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Remember when everyone got all up in arms a couple months ago cuz Specialized made a new shock for the new Stumpy that had that scary word associated with it (**proprietary**😱) and it seemed like you had to ride the bike with the shock? Well, we got to go test with Specialized for a few days to see what led them down the path of making a larger volume air shock with two-stages. And we got to ride the Stumpy with some other shocks to see what that's like. (Spoiler: the bike rides just fine with a coil or normal air shock).
Edit: Also made a forum post dedicated to SJ15/Genie for those who have questions, or own the bike and want to add info on setup, issues, solutions to issues, etc.
Would you put that shock on another bike though?
Yeah, I would. There are enough ways to manipulate the way it feels that'd it be cool to ride it on different designs. I had a Genie shock show up this week (*was not in a bottle). If/when I have other test bikes that the shock fits I'll toss it on to see what it's like.
Hel brakes pre-order is open.
Starting from £499, with alot of customisable colour options.
Don’t worry, these are made entirely in Devon, UK.
SILVER BRAKES MADE IN THE UK?!
WON'T PEOPLE THINK OF THE YORKSHIREMEN THAT ARE NOW OUT OF A JOB?
DISGUSTING
Look at you
Out flexxing in yer fancy vest.....It reminds me of my old purple quilted Roach vest (god I miss that vest)
I've been looking for this vest, and cant find it anywhere!!
Be reet wor kid
Id like to see that.
Also that would be user @FaahkEet. He first mentions every bike turning into crabs.
He's worthy of having a "King Crab" title added to his profile. All hail!
Are brakes the new component that we've realised is easy to make with a run-of-the-mill machine shop?
I expected more cranks to go with the overpopulated machined-stem-and-pedal market, especially since 5dev proved that you don't even need to make a good product to charge stupid amounts for it, but perhaps we're leapfrogging to brakes instead.
No experience, but I'd say brakes anything but simple. They are a component that gets upgraded often, which makes them interesting to the aftermarket. Everybody needs pedals, but with the way modern bikes and drivetrains are specced and sold, aftermarket cranks are a hard sell in the aftermarket as far as I've thought about things. You have to be VERY special (or chase parts built bikes) to get a sell.
What I honestly don't understand is why people buy the likes of 5DEV (okay, length is a factor here), Actofive (SignatureX, single piece crank), upcoming Lewis crank as, SignatureX at least, the machined crank is heavier and more expensive than what Sram offers in the GX Eagle spec. I get what Garbaruk (and Actofive Signature) are trying to accomplish, which makes sense, but then you have Shimano with their XT crank that is hollow forged. Plus with a bonded crank you always have the chance of delamination (Garbaruk at least bolts it together).
Is a brake really that hard to design and manufacture? It's not a super simple product but it is just an assembly of a bunch of fairly straightforward parts. It's not like a rim or a carbon frame where you need expensive tooling and a bunch of special sauce on the engineering side of things to get a functional product.
Good point on the "cranks come with bikes" statement. Shorter cranks seem like a huge thing at the moment because everyone that's talking about their short cranks online, but the percentage of people actually buying them i guess is really really small. If Shimano would offer the XT in 160 and 155 then it'd probably kill most people's interest in most of the smaller brands, but they'd also have to figure out how to communicate to buyers that their boring looking crank is actually built in a way cooler way than cutting it into shape on a mill.
Plenty of people have made carbon frames (very good ones too) in their sheds. Who has made a brake in their shed?
Have you ever seen how much a good cnc machine costs?
Fairly sure that HEL are not a "run of the mill" machine shop either... maybe go look them up.
A concert I'm sure many have is if one can have a spare battery and simply swap batteries on the go. One can't on current Wheeltop MTB RD. Also they need to use Matchmaker mount, not their own mount nobody can replace if they break one.
Is it hard? I think one account that does lurk here could answer that. That would be @CascadeComponents . Id love to see input on this. I dont know why mountain bike stems are so expensive when everyone seems to be making them. Its a dumb “I need everything matching” kind of product. But if everyone is producing brakes and the market has a lot of genuinely decent competitors and hopefully parts that are standardized, Id love that. Hopefully they would maybe be less expensive with a market that is becoming more saturated and competitive. But honestly Im kind of laughing at my self while typing this because Im just thinking about the stem market. Because it seems that will never change.
RIP the Ragley Stubbing stem from Chain Reaction. $50, low stack height, and looked pretty good.
make a brake it's easy, make one that works properly is not as there are not many in the market, if it needs constant bleeding it's not good, if you need to pull super hard on the lever to get anything at the caliper it sucks too, if there's no modulation same, also if the lever starts to rattle, wiggle, if the pistons don't move correctly and constantly need to be cleaned and lubed it's not good either.
The XT crankset is a good candidate for durability but they can still suffer from sheared spindles.
I would put Race Face Turbines above XTs for winning a durability contest. The Shimano BB is leaps and bounds better than the 30mm RF one though.
Same goes for Saint vs. Atlas cranksets.
Yeah but the cascade stem is 42.069 mm. It’s clearly superior
Brakes are challenging.
There's quite a bit of engineering involved in sealing them, and making sure they stay sealed properly, as you can have a rim crack, but break failure is totally unacceptable. So given that you need to have a 0% failure rate, it makes it quite a serious undertaking.
Rims are relatively simple, it's just that nobody has an autoclave at home large enough to bake one. But the actual design and layup isn't very complicated.
Baking a rim is the easy part. It's not even needed depending on the choice of resin. And you don't need high pressures, you can get a lot done with just vacuum (and ambient air pressure compacting things). Making the molds is the hard part. At least for rims.
Entirely true. The machined tolerance of moulds has to be very high.
But again, people make carbon bikes at home, it's just that the mould for a rim is mega expensive as it's normally one massive central piece and a bunch of interlocking rams to compress the carbon. It's just not worth it for a "cheap" part for people to make at home, compared to making a carbon frame.
I think bike performance is so high these days very few parts are "easy" to make, and certainly not a brake system.
Meh. I wanted to buy a bike yoke until I had a bunch come through the shop sagging, and still being pretty low mileage. I reset them, and the sagging came right back. No thanks.
Anyone have any info on a potential new mechanical 13-speed GRX dropping anytime soon?
612 die bremse?
612 Parts brakes (and probably their other stuff) is manufactured/machined by Radoxx in Germany. They also machine the brakes (and probably the rest of the stuff) for Intend BC as well.
How has no one posted here in four days? Is the internet broken? Is everybody alright?
https://www.instagram.com/enrouelibrepodcast/p/DDoU0UlORWf/?img_index=1
New components brand coming out tomorrow made by some great riders.
Curious what this will be about… It‘s not made by these riders but they are sponsored by them.
Cast seems like they will be offering handlebars, stems, grips, saddles and street trials tires. Also looks like there will be a new Minnaar signature grip called the Bamba according to Probikeshop insta.
Could this be a brand started by Probikeshop and am I the only one that thinks the branding looks like it‘s at least 10 years past its prime?
What's going to happen to the burgtec signature grip then?