I think the 3D printed layers of titanium thing Charge is up to is just plain great. I’m also glad Bikerumor posted it, because I would definitely have missed it. Charge makes some pretty cool bikes, but I wouldn’t have expected the next stage of bicycle frame production to happen on their watch.
But this is it.
When I first starting working on a frame design back in 2007, I got to spend some time with an engineer who was developing vehicles for the military. The things she was helping to create were incredible, but the materials she was describing were off the charts. Their fabrication process sounded like carbon fiber, but they were metal. What’s going on in Charge’s video bares a strong resemblance to what she was describing.
Combined with an increasing realization that America has to wake up when it comes to manufacturing, these entirely new ways of creating bike frames are pretty interesting. Will you be manufacturing your own frame with an in-home 3D printer in the next few years? No chance. But things are changing.
It occurred to me today that there might be some shorter distances between points yet on Danzig, and that I just might’ve been a little too conservative with the amount of tubing. If you’re going to have to machine something anyway, I think there’s a real benefit to putting all your pivots onto the same piece. Might change my mind once I see the price tag for machining that section, but here’s the last shot of Danzig’s main triangle for a while. Have to put some more time into the meetings necessary to bring this thing to life.
I’m at this stage where writing about developing my suspension system is getting in the way of actually developing my suspension system. So I’m shutting the hell up about it for a while. For the three guys out there who care, don’t worry: if something interesting happens, I’ll let you know. And I’ll still be moving dots and lines around on a computer screen and obsessing about every quarter millimeter. I just won’t be bothering to screen capture that crap to post it here constantly. Dots are being moved though.
All the focus on suspension designs has reminded me of an NPR article my wife forwarded to me a few weeks ago. Basically, a few companies–most notably IBM and Halliburton–are trying to patent the act of being a patent troll. Here’s an excerpt from IBM’s troll application, as reported by NPR:
A system and methods for extracting value from a portfolio of assets, for example a patent portfolio, are described. By granting floating privileges described herein, a portfolio owner can extend an opportunity for obtaining an interest in selected assets from the portfolio to a client who lacks the resources to accumulate and maintain such a portfolio, in return for an annuity stream to the portfolio owner.”
I have little love for IBM, and Halliburton seems about as close to the Devil’s official corporation as I can imagine, but clearly someone in each of their legal departments has a useless creative writing degree (like me), and I applaud their initiative. In case you don’t know, the M.O. of a patent trolls is to patent a bunch of imaginary products and then charge anyone who decides to genuinely make one of those things. In a special piece of mind-blowing meta-legal kung fu, these companies are seeking to patent the patent troll process. That’s fucking evil genius.
So when someone with no working prototype and only some vague-ass drawings (like me, right now) of a product tries to sue IBM for, say, inventing that product, IBM could conceivably counter-sue them for violating their patent–the one on being a troll.
Doesn’t look like these attempts are going anywhere, but, I’ve experienced the “work” of a patent troll once upon a time (we had to remove all products from our retail web site that bore the phrase “stealth”–including some WTB saddles at the time–because some douchenozzle claimed to have ownership of that word). Having seen one at work, sitting a pile of his own filth under the bridge of someone else’s idea, I wouldn’t mind seeing their asses crushed under the diabolical weight of some giant legal departments and their professionally trained assholes.
The question, of course–should one of these happen to get through–is could I then patent the act of patenting the act of patent trolling? Might be easier at that point to just patent the act of applying for patents, though that one might be a little tough to get approved.
I’ve lost track of the hours I’ve put into Project Danzig, and probably best I did. But just when you think you’ve designed something pretty cool, a company in Japan comes along and releases giant robot that shoots people when you smile.
Lest that shot past you, let me just clarify that last sentence. One feature of the giant new armed robot being sold by Japanese killer robot makers, Suidobashi Heavy Industry–I mean aside from the fact that you can control it with an iPad–is that it shoots people in the face when you smile. Smiling operates the dual Gatling guns that fire BBs, so the funnier and funnier you find it that you’re using a giant robot to shoot your friend in the face, the more Kuratas shoots him in the face.
What type of insurance does a company like this buy?
Did I mention you can operate it from your smartphone? Of course you can.
Nothing I write about can possibly compare to the promotional video, though. Until you’ve watched an adorable Japanese girl’s demure giggles cause a robot to shoot someone in the face, you’ve never met the 21st Century.
My suspension design, in contrast, might one day make people smile, but that smiling won’t be able to put anyone’s eye out. At least not yet.
Clearly I have a lot of design work to do.
To that end, today we wrap up axle path–or the “versus propulsion” side of it. Here’s the drawing from yesterday.
The red dots mark three key stages of the axle path. If you look at the green vertical line along which the red dots are arranged, you’ll notice the lowest dot–which represents the bike sitting there with no weight on it–begins on the right hand side of the vertical line. As the bike moves up to its sag point, the axle moves to the left of the vertical line. The key is that the axle path continues to move rearward for 10mm of vertical travel beyond the sag point.
The idea is that chain tension continues to counteract the suspension’s movement until you’re 10-15mm beyond the sag point. The sag point is where the suspension stays when you’re riding around. Chain force hinders suspension movement until you’re 10-15mm beyond the sag point. Once you compress the suspension beyond that point chain tension no longer tries to control the suspension.
So that’s the idea. Almost all suspension bikes work this way, so I’ve not created anything unique there. What I did try to do, though, is develop a platform that will allow a huge range of options with all of these points. The system makes it easy to fine tune every aspect of the axle path.
So that’s what we’re going to do.
Responses to my “How much more would you pay for U.S.-made carbon fiber?” question keep coming in, but at this point the clear winner is $250-$500 more. The majority of respondents would pay up to $500 more for a carbon fiber frame if it were made in the U.S. Impossible to say how accurate that admittedly highly unscientific analysis really is, those are the results. I’ll keep an eye on incoming responses, though, because these things can change.
And maybe next week we ask how much more you’d pay for a giant killer robot that was made in the U.S. Makes me smile just thinking about it.
You’re looking at the new DeLorean bicycle. Yes, that DeLorean. After the streak of genuinely interesting brand collaboration bicycles that included the mini-moto Audi/Ducati bike and the Aston Martin Factor bike, I’ll admit I’m having a bit of trouble situating the stainless steel DeLorean somewhere on the continuum between “losing all desire to live” and “hey, that’s pretty OK.”
Normally, it’d be a goof-magnet, and at almost $5500, it certainly meets the Decadent Excess criteria, but I’m thrown off by the president of DeLorean, Stephen Wynne’s meta-like realization that he’s being asked to participate in the bullshit fashion world accessorizing of bicycles:
When Wynne was first approached about the idea, he was skeptical. ‘I basically, said, “Yeah, I’m interested, but I don’t want to do a $5,000 bike that’s really a $200 Asian bike with a badge on it,” he says, ‘which you customarily see from other brands.’ Wynne was quickly persuaded, however, that expanding the DeLorean name from four-wheels to two wouldn’t be a shameless, superficial exercise in branding. This is because the bike and the car share a core strand of DNA: the stainless steel body.
‘They said, “No, we want to do a stainless steel bike because stainless steel is the new cool, if you’re into bikes,” he says. ‘It’s sort of taken over from carbon fiber.'”
All this begs the question, “Is it still a shameless and pointless tie-in if you know it’s a shameless and pointless tie-in?”
Or if you believe stainless steel has “sort of taken over from carbon fiber.” Nice as it is, stainless steel certainly won’t be replacing carbon fiber any time soon, but I can just picture the bullshit meeting at which a line like that squeaks out into the room. Besides, everybody knows it’s granite, not stainless steel, that’s taking over from carbon fiber.
Best to ponder that while we move to SRAM’s 1×11 group, which is apparently going to be a reality, based on some near production looking photos popping up at Bicycle Retailer, Bikerumor and Bikeradar.
Remember the impromptu and completely unprofessional poll I took on the 1×11 group, in which the vast majority of readers needed to know the cost, but many others just plain hated all over it? Based on current info. I doubt those original results are going to be overturned. SRAM’s beast of a cassette will, it appears, require a proprietary hub from one of a few wheelset manufacturers (DT Swiss and SRAM are mentioned, but by now we all know Mavic is also fond of longer than currently fashionable cassette bodies, too). So it’s coming, and it’s going to need a new kind of cassette body.
The problem I see here is that if you can’t show a new item with at least some connection to Enve Composites–and preferably sporting the Enve rims–it’s not technically possible for anyone to consider it cool. Here then we encounter the unfriendly intersection between Proprietary Cutting-edge Gadgetry and Artisanal Badassery–at least until somebody somewhere can capture a photo of the igloo-sized Powerdome 11-speed cassette on a wheel sporting an Enve rim.
For what it’s worth, my own wide range cassette idea–zip-tying a 53t chainring directly to my spokes and running it just inside my 34t “large” cog–is unable to be patented due to some extremely narrow-minded thinking on the part of the U.S. Patent Office re. the use of zip-ties as “structural members.”
Forget 650b. If you’ve seen the Czech flying bicycle, you know he future of bicycles is all about air travel. Sure, this thing is a catastrophe, but also an enigma. What, for instance, is the Surly connection here? Check out the video and see if you can figure out why this thing has fat bike tires?
Landing gear, I guess.
In other gadget news, Google is officially scaring the hell out of me now. Self-driving cars and googly eyes were one thing, but Lolcat-loving artificial intelligence and electronic brains are just a bit much. Fast Company is reporting that Google has created an artificial brain.
Google’s brain, more or less undirected through a process of repetition, developed a ‘concept’ of human faces and the different parts of a human body from these images, and also a concept of cats. ‘Concept’ here means a fuzzy ill-understood pattern that it could use to categorize a new image it had not seen before, based on its previous learning. The cats concept was a surprise to the researchers, but given the fact that YouTube is a skewed data set, and that we humans do love Lolcats and their like, perhaps it was inevitable.”
Not scared yourself, yet? Check out the human face “concept” of Google’s fake brain.
Starting to look like zombie apocalypse could be our best case scenario.
There’s a great article over at Fast Company describing the new “social media command centers” some companies are using to “capture, monitor, and utilize social media conversations.” Certainly sounds cool, but I can’t help but think all this talk of “response strategies,” “feedback internalization,” and “two-way conversations” is just the latest version of “this call may be monitored for training purposes”?
Dell, for instance, is cited as a specific example in the article:
Dell’s ground control center tracks around 22,000 daily posts about the company across a wide range of social media, and enables Dell to participate in online dialogue about their brand and use social media insights to improve their products and marketing.”
But everyone knows what sucks so bad about Dell. They subsidize the cost of everything by filling your computer with bloatware programs that make it run like ass. They also skin their vendors alive on pricing until the hardware in your PC makes the back aisles at RadioShack look pretty advanced. Will hearing that change their business model? Of course not.
Oddly, it seems like a lot of the companies investing so heavily in monitoring social media would be much better to allocate funds toward simply not being dicks. According to Manish Mehta, Dell’s VP of social media and community,”Ground Control is about tracking the largest number of possible conversations across the web and making sure we ‘internalize’ that feedback, good or bad . . . . It’s also about tracking what you might call the ‘long tail’–those smaller matters that might not bubble to the surface today, but are out there, and deserve to be heard.”
Right.
When it comes to large corporations, social media is all about pretending to give a shit, but the upside is that it requires actual human beings not just to give that shit, but even to pretend to give it. That’s the social media trap many companies are finding themselves in these days: they thought they could bullshit their way through it like they have so many other things involving customers, but the whole idea that social media is a two-way conversation ruins the whole automated bone-tossing bit. You have to engage with people.
The monstrous industry that’s evolved to support circumventing direct communication with people is certainly impressive. Effective, though? Difficult to say. Other than some game theory time-wasting, it’s tough to say what consumers actually get out of the new communication channels, clogged as they are with “command center” specialists listening and reacting, while still insulating the actual corporate decision-makers. Dell, I’m afraid to reveal, does not actually love you and want to have coffee with you. Even Apple thinks you’re kind of a pain in the ass, frankly.
A few bicycle frame manufacturers, in contrast are in touch with their consumers. Why, because they engage in the same activity as the consumers. That’s why the sight of something like this Kirklee Bikerumor posted recently makes many people who ride bicycles happy.
If you ride a bike, you stand a better chance of understanding what people who ride bikes want. That way, you don’t even have “like” them in order to make the products they want.
Bikes, GadgetsComments Off on Golf Carts and Recycling Launch My Campaign to End Air in Tires
Jun052012
You might’ve noticed I’ve gotten rid of the email form that used to live over there on the right of Cannotervalve.com. As with most things in life, some asshole spoils an otherwise good time, and for me, spam has ruined the direct line of communication I used to offer here, so I had to lose the Submitatron 4000 and replace it with the decidedly less high-tech:
chris at canootervalve dot com
That’s where you can email me from now on, and any psychiatrists out there may see today’s post as a golden opportunity. Here’s my attempt to document the creative process or something. To describe an idea as it occurred to me, at any rate, whatever you want to consider that. So I had this idea today, and here’s how it went.
I’ve had about a beer a day since arriving in Portland and have heard a great deal about Oregon’s bottle recycling centers. One takes one’s beer bottles to a grocery store recycling center–which I’ve heard alternately described as a cross between the DMV and a dentist, or a really swell place, depending on the describer. At any rate, word is twenty bottles will net your lucky ass a voucher for something like one U.S. dollar worth of groceries, so merely setting bottles out for the recycling guy to pick up–it’s been made clear to me–is Mitt Romney behavior. Nevertheless, the Safeway where I shop didn’t seem to have one of these recycle areas, so I waited, figuring one day I’d fine one while slowly accumulating enough beer bottles to build my own bio-dome.
Today was the day.
Today I happened to roll up to a WinCo grocery store, and there it was, a line of people with shopping carts filled with crap to recycle. Finally, the giant bag of empty beer bottles I’d been keeping in my car (driving around for a month with empties was generally frowned upon back in Pennsylvania) was going to pay off. As I was waiting to recycle my bottles and feeling the bottoms of my shoes slowly adhering to the ground just outside the bottle return, I noticed the scene captured at the beginning of this post. It’s a perplexing tableau, so I’ll explain: there’s a very large man in that thing; that thing is a golf cart; he’s using it to retrieve the shopping carts.
OK, so here’s the part where I attempt to explain the carefully synchronized firing of my addled, little synapses. I am watching a woman deposit what I’d conservatively estimate to be $45,000 worth of plastic bottles in a recycling machine, when I turn to see this guy driving the golf cart while towing a row of shopping carts. His golf cart has those overly wide swamp-buggy-style low-impact pneumatic tires like all golf carts.
And I think, “Why do we still have air in our bike tires?”
I remembered having seen a honey-comb airless wheel design somewhere before (think I even posted a picture in an old post)–which turned out to be the Bridgestone version of the more common Michelin “Tweel”.
Tough to say what caused that serious of connections to get me thinking about airless bicycle wheels. Something I’d eaten, or the fact that I hadn’t eaten, maybe. Excitement over the eighty cents I was about to make feeding Rogue and Deschuttes bottles into a machine. There’s a lot going on with my suspension system right now, and bike design is on a kind of tape loop in the back of my mind all the time anyway, but the plastic bottles plus absurdly un-green method of shopping cart retrieval somehow equated to an intense desire to see a bicycle version of this,
That’s Resilent Technologies’ airless tire, and I want some for my Independent Fabrication single-speed.
Bikes, GadgetsComments Off on Eleven-speeds of Hate and Beyond 9000
Jun012012
Barely have we had time to process the deranged majesty of SRAM’s 1×11 drivetrain and freakishly large 42t cog, when already 2013 Shimano Dura Ace Di2 is upon us. While all the social media channels were lighting up with links to “sneak peeks” of the new stuff, I was quietly trudging through a few of the several hundred pieces of product copy I’m working on these days and just so happened to have Shimano’s web site open in a separate window. There, not particularly concealed, was a big graphic with a link to 2013 Dura Ace Di2 11-speed–studio photographs and product information and all.
I admit, viewing everything in glorious detail right there on the manufacturer’s site felt a little stale and lacked the excitement of seeing it covered in black tape or dirty and logoless on a test bike, but it was pretty useful from a “Hey look, here’s detailed photos and text about new Dura Ace” standpoint. If you haven’t seen it yet and are interested, you can check it out on the Dura Ace site. I’ve only skimmed the details, but what I saw suggested Dura Ace was following in the steps of Ultegra with more of a “junction box” and separate individual wires model. Looks like Shimano’s 11-speed chain–like Campy’s had before it–loses some of the cut-outs and stuff once it narrows to 11-speed. Otherwise, it’s an 11-speed.
I like that Shimano has quit screwing around with “7900” mechanical Dura Ace numbering and went straight into the 9000s for 2013 Dura Ace Di2. Suggests a lot of confidence on their part that this might be the last gruppo they’ll need to design for a while. Or that the Mayans are right. I’d post a questionnaire on here to ask how many of you plan to switch to 11-speed or electronics, but I’m pretty I know the adoption rate there would be in the negative numbers (indicating a half dozen of you will be driven to become permanent single-speed riders only).
Anyway, general consensus on the SRAM 11-speed was definitely “depends on what it costs,” though there were some solid haters out there, too. By definition, if you follow this blog, you’re probably a little salty and prone to be critical anyway, so tough to say what kind of focus group we represent. There’s at least some chance the industry would do well to read my posts and just do the exact opposite of everything I write.
Me, though, I would use that. I would use the shit out of that 1×11, though I’d be sad to find we have a new cassette body standard and probably a wheel with even worse triangulation than what we already have. But I suspect that if I could run a 37 or 39-tooth chainring and still have less than a 1:1 ratio I’d be pretty happy. Oh, and the chainring would also have to be quiet. If I need a noisy guide on there or anything, then I’d rather just forget it.
Speaking of forgetting things, I got to see a very old friend last night, and a very nice couple was staying with him after just arriving (literally a few hours before I got there) from a 1,000-mile ride up to Portland from San Francisco. Bill, who owns BikeFlights.com now, had worked with me long, long ago, and the couple had been Speedgoat customers. So here was a bunch of old Pennsylvania bicycle folk gathered in a home in Portland, talking bikes, and out comes this, fresh from a 1,000-mile ride up the coast.
Yes, that is a Cannondale jacket, still functional, back from when Cannondale clothing–like everything Cannondale–was made in the U.S.. These are different times, but economies are always changing. Maybe we’ll see something like the original Cannondale again one day. And who knows what happens once Shimano hits five-digit model numbers.
Bikes, GadgetsComments Off on B. Rose-Colored Glasses
May302012
It’s not your fault if the title seems to make no sense. Today’s post ended up seeming like an ideal kind tribute to a fine man and icon of the bike community, a guy who’s keeping it real in a virtual world.
If you haven’t heard, there’s a badass new computer virus doing the rounds out there. It’s called Flame. Don’t panic yet. According to NPR’s Marketplace, it’s so far only located in the Middle East. It is however, a little interesting, in that it can steal pretty much all the information on your computer. That means keystrokes, screen captures–it can even listen in on your microphone and detect Bluetooth devices near your computer.
Pretty spooky, but it pales in comparison to the personal information gathering virus spreading through the outdoor community. It’s called Strava, and it wants to know how much you rode today.
Strava is far and away the most popular of a new group of physical performance social networks and data gathering applications. Using smartphones and Garmins, Strava records the data on your rides–distance, elevation, etc.–then lets you see just how much you suck compared to the really fast people out there.
It’s actually extremely cool–a social network that involves doing something more than just sitting in front of your computer. What’s always seemed a little odd to me, though, is that we often tend to be OK with volunteering personal information we’d otherwise think twice about giving away if asked. In nerd-speak the term for encouraging people to do something in exchange for some perceived reward is called “gamification.” Really, it means taking the mechanics of a video game and applying it to social interactions and real life, whatever the hell that is.
It has a lot of interesting potential–and some weird examples, like Zombies, Run! an iPhone app (arrives on Android June 14th), that encourages you along on your training runs by, well, telling you brain-thirsty zombies are chasing you.
Between the social element of apps like Strava and the interactive element of apps like Zombies, Run!, it seems like maybe I won’t be telling my grandkids to turn off the video games and go outside; I’ll be telling them to take the dumbass goggles off and just ride their bikes.
Google, in fact, is already building those virtual reality goggles. If you’ve not yet seen the glasses that can take photos and shoot video and do smartphony sorts of things, you should check them out.
Here’s what they look like on you if you’re a model:
And here’s what they look like on you if you’re not:
And here’s how rad your life looks while wearing them:
Have you ever noticed that Google’s a little like the world’s first Giant Spoiled Multinational Corporate Seven-year-old Suburban Kid. Apple has the iPhone and a viable retail manufacturing business, so Google wants virtual reality glasses and a viable retail manufacturing business. Thing is, this is good business practice in the tech sector in 2012. There are no more small innovations left. Everything from here on out will be a game-changer. Until nobody knows what the game is anymore.
For my part, I hope you can ride your bike while being chased by zombies and shooting eyeball laser beams at virtual riders just in front of you on the trail, obliterating their record breaking times and making a little pop-up appear on their own Google glasses to let them know they’ve just been vaporized.
More than likely, though, I’d be one of the last people riding a bike without any of that stuff, swerving around a trailhead full of dudes making “bweeel, bweeel!” laser beam shooting sounds and screaming “No, no!” at imaginary zombies. But I guess witnessing that would be way better than virtual reality anyway.
Bikes, GadgetsComments Off on Looking Forward to the Past
May292012
In case anyone was wondering, yes, I’d noticed the Bikerumor coverage of Kabush’s Scott bike with the Di2 battery-powered fork and rear shock lockout that are the exact patent I’d posted a while back. Lest we wonder that that says about the increasingly cozy relationship between Shimano and Fox, let’s consider that Shimano’s literally plugging its Di2 battery into Fox’s products. By some standards, you have to be married to do that.
Whatever the working relationship between the two companies, they sure are interested in making our bikes more complicated. I read with great interest the Bikerumor article itself, and then the comments that following. Having ridden one of those bikes with the Girven/Noleen piston-velocity-sensing forks my own self like 180 years ago, I’m willing to go out on a limb and say the only thing Foxmano’s NASA-level shit has in common with the 9-volt battery sucking ancient Noleen is that both products were in some way attached to bicycles. I don’t doubt the quality of the Di2 battery-powered lockout system going on there on the Kabushmobile, but I do have to wonder what the market is for such a thing.
Only yesterday, I’d asked if you’d be willing to buy all the new stuff necessary to convert to a SRAM 1×11 system, but in light of what Fox and Shimano are trying to bring to market, buying a new rear wheel, shifter, cassette and rear derailleur seems pretty basic and plain. Sure, there’s a parallel between the two–both address age old issues in fresh ways–but why do I expect electronic suspension will be tougher to sell?
Stigma, for one thing. There’s always going to be some kid who thinks the customer base for gadgets like this is made up of fat old men who like overpriced bikes that do all the thinking, because they can’t pick a line for shit. Haters gonna hate, for sure. But when that kid is motoring away from your electronic wonder bike on his rigid, steel 29er, you have to at least regard his bad attitude as constructive criticism. If you think you’re going to haul ass like Kabush once you’re wired up, the bad news I bring you is that no electronic suspension system is going to help you. It’s like the winter I was living in Atlanta during a freak snowstorm and watched somebody repeatedly gun the engine and plow his BMW into the center barrier again and again and again, thinking, presumably, that his “driving machine” would translate his incompetent spasms into some sort of positive outcome. There’s only so much the machine can do for you. For most of us, Mert Lawwill himself could be operating our suspension via remote control, and we’re still not going to be able to pick a line for shit.
Kabush, it seems unnecessary to point out, is simply hauling ass this year. You could tie him to a tandem with Oprah, and the boy would still be winning, so don’t let’s read too much into wires and servers as relates to victory just yet. I don’t know if people want all this stuff on their bikes. Probably they’ll accept it, but that’s not what I asked. What I asked is did they want it? Because bringing products to market that no one asked for really only seems to work if you’re Apple.
In contrast to the Inspector Gadget approach, consider the weirdly simple Magura fork Bikerumor and MTBR and everyone else just convered.
I have to tell you, I think I have a crush on this weird neo-retro Magura 29er fork, the TS8. For starters, nobody in Germany got the memo that any product is supposed to have an “X” in it. “TS8” sounds like an elite group of airport security people who appear from out of nowhere whenever there’s a potential problem, staring holes straight through you while they pull on a rubber glove.
So not sure about the name, but the c-clip in the bottom of the stanchion warms my heart. That’s how we used to do it. And really ditto on everything else about this fork, from simple-ass air chamber and piston (which is going to need 5cc of RockShox RedRum on top of it, I all but guarantee) to the cartoonish elastomer stack negative spring, to the ability to futz with oil viscosity to change compression damping.
If the Foxmano Di2-powered Lockout-o-matic is the suspension of the future, the Magura TS8 is the suspension of the past, only seemingly very well executed and using much better materials. So I should be far more interested in the groundbreaking Fox forks, but I find I’m actually much more intrigued by the simple Magura, particularly the idea that I can mess with oil weights again and really change the feel of the fork. The Fox post had over 10,000 views; the Magura about 2,400, so I suspect I’m firmly in the minority on this one, but I can’t help it. The simple but easy to tear down and customize Magura looks far more interesting to me right now. Maybe if I owned an X-box I’d feel differently.
