Monday, September 27, 2010

Interbike 2010

Interbike 2010 is a wrap - spent 2 days walking the Sands show floor in Las Vegas looking for new interesting items. A few things caught my eye - I will be updating this as I go through my notes.

The new KS Suspension height adjustable seatpost seems like a nice product. The best part is that it is available in a 27.2mm size which is perfect for the steel frames we build at Worthington Cycles. This will have 100mm of travel, optional remote release lever and will weigh a respectable 530g.



NoTubes showed their complete line of Alpha 340 Road Wheels - the 1200g Pro wheels are very nice and are a perfect, lightweight top of the line wheel-set. However, the star is probably the $615 retail ZTR Alpha 340 Comp wheel-set that weighs 1430g. NoTubes also showed their updated valve stems, hubs, and valve extenders.


Big news at Interbike once again is pedal based power meters - with two "new" systems marketed, but as of yet still unavailable! First is the all new Polar/Look system the seems promising, but is still pretty expensive at ~$2500.00. Second is there is last years Interbike show stopper, Metrigear, which has been bought by Garmin and is still in development...I this more Vaporware???

SRAM had new versions of their S30 AL road wheels on display. We had some trouble with the 2010 models due to faulty Sapim spokes, plus some problems with the bearing preload having to be set correctly each time a wheel was removed. Changes for 2011 look to remedy this by putting a set screw on the bearing preload setting, and hopefully better spokes (from Sapim still?) for next year. The S30 AL wheel is a great low end aero wheel-set for budget conscious buyers.

And in the completely crazy realm there was the much hyped Fairwheel Bikes 6lb road bike on display - with the worlds lightest wheelset (~500g) pretty impressive and only $45,000.00, though it wasn't for sale!

TRP was showing their updated CX-9 "mini v-brake" for cyclo-cross. We built custom V-Brakes like this for our Cyclo-Cross bikes many years ago so we think this is a good option. It is kind of nice to see a large company embrace this style of braking. Using a mini v-brake on a cross bike feels like using disc brakes on a mountain bike...very powerful, but with great modulation, and lever feedback, plus, the added advantage of no front fork shudder and no brake fade under heavy braking.

Maxxis was finally showing their road tubeless tire design.

Not really new, but still one of the best fitting tools I have seen is the SICI X/Y Fitting tool. This tool allows for easy transfer of bike fit from one bike to another and will make custom bike fitting even easier. .

Thursday, September 2, 2010

Shop Moving

We are in the process of moving our frame building and machine shop - our new shop space won't be ready until next year some time, so in the meantime we are in temporary space just around the corner. I will be building out the temporary shop over the next few weeks.

Our office address and contact information is still the same - just the shop is in limbo now...