biking

The Links shoe from Teva has a sticky Spider 365 rubber sole. It doesn’t offer the solid, immovable feel that market leaders Five Ten have become renowned for, but something with a little more ‘float’ on the pedal. 

This isn’t a bad thing though, and there’s still plenty of grip, but the Links allow you to adjust your feet a little more easily, making them a good choice for less race-orientated flat pedal users. The feel of the shoes is more like that of a well-supported running shoe and ridiculously comfortable.

On narrower pedals, we did find that the raised arch of the insole initially caused our feet to ache when we were riding rougher terrain, although we soon got used to it, and we didn’t experience the same issues on pedals with bigger platforms. The Ion Mask technology does a good job of keeping your feet dry which is great for riding in wet climates.

This article was originally published in Mountain Biking UK magazine.

Bontrager are pushing hard in the saddle market, investing in all sorts of pressure-mapping and 3D motion capture tech to help with design. The Evoke is the mountain bike-orientated result, and it’s packed with trail-friendly features.

The squared-off corners and flat, well-padded nose all work well, giving plenty of weight shift options with easy transitions between them. A hollow on the mid-section relieves pressure on your parts, although some may favour a deeper channel. 

The Evoke is more swoopy in profile and flat in cross-section than some. It can be bought in three widths (as well as a women’s version). Your Bontrager dealer can measure your behind (you just have to sit on a pad) and tell you which you need.

This article was originally published in Mountain Biking UK magazine.

Endura’s Deluge winter gloves have plenty of features, but aren’t always as amphibious as the name suggests. The double cuff gives good sleeve sealing and there are plenty of reinforcing panels. 

The snot wipe isn’t on the thumb but all the way up the forefinger, meaning there’s a decent length to wipe your nose with when the cold weather causes it to run. The fit is great too. The movement between the outer shell and inner thermal liner reduces feedback though. 

The multiple ‘Gel Zone’ padded areas on the palm didn’t give the best feel, and the callous-covering ridge of padding meant our hands felt as though they were more on top of the bars than wrapped around them. The palm sometimes tended to bunch up towards the thumb and that was a little uncomfortable.

We’ve had wildly varying experiences with the weatherproofing of the Endura gloves. We had one test pair that would get completely sodden in a few minutes in any serious weather despite their waterproof claims and Deluge name – not good. But another set was totally waterproof, even passing the hand-in-bucket test. Getting your hands back in when they’re damp is a fight.

This article was compiled from reviews in What Mountain Bike and Mountain Biking UK

With its dropped nose, curled-under sides and big hole in the middle, the Selle Italia Max Flite Gel Flow looks like nothing else. The padding isn’t exceptionally soft if you prod it but the Max Flite feels particularly cosseting. 

A lot of that is down to the hole, which means no weight is being supported by delicate parts of your anatomy. The potential downside of a hole is that water and mud can get up through it, but in this age of waterproof shorts that’s not a deal-breaker, at least not for mountain bike use.

The other comfort boost comes from the use of silicone gel rather than PU foam for padding, along with floating rear saddle mounts. It all works – the Max Flite is a very comfortable saddle. It carries a weight penalty as a result, though.

This article was originally published in Mountain Biking UK magazine.

So, you’ve bought a new mountain bike and it’s got the latest rear shock on it, with all kinds of letters and numbers after its name, and an RRP that would make you wince if you had to buy it aftermarket. That means your bike is going to work perfectly, right?

Wrong. What most people don’t realise is that the shock probably has a broad tune inside it that’s designed to suit a wide range of riders, of different sizes, weights and riding styles. Almost a jack of all trades in shock absorber form. And like a jack of all trades, it may be master of none.

Companies like RockShox and Fox Racing Shox now offer a range of base shock tunes, which are designed to extract maximum performance from particular suspension designs and models of bike. Custom valving for a more specific feel is sometimes available too, depending on the shock. 

But a bike company’s idea of how a bike should feel may not match up to your own preferences. On the shop floor, a linear suspension curve feels plush, and plenty of low-speed compression damping gives a bob-free test ride. But out on the trail, more aggressive riders are likely to regularly bottom-out, and excess compression damping can choke the suspension and give a rough ride over smaller bumps.

If your new bike isn’t giving you the ride you’d like, don’t go straight out and spend a massive amount on component upgrades or a new shock â€“ you could achieve a lot more by getting your existing damper tuned up. Custom tuning generally costs around £150 and it’s one of the best ways of increasing your bike’s performance without spending a serious amount on something new and shiny. I’ve had some of my best rides on bikes with cheap shocks that have been tuned to the application (ie. the type of riding) and to myself as a rider.

Shimmy Shimmy Ya

I’m part of Mountain Biking UK’s product testing Wrecking Crew and we’ve spent a lot of time with SRAM over the past year, working with our trail bikes and the new RockShox Monarch Plus shock to get the exact performance we were after. I first had a Monarch Plus bolted into my Devinci Dixon long-term test bike back in June while out in Les Gets, France. Since then I’ve worked with Torben and Danny, RockShox’s elite suspension fettlers for Europe, to achieve the perfect tune for my downhill-orientated riding style.

Jake has swapped the Fox RP23 shock that came with his Devinci Dixon for a RockShox Monarch Plus RT3 that’s now been tuned to suit his aggressive riding style

What I wanted was a shock that gives loads of support throughout its stroke, so the bike doesn’t wallow or blow through its travel, but one that’ll still deliver full travel when needed. Essentially, I wanted a coil shock feeling, but with a more progressive leverage curve.

Basic tuning of the Monarch Plus is done by altering the internal shim stacks. These piles of thin shims â€“ basically, washers â€“ sit either side of the main piston and determine the rebound and compression characteristics of the shock. By altering the size of the shims, oil is made to flow through the shock in a different way and this either slows down or speeds up its movement as it’s compressed (when the wheels hit a bump) and then re-extends.

We decided to stick with the stock rebound damping and concentrate on adjusting the compression stack to extract maximum performance from my Monarch Plus. We also made the air chamber of the shock smaller, to create more ramp-up towards the end of the travel. It’s possible to tune the Monarch Plus’s internal floating piston arrangement too, using different air pressures, but this wasn’t something we needed to change for the Dixon.

The Monarch Plus shim stacks laid out, with the rebound and compression shims on either side of the piston head 

So, could we notice the changes we’d made? Undoubtedly. Although the tune that we had done for our super-hard riding wouldn’t be perfect for everyone, it’s massively improved the bike’s handling over some serious terrain.

When sending your shock off to be tuned, be sure to let the tuners know your weight, riding style and what kind of trails you ride, as well as the bike the shock is going on. Chances are, it’ll be some of the best money you’ll spend in terms of bang-for-your-buck ride improvement. 

Check out our image gallery to see the SRAM shock tuning team in action.

Cleat placement was easy to get right on Pearl Izumi’s Race MTB shoes, thanks to the lengthy slots and clearance around the treads, which in turn then helped shed mud quickly when we were out on the trails. 

The wide cut will suit anyone with feet of larger proportions and there are no awkward tight spots that would make them feel uncomfortable. The sole is stiff enough when you’re looking to put the power down but still offers a bit of give off the bike when walking. Tread carefully over rocks and roots though, because grip isn’t great.

The heel cup offers a fairly decent clasp and helps avoid any unnecessary movement on and off the bike. The meshed front panels over the toes help to keep the temperature down but aren’t ideal for winter wetness – they tend to let moisture in.

This article was originally published in Mountain Biking UK magazine.

WASHINGTON, D.C.

The second London Bike Show kicked off today at the Docklands ExCel centre. It’s a lot bigger than last year’s debut event, with plenty to keep the crowds entertained, including bike polo, Animal Bike Tour stunt demos, the DMR Pump Track challenge and BikeRadar’s own Training Hub, where you can get your fitness and biomechanics appraised by professionals.

Of course there’s plenty of shiny new kit on display too, from brands both large and small. What Mountain Bike’s Matt Skinner has been trawling the aisles and here’s what’s caught his eye so far, on the off-road side of things…

Whyte Bikes

Whyte’s designer Ian Alexander – whom you can read an in-depth interview with in the forthcoming issue of What Mountain Bike (#131), out on Tuesday – was proudly showing of the final production version of the new alloy 829 29er. With heavy use of smooth/double pass welding on both the head tube and seat-tube junctions, it could easily be mistaken for a carbon frame, but a look down into its belly shows the telltale alloy fishscale welds to undermine this first impression.

For a 29er it’s slack, although not as radically laidback as the early prototype that Guy Kesteven tested last year. With our initial test rides showing up the new bike’s undoubted fun factor, with the only fly in the ointment being its slightly high weight for its class, Alexander revealed that next year’s version will jump up from 100mm of fork travel to 120mm to better complement the 829’s fun and fast-riding trail bike feel.

Genesis Bikes

Dom Thomas at Genesis was showing the first real fruits of his labours after taking over design duties from James Olsen. The result is the Fortitude range, made up of three 100 percent rigid 29er hardtails. There’s the singlespeed-specific Fortitude SS, the 1×10-only Fortitude Race (£1,250) and the Fortitude Adventure (£1,500).

The latter uses an Alfine 11 hub gear and comes complete with rack and bottle cage mounts. None of the bikes has provision for front mech cable routing. All share the same basic Reynolds 725 steel frameset with a rolled seat tube to get around the rear tyre clearance issue.

Geometry is adjusted for a suspension fork, should you choose to go down that route in future. Suspension forked 29er hardtails are, however, in development for next year. And Genesis’s first full-suspension bike is still coming, too. We hope to see a prototype within the next six weeks.

Also on the Genesis stand was a very tidy looking alloy framed Core 24 24in-wheeled kids’ bike for all those dads wanting to share the biking bug with their youngsters. It was a very tidy looking package with a 6061 alloy frame, Suntour XCR fork, Shimano Acera/Suntour 3×8 transmission and Shimano M445 hydraulic brakes, all for £550.

Finally, Genesis are reportedly playing with a 1×10 fat bike prototype with a geometry based on the Fortitude, and will also be playing around with 650b wheels in the very near future. Could the inbetweener wheelsize be on the ascendancy? If industry rumours are to be believed, then it’s a definite yes. But how and when exactly remains to be seen…

Saracen Bikes

Saracen have just unveiled their new range for 2012 and top of the pile is the refined Ariel platform. Tweaked framesets and revamped specs and aesthetics now make the bikes better lookers than they were before.

The Ariel 143 gets a trail-ready spec featuring a Shimano Deore XT based transmission, Fox Float RP23 shock, Fox F32 FIT RLC QR15 fork, dropper post – complete with intelligent routing – and collar-and-cuffs colour matching for a smidge under £3,000.

Intense Cycles

Intense’s impressive 18lb complete Hard Eddie 29er has finally made it to the UK and was on show together with its specific rigid carbon fork. UK pricing for the frame alone is confirmed at £1,599 from distributors Extra UK, with pricing on the straight-blade post-mount fork still TBC.

On-One Bikes

On-One’s mission to do for the fat bike market what they did for singlespeeding looks one step further ahead as the British company were again showing their fat bike prototype. It’ll be officially launched on the longest day of the year – 21 June – to underline that it’s a ‘fat bike’ rather than a ‘snow bike’. Endurance racer John ‘Shaggy’ Ross has been helping with development. On-One will be selling it as a complete bike only and are aiming for around £1,000 complete.

Also on the On-One/Planet X stand was the Titus El Guapo 29er, a long-travel trail machine that aims to subvert the 29er stereotype that they’re only good for short-travel applications by being bloody good fun.

Topeak Cycling Accessories

It might not be the best thing sliced bread but it’s certainly a great idea: Topeak’s new Shock & Roll pump combines both a tyre pump and a shock pump in one, together with a smart head that unscrews for Presta valves and screws in for Schrader.

It’s rated up to 300psi and has a two-stage high/low pressure selector so you don’t have to be as strong as a bear to get your shock up to pressure. It’s 25cm long so it’ll fit into most riding packs with ease and ensure you don’t have to travel with two separate pumps on those epic rides. Claimed weight is 270g.

Exposure Lights

On a completely un-mountain bike-related note, Exposure Lights were launching a maritime range of waterproof, floating lights for use on, well, erm, boats. For anyone wondering why they’d launch these at a cycling expo, the London Bike Show is held alongside the Boat Show, the Action Travel Show and the Outdoors Show, with a single ticket granting entry to all four.

What caught our eye was the clever dive lamp prototype. Essentially a Six Pack bike light in a dive casing, its clever talking point is its total lack of buttons. Exposure have deployed clever motion gesture technology to control its three power modes.

You turn it on by tapping its side five times, then rotate it in a clockwise direction to go up through the power levels, one flick of the wrist at a time. Rotate it in the opposite direction and it drops down again. Point it downwards and rotate it a few times anti-clockwise to switch it off. Clever stuff indeed but still at the prototype stage.

London Bike Show ticket offer

The London Bike Show runs until Sunday, 15 January. You can buy discounted tickets by entering the code ‘radar’ at checkout. Entry with the code costs £15 compared to an on-the-door price of £20. While you’re there, why not check out the BikeRadar Training Hub?

The SRAM group’s new top-level downhill cranks have already won two downhill World Championships as part of the company’s BlackBox racing programme. The carbon arms themselves are the same as the X0 trail cranks, but beefed up with pedal thread inserts and a thicker-walled axle to cope with the biggest landings.

The alloy spider is a dedicated single-ring version for increased chain guide clearance rather than just a converted triple. This gives it a very stiff and direct feel through your shoes for excellent power delivery and course communication. The carbon construction also stings less over big rocks and drops compared to heavy-duty alloy sets. There’s a full range of bottom brackets, and the price is great for the performance this crankset gives.

This article was originally published in Mountain Biking UK

The SRAM group’s new top-level downhill cranks have already won two downhill World Championships as part of the company’s BlackBox racing programme. The carbon arms themselves are the same as the X0 trail cranks, but beefed up with pedal thread inserts and a thicker-walled axle to cope with the biggest landings.

The alloy spider is a dedicated single-ring version for increased chain guide clearance rather than just a converted triple. This gives it a very stiff and direct feel through your shoes for excellent power delivery and course communication. The carbon construction also stings less over big rocks and drops compared to heavy-duty alloy sets. There’s a full range of bottom brackets, and the price is great for the performance this crankset gives.

This article was originally published in Mountain Biking UK