DT Swiss has had high-end rims covering the lightweight XC (4.1) and heavy-duty FR/DH (6.1) bits of the market for a while. Now available is the long-awaited enduro/all-mountain/just riding around gap-filling EX5.1d. It’s a usefully wide 28mm to give fat tyres a decent shape, but keeps the weight more than acceptable at 500g per rim. It’s disc-only, but we can’t see too many people being too troubled by that. There’s also a tubeless kit available to suit the new rims.

In other DT Swiss news, it’s now producing brake pads with a special compound to work with the 4.1c ceramic-coated XC rims. And there’s a new line of more budget-oriented rims – the X450, X455 and E540. They’re all sleeve-jointed rather than welded like the 4.1/5.1/6.1 rims and the weights are generally a little higher. The numbers are the weights in grams, the X rims are XCish narrow ones in non-disc and disc flavours and the E is a wider disc-only enduro rim.

This is the latest frame from Dialled Bikes. The Love/Hate is based on the geometry of the popular Prince Albert bikes, but optimised for a 100mm travel fork rather than a 130mm one. The main attraction, though, is the Phil Wood eccentric bottom bracket that makes this a singlespeedable frame. You don’t have to run one gear, though – it’s got a derailleur hanger too. They’ll be £255, although there’s a pre-order deal that’ll get you the frame, EBB, Dialled Bikes Pablo Esco bars, Salsa QR seat clamp and delivery for £220. There’ll almost certainly be a choice of colours, and we’re hoping that this olive green will be one of them. There’ll be three sizes, all made from steel-type metal.

We were quite taken by the Cycloc bike storage gizmo when we saw it at London’s Cycle show last year. It’s a cunning moulded plastic spiral hook thing – attach it to a convenient wall, pop the top tube in there and gravity does the rest. Got a sloping top tube? No problem, just rotate the Cycloc to suit. There’s a hole for a lock and you can stash gloves and lights and things inside. It’s available in four colours including a recycled version and costs £49.95. The press release contains a number of quotes from various bits of the media, of which our favourite is: “Cycloc is a nifty accessory for storing bicycles above the ground.” No arguments there – it’s clearly more convenient than burying your bike…

Reborn clothing company Swobo is back in the UK thanks to Stif in Leeds, who have the full range in stock. A few carefully-selected items are also available from on-line women’s clothing retailer minx-girl.com. There’s an extensive range, but Swobo was always best known for its wool jerseys so you won’t be surprised to find that said sheepy garments figure largely in the range. This “Bubblegum Pink” one is made from Merino Advanced Performance Program wool, apparently the “gold standard for athletic wool”. Catching those sheep must be a challenge, but we digress. It’ll have all the usual Merino attributes of great feel, temperature control and breathability. The slight downside is that it’s £80, but there are plenty of Swobo jerseys still being used after a decade.

Also in the clothing line is Chrome, “a domestic bag and clothing manufacturer”. Obviously they’re only domestic in the place where the press release was written, and not necessarily where it ended up – last time we checked San Francisco wasn’t anywhere near Somerset. Anyway, Chrome is best known for bags, but also does clothing and has a new line of “urban technical” garb. The first two items are a riding jacket and these 3/4-length messenger-style semi-trousers. The Shins are made from breathable and water-repellent stretch fabric with articulated knees and zippered cargo pockets. They’re cut for pedalling but not so dramatically that they look weird standing up.

Want to ride the same tyres as a World Champion? Julien Absalon won the XC World Champs in 2005 on a pair of all-new Michelin tyres, and now they’re available to the public. This is the XCR Dry², designed (as the name and appearance suggest) for dry, smooth terrain. It’s part of Michelin’s Expert range, and uses the company’s Dual Compount technology – hard rubber on the inside and soft on the outside. The tread pattern combines small, closely-spaced blocks in the centre of the tread for fast rolling in a straight line with larger ones on the shoulders for cornering grip. It’s all built on a supple and puncture resistant 127tpi casing. There’s two versions, a 485g tubed one and a 685g tubeless model.

Another week, another new brand being brought into the country by Transition Bikes UK. These sturdy-looking singlespeed gubbinses are the work of Rennen Design Group. The tensioner is called the Rollenlager. It rather cunningly mounts to both the end of the hub axle (QR or bolt-on) and the otherwise-redundant derailleur hanger, providing a solid mount. The arm is machined from 1/4in 6061-T6 aluminium sheet and carries a moulded urethane roller running on two cartridge bearings. It’ll work with MTB or BMX chains.

The other thing is the Rennen Single Cog Spacer. You might think that there’s little innovation to be had in the sphere of spacers to run a single sprocket on a multi-speed freehub, but think again. The Rennen spacer has a threaded coupler on each side of the sprocket, so you can adjust your chainline by threading down one side and expanding the other. Then lock it all down with the supplied lockring.

More information at Transition UK or Rennen Design Group.

It’s become something of a cliché to comment that downhill bikes look like motorbikes without engines. But here’s something that turns the tables by being a motorbike that resembles a downhill bike with an engine. The FX Bikes Adventure is a “super lightweight, high performance off-road motorbike”. 55kg (110lb) might sound pretty heavy, but by motorbike standards it’s very light – less than half the weight of a typical 250cc MX bike. And that’s the chromoly version – there’s a titanium one too that comes in just under 100lb. The manufacturer says that you can carry it on a car using an MTB rack, although we wouldn’t try carrying two… It’ll come in 50, 90 or 125cc capacities. And yes, those are mountain bike forks, brakes and wheels. It’s an interesting idea, although it’s probably also the trailbuilder’s worst nightmare, particularly as the press release points out that it’s light enough to lift over fences. More at www.fxbikes.com.

Silverfish, importers of lots of nice things, has added Intense Tire Systems to its portfolio. Lots of top racers use Intense tyres (Nathan Rennie, Chris Kovarik, Sabrina Jonnier etc), and tyres are one of those areas where the sponsor’s product is occasionally surreptitiously swapped out for something the rider likes, so the fact that Intense tyres actually get used must mean something. The whole range will be coming to the UK (that’s a 909EX in the picture) including a UK-specific line of FRO (For Racing Only) LITE tyres, combining Intense’s “Super Sticky” rubber compounds with a lightweight casing. There’s tyres for all occasions in the range. Prices run from £26.95 for the XC tyres up to £37.95 for the poshest DH race tyres, with various others in between. See the whole range at www.intensetires.com and UK-specific information at www.silverfish-uk.com.

The next title in the popular Vertebrate Graphics MTB route guide catalogue is White Peak Mountain Biking: The Pure Trails, by Jon Barton, who also did the Dark Peak volume. It contains 26 routes in the less well-known southern half of the Peak District, swapping the gritstone, rocks and moorland of the Dark Peak for limestone, woods and singletrack. As well as the routes, there are lists of the top downhills, climbs and singletrack plus a “Family Rides” section. We expect that the design and layout will be every bit as good as Vertebrate’s other excellent books – this one’s due out in late February. It’ll be £14.95, although there’s a £2 discount for orders before 20 February. Take a look at www.v-graphics.co.uk.

FSA has a couple of new Mega-Exo outboard-bearing cranks. This is the £159.95 Afterburner, with two-piece crank/spider and machined rings. Not spendy enough? There’s also the Carbon Pro Team Issue with carbon fibre arms and a £359.95 price tag.

The Atomlab hub range has got a little bit bigger with this 150mm wide model for owners of big bouncy bikes. More normal sizes are also available.

This is a BLT Ozone LED headlamp. It’s available in two versions, the 1W 9ine and 0.5W 5ine (no, we don’t know how to pronounce that). Both are lightweight, self-contained and funky-looking. BLT also has a range of somewhat eye-searing rear lights in a variety of designs.

In a hurry to break in your Brooks saddle? Fear not – you can now get your classic leather perch in pre-softened form thanks to a new process that simulates a solid year of riding. And no, they don’t just give it to someone to use for a year and then package it up, it’s cleverer than that. We’ll have a closer look at Brooks soon – it’s got some very cool retro gear.

Berghaus

The Berghaus bike range is diversifying for 2006. As well as the current range of waterproof jackets, there’ll be superlight “high intensity” wind/showerproof jackets, short-sleeved jerseys and shorts in both baggy and Lycra flavours.

The jerseys come in men’s and women’s designs and a choice of colours. There’s two cuts, a slimmer, racier one with traditional rear pockets and a looser, more casual one without pockets. Baggy shorts also come in men’s and women’s versions and have a built-in liner with contoured anti-bacterial chammy. If you want to be more aero, Berghaus is doing distinctive eight-panel Lycra shorts with heavy-duty fabric in the outside panels.

The jacket is a cunning dual-purpose design. Plenty of jackets have detachable sleeves, converting them into gilets, but the Berghaus offering lets you zip off both sleeves and most of the back. You’re left with a mesh-backed gilet with a windproof front. Neat.

Kinesis

A couple of new items from Kinesis. The frame is the latest incarnation of the popular Maxlight XC Pro. The XC Pro 2 has hydroformed Kinesium tubes and a carbon fibre wishbone seatstay. It’s designed for 90-100mm travel forks plugged into a zero-stack head tube. Three colours, four sizes, five-year guarantee and £399.

If you’ve ever thought that there aren’t enough rigid carbon fibre forks on the market, then fear not – there’ll soon be another one. This is the Kinesis Xmax fork, designed to replace a 100mm travel suspension unit. Carbon blades are bonded into aluminium crown and dropouts. There’s an IS disc mount and optional clamp-on V-brake bosses, plus a hose guide on the back of the left leg. Claimed weight is 700g and the Xmax will cost £139.95.

A stack of Coves – from the top we have the revised Handjob in Columbus chromoly. The geometry has been tweaked for a 130mm travel fork and there’s a choice of seven colours (although we’re not sure how many Chocolate Browns we’ll see).

Next is the Litespeed-built Hummer titanium frame. Again, the geometry’s been refined for longer forks and it’s sprouted a gusset under the down tube/head tube junction. £1,399 and any colour you like as long as its raw titanium. Which is as it should be.

The blue frame sneaking out of the edges of the frame is the Sanchez, a 4130 chromoly dirt jump/street frame. Singlespeed-ready horizontal dropouts, 24in wheel compatible, lots of metal, not much money (£250).

Easton‘s wheelsets have touched down in the UK. There’s two versions. The AM Havoc is the all-mountain/freeride package, with a 28mm rim and straight-pull DT spokes. The front hub can be converted from 9mm QR to 20mm through-axle without tools, and the whole package weighs a claimed 1,875g. The lightweight XC One wheelset weighs 1,590g with 23mm rims and 24 spokes. Both versions will cost £500 a pair.

DMR

A couple of new things from DMR. First we have the Extype chromoly crankset. At first glance this looks like the two-piece chromoly cranks that have been around for ever and a day, but the Extype is compatible with standard outboard-bearing MTB bottom brackets from Shimano, Race Face, FSA or whoever. Which makes them about 400 times easier to fit than the old-style chromoly jobbers that always took lots of fiddling with spacers and swearing to get right.

Also filed under “beefy” is the splendid Trailblade 2 rigid fork. It’s a hefty 4130 chromoly unit designed for, well, landing on. You get a choice of three versions for standard 9mm MTB axles, 14mm BMX axles or, as shown here, a 20mm through-axle. The Trailblade is the same length as a 100mm travel suspension fork and costs between £79.95 and £149.95 depending on version.

Looking for bike cleaner? Two rival brands of apparently chrome/anodising/paint/decals/disc brakes/plastic-friendly degreasers. This is Fenwick’s, notable for availability in two concentrations and pleasing retro branding…

…and this is Fuchs Wash-Off (they’ve rebranded it since these bottles were printed…) from the mighty Silkolene empire (although actually it’s the other way around, as Fuchs owns Silkolene. As well as all the usual cleaning prowess, the main USP of this one is that it’s not pink.

Fi’zi:k

The punctuation-challenged Fi’zi:k has a selection of new seats. In the top picture we have the all-new Nisene. The original Nisene was Fi’zi:k’s first MTB saddle, and the new one retains a familiar profile while adding a longer tail, Wingflex sides and two toppings – if you want a bit more squish you can choose a CP model with extra gel. There’s also a pop-out bit at the back that lets you clip on a custom seatpack or, coming soon, tail light. The white seat is the Freek freeride saddle, complete with handhold under the nose, non-puncturing turned rail ends and arse-saving flexible top. At the other end of the scale is the all-carbon Arione (bottom picture) which not only has a carbon fibre hull but has carbon fibre rails too…

Hope

We saw Hope‘s Pro 2 hubs this time last year, but they’re now actually in production. From left to right we have a 150mm DH/freeride model, singlespeed cassette hub, 12mm through-axle rear hub, standard QR rear hub, Maverick-compatible 24mm front hub, 20mm front hub and QR front hub. All the front hubs are the same shell and bearings with different end bits and the 12 and 10mm rear hubs are mostly the same too, leaving just the 150mm and singlespeed options as unique items. The useful thing about this is that, for the most part, you can change from one kind of wheel mounting to another without having to get new hubs and rebuild wheels.

Also imminent from Hope is a new seatpost. Just as it originally only made hubs because it needed something to fix a brake rotor to, the Hope stem came about because the company’s Vision light project attached to a stem. And once you’ve got a stem in the range you need a seatpost. This prototype is claimed to weigh 225g, which isn’t too shabby.

Hydrapak is entering the freeride hydration pack market. What’s a freeride hydration pack? It’s a hydration pack that you can carry a full-face helmet and pads in or on. The Hydrapak offering has a combination of chin-guard straps and a bungee web for the former and side pouches and straps for the latter. It’s robustly constructed, with a semi-rigid outer panel.

Formula‘s Oro brake has been around for a while now, but there are a couple of new variants for 2006. The original Oro is now known as the Oro K24 and sits in the middle of the range. Below it is the K18, essentially the same brake (ambidextrous levers, choice of 160, 180 or 200mm rotors, compact caliper) but without the K24′s neat bite-point adjuster and in black rather than silver. You save about twenty quid per brake, though. If you want to go posh, the Oro Puro adds a carbon fibre lever blade, Kevlar braided hose and titanium hardware into the mix. You’re looking at the best part of £200 for one of those.

The Veleno is the latest helmet from MET. It’s a mid-range (£59.99) lid, with in-moulded construction, 20 vents, MET’s Safe-T X retention system, a choice of colours and two sizes. The larger of bonce will want to look at the Predatore, which is essentially the same helmet (although with a slightly different retention system) but in an extra-large 61-64cm size.

Creek2Peak‘s latest commuter-friendly baggage has concealed left- or right-handed pannier fittings, can be carried as a shoulder bag, opens out completely for crumple-free carriage of smart clothing, has an organiser pocket and comes complete with a separate padded laptop bag. Just the thing for the urban riding professional.

A very neat idea from Muc-Off – this new chain cleaner attaches to the top of a can of degreaser and has a spring-loaded trigger action. Just align it with the chain, pull the trigger, squeeze and spin. If you’re really keen, get another one and attach it to a can of lube for afters…

X-Lite also has a new seatpost. The Tech 390 hits the scales at 224g and uses a 7075 aluminium shaft and simple clamp in a choice of anodised colours.

Newton is Fisher’s tool range, and as well as workshoppy stuff like long ball-ended Allen keys in a big case, there are various trail tools too. This is the Tool-Box 8, a folding mini-socket-set affair with interchangeable bits offering Allen keys, Philips screwdriver and a Torx bit for those pesky rotor bolts.

Another neat commuting accessory. Nitezone‘s Redeye is a bar-end LED (or a pair thereof – you get one unit for each end of your bars). It’s available in flat or drop bar flavours and offers various flashing modes as well as a steady one.

Schwalbe‘s Racing Ralph tyre is a popular and successful tread, having won every round of the National XC series and been on the bike of the first man home at various enduro events. For those who want something a little chunkier than the fast-rolling Ralph, Schwalbe now has the Nobby Nic. It’s a triple-compound tyre, with the center and side knobbles using different compounds over a third compound across the width of the tyre. You can choose from 1.8, 2.1, 2.25 or 2.4 sizes, so there should be something to suit nearly everyone.

This is Powerplay‘s Force Pro clipless pedal. It’s compatible with Shimano cleats, at 295g/pr it’s certainly competitive on weight and it’s got a pleasingly open design that should cope well with mud. And it’s only £44.99, which can’t be bad. Powerplay has a bunch of other pedals too, including the rather funky X-Play flattie.

Smart lights have, up until now, been known primarily for inexpensive offerings, but it’s upping the ante with its first foray into HID lights. The Smart HID is a very tidy bit of kit, housing the lamp, electronics and battery in one quick-release bar mounted unit. That’s great for commuters who have to leave their bikes lying around – just pop the whole thing off and drop it in your bag or pocket. The battery slides out and drops into a docking-station style charger. Once charged you’ll get a claimed three hours on low beam and two and half on high. The light unit and battery weighs 417g, which isn’t at all shabby. It’s a penny under three hundred quid, which in today’s light market somehow manages not to look bad in the value stakes.

As if one innovative light wasn’t enough, Smart also has this rather cunning LED commuting light. Plenty of people are stuck in offices with all of the mains outlets hidden under the floor, but with this light that’s no problem – plug it into a spare USB port on your PC and it’ll charge itself up from that. Neat.

Fisher’s biggest line is, of course, the increasingly-mighty SRAM empire. We’ve seen X.0 and new RockShox stuff already, and very lovely it all looks. More mundanely, the latest generation of SRAM cassettes feature aluminium spiders on the PG-990 and PG-980 models for super low weight and improved shifting. The 980 is claimed to be a huge 100g lighter than the equivalent Shimano cassette…

Fed up of having shins? These Moto-X pedals are the first product from new UK company Law. They’ve been in development for three years, apparently, and the results feature a CNCed, anodised and laser-etched 6061-T6 concave aluminium body, replaceable stainless steel traction plates and pins, dual cartridge and needle bearings and stainless steel axles. Not cheap at £99, but they have a five-year guarantee. Find out more at www.lawcycling.com.

Standard MTB history has it that the first mass-produced MTB was the Specialized Stumpjumper, launched in 1981. Mental arithmetic enthusiasts will note that that was 25 years ago this year, and to celebrate Specialized has published a commemorative 128-page hardback book entitled “Stumpjumper: 25 Years of Mountain Biking”. It actually goes back rather further than that, kicking off with the really early stuff (including airborne Frenchmen in the 60s) before getting into Stumpy and Specialized history. There’s loads of good stuff in there – not just the bikes, but the riders, including ordinary MTBers that you’ve never heard of. The book has been written by Mark Riedy, formerly of Bicycling Magazine. It’ll be available from Specialized dealers soon, priced at £19.99, or £9.99 if you own a Stumpjumper…

This curious-looking device is the Jackknife, latest in a string of concept bikes from Cannondale. It’s the result of a design contest amongst students of transport design at the Elisava Design School in Barcelona. The goal was to “design a futuristic urban bike targeting a consumer age group of between 20-35 years of age” that “had to communicate dynamism and efficiency whilst also employing a high degree of practicality”. The Jackknife is the work of Dutchman Phillippe Holthuizen and Spaniard Rodrigo Clavel. It’s got a Lefty fork, integrated light and concealed hydraulic drive system. It also folds by pivoting in the middle (roughly where the ‘d’ in ‘Cannondale’ is) to put the front wheel next to the rear one. Don’t expect to see it in production any time soon…

UK bike brand Ridgeback has joined the 29er movement, but it’s pitching the big-wheeled MTBs at a slightly different market to most. The three-bike range is “aimed at adventurous leisure riders who don’t want to be categorized”, or to put it another way, those riders looking for something to do a bit of fairly straightforward off-roading, a bit of towpath bashing and so on who’d usually buy a budget 26in MTB because it looks stouter than a hybrid bike but would then find it a bit of a chore on the road. While most 29er manufacturers are trying to persuade us that their bikes are just as agile and lively as a 26in bike, Ridgeback uses “a more stable feel” as a selling point, which for the target market, it is. The range is called Dual Track (as opposed to singletrack, see?) and features three bikes. Pictured is the £799 Pursuit, with a Manitou Empire Elite fork and mostly Deore components. There’s also the £549 Quest and £369 Advance. Find out more at www.ridgeback.co.uk.

After show appearances last year, Pace‘s all-new RC303 long-travel hardtail frame. It’s described as “not a jump frame but sturdy enough to tackle big terrain”, which is an increasingly popular niche. Despite its chunky appearance, a medium 303 frame is claimed to weigh 1.95kg (4.3lb) which isn’t too shabby. It’s built from custom-butted 6066-T6 aluminium and sports a semi-integrated headset to help keep the front end fairly low. The 303 is designed for a 130mm travel fork, will take 2.5in tyres, is available in three sizes and a choice of silver or black. We’re looking forward to having a go on one – in the meantime, take a look at www.pacecycles.com for more details.

SIC is a new name to these shores. It stands for Super Innovative Concepts and the company is probably best known for its line of Aaron Chase signature components. There’s an extensive range of bars and stems (plus some very tidy oversized-to-normal-sized bar shims that are shaped to integrate with the stem) with interesting-looking projects like these SIC-ness cranks in the pipeline. All the SIC stuff that actually exists is now available through the increasingly-prolific Transition Bikes UK – see the gear at Transition UK’s site or have a look at www.sicusa.com.

You probably associate the Silva name with compasses, but it does lots of other outdoorsy stuff too. Just launched is the L Series of headtorches, which are being pitched as ideal mountain biking helmet lamps. The flagship is the L1, which uses a 3W Luxeon LED (as used in Exposure, Solidlights, Cateye and other LED bike lights) with a claimed range of 60m. The L1 has four power modes (Power Save, Bright, Ultra Bright and Blinking Alert) with a claimed run time of 200 hours from four AA batteries. We assume that that’s not 200 hours of Ultra Bright… The L1 will cost £69.95. For thirty quid less there’s the L2, with the same construction and same lamp but running from two batteries and therefore running for about half the time. There are also lights using conventional LEDs. The L3 has similar styling to the 1 and 2 but uses five white LEDs and one red one. Again, you get a bunch of modes, run time is up to 150 hours and the price is £29.95. The entry-level L4 is in the traditional LEDs-in-a-row, integrated-battery mould – more of a campsite or trailside repair light than one for seeing the trail. But it’s only 82g and twenty quid. More details from www.silva.co.uk.

Cove‘s G-Spot frame isn’t new by the conventional definition, but this one’s a new colour and as such has been admitted into the hallowed Incoming halls. UK distributors Silverfish now have stocks of G-Spots in Pixie Blue and Chocolate Brown, which sounds a bit 1970s British Leyland but you never know, could look good. Pixie Blue’s certainly a winner. Various other colours are also available and they each cost £1,395. Which of course includes the six-inch travel metal bit inside the paint. More details from Silverfish.

Not content with producing largely conventionally-shaped titanium hardtails, Pipedream Cycles can now satisfy all your retro-styled singlespeed cruiser needs. There are two frames on offer, both blending cruiser styling with contemporary geometry. The one in the picture is the Monomania, with full-on classic cruiser swoopiness. There’s also the Modro, which has a normal straight downtube and curved top tube and seatstays. Both bikes have eccentric bottom brackets to tension the chain, vertical dropouts and disc mounts. The Modro also has a derailleur hanger so you can run it with gears if you so with. Both frames are £949 as standard, although as usual with Pipedream various options are available (some of which may actually make them cheaper – you can have track ends and a conventional BB shell if you like). More at www.pipedreamcycles.com.

German fork and brake manufacturer Magura has launched a range of products of interest to those with a green fetish. Their HS33 rim brake, the Louise disc brake and the Asgard fork have just been released in a very fetching green. They’re limited edition, so just 1000 HS33’s, 800 Loiuse’s and 400 Asgard’s will be released.

Not happy with just making forks and disc brakes, they’re also branching out into the clothing market. Their winter range includes a Windtex jacket with strikingly bold black and yellow Magura artwork. There’s also similiarly fetching gillet, and more sublte fleece bodywarmer and some ¾ bib shorts. Visit the Magura website.

Co-inciding with the launch of the new skills loop at Hamsterley Forest, County Durham, the Beyond Hamsterley guide book details 23 graded routes in the local area. Each of the OS routes with full instructions is printed on sturdy card, all ring-binded together, so you don’t have to take the whole lot with you, just the one you need for your particular ride. The book’s available from the Beyond Hamsterley website and selected bike shops, book shops and tourist information centres for £12.95. Visit their webite to buy a copy.

For a custom finished frame, built by people with a passion for riding, check out the 2006 range of hard tails from Dekerf Cycles. Dekerf are preparing to launch their website in the UK which will feature their massive range of hand-built, custom frames.

Uniting two passions, building things by hand and riding bicycles, Dekerf say “We believe there is no substitute for gaining appreciation for what our customers want in a bike frame, than by passionately riding one ourselves.”

Each Dekerf frame is made in their Vancouver factory. Right from cutting the tubes, to applying the paint, and putting them in a shipping box, customers are promised an innovative product with great attention to detail. So if you’re looking for that unique touch, keep an eye out for the new Dekerf website.

Bolt through axle’s on forks are getting more popular, but some systems though are a faff: the Hartlett QR offers the security of a bolt-through with the genuine simplicity and speed of a traditional quick release axle. It’s quite an ingenious design; the axle slides through the dropouts, rotates and fixes via a bayonet fixing and sliding engagement cap – no tools required.

The guys behind the design, Nick and Charlie have been testing it for the last 12 months and are now looking to begin manufacturing it. Interested? Give them a call on 07855 859572, email charlieandnick@hartlett.co.uk or visit their website www.hartlett.co.uk.

The makers of the Ergomo say that “it’s the first single system [to] provide the cyclist with all the important data necessary to optimise his/her performance.” That’s all the usual stuff – heart rate, speed, distance, cadence, altitude – plus power output in Watts. Measuring rider power isn’t new, but the Ergomo puts a new twist on it by using a sensor built in to the bottom bracket. That means that you don’t need special cranks or a new rear wheel. It’s also measuring the power output as close to the source as it can, so the readings aren’t subject to the whims of your transmission. It’s claimed to add just 100g to the weight of your bike. The HRM gubbinses is compatible with Polar coded transmitters and will also work with transmitters from other manufacturers. The computer itself has a huge screen and enough memory to store up to 340 hours of training data. That’s at 30-second sampling intervals – if you need more granularity you can adjust that all the way down to one second, giving you eight hours of storage. It can be used with up to 99 different bikes, is firmware-upgradeable and comes with ergoRacer training software. And the price? You might want to sit down for this bit – the complete system is £1,090. If you want to put the BB sensor in another bike, it’s £599. You’re going to have to be pretty serious about your training (or a coach), but if that’s you, visit www.ergomo.net.

Looking for a combined pair of sunglasses and MP3 player? Oakley‘s Thump has been the only game in town since its launch, but now there’s a new offering from, er, Oakley again. This is Thump 2, which packs a music player and earphones into Oakley’s Gascan eyewear. The result is chunky but a lot tidier-looking than the original Thump. You can also get more tunes on it – maximum storage capacity is 1Gb (or 240ish songs), with cheaper 512 and 256Mb models also available. It hooks up to your Mac or PC via USB, is available in black or white and weighs just 50g. The music player runs from an internal li-ion battery giving up to six hours of continous tunage. The glasses themselves have all the usual Oakley features – XYZ Optics®, Plutonite® lens material and Iridium® lens coatings. The 256Mb version is £199, rising to £299 for the 1Gb model. Call 01462 475400 to find you nearest stockist.

We saw this internal brake prototype being waved around at the recent London Cycle Show by creator Dave Houghton. Rather than the boringly conventional method of mounting a caliper to the fork leg and a rotor to the end of the hub, Dave’s moved the whole ensemble into the middle of the wheel. The hub is split, with that black metal cage arrangement joining the two halves together. The rotor mounts to the inside of one half while the caliper mount clamps around the bit of exposed axle between the two halves. The hose routes through the end of the hub. The advantages are more even fork loading under hard braking and less risk of rotor damage. It’s an interesting idea, we’ll keep you posted…

Yes, that’s a Santa Cruz VP-Free and no, it’s not new. It appears here to accompany news of lower Santa Cruz prices for 2006 – the VP-Free frame has seen a considerable price cut, with a powder-coated one with a 5th Element shock now costing £1,449 rather than £1699. That’s a whole £250 cheaper. All the single-pivot frames have had another fifty quid knocked off, so Superlights, Julianas and Hecklers are now £849 (powdercoat/Float R). And the V10 drops a hundred notes to come in just under £2,000 at, er, £1,999.

SC’s range of complete bikes has also been expanded. As well as the existing Superlight and Jackal packages, you’ll be able to get a Heckler Mountain (£1,949 with LX groupset, Avid Juicy 5 brakes and RockShox Revelation 409 fork) or a Chameleon Trail (£1,349 with a Deore disc groupset, Race Face bits and a Revelation fork). In other changes, there’ll be no more Trans Blue, Apple Green, Navy Grey or red colour options, but in come Liquid Blue and Black Chrome. DHX Air shocks will also be available on Blur LT and 4X, Heckler and VP-Free frames, the build kits have more SRAM in them and there’s a new All Mountain kit with beefier wheels and brakes.

Find out more at www.santacruzbikes.co.uk.

We know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “That’s just a water bottle”. Well, yes it is, but it has hidden depths. The Hydropal is fitted with a filter in the top that sifts out various chemicals. It’s mainly intended for filtering tap water, but it’ll also trap Giardia and Cryptosporidium so it’s of some use out and about. It won’t do anything about viruses or bacteria, though. The Hydropal is £14.99 and the replaceable filter is claimed to last for up to 250 refills. For stockist information Hi Gear on 0208 847 4422

This lovely-looking device is Charge Bikes‘s Duster Ti. Like its 853 brother, geometry is classic 71/73 XC, corrected for a 100mm travel fork. And like the Blender Ti jump/slalom bike it’s built from Tange double-butted titanium tubing. Did we mention that it looks lovely? Because it does. The frame’ll set you back a grand – test soon, have a look at www.chargebikes.com for more details.

This isn’t technically a bit of mountain biking gear, but The North Face‘s Nuptse down jacket is a campsite favourite so we reckon the new limited edition Quantum Nuptse is worth a mention. It’s a super-light version of the jacket, made of 15 dernier ripstop Pertex and 900 fill power down from “a limited number of Hungarian Grey geese”, it says here. 900 fill power means that 1oz of down will fill a volume of 900 cubic inches, which is pretty impressive. Apparently it’s “extremely difficult to obtain”. Well, you know how aggressive geese can be, and that’s before you start trying to relieve them of their underfeathers… A medium Quantum Nuptse weighs 623g and will cost £200 – you’ll have to be quick, though, only 585 of them will be available across the UK.
For stockist information telephone 01539 738882 or visit www.thenorthface.com.

Simtra Bikes are only available in their native Canada at the moment, but we present them to UK readers because, well, they look nice. Cycles Simtra is a Canadian distribution outfit, and Simtra Bikes is its first foray into producing its own bikes and components. The frame range is unashamedly street/trials oriented. The grey frame is the 4130 chromoly Psycho. The USP here is the 8mm thick dropouts that let you run either a 135x10mm MTB hub or a 110x14mm BMX hub. If you prefer some chunky aluminium then there’s the B’n'B (aka Bruised’n'Battered) 7005 street frame. It’s described as having a “trialsy feel” – the geometry is steep for doing all that tricksy trialsy stuff rather than geared towards just hucking off everything in sight. If that’s not trialsy enough, there’s also the ST-1, a pure trials frame.

You never know, someone might start bringing this stuff into the UK at some point. Until then, have a look at www.simtrabikes.com (warning: microscopic navigation).

Moving on to Canadian stuff that you can buy in the UK, eNVy gear is now available from Rolf’s Pukka Parts. Apparently eNVy (that’s North Vancouver, geddit?) is the number one chainring supplier in Canada. And the Canadians eat chainrings, probably with maple syrup on top. But we digress. The ring range encompasses DH/singlespeed rings and ramped ones in FR, XC and even road flavours. Plus there are bashguards (including an XC bash that fits outside a 42T ring), chainguides, stems and various other bits and bobs. Check it all out at www.envygear.com and track down UK suppliers at www.rolfspukkaparts.com.

Another week, another missive from the hyperactive UK wing of Transition Bikes. First up is the Transition jersey, which will be worn throughout 2006 by Transition riders Ryan Baker, Greg Bowles and Elbry Sandland, and also by anyone who’s willing to stump of £35 for one. In hardware-related news, January will see the introduction of a UK special edition complete hardtail, built around a Vagrant frame with XT transmission, Hope M4 brakes, Hope/Mavic/Maxxis rolling stock, Thomson bits and Fox 36 or Manitou Travis forks for some as-yet undecided sum of money. On the subject of Fox, Fox shocks will shortly be available on the DirtBag, Gran Mal and Preston FR, and there’ll be frame/Fox fork packages too. More at www.transitionbikes.com.

All manner of new things from Transition Bikes – as well as revised DirtBag and Preston FR frames and a redesigned Trail-or-Park hardtail, there’s a new component range and two completely new frames. The Gran Mal and Vagrant should arrive in January. The Gram Mal offers up to 222mm (8.7in) of travel from a 3in stroke shock, but you can run different length shocks to get different amounts of travel and play with the BB height and head angle to get it just how you like it. The Vagrant, meanwhile, is a freeride hardtail – 6.3lb of aluminium metal, 1.5in headtube, all that stuff. There’ll be a choice of three sizes, and it’s designed to let you run the seat high enough to get to the top of your chosen gnarliness by means of pedalling. More details (including the component stuff) at uk.transitionbikes.com.

Maker of all things reflective Respro has a couple of new offerings. Pictured is the Hump rucksack cover – you just stretch it over your pack and let it ward off errant motorists with its extravagant dayglo powers. Obviously it’s aimed at commuters and the like, although the waterproof version is, um, waterproof so it acts as a rain cover too which may prove useful on a Welsh hillside. It’s been known to rain there, after all. The Hump is £24.99 for the waterproof one and £19.99 for the “original”. Respro’s also doing bright reflective waistcoaty things in kids’ sizes for some added visibility on the school run. More at www.respro.com.

Now this is a cool gadget. The Dirtworker is a self-contained, portable, 12V jet washer. It’s described as, er, a “recreational pressure washer” – we’re not too sure that we want to know too much about recreational pressure washer usage, so we’ll move swiftly on. It’s a 41x20x35cm yellow box with a handle on top. It weighs just over 6kg empty, or a rather more substantial 20kg (about the weight of a DH bike) once you’ve filled the 14l tank. It runs of your car’s lighter socket (or “power port” if you have a healthy outdoor lifestyle vehicle rather than a mere car) and has an adjustable jet that’ll give you up to 70psi of dirt-shifting oomph. It’s £89.99 – find out more at www.dirtworker.co.uk.

Digital mapping guru Memory-Map, not content with recently launching v.5 of its popular mapping software, has also expanded beyond UK shores with IGN 1:25,000 scale maps of France. The Standard Edition (1:25,000 maps of your chosen area, 1:250,000 road map of the whole country and software) will be £79.95 and the Premium Edition (which adds aerial photography) will come on DVD and be £99.95. The first titles in the series will cover the Alps and Pyrenees. As well as all the usual Memory-Map features – planning routes, printing maps, uploading to and downloading from a GPS and real-time position plotting – the v.5 software has a new 3D World feature to run fly-throughs across the virtual landscape, more print options, the ability to include photos and notes, route categories and a handy Go-To feature that takes you anywhere you know the grid reference for. For more information head to www.memory-map.co.uk or call 0870 740 9040.

On-One has a new range of complete bikes coming in shortly. Probably of most interest to the mountain bike fraternity is the 456 offering, featuring a RockShox Revelation fork, Avid BB7 disc brakes, SRAM X-7 transmission, Panaracer Cinder tyres and On-One bits and bobs for £799. If that’s altogether too geared for you, the new sliding-dropout Inbred will be available as a complete singlespeed bike (complete with spare gear-hangered dropout should you wish to add gears at some point) for £450. Also at £450 is the all-new Inbred 29er, essentially as above but with bigger wheels and only two sizes (18 or 21in). All these and more at www.on-one.co.uk.

Finally this week, a saddle. Fresh from securing a distribution deal with GT importers Hotwheels, Charge Bikes has also got components coming through. This is the Stool, a “compact and lightweight dirt bike saddle”. It’s got a leather-effect top with Kevlar edges and a plastic bash guard at the back, 7mm chromoly rails, a subtly embroidered top and non-rub-offable screenprinted logos on the side. Charge is also doing three-piece chromoly cranks. More at www.chargebikes.com.

North-east Wales is an area that’s slightly off most people’s trail radar – a lot of riders pass through on their way to somewhere else, but not many stop to ride. Which is a pity, as there’s plenty of good stuff there. To help you find it, this is the very area covered by the second Bikefax mountain biking guide – “The Best Mountain Bike Trails in North East Wales”. The guide contains 24 routes in the Clwydians, Mynydd Hiraethog and the North and South Berwyns. The new guide is, we’re told, improved and decluttered compared to the first book, with more space between sections, a graded route list and clearer descriptions. Welsh speakers will be glad to see that it’s still bilingual. The accompanying CD-ROM will include plain-text GPS route files that’ll work with any make of GPS, plus Tracklog files. Find out more at www.bike-fax.com.

Just in time for autumn is a new range of base layers from The North Face. The range comprises long and short sleeved crew and zip neck tops, along with capri and full-length tights. Plus men’s and women’s briefs (that bike riders probably won’t be interested in) and a “women’s bra”, not to be confused with the often-seen men’s bra, presumably. All the garments are made from TNF’s Equilibrium fabric, which uses long, hollow-core polypropylene yarn – it’s apparently soft, resists pilling, has rapid moisture transfer and excellent thermal properties, as well as containing stink-resisting silver ions. The range is split into Summit (slightly heavier, warmer) and Flight (lightweight) Series – we’d anticipate that the Flight stuff would be the best option for riding in. More details at www.thenorthface.com.

We tested the Spanish Rotor Systems crank arms a while ago, and were reasonably impressed by their top-dead-centre eliminating articulated crank cleverness. The system has its downsides, though – weight, cost, non-standard chainrings, not-quite-contemporary BB arrangement, that kind of thing. In an effort to deliver some of the Rotor benefits to people who are unwilling to shed their existing cranks, the company has come up with Q-Rings – elliptical rings designed to deliver a higher gear on the power stroke and a slightly lower one at top and bottom dead centre. We know what you’re thinking – they’ve reinvented the largely-unlamented Biopace. But Biopace actually did exactly the opposite – it was intended to take the pressure off rider’s knees by having an effectively lower gear on the power stroke. Some canny riders rotated Biopace rings to get a more useful effect, and Chris Bell’s elliptical Eggrings have been using the same idea for years. The innovation in Q-Rings, though, is the simple idea of having considerably more than the usual four or five bolt holes, allowing you to position the chainrings pretty much however you like relative to the crankarms to tune them to your pedalling style. It’s certainly an interesting idea – when we get hold of some we’ll let you know how it goes, but in the meantime take a look at www.rotorbike.com.

Finally this week, a whole host of new things from Pace. First up we have the new RC31 Titanium rigid fork. It looks very similar to the old model – the titanium’s hidden away inside, being used for reinforcing spigots at the top of the carbon fibre legs. The steerer and crown are still aluminium and the dropouts are still magnesium, but the weight has dropped to a remarkable sub-600g with a 200mm steerer.

Also new from the Pace stable is a 20mm through-axle option on the RC40 and 41 forks. You’ll get CNCed 6262 T9 aluminium dropouts and a 7050 T6 hard anodised axle for a super-secure front wheel without much of a weight penalty.

Pace is also doing 150 limited edition “Factory Forks”, available exclusively through Leisure Lakes. There’ll be RC40 XCAM, RC40 Fighter, RC41 XCAM and RC41 Fighter versions, all with an upgraded 7050 aluminium steerer, custom offset gold anodised crown for faster steering, hand-finished internals, custom-blended oils and custom graphics. Each fork will be individually numbered. Find out more at www.pacecycles.com.

This none-more-black device is the 2006 Brodie Awl. It’s one of the Canadian manufacturer’s new line-up, and sits in the “Marathon” series. Obviously that’s not Euro-style Marathon (which is essentially really long XC racing) but more all-day, all-mountain, all-round riding about kind of thing. It’s got 130mm of travel at the back from a Manitou Split shock, 150 at the front from a Marzocchi Drop Off II (complete with through-axle), Truvativ bits and bobs and unrelenting blackness. You may not have heard of Brodie, but 2006 will be the 20th year for the brand – it was set up by founder Paul Brodie in 1986, and he was one of the pioneers of the sloping top tube/compact MTB frame design that pretty much everyone uses now. He’ll be inducted into the Mountain Bike Hall of Fame in September, too. The 2006 range has got all sorts of stuff in it – the Awl is somewhere in the middle, with burlier stuff and lighter stuff around it, as well as dirt jump, street, commuter and cruiser bikes. None of which, alas, are currently available in the UK – Brodie is looking for distributors. We hope it finds someone, the bikes look pretty tidy… www.brodiebikes.com just has 2005 bikes at the moment, but you’ll get a flavour of what the company’s about and we’re sure the 2006 ones will be up there shortly.

Another company you may not have heard of is Anatom. Although that’s a spectacularly tenous link to the previous story, as Anatom doesn’t make bicycles. What it does make is a few things that you might have heard of – Superfeet insoles, SmartWool socks, things like that. It’s latest foot-related product is the aptly-named Coolfeet, a special-purpose foot deodorant. It’s 100% natural and CFC-free, and has a pleasant minty fragrance which certainly beats the smell you usually associate with sweaty feet. Its use isn’t limited to feet, either – you can spray it on to socks and in to shoes and it’s claimed to keep working for up to five days. It certainly freshened up the editorial plates and saved a pair of quite offensive sandals from outdoor banishment, so it’s a thumbs-up so far. It’s £7.95 from the sorts of shops that sell foot things.

This isn’t really a mountain bike accessory, but if you commute or ride in town you might well be interested in it. The Pedalite does just what you might expect from the name – it’s a pedal with built-in lights. Inside the DuPont polymer body is a tiny dynamo, a capacitor and a bunch of LEDs. Start pedalling and after a few seconds the capacitor is charged and the LEDs start flashing away – white to the front, amber to the side and red to the rear. Stop again and they’ll keep going for up to ten minutes. Obviously they’re not clipless or anything, but if you ride a flat-pedalled commuter on hazardous roads they could be a valuable addition to your light armoury. They’re available “in pairs”, as the press release helpfully states, at £49.99 from www.pedalite.com.

This gizmo here is the new Garmin Edge 305HR. It uses GPS to monitor your location, speed, distance and all that stuff, has a barometric altimeter to track climbs and descents and there’s an integrated heart rate monitor. So once you’ve been out riding you can see exactly where you’ve been, how steep the hills were and how hard you had to work to get up them. You get training software with it and it works with various web-based services that we’ve never heard of too. There’s also a 305CAD with a wireless cadence sensor – if you’ve got the HR model you can add the cadence sensor to it and vice versa. And apparently the new GPS architecture works better under trees and near tall buildings. Also available is a cheaper Edge 205 which does without the barometric altimeter. All of them run off rechargeable Li-ion batteries with a claimed run time of 12 hours. More details at www.garmin.com.

Dialled Bikes‘s new 853 incarnation of its popular Prince Albert long-travel hardtail has just touched down at BM towers. It looks largely similar to the Reynolds 520-tubed original, only without the extra tube up front. It’s a pretty burly device, with 34.9mm top and down tubes and gussets up front – it came to a hefty 5.5lb on the BM scales. That much 853 should make for a ludicrously strong frame – we don’t know anyone who’s managed to bust one of the originals, so this should be nigh-on indestructible. Probably not one for fans of traditional pingy steel frames, though. An 853 PA will cost you £380 – head to www.dialledbikes.com for more details. This one’ll get built up and tested as soon as we can.

NKE 6.0 is a new sub-brand from sportswear supremos Nike. It’s aimed at “young talent who love action sports”, it says here. As part of the marketing push for NKE 6.0, there’ll be (somewhat inevitably) an action sports team of surfers, skaters, BMXers, MTBers and people who do things on snow, all of whom will doubtless be showing off across the UK. This is the Zoom Mobisu shoe, by the way. Various colours available, on sale soon, no idea of price yet. More at www.nke6.com.

Not content with burly frames and complete bike packages, Transition Bikes is launching a full line of components. First up is the chromoly-railed Park’n'Ride saddleNew TBC Components Saddle. It claims to mix long-haul comfort with freeride strength, and will set you back £30. Look out for seatposts, stems, bars and pedals appearing over the next few months. More details at uk.transitionbikes.com.

Niner Bikes is another niche US brand being brought to the UK by the crew at Sorted Cycles. The particular niche that Niner occupies is 29in-wheeled singlespeeds built from custom-drawn Easton Scandium tubing. We like the idea of a Scandium singlespeed a lot more than we like the idea of 29in wheels, but that’s just us, and the One 9 frame certainly looks really rather lovely. The frame includes a custom-made eccentric bottom bracket to tension the chain without moving the back wheel, so running disc brakes is a breeze (indeed, it’s a necessity – there’re no canti bosses). The top tube is very sloped, to the extent that Niner recommends a 400mm seatpost – four frame sizes are available to suit riders from 5’4″ to 6’8″ (and if you’re 6’8″ then 29in wheels certainly make sense, if only on aesthetic grounds). And you get a choice of three colours. Frames are £600 with various deals available on forks, brakes and wheels if you buy everything at the same time. More details at www.sortedcycles.com or www.ninerbikes.com.

If you’ve been at certain 12 and 24 hour races this year, you might have seen our irComp test bike in slightly uncompromising rigid singlespeed format. We were quite pleased to build up the Slovenian carbon fibre frame into a 20lb bike just with stuff that was kicking around the workshop, but the company itself has gone one better – it’s built its own carbon rigid fork, stuck it on the Race frame (which is even lighter than the 2.8lb one we’ve got), built it up with a full complement of gears and ended up at, apparently, 8.5kg (18.7lb). Madness. More at www.ircomp.com.

Last week we told you about FSA’s new retrofittable ISIS outboard-bearing bottom bracket. This week we’ve got another company looking to solve ISIS’s bearing-longevity issues, and it’s SKF. Now, SKF is a company that knows a thing or two about bearings, so you’d imagine that they could make something that works. And it’s making bold claims for its new bottom bracket range – apparently you should get ten years out of one of these. There’s even a picture of someone jetwashing one at close range on the SKF site – the patented axial seal apparently keeps it all out. SKF has maximised the room available for bearings by running them directly on the spindle and shell, rather than pushing a cartridge unit on there. And it’s put a high-load roller bearing on the drive side to deal with the assymetric loading that BBs experience. Pace Cycles is distributing the new range, which includes XC (BXC) and freeride/downhill (BFR) variants, along with road and square taper units. They’ll be available in two levels – the 300 series has a chromoly shell and spindle, while the 600 series is stainless steel throughout. Full details at www.skf.com or www.pacecycles.com – no prices yet, though.

If you thought Lupine lights were pretty bonkers, take a look at the freshly-imported SuperNova range. The unit pictured here is the P99-D. It claims to be the brightest bike light in the world, packing two 14W HID lamps, one with a 6° beam angle and the other with a 13°. Most HID stuff on the market uses one 10W lamp, and they’re pretty damn bright, so this thing’s going to be like having a small sun attached to your bars. To keep up with the energy demands of all those photons, you get an 8.8Ah, 14.5V Li-ion bottle battery giving a run time of two hours at full lick or four hours with just one lamp. The charger is integrated into the system, just plug it in to the mains via a transformer or straight into a car lighter socket. You get waterproof, gold-plated connectors, microprocessor controls, multi-LED status display, machined aluminium housing and all sorts of other stuff. And the price? We recommend you sit down at this point – srp is £833.49, although exclusive stockist Wiggle is doing them at 10% off at the moment, so they’re only £750.14 during July… The range also includes halogen/LED units, single HID and Super LED models, tail lights, helmet mounts and all sorts of other stuff – you can see the full UK range at Wiggle or find out more at www.supernova-lights.com.

We tested Transition’s Preston FR recently and rather liked it. This is the latest from Transition, the 2006 DirtBag, a revised version of the current 7in travel freeride bike. The geometry’s been tweaked and the linkages fiddled with with the aim of delivering big travel without a sluggish feel. You can also now choose green or blue colour options as well as black. The DirtBag frame is £899 with either a Manitou Swinger 4-Way coil or Romic coil shock. More at uk.transitionbikes.com – Transition is looking for a small number of UK dealers, so if you think you fit the bill, give the guys there a shout.

Got a house or flat full of bikes? Lovely though bikes are, they do tend to take up a fair bit of room. If you’re lucky enough to have a garage or shed you’re laughing, but plenty of people have to find somewhere else to stash them. We saw these stylish racks at Interbike last year and thought at the time that someone should bring them to the UK. Now Theartofstorage.com has stepped up to do that very thing. There’s a range of designs – choose from horizontal or vertical storage, one or two bikes, folding, freestanding and a bunch of other choices. You can also get rather neat nylon wheel cradles to keep tyre marks off your walls, which is nice. They all look great, certainly streets ahead of hardware-store plastic-covered hooks, and the prices are pretty reasonable too. Check out the full range at www.theartofstorage.com.

You may not have heard of Trigon, but chances are you’ve seen or used some of its stuff. Trigon is a huge Taiwanese manufacturer of carbon fibre frames and parts, and is now “doing a Giant” – moving beyond contract manufacturing of stuff for other people and starting to sell frames and parts under its own name. Cycle Citi is distributing Trigon gear in the UK – there’s no on-line product information yet, though. There’ll be a huge pile of road gear, plus a selection of rather fine-looking MTB kit. Pictured we have the GMCC07 full-carbon frame, with a claimed weight of 1.45kg and a UK SRP of £850. There’s also an aluminium/carbon model for £200 less. There’s a wide range of flat and riser bars, but our attention was immediately drawn to this space-age one-piece monococque stem/riser bar combo. It’s 295g, available in a range of stem lengths and has an optional bolt-on light/computer bracket to go on the front. It’ll be £199, or twenty quid less for the slightly lighter and narrower flat version. Coming soon to a bike shop near you…

German brake giant Magura is building a good reputation for its suspension units – you don’t see all that many of its forks around in the UK yet but they’re pretty damn good. This is its latest rear shock, the Hugin. As is the current vogue, it’s a platform-damped anti-bob unit. In common with Magura’s other high-end suspension offerings, the Hugin has an adjuster
for rebound damping and separate high and low-speed compression damping clickers, so you should be able to get it dialled in for whatever feel you like. It’s air-sprung, with a large-volume air can for a linear rate. If Magura’s other suspension stuff is anything to go by, it should be ultra-reliable too. No news on pricing yet – we expect that full details will be on www.magura.com shortly.

FSA is breathing new life into the ailing ISIS BB standard with this new Mega Exo design. It gets around the problem of limited space inside the BB shell resulting in small bearings by moving them outside in the style of the new crop of outboard-bearing integrated cranksets, but retaining ISIS compatibility – it’ll work with “most ISIS cranks”, it says here. Obviously the bearing units have to be pretty narrow, but they’re large-diameter full-complement jobbers which should help. If you’re struggling with ISIS BB life but have a substantial investment in cranks, one of these is probably well worth a go. Importers Windwave have them in stock now at £49.95 for the 290g cromo model or £79.95 for the 230g titanium one. Find a dealer at www.windwave.co.uk.

Not content with near-ubiquity in the riding gear market, Fox is moving into more mainstream sportswear. As well as the Fox/Oakley eyewear deal, it’s got a new range of running shoes and trainers out. There’s a whole bunch of styles, all available in a selection of colours. The selection in the picture is, from top to bottom, the £45 Freeway, the £65 Featherweight and the £75 Siege. Fox is “creating and entirely new category within the footwear market that combines action sports style and attitude with running shoe technology and performance,” says the press release. So there you go. More at www.foxfootwear.com.

We’ve been sent some information about the Scott Ransom, their all new full-suspension bike. It’s targeted at the All-Mountain rider, and presumably replaces their range of Nitrous bikes. With a new suspension design, a carbon frame and a whopping 165mm of travel, it sounds good.

They’re launching the bike in August, we’ll have more information then but for now check out the Ransom website. www.scottusa.com/ransom

High-5 have added two new products to their already extensive line-up. EnergySource X’treme mixes their Complex Carbohydrates and Hi-Electrolyte Anti Cramp formulas. Their second new product is EnergySource 4:1. This comes with claims of 30% increased endurance. The 4:1 in the name refers to the 4 parts carbohydrate to 1 part protein.

They also have some new flavour gels, including Lemon Cola Plus. For more information visit the High-5 website. They have plenty of good offers currently available, so go check them out.

North Face are concerned about the heatwave we’re due. They have developed the Tek Tee, part of their Flight Series range. They claim ‘maximum breathability during high aerobic output’, and they achieve this by using light weight Polartec Powerdry material. It’s quick drying, but the USP is the protection from UV radiation provided by the unique characteristics of the material.

Long and short sleeves with either crew or zip necks. Visit www.thenorthface.com for more information or phone 01539 738882 to find your local dealer.

Seeking shelter from Friday’s rain at SSMM, we ambled into the USE marquee and came out with an almost-production version of the new Sumo seatpost. The all-new clamp design relies on end-caps being clamped onto a tapered, barrel-shaped head by a sturdy 5mm steel bolt. It ought to sort out the issues that people have had with the Alien design – that’ll still be in the range, targetted at the road and XC MTB market. Despite the name, the Sumo isn’t a heavyweight – the carbon model is claimed to be 200g, and the aluminium version pictured is only a little bit more. It’ll be available in the common sizes, a 350mm length and with 10 or 30mm of layback. You’re looking at £pound;85 for the carbon post and a bit less for the aluminium one. Keep an eye on www.use1.com for details. USE’s also got some Exposure Lights developments in the pipeline…

We can’t decide if it looks more like Johnny Five or a Martian war machine, but either way, this is Cateye‘s new Triple Shot light. It uses SLED technology, like the Exposure and Solidlights units, with three lamps giving a claimed output equivalent to a 35-40W halogen lamp. Proprietary lenses give a spot from the centre lamp and a flood from the side ones and it’s all housed in a funky cast aluminium body with cooling fins all over it. The battery is a 2.6Ah NiMH unit and you get a remote on/off switch and brackets to suit standard and oversized bars. Claimed run time is over three hours, weight is 710g and price is £350. Importers Zyro say it’ll be available in August. There’ll also be a Double Shot with two LEDs, a helmet mount and a 5hr run time at £275. Details will appear at www.zyro.co.uk as they become available.

This is the forthcoming Cannondale Prophet MX, a “light freeride” bike designed to fill the gap between the current Prophet models and the beefy Gemini. The frame is the same as that found on the Prophet 4-cross, as used by Cedric Gracia, with a 12mm through-axle rear, ISCG mount and reinforcing downtube gusset. You’ll also find big forks (Fox 36 on the Prophet 1 MX, RockShox Pike on the Prophet 2 MX), wider rims, beefier tyres and twin-and-bash chainsets, along with shorter stems than the trail-oriented Prophets. Prices are to be confirmed, but the 2 MX will be available in late August and the 1 MX towards the end of September. Also in the works from Cannondale is a new marathon-specific bike – apparently it’s a kind of longer-travel Scalpel, but it’s so hush-hush that the crazy guys at Cannondale have just sent out a picture of a grey box with “Shhh” stencilled on the side… More Cannondale stuff at www.cannondale.com.

The 2006 Fox Racing Shox range has one significant new product and a load of tweaks. The new thing is the DHX Air shock, with all the same toys and damping tech (Boost Valve platformy thing, adjustable ProPedal, adjustable bottom-out resistance, depending on exact model) as the coil version but with a large-volume air sleeve instead of a coil spring. As a result, it’s about half the weight of the coil DHX, at 450g for a 222mm shock. Expect to see it all over the place as original equipment.

The RP3 shock has had some tweaks to the ProPedal damping, with more positive lever engagement in the three positions and improved sharp bump performance. The adjustment range as also been widened – minimum ProPedal is less than before, maximum is more. And all Fox forks now have a brake hose guide, so it’s bye-bye zip ties. Keep an eye on www.foxracingshox.com for more details.

Sticking with suspension, Marzocchi‘s forthcoming range includes revisions of existing models, all-new forks with the same name and new forks with new names. The interesting stuff is at the big end. Pretty much everything will have an external rebound damping adjuster, including the 888VF2. The 2006 888 will also come with new flat crowns, making the fork 25mm shorter. There’ll also be an 888RC2 with adjustable rebound and compression damping on each leg. The 66 is all-new, with a new lower-leg casting and crown making the single-crown big-hitter considerably shorter. In common with other Marzocchis with new lower castings, the 66 will go to 74mm post-mounts for the brake calipers. That’s quite a significant move, but with a lot of currently-available brakes being post-mount native with adaptors for ISO mounts or big rotors, the time looks right for such a change. More details will probably show up on www.marzocchi.com at some point.

Race Face has a cunning new XC seatpost design for 2006. The funky head will take 7 or 8mm saddle rails and has 35mm of fore-aft adjustment. Tilt is adjustable independently and the design is claimed to distribute loads better for enhanced durability. It’ll be available as a carbon fibre Next post (215g), 7050 butted aluminium Deus (235g) and a 2014 alu Evolve. Other interesting news from Race Face is that they’re almost-but-not-quite dropping ISIS cranks from the range – the entry-level Ride XC crank will be ISIS and RF will continue to make Evolve and SRX ISIS bottom brackets, but everything else is now X-Type outboard bearing stuff. Have a gander at www.raceface.com.

We’ve got to admire the trouble to which the people at Bike-Fax have gone to promote their new book/CD-ROM route guides. This box contains all we need for “an office environment experience of the best mountain biking trails in Snowdonia” – the book, the CD, a bottle of Snowdon mineral water and a small pot of Welsh mud, plus instructions on how best to spread the mud and water around for the full effect. Fun with marketing aside, the Snowdonia guide looks good. It’s the work of Sue Savege, Dafydd Davis and Paul Barbier. Dafydd built a healthy proportion of the trails in North Wales, but a quick riffle through the pages shows that the book’s got loads of “traditional” rides too. And it’s bilingual. The book’s £16.95, the CD’s £9.50 and Bike-Fax even sells waterproof paper to print the maps on to. Find out more at www.bike-fax.com.

Also new in the world of guidebooks is the second title from Vertebrate Graphics. We very much liked its first book – Dark Peak Mountain Biking – and by the looks of things South West Mountain Biking looks to continue the quality trend. The book’s written by veteran guidebook author Nick Cotton and covers Dartmoor, Exmoor, the Quantocks and the Mendips. Which is pretty much our patch, so we’ll be checking them out shortly. South West Mountain Biking is £14.95 – visit www.v-graphics.co.uk for more details.

We’ve already told you about Intense Tire Systems‘s CC 2.25in tyre – here’s another one from the range, the System 2. There’s also the System 1, which is similar but with a slightly more spaced-out tread. Both are 2in tyres, but the 1 is intended for soft-to-intermediate conditions and the 2 is intended for intermediate-to-hard. Apparently people are having reasonable success using the slightly knobblier 1 on the front and the fast-rolling 2 on the back, so we’ll give that a whirl first. Both tyres are around 560g and £27 – more from Jungle Products.

Just arrived in at BM global HQ is this sleek black beastie. It’s an IR Comp 3.1, which is the middle of three carbon fibre hardtails manufacturered by the Slovenian company. It used to make the front ends of the Remec DH bikes, and makes all sorts of carbon fibre stuff for other people – those big steering wheels that ocean-racing yachts have, for example. IR Comp’s own frames have been raced to some success by Blaza Klemencic and Monika Schachl. Yes, they’re both Elite XC women, but then they’re using the IR Comp Race which weighs under 1kg (2.2lb). This one’s burly by comparison – out of the box it weighed 3.1lb, then we took all the bubble wrap and parcel tape off and it weighed 2.8lb. There’s also a Heavy Duty version, which is 1.5kg (3.3lb). We’ve got plans for this one – watch this space… IR Comp’s looking for a UK distributor, and pricing’s kind of up in the air at the moment thanks to a carbon fibre shortage (all Boeing and Airbus’s fault…) but we’re told you’re looking at about 900Euros (or a bit over £600). More at www.ircomp.com.

Another week, another Thule product. This is the Euroway three-bike towbar-mounted bike carrier. It’s designed to mount to any towbar with a self-centring clamp mechanism. The bikes are supported by moulded wheel cradles and secured with straps and top tube clamps. It’s all fully adjustable and is claimed to fit any size bike “from child’s to extreme mountain bikes”. When it’s not on the back of your car it folds up into a compact, easy to store package, and Thule is particularly proud of the streamlined design. The Euroway is certainly ahead of the towbar-rack pack on looks… More details at www.thule.co.uk.

Launched to coincide with National Bike Week (June 11-19) is the Cyclobag, “the latest must-have cycling accessory,” it says here. Press release hyperbole aside, this is actually quite funky – it converts between a backpack, a shoulder bag and a handlebar bag, has outside pockets for a bottle and phone, somewhere to stash your helmet and a zip-off “face” system so you can change colours and designs on a whim. Obviously it’s not a rugged MTB accessory, but we can see it gracing the front of an urban commuter bike. There’s also a laptop-friendly version and a smaller kids’ model.