Alongside the team launch for the Madison Genesis team for the 2014 season, Genesis head honcho Albert Steward also gave us a sneak peek of the new team machine.
The Genesis Mark 4 Volare is still constructed using Reynolds high-grade 953 stainless steel but they’ve made some significant changes both inside and out.
The frames are now made using custom butted size-specific tubing ensuring parity in stiffness across the size range. They''ll also be compatible with Shimano mechanical and Di2 groupsets. The other major change to the frame is a fresh graphic treatment.
Steward told BikeRadar : "Looking back at the previous model and seeing where we could make improvements it was obvious really. Rather than painting over the beautiful polished steel we’ve changed over to decals. By getting rid of the paint and lacquer we’ve actually reduced the frame weight by 100g!"
The team will be riding Dura-Ace Di2 equipped bikes with Dura Ace C35 tubular wheels, an Enve fork and finishing kit from PRO.
Pricing is still to be confirmed but is expected to be in line with the current 953 frames, which retail for £2299.99.
Chamois cream is designed to prevent saddle sore and increase your comfort. There is a plethora of options available. Dave Zabriskie, a former WorldTour rider with a chequered past, has put his name to DZ Nuts chamois cream, a product with personality that stands out from the crowd.
Made from a long list of natural ingredients which claim to offer anti-bacterial, anti-inflammatory, wound-healing and anti-chaffing properties, DZ Nuts is a true cream that’s easy to apply to the skin and doesn’t have a greasy or wet feeling. There’s a lasting cooling feeling and the cream is well-lasting to avoid friction late in a ride or post-ride.
The 120ml (4oz) tube is a similar size to other major branded jars, such as Assos chamois cream. As it's a tube, sharing the cream with other riders is far more acceptable than sharing cream from a jar when the need arises.
The high price stops it scoring more highly, but it works exactly how a good chamois cream should. In the end, chamois cream is a very personal item, but the packaging and directions alone are enough to make us smile – as Zabriskie puts it, it’s “maintaintanance”.
Endurance nutrition specialist Science in Sport has added two new flavours to its range of popular GO Energy and GO Electrolyte drinks: elderberry and raspberry.
The UK company identified the slightly less sweet – and dare we say more sophisticated – flavours after favourable early tests with sponsored pro athletes
Luke Heeney, new product director at SiS said: "We were looking to add some new flavours to the range that were slightly less sweet, and with elderberry and raspberry that’s what we’ve got.
"We had some great feedback from initial tests with our pro athletes and that was enough to convince us to produce them."
The products were displayed at this week's ICEbike show in new 500g tubs costing £9.99 each.
The new flavours are the only alteration to the SiS GO recipe. Raspberry-flavoured GO Electrolyte contains sodium and 36g of carbohydrate per 500ml serving. The elderberry GO Energy majors on carbohydrate and offers around 48g of energy per serving.
Visit http://ift.tt/16eiXTf for more details.
E-bikes are big in Europe, but unknown in the UK. Can Scott’s E-Spark change that? Well, if there was ever a bike aptly named for the addition of an electric motor, it’s Scott’s Spark.
But Scott has plenty of other frames with less auspicious names; was the Spark even the right platform to use?
This E version of the proven Spark chassis keeps its head tube and shock mounting top tube, as well as the very neat 3D linkage section that wraps around the seat tube. It also keeps the unique three-mode Fox Nude shock (full open, two-thirds travel and fully locked) with handlebar remote, and the flip chip for dropping the bottom bracket and slackening the head and seat angles.
The build is broadly equivalent to the conventionally-propelled £2,500 Spark 740, with a through-axle Fox fork (synced via a shared remote to the rear shock), Shimano drive gear with XT highlights, and Syncros figuring big for the cockpit, rims and saddle.
The Bosch power unit features a 400w battery
The big difference is the massive plastic case for the Bosch Performance motor, bolted below the curved plate that replaces the bottom part of the downtube and conventional bottom bracket area. The 2.42kg battery locks (with a proper key) neatly into place where you’d normally have a water bottle.
Slim, curved FSA Metropolis town bike cranks drive a tiny 16-tooth sprocket, while a trailing main pivot means the whole back end is stretched and the wheelbase elongated by almost 60mm. With the battery it’s 16.8lb (7.6kg) heavier than the 740.
Yes, you read that right. It’s 44lb all-up. But toggle the big Intuvia headunit display into 'turbo' or even 'sport' mode and weight just isn’t a problem.
The problem is not ploughing straight off the trail, as even slight pedal pressure triggers the motor, launching you forwards like a spooked horse. Getting the long wheelbase round tight corners, and the simple fact you’re not expecting to arrive at uphill corners at downhill speeds, make the first few minutes on the E-Spark a startling experience.
It doesn’t take long to learn when to back off and how to nudge the pedals to feed the power in smoothly though, and soon we were power sliding the Scott up and down loose loamy turns in showers of peat and leaves.
The fact that only laughing like a maniac is making you breathless even on the steepest climbs has a profound effect on your riding. You start deliberately hunting out the slopes that have laughed at you for years, or ride down stuff just so you can ride back up it.
There’s minimal lag between our inputs and the motor kicking in
The Bosch motor is really impressive, with minimal lag between your pedal pressure and the power assist kicking in. It does drop torque slightly after a few seconds of initial surge in turbo mode, but you soon learn to expect that in the same way you learn to take straight-through lines up climbs rather than trying to weave the stretched E-Spark around obstacles.
The rearward main pivot means significant pedal bob in lower power settings, so we were glad of the shorter, tighter feel of the traction mode on less hectic climbs and used the lockout a lot on smooth trials. With the suspension locked out and a lower power setting, flex from the skinny cranks is obvious.
The unpowered descending of the Scott is better than you might expect. Apart from the head unit, all the battery and motor weight is kept as low as possible. Even with the long chainstays, the ratio of unsprung weight (wheels, rear mech, stays and lower fork) to sprung weight (rest of the frame, motor, kit and so on) makes the suspension feel more active and the bike more planted than normal.
That’s a definite bonus given the normally rather notchy feel of Fox’s Evolution dampers, and an extra-special bonus given the even notchier feel of these unique three-mode versions. The long tail also balances the battery weight so the bike’s in-flight balance is okay too, although the sheer weight means heaving it into the air more than a few times is bloody hard work.
Triple compound tyres give a reasonable grip/speed balance
Unsurprisingly, the long wheelbase, low-slung mass and slack angles make it very stable in a straight line and when braking heavily. The triple-compound Schwalbe tyres give a reasonable grip/speed balance too.
Turning the E-Spark takes a lot more effort than usual, particularly with only 700mm bars to crowbar it into corners. We also dropped the chain off the small motor sprocket several times during testing. Obviously you’re not going to be able to fit conventional chain devices to keep it secure.
The more we rode the E-Spark, the more we wondered why the company hasn’t motorised one of its longer-travel Genius bikes instead. The extra weight would be tiny compared to the motor mass, more suspension would mean the chain gets bounced less, and you’d have wider bars and a shorter stem to coax it through corners. Maybe E-Genius just doesn’t sound as good!
You must keep a very close eye on battery life. While the pack starts off with a nominal 60km of juice, estimates of remaining range can shrink to less than half that after only 10km of high-power riding. With only a 16-tooth cog and skinny cranks to propel 45lb, the thought of running out of charge a long way from home is a serious worry.
Keep a close eye on battery life – if it goes flat, it’ll take your will to live with it
The way the Bosch motor works in tune with pedalling, and the potentially massive difference it makes to speed left us really impressed with the E-Spark. It behaves better than we expected on descents too, although the suspension is still relatively limited and the chain prone to dropping.
This article was originally published in What Mountain Bike magazine, available on Apple Newsstand and Zinio.
UK steel bike specialist Genesis will fit its entire range of all-rounder bikes with larger volume 28C tyres from mid-2014.
Genesis product manager Albert Steward told BikeRadar that the 2015 line-up of Reynolds-tubed Equilbrium 00, 10, 20 and the top of the range butted titanium frames would feature 28C wheels as standard, saying it was natural progression for the bike which majors on comfort and practicality.
"There's enough data from tyre manufacturers [to say] that larger volume tyres roll faster," he said. "Yes, there's a bit of a weight penalty but for the people who aren't chasing the grams it makes perfect sense."
Larger volume tyres are steadily gaining traction on road bikes, which have mostly been specced with 23C tyres – particularly at the performance end of the range. A large number of top-flight professional teams now rig their bikes with 24mm and 25mm wide tyres, which are said to give less rolling resistance over their skinnier counterparts, puncture less frequently and in some cases improve aerodynamic performance.
Steward said the development was also in keeping with the brand's position of making bikes suited to the UK's dodgy road conditions.
He said: "I guess we're viewed in a way as being with quirky British attributes really and I think the extension from the UK design aspect in terms of long drop brake callipers, mudguards is larger volume tyres – the roads certainly aren't getting any better."
The new bikes – first launched in 2008 – will be unveiled in June 2014, and be on the market by July.
Fox uses the same lower legs across all its 32mm stanchion 650b forks, and the F100 is no exception. The asymmetrical, ribbed dropouts drop a full 40mm below the end of the leg reinforced by the crisply finished disc brake mount.
The Fox/Shimano QR15 axle is the best through-axle out there, with an adjustable receiver that lets you set the angle the lever closes at. 80 and 100mm travel versions get the scalloped crown to save a few grams, while 26 and 29in options use a significantly different chassis.
In straight structural terms none are very impressive, but their controlled action on the trail sucks up the flex that’s so obvious in workshop warping tests – they’re actually the most confidence-inspiring short-travel forks around.
Kashima coating is standard on all Fox's top-end Factory forks (Evolution and Performance dampers are available) and helps create excellent traction through sensitive small bump responses.
But it’s the end stroke control that sets the Fox F100 apart in the short-stroke category, with just the right progression in spring rate. Trail Adjust offers three compression settings (when in trail mode) for further fine control.
The result encourages aggressive rather than defensive riding, and keeps Fox the gold standard for short-travel forks.
This article was originally published in What Mountain Bike magazine, available on Apple Newsstand and Zinio.
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
This email is being sent to apkparty.bikes@blogger.com. | |
