More cool, uncool or just interesting stuff from the halls of Interbike…
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Calfee Designs is best known for carbon, but this one-off tandem is made primarily of bamboo. The stalks are cut and shaped to fit together, then glued and wrapped with carbon fibre. The wooden pedals are a nice touch… The tandem may be a one-off, but Calfee will sell you a bamboo road, track or CX bike for $2,695. Frame weights are between 3.5 and 4lb.
Bionicon’s front/rear travel adjust system lets you steepen the bike up by shortening the front but simultaneously extending the rear to maintain BB height. This pre-production bike has up to 8in of rear travel.
Foes always seems to manage to turn out an amazing number of new bikes considering the small size of the company, and this year is no exception. The new DHS runs a super-low 2:1 leverage ratio on the rear suspension, which with 9in of travel means a huge Curnutt shock. The leverage ratio lets you run a very light spring, reduces the shock shaft speed, allows the shock to run cooler, makes set-up easier, reduces stress on the frame and is just generally A Good Thing.
Not running any sort of leverage ratio is the Foes Predator slalom hardtail.
This is the Foes that really caught our eye, though. The new 2:1 FXR has 5in of travel from a long Curnutt platform shock. We rather suspect that it’ll work very well indeed.
Intense’s VPP line is extended once again with the 6.6. It’s a bit-over-6in travel bike that fits between the 5.5 and Uzzi, so essentially in the same category as Santa Cruz’s Nomad.
Merlin’s classic XLM is now made of 6Al/4V titanium and comes in at 2.9lb.
Vicious Cycles is now offering titanium versions of most of its bikes. This is the classic Metal Guru hardtail – Motivator 29in, Monolith singlespeeds and Jewel women-specific bikes can also be had in Ti. Vicious will also build you a 29er tandem with a Titus Racer-X rear end.
With one gear, rigid forks, a narrow back end, a stout frame and a steep head angle, you’d never guess that the Flight Monocog was the product of a BMX company…
29er specialist Niner has added the steel SIR (that’s Steel Is Real, of course) to the existing Scandium One-9. Both are available in singlespeed or geared versions.
Still in development is this Niner full-suspension bike. Even in prototype form it’s looking quite sorted.
Ritchey’s Break-Away dismantlable-frame technology can now be found in a range of bikes, including titanium road and this steel cyclo-cross bike.
Seven’s Duo 6.5 uses a welded Maverick Mono-Link 6.5in-travel rear end combined with a titanium front. No, you’re right, it’s not actually terribly pretty.
The new carbon/titanium IMX hardtail certainly improves Seven’s aesthetic average, though.
The Shocker is Cove’s new downhill bike, featuring a linkage-driven shock and a less bulky-looking front end than the Peeler.
Spot was showing this fine pink and black S&S-coupling equipped “travel singlespeed”. Nice saddle cover, too.
Storck’s Rebel Carbon hardtail was dripping with lightweight bits.
Bits and bobs
Move aside, 853, there’s a new top-dog steel in town. Fortunately for Reynolds, it makes the new tubing too. 953 is a super-strong stainless steel that’s apparently twice as strong as titanium (although we don’t know what sort of strong that is or indeed what kind of titanium it’s compared with). Independent Fabrications has made a couple of track frames with it – we’re told that it’s pretty hard to work with in a tool-blunting kind of way, but the end result is very smart. The strength of the tubing allows Reynolds to use a super-thin 0.3mm wall thickness in the middle of the tubes. The first 953 MTB is yet to surface…
“Rides like a Cadillac” has been a favourite metaphor of the bike press for quite a while. Whether the existence of Cadillac-branded bikes will cause it to fall out of favour remains to be seen.
This is half of Cane Creek’s Zonos Disc Carbon wheelset. The 23mm rims are carbon fibre over an aluminium “skeleton”, and the wheels are just under 1.7kg for a pair. Also available in the inevitable 29in size. Pretty smart, but not necessarily the most exotic MTB wheels out there – keep reading…
Chromag’s direct-fit Boxxer stem is pleasing in its simplicity.
We didn’t see much on Elixxir’s stand to engage our attention, but the stand itself was pretty impressive, being assembled entirely from titanium junctions, seat QRs and carbon tubes.
USE had this example of an Exposure Race light that got dropped on a road and then run over by an HGV. It’s pretty battered, but it still works…
But never mind that, here’s an all-new Exposure. This is the new Enduro model, with a custom Luxeon flood/spot LED combination, extra cooling, a repositioned (and waterproof) charging jack, revised control system and new “Turbo” mode with 50% more brightness. Run time is three hours in Turbo, five in Normal and sixteen in Low. The Race also gets extra fins, the new jack, new controls and Turbo mode.
Also from Exposure is the Joystick single-LED light. It’s shown here with the very neat helmet mount, but there’s a bar mount too. Run times are eight hours in low or 3.5 in high and it only weighs 85g.
Want a pair of cranks you can see your face (albeit a somewhat distorted view of your face) in? Jeff Jones transformed these XTR cranks into things of single-ring wonder. This Niner frame also had a pair of Avid Juicy brakes that had received the same treatment.
Kryptonite has apparently replaced 380,000 locks during what’s come to be known as “that pen thing”, but it’s still found time to develop some new products. This is the New York Fahgettaboudit U-lock, a mini-sized lock with an 18mm steel shackle and general air of indestructability.
We very much like the way that Lake combines race-style show uppers with super-grippy Vibram soles. If you want bike shoes that’ll take some serious hike-a-bike, though, these boots are what you want. They’re pretty much a lightweight hiking boot with an SPD fitting in the bottom.
Yes, that’s a shoe in an oven. Lake’s remouldable carbon shoes can be heated up for a few minutes, put on your feet and pressed into a custom fit. If it doesn’t work out right, just do it again – they can be endlessly heated and remoulded.
The splendidly-named Nemesis Project makes a number of street/jump hardtails. 24 or 26in wheels, conventional or Spanish BBs, grind-friendly derailleur hangers and great finish are the defining characteristics. Oh, and fantastic names – how could you resist a Nemesis Project Death Machine?
Very very shiny flats from NY Freeride. Almost seems a shame to use them…
Rocky Mounts is now offering its roofrack bike carriers in a wide range of colours (and patterns) to coordinate with your car. Although we can’t help noticing that the sure-to-be-popular “rust and filler” is missing from the selection.
Spinergy’s Fall Line wheels apply composite spokes to freeride/DH wheels. You also get a Hadley freehub and 39mm rim. Claimed weight is 2.5kg for a pair.
Sinister bikes had this new version of the Splinter MX. The frame has 7in of travel and has the shock offset slightly to the left so you can run a normal-length BB axle and conventional 135mm back end.
More quirkies – we’ve no idea what this is supposed to be, frankly.
Not content with building ludicrously fat-tyred bikes, Surly is also producing ludicrously fat-tyred unicycles.
Ridable Bicycle Replicas build exactly that. We particularly like the wooden pedals on this tricycle.
Prize for the most exotic MTB wheels at the show has to go to Reynolds possibly-not-for-production-but-maybe-we’ll-have-to-see full-carbon rims combined with Tufo MTB tubulars. Stupidly light, ridiculously expensive but we suspect that someone’ll buy them however much they cost…
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