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Yesterday was the first official day for the exhibitors at Interbike 2005. Following two solid Demo Days, manufacturers and journalists alike moved indoors to talk shop, grab as many photos as possible, and engage in other forms of activity made famous by the city of sin.
Interbike - Inside the Sands Convention Centre, day 1
BikeMagic: The team at BikeMagic has done a great job keeping their site up to date with tonnes of photos and solid writeups. For their first day inside, BikeMagic devoted space to Ellsworth Bicycles, which introduced the Rogue (the replacement for the venerable Dare) and a prototype version of a new downhill bike, using a drivetrain design that’s similar to the Honda ridden by Greg Minaar on the World Cup circuit.
Other brands covered by BikeMagic include GT, Giant (there’s a good shot of the revised shock mount for the Reign), Titus, Ventana, and many others.
Cycling News: CyclingNews.com takes an interesting approach to their first day inside, focusing less on what everyone else is covering (ie. big name bike manufacturers) and more on other brands. Companies covered include Louis Garneau, Felt, Foes Racing, and cowbell.com.
Pinkbike.com: Back at the Sands after a couple of days in the sand and rock at Bootleg Canyon, Pinkbike.com focused more on component manufacturers for their first report. Product lines under the microscope include components from FSA, Syncros, Deity Components, and SDG. In addition to the information on the component manufacturers, there are some great shots of the Intense 6.6 and the 2006 Transition Bikes lineup.
NSMB.com: NSMB came in a little late with their wrap up of day one, but they devote a good deal of space to gear not covered elsewhere. There’s some coverage of Northwest bike company Transition Bikes, helmets by Bell and Giro, tires by Maxxis, a great looking light from Cat Eye, and a revised DRS chain guide from e.thirteen. Check out the writeup — there are some great photos too!
Interbike - Day 2
There was more bike gear from the regulars today, although it seems to me as though the excitement is wearing a little thin. I guess there’s only so much bike-related gear that the brain can take in over a five day span.
BikeMagic: For Day 2, BikeMagic focused on ‘the cool and the crazy‘. As we all know, one man’s cool is another man’s crazy and the team at BikeMagic devoted space to things like a bamboo tandem cycle from Calfee Design. Other space covered more conventional product from high-end manufacturers like Foes Racing, Storck, Bionicon, Intense Cycles, and Merlin (a gorgeous looking titanium hardtail). There are a whole lot of product shots on the BikeMagic site, so head there if you’re looking for more.
Pinkbike.com: The Pinkbike.com crew comes on strong again in Day 2, with yet another closeup on the 2005 Foes Racing lineup, soft goods from Dakine, great shots of the new 50/50 platform pedal by Crank Brothers and a number of other images from multiple manufacturers.
A special mention goes out to their coverage of the Mountain Cycle. The company’s prototype Slopestyle bike looks hawt and the upcoming 9.5SL has some amazing looking lines (especially without decals). The photos of these bikes make a trip to Pinkbike well worth it.
Others: A number of other sites are doing their best to provide a different take on the entire Interbike ‘experience’. The boys over at Blue Collar Mountain Biking have a prodigious photo gallery, even if many of the photos do indeed look to be snapped by a cheap camera phone. Guys! If you read this entry, snap some shots of the Giant Reign and the Giant Trance!
Go Clipless is spending some quality time with a number of different manufacturers’ products but the best Interbike-related entry on the site so far is a story about how site contributor J. Vicious was turned away at the doors of a nightclub for wearing his comfy Asics sneakers. Good stuff!
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The Interbike trade show is the bike industry’s last hurrah before it officially releases the product that this site has been documenting for the past few months. I took a pass on this year’s show because I had other commitments and, to be frank, didn’t feel up to the trip.
That being said, many other industry insiders and observers made the trek down to Vegas and I’ll be using this section to send you in the direction of their websites. Check back frequently for the next week or so for all of the Interbike mayhem.
Interbike Day 1 - Dirt Demo 2005
The first day at Interbike is devoted to getting participants out on the bikes that will be on display during the rest of the trade show. Typically, members of the media get time on bikes they’ve drooled over for the previous few months and this year is no exception. Here they come:
NSMB.com: NSMB took a smart approach to the demo day, choosing bikes that are well suited to their area of expertise (freeride, light freeride, trail, downhill). Bikes on display at the NSMB.com website include the Yeti 303, the Santa Cruz Nomad, the Rocky Mountain Slayer, the Scott Ransom, the Turner RFX (ex 6 Pack), and the Surly Pugsley.
BikeMagic: UK-based BikeMagic previews six new rides in their Dirt Demo writeup. There are some closeup shots of the Turner Five Spot (with the non-Horst link suspension platform), the Giant Anthem cross country bike, the Kona King Supreme, Mountain Cycle San Andreas DNA downhill rig, the Maverick ML7/5, and, yet again, the Surly Pugsley (featuring 4″ tires).
Pinkbike.com: Pinkbike opted to take big bikes out for their test runs down the trails. The crew focused on bikes like the Specialized Demo 8 Pro, the Cove Peeler and Shocker, the Santa Cruz VP-Free and Nomad, the Cannondale Prophet, the Kona Stinky Primo, the Yeti 303, and more.
Interbike Day 2 - Dirt Demo 2005 continued
Like the first official day of Interbike, the second day is again devoted to bike demos. And like the first official day, there are another batch of test ride stories posted on various websites.
Go Clipless: One of the first mountain biking weblogs to post material from Interbike online, Go Clipless took a smart approach to their go-round at the Demo Days. Instead of jumping on the bikes from the larger companies, the guys plowed headlong into unfamiliar (for them) territory: the 29ers. Among the 29″ bikes that they tested out were the Ventana El Capitan, the Niner One 9, and a couple of others that will be posted online when they get up to speed.
BikeMagic.com: As they were on day one, BikeMagic was at it again on Tuesday for day two. The real coup for the BikeMagic crew was to be one of the first batch of journalists to spend some trail time on the Scott Ransom. Other bikes demo’d by BikeMagic during day two included the Specialized Epic Marathon, the Cannondale Rush, and the venerable Slingshot. You read correctly, the Slingshot is still in the building.
Pinkbike.com: Pinkbike followed up their Day One demos with more of the same — big bikes best suited to freeride and downhill. On Day Two, the Pinkbike riders saddled up on bikes from Norco, Intense, Voodoo, Cove, Giant, Iron Horse, and Mongoose.
Update (30 September 2005): One last item of note to post before I move on. Dave Tolnai has what’s probably the most refreshing take on the Dirt Demo over at NSMB.com. It’s well worth the read, if only because the author isn’t immediately sold on the necessity of, well, the entire idea of the show.
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Rocky Mountain Bicycles have been around for quite some time. When I was first getting into the sport in the late 80s, the Rocky Mountain Blizzard was the bike that all of my lusted after — the frame’s simple colour scheme, bang-on geometry, and nimble feel was the perfect excuse to cut school and head out into the hills (not that I ever did that).
Since then, Rocky Mountain continued to produce popular mountain bikes in all of the different categories that started to pop up in the mid- to late- 90s. The RM-series (along with riders like Wade Simmons and Richey Schley) helped usher in the freeride scene and, more recently, riders like Marie-Helene Premont and Alison Sydor have kept the company in the news on the cross-country front. In addition to their success on the aforementioned circuits, Rocky Mountain riders like Andreas Hestler and Gretchen Reeves have found tremendous success on the endurance circuit, performing extremely well in races like the Trans-Rockies Challenge and the Trans-Alp Challenge.
So what’s the point of this entry? Well, it’s to get down to Rocky Mountain’s ETSX series of enduro / cross country / trail bikes. Pinkbike.com has a review of the Rocky Mountain ETSX-50. Other than being nice-riding bikes, I’ve heard of (and seen) multiple instances of cracked swingarms on the ETSX series of bikes. I can’t be sure about the abilities of the riders using them or the abuse to which the bikes were subjected, it’s definitely something to keep in mind if you’re considering the ETSX as an option for your next ride.
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I must admit that I don’t know a whole lot about Marin bikes. An old girlfriend had one in the early 1990s but the company pretty much disappeared from my area and my frame of reference shortly after that.
In the past couple of years, I’ve seen a few Marin downhill bikes at local bike parks but, again, they never made much of an impression on me. I’m sure it’s partly because I don’t see them over and over again, and partly because the company’s distribution channel up here in Western Canada isn’t the same as it is elsewhere.
Rambling aside, I was intrigued enough by a recent photo of the Marin Quad XLT from Expocycle 2005 to do a little digging on the company’s interesting-looking suspension design. I checked out the 2006 Marin bikes but wasn’t really able to get a good ‘feel’ for the way the Quad-Link equipped bikes worked.
So when BikeMagic posted an article about the 2006 Marin bike lineup, I was keen to read about their initial impressions. Judging from the writeup, the 2006 bikes look like versatile machines. From the 7″ Quad-Link Quake to 4″-6″ Tara to the company’s hardtails, Marin looks to have a competitive lineup on the board for the upcoming year.
Update (14 October 2005): Bike Magazine has a good writeup from the Interbike show about the 2006 Marin Quake series. The piece features good information about the frame design and the pedalling characteristics of the Quad-Link suspension platform.
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26 September »
How tos »
Cory
Most women don’t fall into the 5′9″ to 6′ which category which, until recently, meant they had to stretch themselves onto a bike designed around a much larger body type. Finding a bike that pedals well without sacrificing comfort and proper geometry can be a real chore. In my neck of the woods, I see a lot of women riding small or extra small bikes with short stems and raked angles — I truly feel for these people because riding a poorly fit bike sucks.
Titus Cycles has a section on their website devoted to fitting a mountain bike for a woman (link via Mountain Bike Action. The article is pretty informative and provides a good starting point for finding an appropriate bike for a woman.
In addition to the Titus Cycles website, another good source for information geared specifically to women cyclists is SheCycles. SheCycles aims to be a complete resource for female cyclists and provides a number of decent (and free) sources of information for its readers. I’d recommend checking out the SheCycles Forum if you're a woman looking for some honest feedback about such-and-such a bike and its suitability for you and your riding style.
Sources: Titus Cycles | Mountain Bike Action | SheCycles
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Bike Magazine’s online counterpart has a decent feature on the lineup of 2006 Specialized carbon bikes. While information on the 2006 bikes has been available for some time, Bike obviously spent some time actually riding these bikes.
For this reason the writeup is a worthy read and, if you read between the lines, you can figure out what style of riding the bikes are suited for (and not suited for). Of course, you need to have a very, very fat wallet if you’re looking to own one of these things on your own…
There’s also a little snippet on the S-Works Tarmac frame, fork, and bar / stem combo for those of you interested in road bikes.
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Bikemagic.com has an early season look at the 2006 Orange bikes lineup.
For ‘06, Orange introduces the 224, the successor to their wildly successful 223 DH-rig. The 224 features the same single-pivot suspension design that was used on the 223 and ridden to victory by Steve Peat on multiple occasions. The 224 has been refined a little bit — the pivot has been moved closer to the bottom bracket and the head tube area has been changed as well. Also, the 224 will be available in a dual-ring freeride oriented configuration, with a parts-spec better suited to drops, skinnies, jumps, and climbing.
Bikemagic has the scoop on a number of other Orange projects too, including the Orange Five trail bike and the single-speed friendly P7 hardtail. Check out the article for some good images and more information.
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There’s a short term review of the Haro Escape 8.3 over at the Bike Magazine website that’s worth checking out if you’re considering this burly hardtail as your next ride. Reviewer Justin Graves does a pretty thorough job of putting the bike through its paces and subjects the Escape 8.3 to all sorts of different riding styles.
Like Graves, I’m curious as to why Haro went with a Shimano Deore XT rear derailleur on the 8.3, especially since they spec’d the lower priced 8.2 with a SRAM X.7 rear derailleur. As I mentioned in my review of the Deore XT rear derailleur, the slapping of the derailleur against the chainstay makes it less suited to a bike like the 8.3 than a similarly priced SRAM rear derailleur.
I’ve read mixed reviews on the SDG I-Beam saddle that comes stock on the 8.3 — some riders love it while others complain that it’s far too hard for their liking. For 2006, it looks like more manufacturers are producing I-Beam-compatible saddles, so this is an area where time will tell if the system will be adopted on a wide scale.
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21 September »
Tech tips »
Cory
As a mountain biker, there’s nothing worse than bombing down a steep run and pulling your brake levers until the come into contact with your handlebars. And even then they still fail to stop you. For most people, this scenario ends with a trip to the local shop for a brake bleed (or new pads, but that’s another story).
The good news is that bleeding hydraulic disc brakes isn’t that difficult if you take your time and have a sliver of mechanical aptitude. While this entry isn’t a ‘how to’ guide on bleeding your own brakes — there are plenty of examples online — it is meant to be the starting point for your search for good technical data on your brakes. Below is a compilation of links to relevant online resources for major hydraulic disc brake brands.
Bleeding Hayes disc brakes
Hayes’ new website is a great resource for all of you Hayes owners out there. Whether you’re interested in learning all of the ins and outs of the brakes at Hayes ‘U’ or downloading detailed product service manuals, you can find all of the information you need at the company website.
While you can easily put together your own bleed kit for Hayes brakes, you can also purchase pre-assembled Hayes bleed kits from your local bike shop or at an online retailer.
Bleeding Avid Juicy disc brakes
I was particularly impressed with the performance of SRAM’s Avid Juicy 5 disc brakes. I continue to be impressed by the brakes’ stopping power, even when it’s pretty obvious to me that my brakes need a little bit of brake bleeding love. Looking online, I found that Avid makes available all of the servicing information for the Juicy brakes.
The Avid Juicys require a special bleed kit that can be a chore to track down if you don’t know where to look (or if your local distributor doesn’t have any in stock).
Bleeding Shimano disc brakes
Unlike Hayes and Avid hydraulic disc brakes — which use Dot 3 or Dot 4 brake fluid — Shimano hydraulic disc brake systems use mineral oil to help provide their stopping power.
At this point in time, you can find servicing manuals for all Shimano products at the company’s website. While the listing is a little intimidating, Shimano makes it easy to track down your brake model.
Inexpensive Shimano-branded bleed kits are readily available, but I’d recommend putting together the pieces on your own — you’ll be able to get far more bang for your buck doing it this way.
Other disc brake systems
Anything you’d like me to add? Drop me a line or add your comments below.
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Giant Bicycles is one of the world’s largest bicycle manufacturers and they’ve always done a decent job putting together high quality rides and making them available at very competitive prices. Bikes like the Giant NRS and the DH Comp (and Team) are stalwarts on the cross country and downhill racing scenes across the world. Combined with Giant’s freeride, all mountain, and trail bikes built around the Maestro suspension platform, the company has put together an excellent range of bikes for the demanding cyclist.
The NRS has been around for years and is well loved, but with last year’s introduction of the Giant Trance there was rampant speculation that the NRS’ days were numbered. Now come images out of Expocycle of what looks like the replacement for Giant’s flagship xc bike. The Giant Anthem takes the Maestro platform and uses it on a short travel frame. Of course, time will tell if the Anthem is a worthy replacement for the NRS, but for the time being, Giant looks like they’ve got a sexy rig waiting for consumers in 2006.
As I mentioned a couple of months ago, the well-received Giant Team DH was being tested with a Maestro equipped platform. At Expocycle in Montreal, Giant formally unveiled the Glory. The Glory makes use of the aforementioned Maestro suspension platform to provide downhillers with what will likely be a solid performer on the DH circuit. While I’m curious to see how the relatively exposed shock mount holds up to rock gardens and general abuse, I’m sure the bike will pedal like a champ.
I’ve pedalled a couple of Maestro-based bikes around parking lots in my area and they were amazing. If either of these bikes perform in the same way, Giant has a pair of winners headed towards the podium.
Update (29 September 2005): CyclingNews.com spent some time on the Giant Anthem at the Dirt Demo at Interbike. The Anthem sounds like, how do I put this, an interesting ride, although I’m not sure it’s something I’d choose for a daily bike — the Trance seems like it would be more fun to ride regularly.
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