti are sponsoring freeride.

What is going on? I have no idea but I feel like it's just going to get weirder.

And Trust is goneburger.

Yeah, I've wondered if they launched a new company (instead of using e13 or Evil as a brand) so it could fail alone, without sinking the brand loyalty of existing business.
Not that I necessarily thought it would fail, but they knew it was going to be a tough sell.

Yeah. Investors pulled out cos of the whole covid thing. Shame I reckon, I wouldn't have bought one myself but I did like it, and it definitely had benefits that others would gel with enough to buy.

AgrAde wrote:Yeah. Investors pulled out cos of the whole covid thing. Shame I reckon, I wouldn't have bought one myself but I did like it, and it definitely had benefits that others would gel with enough to buy.

Enough to buy at twice the price of Fox / RS? I understand there are compromises with telescoping forks, but that price jump was big.

Well he did say he wouldn't buy one..

AgrAde wrote:Yeah. Investors pulled out cos of the whole covid thing. Shame I reckon, I wouldn't have bought one myself but I did like it, and it definitely had benefits that others would gel with enough to buy.

I don't think Wuhan Flu was the problem here. Selling just over 1000 forks total was the bigger deal. That's probably $1.5M total sales income.
Their tooling costs alone (two fork designs) possibly ate that. Let alone salaries, facilities, production costs, shipping, marketing etc etc.