The Future of DH? Trinity's Wild Gearbox-Ready, Virtual High-Pivot Bike 19

All you need to know.

sspomer
3/6/2023 8:32am
TrinityAA

It's a downhill bike. It's an enduro bike. It's a gearbox bike. It's a regular derailleur-based drivetrain bike. Learn all the details about Trinity's diverse and unique mountain bike with Mic Williams. Mic runs Williams Racing Products and is 1/3rd of the Trinity crew.

 

Interview contents

  • 0:00 - Trinity and WRP Background
  • 2:39 - Gearbox-Adaptable Trinity Design
  • 7:15 - Steel and Aluminum Frame Build
  • 9:30 - Modular Frame Flex and Compliance Tuning
  • 14:54 - Importance of Swingarm Flex
  • 17:33 - Geometry - Matching Rear-center & Reach?
  • 19:24 - Suspension Kinematics
  • 23:44 - Modular Drivetrain Design
  • 25:47 - WRP Gearbox Explained

Hit up @trinity_bikes for the deets

 

 

Related:
Downhill
Enduro
Trinty MTB
Podcast
19 comments

View replies to: The Future of DH? Trinity's Wild Gearbox-Ready, Virtual High-Pivot Bike

c50 adamfreund 1533952347
Adam_Schaeffer
1 year ago

Judging by Mic's physical build and riding skills, I'd reckon that the gen 1 'noodley' stays are probably bang-on for most of us average joes. The swappable stays opens up a lot more puzzling for riders, but its really cool to see the level of detail and adjustment they are trying to offer in a single package. It totally makes sense that a 150lb rider on mixed wheel would need a more compliant setup than a 220lb rider on full 29".

Regarding the suspension layout, Antidote rarely ever gets name-checked in the virtual high-pivot conversation, but their original Darkmatter 26" DH bike was the first frame I remember using this design. I believe the prototype was shown in 2016. The key being the brake and rear wheel mounted to the chainstay, so they float between the swingarm and the shock link. This creates a virtual floating brake effect, which is a huge improvement over single high-pivot layouts. The independence of each system on the frame (both in design and construction) is really appealing. 

c50 Ella 1615387849
Cougar797
1 year ago

Yah canfield was literally decades ahead of the virtual HP trend. Its the gear box piece of this that to me makes this bike a unicorn. Near no maintenance, better sensitivity due to lower unsprung mass, and the canfield type suspension makes this the ideal DH rig to me. What I am afraid will happen is the price will kill this idea. 6k for frame is super steep when i can buy a brand new complete jedi right now for that amount. I hope they are successful though. I'd like to have one someday when I can save the coin up. 

c50 88521480 1251936778
TEAMROBOT
1 year ago

Totally agree. There's a lot of cool things they did with that bike, but a Honda gearbox that you can buy is clearly the coolest. Did you catch if/when the derailleur-in-a-box will be available to customers or how much it might cost?

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DevlinCC
1 year ago

The problem with your comparison is that the Canfields are built out of aluminium in asian factories. While a quality product they are somewhat cheaper to produce. Building small numbers in Australia and actually get paid and make a small profit to keep the company going is a completely different ball game. Materials and machine time locally is very expensive. Maybe once they have proved the bike and they are established they could go to asia and order 500 front triangles and get the leverage of volume but thats still a very big expense up front. I can tell you from my own experience trying to do a similar thing, unless you have at least a couple hundred K you can invest in buying a few hundred units minimum, then you can't make and sell locally at a price that competes with asian production.

c50 Ella 1615387849
Cougar797
1 year ago

Oh your completely correct. And ill bet the build quality on this will probably be just as good or better then anything out of asia. That said, hoping these guys make it and make waves. 

c50 2014000203 Lance Canfield 1470338334.jpg?VersionId=hYYi7OtWSqpgdgvLx
flymybike
1 year ago

While you are correct that current Canfield Bikes are alloy and built in TW, we also started with building our own bikes in Utah by hand. Some aluminum but also steel front frames were made one by one a lot of times custom for each customer. After about 5 years doing this, it wasn't working like a business, more like a hobby. We had to make the decision to go where we could scale production so that we could focus more on design and customer relations. 

Way to go Trinity, you've got a really cool bike here and I'm stoked to see all the stoke for high pivot bikes lately. 

1
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DevlinCC
1 year ago

It's definitely not a bad thing. Canfield Bikes are top shelf quality but as you pointed out scaling up needs to be taken offshore to be price competitive and sustainable. Myself and Trinity aren't there yet as we are both still proving our bikes are worthy of a place in the market and neither of us can afford to go straight to a production company and order the many hundreds sometimes thousands minimum to be able to sell at lower prices......but that's OK too. Maybe one day we can. There are a huge amount of pieces to the puzzle, which you'd know more about than I, that affect the end product price that the consumers don't know about.

1
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DevlinCC
1 year ago

Thanks man. That's what I'm working through now. Lots of request for quotes out for 3D print, CNC and supply of materials etc. to be able to build in small volumes in a more economical way both financially and time wise. Funding is my single biggest hurdle, but I'll get there.

c50 adamfreund 1533952347
Adam_Schaeffer
1 year ago

Depends on definition. They are both virtual pivot designs, but the Canfield is a true VPP-style design (solid rear triangle, two short links) that uses an idler. Trinity is a virtual HP four bar, which is essentially a horst link system flipped upside down so the 'main' pivot is up high on the end of the seatstay, but the wheel and brake are still mounted together (now on the chainstay), which is pulling on a shock link vs a traditional horst system where the seatstay is pushing on a rocker. The independence of the floating chainstay (between shock link and swingarm) is the key difference in behavior and what it allows in design/manufacture.

c50 2014000203 Lance Canfield 1470338334.jpg?VersionId=hYYi7OtWSqpgdgvLx
flymybike
1 year ago

@TEAMROBOT At the time there where a few builders trying similar things like jack shafts and single pivots with pully wheels and also short multi link bikes like Cortina and Karpiel but I felt they all had some serious down sides. The Big Fat Fatty Fat was an attempt at solving the issues that I had with the bikes at the time, weak frames, poor kinematics with both pedaling and braking. The BF3 was really good for the first attempt but still had lots of chain stretch and pedal kick. The two that we built where retro fitted with a upper pully wheel to solve that and the difference was mind blowing. Pully wheels where designed into the Fatty Fat, Formula 1 and Jedi bikes since 2000.

1
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bizutch
1 year ago

Any time someone posts idea origins like this, I just assume that either Lawwill, Turner or BCD Racing (hi Alex) came up with it first, someone stole it...and them claimed it was moar better.  But maybe Canfield's did.  Wish my memory wasn't so far gone.

You made me go down a search engine rabbit hole.  But I climbed out when I hit this

c50 88521480 1251936778
TEAMROBOT
1 year ago

Also are the riding clips in the video Brian or Mic? Because whoever it is, they were ripping. The flat turn at the bottom of the steep chute at 4:08 was sick. Kinda hoping it was the bike designer himself putting the miles in on his bike.

1

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