2008 Bianchi

A company that has been very well known in the road industry decides to expand its Mountain lineup. So what has Bianchi offer us for the upcoming year?

First up is the hardtail. Bianchi Oetzi hardtail will receive a redesigned seatstay and BB for 2008. Bianchi has also used their nano tech carbon (the same found on their road bikes) onto the bikes. This made the frame to weight at a respectable 1.2kg.

Oetzi pics (provided by BikeRadar):




Next is Bianchi's XC/Marathon Full Sus, Camos, it features a 80mm of rear travel and the suspension design is rather new and unseen in the market, they used a shock mounted on a bar link to suspend. The front part of the bike is carbon while the back part is alu. This combination made the bike frame to weight at a decent 2.4kg. From the pics, it seems the pivot is located on the chainstay, it is possible that Bianchi managed to escape the HorstLink pattern with the pivot location. So thats all the info bout 08 Bianchi MTB range and now is pics of the new Camos!

Camos pics(provided by BikeRadar)

2008 Felt MTB's

Hmm, it appears last year as a hyped product, so what happened? Well the Equilink hasnt dead yet and Felt are expanding its range for 2008. Sadly, their first Equilink equipped bike doesnt get as much attention as it should. You rarely will find a online owner owning it. Partly is cause they are better bikes out there, if you compare it with the price range of Felt Virtue bikes.

So anyway, lasts year biggest complaint is that the price of the Virtue is very expansive and Felt answer that the price is kinda pricey is cause of the seatstay carbon and that isnt a good answer. So for 2008, Felt decides to make the whole Virtue rear triangle to carbon, and it does look very stunning indeed. Felt engineers also claimed that the new design increases stiffness. So how bout the price? Sadly, Felt hasnt announce the price of the 08 Virtue or its component, lets hope they make it cheaper.

2008 Felt Virtue rear triangle

Some of you might notice that there in MTBR bike review page that the Felt Redemption is listed in the site but you cant really find any info bout it from Felt's website. Well the Redemption has presented itself in this year Eurobike and it features 165mm of rear travel, that makes it into light freeride MTB range. Anyway pics! and damn the Redemption has one sweet paint theme.

2008 Felt Redemption

Lastly, Felt is releasing their all-mountain bike to complete the lineup, with a rear travel of 145mm, introducing Compulsion!. The bike looks like a Redemption little brother rather then the Virtue. It comes with a full aluminium frame, top to bottom. So here are the pics!!!!

Felt's All-Mountain platform bike, the Compulsion

So thats all the updates that Felt is offering for 2008, lets hope next year they will have better media attention and lowered their bike prices. The weight of their 08 bikes hasnt been confirmed yet, I will update as soon as I found out. Thats all for now

Pics provided from cyclingnews.com

A new trend?

Honestly speaking, I totally got nothing to talk about today but after accidently seeing the review of Pace latest full suspension bike, I realise a similarity about its floating shock mount design. The bike is smoother. Thats exactly the same comment as Trek's Full Floater.

BikeRadar states: Pace's patented Free Floater suspension design sandwiches the shock between ultra stiff 3D CNC'd linkages. These combine to bring the back wheel first backwards and then increasingly upwards and round through the 130mm (5in) stroke. They also manipulate leverage on the DT shock for smoother start and end phases but, thankfully, much less mid-stroke 'hammock. The Free Floater rear end is spot on too, making the DT HVR shock feel fantastically supple. It's smooth enough to stop eye blur on washed-out wooden steps, it rolls easily over square-edged hits without taking a momentum kick to the kidneys and it lands proper drops with a very calm catch.

CyclingNews states: According to Trek, the 'Full Floater' design allows for better fine-tuning of shock leverage ratios throughout the travel range, delivering a more supple feel at the top of the stroke and a more 'bottomless' feel at the other end.

As you can see, the comments is pretty much the same, especially commenting about the manipulated leverage ratio. Below are the two pics of a floating shock mount.(Left: Trek Full Floater, Right: Pace Full Floater)

So basically the advantage of this design is it allows the manufacturer to custom tune the leverage ratio of the shock throughout its travel without resorting to complicated design like DW Link

2008 BMC Fourstroke

Hmm, what is BMC? A bike company?. I never heard of it. BMC is a swiss mountain bike company, they are not that popular in MountainBike but roadies should know BMC. So anyway they make some interesting moutain bikes too, the quality of their bikes are superb (considering its built in Swiss), so far their lineup only offers hardtails and full suspension ranging from cross country to all-mountain.

BMC uses VPS which is something like a virtual pivot bike (seems most bike manufacturer are using virtual pivot concept nowadays). Their XC full suspension bike, FourStroke receives some changes for 08, so what do the Swiss company has offered us for 2008?

08 Fourstroke 01 VPS rear linkage and Easton unidirectional CNT

For starters, they did a makeover on their top XC full suspension bike, FourStroke01. Its now offered in full black and it features Easton CNT (thats right, they use the same type of carbon tube that you found on your Eason carbon MTB products). Above is the picture of the rear linkage. It looks beefy and stiff for a XC bike, the weight hasnt been confirmed yet (lets hope its light shall we).

To improve stiffness, the lower link for 08 models have been widened.

Knowing European bikes, the mud clearance for the Fourstroke doesnt disappoint. And the carbon bracer is actually curved upwards for better rigidity and it looks good too.

The Fourstroke 01 also receives a newly redesign head tube bond that increases the front stiffness.

So before we move to the aluminium model, there is a bit of change that will affect both the carbon and aluminium model which is BMC unique toptube/seattube joint. It has been redesign and it looks beautifull.

The newly redesign toptube/seattube joint

The aluminium version of Fourstroke also recieves a new hydroformed head tube joint which elimantes the use of gussets, thus save weight.

So basically those are the changes that 08 BMC Fourstroke will undertake and I must say that the carbon bike aint going to be cheap. But since the carbon is made from Easton which produces one of the strongest carbon fibre parts in Mountain Bikes, EC90 seatpost, MonkeyLite Handlebars, durability should be assured. Below are the pics of the new Fourstrokes and take note that in the second pic, the bike located in the middle is 07 Fourstroke, as you can see the toptube/seattube junction is different.

2008 BMC Fourstroke 01 (carbon) - It aint goint to be cheap

07 and 08 BMC Fourstrokes (Aluminium version - front is 08 and the middle one is 07)

Pics provided from CyclingNews.com

Carbon Flex

Hmm, so after a couple of days of not posting new stuffs, I decided to find something to talk about and after browsing through some of Eurobike 08 stuffs, I got my self interested into carbon flex.

Most riders buy carbon frame because of the stiffness offered by carbon is uncomparable to aluminium frame. Even Specialized states on their site that thier 08 stumpy carbon frame is stiffer then their alu frame (07 alu frame is stiffer then 08 according to spesh site). Anyway if a carbon frame were to flex, most riders wont like it and that will be their biggest disappointment of the bike. So why am I writing about carbon flex?

Well if you guys notice, they are a few 08 bikes that design their carbon chainstay to flex. A company that has been developing flex carbon stays for quite a while now is Cannondale, most riders doesnt notice this cause Cannondale doesnt really promote about it, but their XC bike, Scalpel stays depends of flex. If you read over MTBR, some riders actually commented the flex as a bad part of the product. Anyway the Scalpel got redesigned and lighter by 200-300g compared to last year model and its travel has been increased by 100mm and the shock is now located below the top tube instead of behind the seatpost like lasts year model. Below is a pic of the 08 Scalpel frame, without shock.

2008 Cannondale Scalpel Frame

Anyway besides Cannondale, another company decide to make the chainstay carbon to flex. The Italian company is called Carraro and for 08 its releasing a full suspension bike called the Rampant.

So, knowing that they are other company that has decided to use Cannondale flex stay concept, I decided to do some research on carbon flexing/bending and surprisingly I found out that some carbon can be bent at 90degrees. Click here for more info about it.

So what else I found out? Because of nano-tech, its possible to design a super stiff and strong seatpost like Easton or to design a bendable carbon nano tube. Click here for the pdf page (only accessable by AdobeReader or formerly known as AcrobatReader, click here to go to the download site), its pretty impressive how they manage to flex the carbon nanotube.

So far thats the usefull sources that I can find about carbon flex. I will try and find out more in time :D. And below are the pics of Cannondale 08 Scalpel chain stay, Cannondale earlier version of chain stay and Carraro Rampant.

08 Cannondale Scalpel chainstay

Earlier versions of Cannondale EPO

08 Carraro Rampant chainstay

My say: I cant confirm the durability of flex chainstay as in jumping or standing up while mashing the pedal cause I myself havent manage to test this kind of design for a period of time, I only ridden a Cannondale full suspension bike a couple of time only and I think its a old model, heard of Sobe? and I used to wonder why the chainstay is oddly shaped and now I found its purpose. If the durability of flex chainstay is getting better year by year, I belive in the future, you can see more company doing flex chainstay and it will appear from XC to Trail bike range. Imagine the possibility of making carbon flexing to absorb small bumps and the shock will only be used once your bike hit bigger obstacles. I remember reading it from a mountain bike magazine where a teenager managed to design a full suspension bike without the shock, just by flexing the carbon. How cool is that, you just dropped 200g from the bike. Anyway thats all for today and toodles. :D

Ride 4 Health

Updates @ 2/9

I recently updated the 2008 Rock Shox SID, be sure to check it out, click the link below to go directly to the post:
2008 RockShox SID

Sorry for the inactivity

Hey guys, sorry that I havent post things up like I usually do, its just that after a couple of days not enough sleep and having late night party, I've gotten soo sleepy and tired to write something in the blog, but now I am revived and im going to start posting again, sorry.

Anyway Scott has updated its 08 site. Make sure you guys check it out, its easier to navigate and now comes with simple and practical flash animation. It doesnt have a HTML version though, so you guys with 56k connection better be patient while loading the site (hmm, by the looks of it, by 2010, dial up wont be able to access many sites anymore without waiting for a period of time). The link can be found here.

Oh yeah before I forget, the site have the new Gambler listed, click here to go to the product page