A New Standard for Trail Bikers!!!

Trail bikes or Light All-Mountain Bikes (as some call) riders usually end up in a dilemma when it comes to choosing their forks.

Most riders want a 20mm version without having to live wit h the weight penalty. Although some riders dont mind the extra weight, they are still a large group of riders who wants a stiffness of 20mm axle fork but with the weight of a normal axle fork.
Well, you can now throw away that dilemma because Shimano (aint they great at introducing new standards? although we might not like it, remember low-normal?) is introducing a new axle diameter standard, the 15mm. The good news is Fox already has a 15mm fork prototype model.

Image taken from BikeMagic.com.

Shimano is introducing 15mm versions of their hubs and wheels in their XTR and XT product line sometime middle to end of year.

It's uncertain when the rest of the fork manufacturers (RockShox, Marzocchi, Manitou and etc.) will introduce the new standard into their product line. (Lets hope we see some prototypes during InterBike 08). Anyway the new standard is certainly a good newss for us trail riders. Expect to see the new 15mm hubs from other companies later this year (maybe next year) and hopefully it will become a new trailbike standard for 2009 and beyond :cross fingers:.

*Update: So far I have recovered from pneumonia and I am happy cause I can continue adventuring into the woods, problem is....im not as fast as last time (poor me). Oh well guess more training and exercise for me.

Chaoz

CrankBrothers surprise.

Recently I went to cyclingnews.com and I found a very interesting article. It seems CrankBrothers has now join the ranks of fi'zi:k, Brooks, and Selle Royal because CrankBrothers has merged with Selle Royal. The good news is CrankBrothers will stay as the CrankBrothers we knew now. For more information, head to cyclingnews.com.

For those who didn visit CrankBrothers website yet, you will realise that it has been updated but to most of our surprise, it seems CrankBrothers Cobalt SL cranks and Wheelset is missing from the website. So far the products that are shown in its website is :

pedals | bottom brackets | directsets | seatposts | pumps | tools | accessories.

Its odd that they remove the crankset link and still show the ISIS bottom bracket. And the absence of the 2 products that are shown in last year interbike is a surprise. Guess we have to wait for this year interbike. I am hinting that CrankBrothers still has to sort out some problems with the new products.

Anyway Happy Chinese New Year!.