We’ve just got back from the bierfests and lederhosen of Bavaria where Trek were showing off their 2002 bikes in true thigh slapping fashion. We’ll go through the new tweaks from parent company Trek first but we’ll have the latest from stablemates Gary Fisher, Klein and Bontrager later in the week.

The Fuel suspension bike has had a stunningly succesful first year as Roland Green has dominated the mens World Cup circuit (although punctures have robbed him of two seemingly dead cert wins). Despite these successes it’s never been a truly lightweight bike (compared with Scott’s Strike or Trek’s own STP) which is where Trek have spending their development time for this season.

Starting from the front, Trek are now speccing the increased (80mm) travel SID Race fork which was avoided previously because of it’s short travel. The fork also gets new Titanium Nitride coating on the fork legs which Trek were suprised to find out Pace had adopted then abandoned due to rapid wear on their Pro Class forks.

The dry and dusty German trails gave us no chance to check wear on these forks but we’ll see if Rock Shox coating is any more durable when we get the first examples out on our home trails. Before you ask, Rock Shox new carbon crown and steerer Black Box SID (as used by Roland Green on his Fuel) is still under development and won’t be on production bikes for a while yet.

The mainframe is upgraded with a new tubeset entitled ZR9000 from the Zirconium elements used in the alloy (together with copper and manganese). This alloy has been under development by Gary Klein since 1991 and like Specialized’s M4 tubesets it acts as a grain refiner that keeps the alloy more stable when it is cold worked and during heat treating and welding. This allows longer and more refined butting and elongation of the tubes which means a lighter weight frameset.

The mainframe also gets a new (for the Fuel) downtube section, ovalised vertically at the headtube and horizontally at the bottom bracket to increase the stiffness of the front end.

The thing that was getting the boys at Trek really excited was their new OCLV-MC (Mouldable Carbon) material. Developed by Quixcel (who developed their OCLV and OCLV-HC technologies) the only previous application has been in-line skate trucks and Trek have got an exclusive deal on it’s use for bikes.

Essentially it looks and behaves just like a very high performance carbon “papier mache” with small sheets clearly visble under the surface lacquer of the moulded pieces. The big advantage is that it can be forced into moulds under high pressure to produce solid rounded objects. The moulding process also means it doesn’t require slow and expensive hand laying like normal carbon fibre. So far they’ve only used it on the new rocker links for the 2002 Fuel 100 which have tested to be lighter but still 1.5 times stronger and stiffer than aluminium pieces. However, as Trek themselves say “We are investigating a number of future uses. As you can imagine, there are currently a lot of aluminium items on frames and components that may lend themselves to our OCLV-MC technology. Stay tuned, because we know this will be very interesting over the next few years.”

Those who’ve already got Fuel’s will be pleased to hear that the new carbon linkage and gram saving titanium ‘furniture’ will be available as an upgrade kit for 2001 bikes.

The final improvement to the bike involves a switch to carbon chainstays from aluminium which again shaves a few grams from the frame, taking complete bike weights for the Fuel 100 down to a planned 24lb.

Away from the Fuel nothing much changes on the mountain bike front. The chassis of the 9.8 OCLV-HC ultralight carbon fibre hardtail remains unchanged as does the softail frame of the STP, although both now come in a single high spec. complete bike version and a frame only option.

We reckon that’s enough to keep the materials specialists on the forum going for a while (feel free to correct any ‘facts’ Trek have fed us) but stay tuned for the latest developments from Gary Fisher sometime very soon.