Man, that Winice enduro bike looks awesome! How long till China does to the MTB market what they are about (doing) to do to the car market? they...
Man, that Winice enduro bike looks awesome! How long till China does to the MTB market what they are about (doing) to do to the car market? they already make the frames, they’ve just been lacking decent design. Maybe we’ll be able to afford bikes again?
Starunion MGM Looks the good too
Realistically, they aren't.
You can already order a ton of competent bikes directly from the likes of Carbonda for excellent prices, but by the time you, as a consumer, build everything up, you often don't really end up that far ahead. There's a community that likes to play around with this stuff but pure financial reasons shouldn't be the motivation. Further, those of us in the community continue to see questionable or outright baffling choices all the time well into 2025.
As soon as you add the overhead involved on getting these bikes to non-savvy consumers in a format that most of the industry can handle, you're going to be in line with many of the lower end of the DTC brands - many of which are essentially already taking Chinese frames, slapping their logos on them, and adding in the overhead involved in getting the bikes to non-savvy consumers. Examples of companies that did this include Nukeproof and Evolve - look how that worked out. Were those bikes good deals? Yeah. Were they mind-blowing, industry shattering deals? Hell no.
There's a few cool things floating around. A company has something that looks like a high pivot Nukeproof Mega, it looks amazing. So does what you posted. Da Bomb has managed to find someone making high pivot Norco Sight and Range clones, and guess what, they look really good too. But so far, no real impact on the industry.
Tube....you know like a round tube. Same as bikes were made from before molded carbon. You take a round tube and squish it a oval shape so...
Tube....you know like a round tube. Same as bikes were made from before molded carbon.
You take a round tube and squish it a oval shape so it's optimized to the loads it's going to see. A tubular structure is better suited to the forces of a crank than an I-beam.
See EEwings here. Drop the hirth joint, make them from steel, and use the available axle that everyone is using. Go with 8 bolt sram mount for rings so that there will be plenty of options and no special tool needed. They don't need to survive 30ft roof drops to flat like Profile cranks so can be a reasonable weight.
side note - CC recently updated eewings to the sram 8 bolt mount.
I noticed some silver Crankbros wheels popping up, first in Brian Cahal's video on the new Ari Ebike, now on Commencal's Instagram. Hopefully these are releasing...
I noticed some silver Crankbros wheels popping up, first in Brian Cahal's video on the new Ari Ebike, now on Commencal's Instagram. Hopefully these are releasing soon. Silver rims absolutely need to come back!
Wheelsets only or rims too? I wanted to sandblast the EX511s for my current bike 2 years ago but then there were so many problems executing that that I gave up...
Man, that Winice enduro bike looks awesome! How long till China does to the MTB market what they are about (doing) to do to the car market? they...
Man, that Winice enduro bike looks awesome! How long till China does to the MTB market what they are about (doing) to do to the car market? they already make the frames, they’ve just been lacking decent design. Maybe we’ll be able to afford bikes again?
Starunion MGM Looks the good too
How many Chinese actually ride MTB? I guess a lot more are into road cycling and if true, that shows. They are pressuring classic brands in the road market more and more, wheels are being developed left and right there.
If you're not into the scene, you can't do anything else but follow, which is what we are seeing more or less. So I'd be conservative and say it will take a while for MTB (in general) or at least longer than for the road scene...
Not going to lie, I got Lewis brakes and ran them all last season and they've been amazing. More consistent and better modulation than my Shimano...
Not going to lie, I got Lewis brakes and ran them all last season and they've been amazing. More consistent and better modulation than my Shimano brakes and more than enough power to stop my 270lb self on Squamish slabs and dh tracks throughout Alberta and BC. No leaks. No sticky pistons. Easy to bleed.
I didn't go out of my way to order them. My LBS brought a set in to check them out and I got a great deal on them to be the guinea pig and report back. You may not like them for ethical reasons, but you absolutely can't criticize them for their performance and reliability.
***edit*** - I can only speak about my experience with the brakes. I wouldn't get the 5dev cranks, let alone the Lewis or any other knockoff version.
"easy to bleed" it's just a plain lie, ok, with skills you can do everything, but a Intend brake is easy to bleed, if you need to do this: https://www.instagram.com/reel/C5lD1eUBYyl/ to remove air it's everything but easy and just bad design at this point, copy 99% and you skip the part where they put the bleed port in the best position to remove all the air?
Not going to lie, I got Lewis brakes and ran them all last season and they've been amazing. More consistent and better modulation than my Shimano...
Not going to lie, I got Lewis brakes and ran them all last season and they've been amazing. More consistent and better modulation than my Shimano brakes and more than enough power to stop my 270lb self on Squamish slabs and dh tracks throughout Alberta and BC. No leaks. No sticky pistons. Easy to bleed.
I didn't go out of my way to order them. My LBS brought a set in to check them out and I got a great deal on them to be the guinea pig and report back. You may not like them for ethical reasons, but you absolutely can't criticize them for their performance and reliability.
***edit*** - I can only speak about my experience with the brakes. I wouldn't get the 5dev cranks, let alone the Lewis or any other knockoff version.
"easy to bleed" it's just a plain lie, ok, with skills you can do everything, but a Intend brake is easy to bleed, if you need...
"easy to bleed" it's just a plain lie, ok, with skills you can do everything, but a Intend brake is easy to bleed, if you need to do this: https://www.instagram.com/reel/C5lD1eUBYyl/ to remove air it's everything but easy and just bad design at this point, copy 99% and you skip the part where they put the bleed port in the best position to remove all the air?
As someone who runs Trickstuff, Lewis, SRAM and Shimano brakes across my fleet of bikes, I would consider Lewis brakes to be on the "easier side" of bleeding. I am also very pleased with my Lewis LHT's.
Tube....you know like a round tube. Same as bikes were made from before molded carbon. You take a round tube and squish it a oval shape so...
Tube....you know like a round tube. Same as bikes were made from before molded carbon.
You take a round tube and squish it a oval shape so it's optimized to the loads it's going to see. A tubular structure is better suited to the forces of a crank than an I-beam.
See EEwings here. Drop the hirth joint, make them from steel, and use the available axle that everyone is using. Go with 8 bolt sram mount for rings so that there will be plenty of options and no special tool needed. They don't need to survive 30ft roof drops to flat like Profile cranks so can be a reasonable weight.
side note - CC recently updated eewings to the sram 8 bolt mount.
Side side note: They also updated the fixing bolt to 8mm (so no more 14mm hex) BUT it's not backwards compatible.
The CC CSR I talked to said he was on a personal mission to get them to update that to make it fit the older cranks, so give them them a call and let them know if you want that too!
Side side note: They also updated the fixing bolt to 8mm (so no more 14mm hex) BUT it's not backwards compatible.The CC CSR I talked to...
Side side note: They also updated the fixing bolt to 8mm (so no more 14mm hex) BUT it's not backwards compatible.
The CC CSR I talked to said he was on a personal mission to get them to update that to make it fit the older cranks, so give them them a call and let them know if you want that too!
Would very much like to switch both my sets of eewings from 14mm bolts to 8mm. I posted as much on their fb. I will drop them an email too I reckon.
Tube....you know like a round tube. Same as bikes were made from before molded carbon. You take a round tube and squish it a oval shape so...
Tube....you know like a round tube. Same as bikes were made from before molded carbon.
You take a round tube and squish it a oval shape so it's optimized to the loads it's going to see. A tubular structure is better suited to the forces of a crank than an I-beam.
See EEwings here. Drop the hirth joint, make them from steel, and use the available axle that everyone is using. Go with 8 bolt sram mount for rings so that there will be plenty of options and no special tool needed. They don't need to survive 30ft roof drops to flat like Profile cranks so can be a reasonable weight.
10-4, thanks for clarifying your thoughts. And yes I am aware of tubes and their use in bicycle construction. I guess I was thinking you may have meant that crank "tubes" remain cylindrical instead of being shaped because hollow "tubular" cranks have been around for a long time.
Copying the 5Dev cranks tells you everything you need to know about a company. All they care about is looks. The originals are a horrible engineering...
Copying the 5Dev cranks tells you everything you need to know about a company. All they care about is looks. The originals are a horrible engineering design.
They should have copied Came Creek EEwings. But that would require some skilled welders and not just feeding a CNC machine.
Innovation would be using ultra high strength steel from the automotive industry and make a tubular crank that uses the same axles as RF, Cannondale , FSA and all the others that use that same axle.
I'm curious about the tubular crank idea, not sure I understand exactly what you mean though (tubular crank arm?). Mind adding a little detail to that...
I'm curious about the tubular crank idea, not sure I understand exactly what you mean though (tubular crank arm?). Mind adding a little detail to that picture for me?
Tube....you know like a round tube. Same as bikes were made from before molded carbon. You take a round tube and squish it a oval shape so...
Tube....you know like a round tube. Same as bikes were made from before molded carbon.
You take a round tube and squish it a oval shape so it's optimized to the loads it's going to see. A tubular structure is better suited to the forces of a crank than an I-beam.
See EEwings here. Drop the hirth joint, make them from steel, and use the available axle that everyone is using. Go with 8 bolt sram mount for rings so that there will be plenty of options and no special tool needed. They don't need to survive 30ft roof drops to flat like Profile cranks so can be a reasonable weight.
Every 18 months I poke CC about a steel Ewing... tooling is the big issue.
I come here for the pictures of cool stuff not the endless chat about horrible looking cranks which the majority people won’t buy, can we please move on!?! we are so close to the first WC pit bits of the season I’m getting a warm fuzzy feeling in my pants
Right on cue, here's our 1st gallery from the China Cycle 2025 show which just wrapped up after 4 intensive days in Shanghai: https://www.vitalmtb.com/photos/members/china-cycle-2025-shanghai. Lots of clones of course but lots of really interesting work being done too!
Some neat stuff in here. I know Vital doesn't have the budget to send someone to China for an extended period of time, but would be interesting to have a series covering the China scene (riders, small builders, trails etc).
Right on cue, here's our 1st gallery from the China Cycle 2025 show which just wrapped up after 4 intensive days in Shanghai: https://www.vitalmtb.com/photos/members/china-cycle-2025-shanghai. Lots of clones of course but lots of really interesting work being done too!
Some neat stuff in here. I know Vital doesn't have the budget to send someone to China for an extended period of time, but would be...
Some neat stuff in here. I know Vital doesn't have the budget to send someone to China for an extended period of time, but would be interesting to have a series covering the China scene (riders, small builders, trails etc).
Would also be cool if some more info is shared regarding the products, or at least if there are websites of the manufacturers. For example, several frames are pretty interesting (ok, the high- and mid-pivot ones 😃), with bombastically-low prices, and one cannot check their details or try to buy. It’s like “see, here’s some pretty good product for an absolute bargain of a price… yeah, you can’t order, you can only watch pics!” 😅
Would very much like to switch both my sets of eewings from 14mm bolts to 8mm. I posted as much on their fb. I will drop...
Would very much like to switch both my sets of eewings from 14mm bolts to 8mm. I posted as much on their fb. I will drop them an email too I reckon.
I had the oringal eewings with the 8mm. After they’d been on for a while i came super close rounding that thing off. Made sure I used a lot of the ti prep (copper grease) on it after that. The 14mm one was much better and its not hard to find tools when you look outside of the bike world.
Would also be cool if some more info is shared regarding the products, or at least if there are websites of the manufacturers. For example, several...
Would also be cool if some more info is shared regarding the products, or at least if there are websites of the manufacturers. For example, several frames are pretty interesting (ok, the high- and mid-pivot ones 😃), with bombastically-low prices, and one cannot check their details or try to buy. It’s like “see, here’s some pretty good product for an absolute bargain of a price… yeah, you can’t order, you can only watch pics!” 😅
are you gen z? do you need help in how to use a search engine?
I had the oringal eewings with the 8mm. After they’d been on for a while i came super close rounding that thing off. Made sure I...
I had the oringal eewings with the 8mm. After they’d been on for a while i came super close rounding that thing off. Made sure I used a lot of the ti prep (copper grease) on it after that. The 14mm one was much better and its not hard to find tools when you look outside of the bike world.
The original 8mm bolt was made of titanium. Titanium bonds to the crank and is softer than steel. That is why they changed to a 14mm steel bolt. If you are interested in a 8mm steel bolt check this
I had the oringal eewings with the 8mm. After they’d been on for a while i came super close rounding that thing off. Made sure I...
I had the oringal eewings with the 8mm. After they’d been on for a while i came super close rounding that thing off. Made sure I used a lot of the ti prep (copper grease) on it after that. The 14mm one was much better and its not hard to find tools when you look outside of the bike world.
The original 8mm bolt was made of titanium. Titanium bonds to the crank and is softer than steel. That is why they changed to a 14mm...
The original 8mm bolt was made of titanium. Titanium bonds to the crank and is softer than steel. That is why they changed to a 14mm steel bolt. If you are interested in a 8mm steel bolt check this
I had the oringal eewings with the 8mm. After they’d been on for a while i came super close rounding that thing off. Made sure I...
I had the oringal eewings with the 8mm. After they’d been on for a while i came super close rounding that thing off. Made sure I used a lot of the ti prep (copper grease) on it after that. The 14mm one was much better and its not hard to find tools when you look outside of the bike world.
The original 8mm bolt was made of titanium. Titanium bonds to the crank and is softer than steel. That is why they changed to a 14mm...
The original 8mm bolt was made of titanium. Titanium bonds to the crank and is softer than steel. That is why they changed to a 14mm steel bolt. If you are interested in a 8mm steel bolt check this
Side side note: They also updated the fixing bolt to 8mm (so no more 14mm hex) BUT it's not backwards compatible.The CC CSR I talked to...
Side side note: They also updated the fixing bolt to 8mm (so no more 14mm hex) BUT it's not backwards compatible.
The CC CSR I talked to said he was on a personal mission to get them to update that to make it fit the older cranks, so give them them a call and let them know if you want that too!
The original 8mm bolt was made of titanium. Titanium bonds to the crank and is softer than steel. That is why they changed to a 14mm...
The original 8mm bolt was made of titanium. Titanium bonds to the crank and is softer than steel. That is why they changed to a 14mm steel bolt. If you are interested in a 8mm steel bolt check this
£55 gets me a whole SLX crankset with a chainring and I have £20 left for a few pints at the pub. That is a challenging value proposition for a relatively simple turned metal part. Appreciate we are talking about a part for a £1000 titanium crankset.
The steering tube is the most highly stressed component on the fork and possibly the whole bike, so adding stress risers in the form of threads...
The steering tube is the most highly stressed component on the fork and possibly the whole bike, so adding stress risers in the form of threads is a non-starter.
I think creaking can be nearly eliminated in the current design, but at the moment it comes down to the balance of increased production cost/time vs warranty cost/exposure for the big guys.
My warranty replacement Zeb CSU crown is thicker around the steerer tube and the flat area around the crown race is now wider than the headset...
My warranty replacement Zeb CSU crown is thicker around the steerer tube and the flat area around the crown race is now wider than the headset cup. Hopefully this makes it less prone to creaking, but making the interfaces taller would be way more effective as you say.
Wonder if they're using the same crown as used on their 1.8 bottom steerers. From a mfg standpoint, having one crown to rule em all makes a lotta sense financially.
£55 gets me a whole SLX crankset with a chainring and I have £20 left for a few pints at the pub. That is a challenging...
£55 gets me a whole SLX crankset with a chainring and I have £20 left for a few pints at the pub. That is a challenging value proposition for a relatively simple turned metal part. Appreciate we are talking about a part for a £1000 titanium crankset.
£1200ish now and they have a stupid 30mm spindle so you bb bearings are tiny.
My warranty replacement Zeb CSU crown is thicker around the steerer tube and the flat area around the crown race is now wider than the headset...
My warranty replacement Zeb CSU crown is thicker around the steerer tube and the flat area around the crown race is now wider than the headset cup. Hopefully this makes it less prone to creaking, but making the interfaces taller would be way more effective as you say.
Wonder if they're using the same crown as used on their 1.8 bottom steerers. From a mfg standpoint, having one crown to rule em all makes...
Wonder if they're using the same crown as used on their 1.8 bottom steerers. From a mfg standpoint, having one crown to rule em all makes a lotta sense financially.
Possibly it's the 1.8 crown forging, it's not massively different to the original one so hard to know without being able to compare. As you say, simplifying the number of crown forgings makes good sense.
Realistically, they aren't.
You can already order a ton of competent bikes directly from the likes of Carbonda for excellent prices, but by the time you, as a consumer, build everything up, you often don't really end up that far ahead. There's a community that likes to play around with this stuff but pure financial reasons shouldn't be the motivation. Further, those of us in the community continue to see questionable or outright baffling choices all the time well into 2025.
As soon as you add the overhead involved on getting these bikes to non-savvy consumers in a format that most of the industry can handle, you're going to be in line with many of the lower end of the DTC brands - many of which are essentially already taking Chinese frames, slapping their logos on them, and adding in the overhead involved in getting the bikes to non-savvy consumers. Examples of companies that did this include Nukeproof and Evolve - look how that worked out. Were those bikes good deals? Yeah. Were they mind-blowing, industry shattering deals? Hell no.
There's a few cool things floating around. A company has something that looks like a high pivot Nukeproof Mega, it looks amazing. So does what you posted. Da Bomb has managed to find someone making high pivot Norco Sight and Range clones, and guess what, they look really good too. But so far, no real impact on the industry.
side note - CC recently updated eewings to the sram 8 bolt mount.
Wheelsets only or rims too? I wanted to sandblast the EX511s for my current bike 2 years ago but then there were so many problems executing that that I gave up...
How many Chinese actually ride MTB? I guess a lot more are into road cycling and if true, that shows. They are pressuring classic brands in the road market more and more, wheels are being developed left and right there.
If you're not into the scene, you can't do anything else but follow, which is what we are seeing more or less. So I'd be conservative and say it will take a while for MTB (in general) or at least longer than for the road scene...
"easy to bleed" it's just a plain lie, ok, with skills you can do everything, but a Intend brake is easy to bleed, if you need to do this: https://www.instagram.com/reel/C5lD1eUBYyl/ to remove air it's everything but easy and just bad design at this point, copy 99% and you skip the part where they put the bleed port in the best position to remove all the air?
As someone who runs Trickstuff, Lewis, SRAM and Shimano brakes across my fleet of bikes, I would consider Lewis brakes to be on the "easier side" of bleeding. I am also very pleased with my Lewis LHT's.
Side side note: They also updated the fixing bolt to 8mm (so no more 14mm hex) BUT it's not backwards compatible.
The CC CSR I talked to said he was on a personal mission to get them to update that to make it fit the older cranks, so give them them a call and let them know if you want that too!
Would very much like to switch both my sets of eewings from 14mm bolts to 8mm. I posted as much on their fb. I will drop them an email too I reckon.
10-4, thanks for clarifying your thoughts. And yes I am aware of tubes and their use in bicycle construction. I guess I was thinking you may have meant that crank "tubes" remain cylindrical instead of being shaped because hollow "tubular" cranks have been around for a long time.
I made an adapter from a RF adapter. Used a bench grinder to turn it into 14mm(ish). https://www.raceface.com/products/tool-8-16mm-hex-adapter?srsltid=AfmBO…
Every 18 months I poke CC about a steel Ewing... tooling is the big issue.
I come here for the pictures of cool stuff not the endless chat about horrible looking cranks which the majority people won’t buy, can we please move on!?!
we are so close to the first WC pit bits of the season I’m getting a warm fuzzy feeling in my pants
Some neat stuff in here. I know Vital doesn't have the budget to send someone to China for an extended period of time, but would be interesting to have a series covering the China scene (riders, small builders, trails etc).
Would also be cool if some more info is shared regarding the products, or at least if there are websites of the manufacturers. For example, several frames are pretty interesting (ok, the high- and mid-pivot ones 😃), with bombastically-low prices, and one cannot check their details or try to buy. It’s like “see, here’s some pretty good product for an absolute bargain of a price… yeah, you can’t order, you can only watch pics!” 😅
Chinese trade shows apparently make good games of "name the knock-off"
I had the oringal eewings with the 8mm. After they’d been on for a while i came super close rounding that thing off. Made sure I used a lot of the ti prep (copper grease) on it after that. The 14mm one was much better and its not hard to find tools when you look outside of the bike world.
can anyone identify what RR has on his bike instead of an ochain? it‘s not rimpact…
Yeti Switch Infinity Chainring
Power2Max power meter.
@krabo83 It´s a power2max system, i build a few XC Bikes for a German Team and they use them too.
are you gen z? do you need help in how to use a search engine?
The original 8mm bolt was made of titanium. Titanium bonds to the crank and is softer than steel. That is why they changed to a 14mm steel bolt. If you are interested in a 8mm steel bolt check this
£85 for a bolt.
correct
Made in Zürich...
They will considered it but will not update it. They want to sell "new" cranks.
Check my bolt that is retro compatible.
£55 gets me a whole SLX crankset with a chainring and I have £20 left for a few pints at the pub. That is a challenging value proposition for a relatively simple turned metal part. Appreciate we are talking about a part for a £1000 titanium crankset.
Wonder if they're using the same crown as used on their 1.8 bottom steerers. From a mfg standpoint, having one crown to rule em all makes a lotta sense financially.
£1200ish now and they have a stupid 30mm spindle so you bb bearings are tiny.
Possibly it's the 1.8 crown forging, it's not massively different to the original one so hard to know without being able to compare. As you say, simplifying the number of crown forgings makes good sense.