Of the 200+ photos I took at the Sea Otter Classic, some stand out to me. These were the products that bored me, the ones that wowed me and then there was stuff that stopped me. The biggest draw with Sea Otter is to see the many friends, many terrific people that the event draws there, but I’m not there to report on the people; I’m there to report on what came out of the imaginations of many of those people I go see.
For starters, Mondraker, the Spanish mountain bike maker, is making a big push into the U.S., following several years of a barely noticeable presence. The bike above is the Raze Carbon RR, a 150mm front/130mm rear, full-suspension 29er. It’s equipped with a SRAM GX Eagle 12-speed drivetrain and SRAM G2 RS 4-piston calipers. Mavic wheels and Maxxis tires round out the package.
I like the lines of this bike; it’s not hard to get the industrial design-end of a carbon fiber bike wrong. You can design it to be strong, light and butt-ugly. But you can also make a frame that is light, strong and gorgeous to look at. The purple and blue paint doesn’t hurt, either.
Thesis, a small brand that focuses on the high-end road and gravel market showed off this quiver-killer of a drop-bar bike. It is both a road bike and a gravel bike, and the geometry is correct for both, regardless of tire choice.
The fork includes reversible inserts that change the rake of the fork based on whether it will be ridden as a road bike or a gravel bike.
Similarly, in the rear, these dropouts adjust to compensate for necessary changes for wheelbase and bottom bracket drop.
The TIG welding on this titanium beauty was impressive and the finish is remarkable and now I’m realizing that I meant to ask if this was etching or something else, and never did. Ugh.
There are always bargains to be found at Sea Otter, but this one was so good I wish I’d had a mountain bike with me.
Engineer Tim Lane is back with his next creation for Digit Bikes, a 29er with 140mm front travel and 128mm travel rear. The bike features an aluminum frame built with a SRAM XX Eagle group and weighed in at 26.3 lbs. The big draw with Digit is by using the top tube as the air chamber for the rear shock, the design can run much lower pressure because the volume of air is so high. The benefit to this is that it yields a much more linear response rate.
I’m a nut for good tools and this bearing press and pull kit from Enduro Bearings is incredibly well designed and the kit can pull or press any size bearing being used in bicycles, whether we’re talking about the bearings in hubs or the pivots of a rear suspension.
From Feedback Sports we have the Adjustable Pliers Wrench. I know that sounds like word fruit coctail, but here’s the genius of this product: Imagine a pair of channel locks with the jaws of an adjustable wrench, but each increment on the wrench corresponds to a single millimeter change in the opening of the jaws.
Giant is pushing its Cadex brand out of the nest. They had a separate booth just for Cadex, where they showed off a variety of products, including bars, stems, seatposts, wheels, tires, saddles and even a triathlon frame. The idea is to demonstrate Giant’s ability to produce unparalleled products. And yes, that certainly does sound like marketing copy, but that rim rivals anything I’ve seen from Zipp.
The carbon fiber bladed spokes on this Cadex wheel are “welded” into this hub. In this instance welding means that the spokes are sandwiched between two thick sections of carbon fiber, which form the flanges of the hub. I’ve seen a lot of layup work and this impresses the hell out of me.
Boyd Johnson of Boyd Wheels and Tony Karklins of Time (and Detroit Bikes and before that Allied Cycle Works and before that Orbea USA) joined forces with a group of investors to purchase German carbon fiber rim maker Munich Composites GmbH and move the operation to South Carolina.
The new company will be called Munich Composites SC. It uses the same basic technology that Time uses, which is resin transfer molding, also known as RTM. The process, unlike working with prepreg carbon fiber, which is very labor intensive, is highly automated and is said to result in products that require very little finish work.