- Welcome to the brand new GMBN tech show.
This is our new weekly show focusing entirely
on the world of mountain bike tech.
We're gonna be taking you to the manufacturers.
We're gonna be looking at stuff, how it's produced,
and how these things are designed.
And of course, we want you guys to get involved.
(electronic music)
Okay, so now it's time for tech news.
And this time of year is especially interesting for us
because we start finding out who's moving teams.
And of course the tech stuff that goes with that
is what bikes they're gonna be running,
what suspensions are gonna be on those bikes,
what wheels, tyres, all of that cool tech information.
Now, ENVE wheels have obviously been everywhere
the last couple of years.
Super high-end, expensive carbon fibre
superbike wheels really.
And they've been really famously used
by the Santa Cruz Syndicate.
So I was looking on Greg Minnaar's Instagram page
the other day, and I noticed there was a video
of him riding this really steep rocky trail.
And his comment on there was,
can you spot anything different?
Now I looked through the comments on there,
and a lot of people was drawn straight away to his kit.
He's wearing quite dark a kit.
Helmet looked a bit different.
Handlebars looked wider.
But the thing that I noticed straight away
was there were no decals on his wheels,
no ENVE decals on those wheels.
So does that mean he could be using their Santa Cruz rims?
So at the moment, they don't actually make
a carbon fibre downhill wheel, but that all-mountain wheel
they do make with a 30 millimetre internal width.
Certainly, it does seem like it would be strong enough
for the downhill racers out there.
Let's not forget that Danny MacAskil
recently launched a video where he's deliberately trying
to break a set of those wheels.
It wasn't till the end of the video
that he did actually manage to smash 'em
by riding into a flight of stairs repeatedly.
- Insane, I don't know what I need to do to break that.
(laughs)
Aluminium would be like a square block by now.
- Now, Danny's actually been using those wheels
for quite some time, just off the record.
He's actually been using them since his Wee Day Out video.
If you look very closely,
you'll see them on his bike in there,
and a really cool fact is that Danny's still running
those very same rims even today.
We did ask Santa Cruz if they were actually making
a downhill specific rim, and all they commented was
can't really tell you too much at the moment,
but we have some R and D development going on.
Watch this space.
So next up, I wanna talk about Danny Hart.
Mondraker made the announcement last week
that he would no longer be riding for them,
and that was a really successful three-year partnership
he had with the brand who produced
the really famous Mondraker Summum Carbon pro bike.
So this is a very progressive downhill frame,
one of the lightest bikes on the market as well
and had very adjustable geometry.
And it took three years really for Danny
to sort of get into the bike as such
and get his setup tweaked.
So it's quite unusual for someone
when they're at that sort of stage
in a brand to sort of move aside.
But Danny interestingly is signed for team Saracen.
Now, Saracen bikes are a British brand,
and they've actually been around since the mid '80s.
They were first making bikes in 1984.
Although Mondraker have a very sophisticated design,
Saracen do as well.
They've got the Saracen Myst,
and it's available in carbon fibre too,
so this is the superbike sort of level for a downhill bike.
So at the moment, Danny is away testing
in Portugal with Team Saracen and the mechanics.
Now we do know that he's got a couple
of different sized frames.
He's got a number of headsets for changing the reach
on the bike and a whole bunch of other stuff.
So, we're gonna have a pro bike chat with Danny
with his final bike as soon as he returns from that trip.
And finally, Orbea have got a brand new Enduro Team,
a four-person team, and they're gonna be riding
the Rallon bike, which is that amazing bike
that's got the offset shock and the offset linkage.
It's a really, really cool looking bike,
and there's quite progressive geometry on that too.
Now on the team is Brit racer Becky Cook
alongside Javier San Roman,
Gabriel Torralba, and Thomas Lapeyrie.
They're gonna do some serious damage on the EWFC,
and so just watch the Orbea Team go.
So we wanna see where you play with your bikes,
whether that's the front room, the garage,
your mate's house, even your local bike shop,
if they've got an especially good workshop, fire it in.
We wanna see it.
What I wanna do is kick it off,
and I'll show you my awful sort of working space
I have to suffer at the moment.
Now, the picture on the screen shows you
a rather messy garage with some bikes stacked in.
It is crammed, and the reason for that is
I'm actually in the process of moving house.
And I'm actually building a dedicated workshop
in the new house.
So at some point, I'll give you a tour of the new place
when it's done, but in the meantime, sorry about this.
Here's my entry.
Don't forget to tag us on Facebook
in any of those pictures you post.
The same on Instagram.
Of course, you can comment in the comments below,
and email to the email address on the screen.
Welcome to rewind.
So this is the retro corner of the GMBN tech show,
and we're gonna be paying homage
to some of the original tech and how it developed
into the stuff that you guys are riding today.
Just for example, did you know
that this was the original dropper post?
I'll tell you all about that in a future show.
And look at this monstrosity here.
Back in the day, this Troy Lee Designs Edge helmet
was so sought after.
Removable jaw guard, where have we seen that today?
All the modern Enduro helmets do the same thing.
Everything you think is new, it has been done before.
Maybe not quite as good, but this is where we're gonna have
a bit of laugh with these sort of things.
So perhaps you didn't know about
those early suspension forks
or what the first disc brakes were like.
Anything you wanna know,
let us know in the comments below, and we'll try and dig
some of this old retro kit out to look at.
Alternatively, if you have some cool retro kit,
let's see it.
If you've got some bikes like the ones on the screen.
Look at this Yeti.
Just imagine having one of those things now.
Worth a fortune.
As usual, don't forget to send your entries in
or add 'em in the comments below.
Tag us in Facebook pictures
or fire 'em on the Instagram page.
We really, really wanna see what is this old school tech
and answer your questions about it too.
It's the section of the show where we talk
about customising and upgrading your mountain bike.
Now when you say upgrading,
a lot of people just think that's just bolting on
some shiny pedals that are expensive
or just doing stuff for the sake of it.
But actually, one of the really good things
about mountain bikes is that as you wear things
out over time, you can upgrade those
to make your bike better, lighter, and function better.
And of course, there's a lot of detailed things you can do
like setting up your suspension,
changing the oil weight in there,
making your suspension units feel more progressive.
We wanna know all of those cool things
you've been doing to your mountain bikes at home.
So to kick it off, I'm gonna fly you over to Blake
who's got this really cool upgrade
that he did on his bike that didn't cost him any money.
Check this out.
- So Neil and Dotty are using their lockouts,
and it's perfect for them for climbing.
For me, this is a little bit different.
I like to use it when it comes to jumping.
I tend to flick it straight to 110,
and that kind of stiffens it all up
to give me a little bit more pop on the jumps
because I don't really wanna run it at 150
on these little steep jumps where I kind of sags in.
So welcome to tech of the week.
So this is a part of the show where we discuss something
that basically we've been talking about ourselves
whilst out riding for the last week.
Now that could be something brand new.
It could be something we've changed the setup of.
Or it could have been something that's been
on our bike for a long time that we've kind of
just gone under the radar with.
First up is this week's entry.
So, it's by Bike Yoke,
and it's a Revive dropper seat post.
So this is not like all of the other dropper posts
on the market.
It's a little bit different.
So the Revive post comes in the usual sort of sizes
and has three drops, 125, 160, and 185, which is huge.
Now, the things that's really cool about this
and the way it differs from all the other posts
on the market is it does not have an IFP design.
So that stands for internal floating piston.
So, for example, the Rockshox Reverb post
has an IFP on the inside, has four seals,
and has a separate air and oil chambers
divided by that piston.
This post only has two seals.
The air and oil are mixed inside,
and if you do get that problem of air finding its way
into the inner tube which makes it sort of bouncy
at the top, which some of you might have noticed
on some previous posts you've had,
you've got a simple reset valve on the top here.
Nice little feature, that.
So what do you think of this post
and the fact that you can sort of tune it at home?
Let us know in the comments below.
So, over the year, I'm gonna be taking on
a whole bunch of cool projects for the channel
and of course this very show.
But the first thing I'm gonna do is build a custom bike,
and what I mean by that is picking my own frame,
all my own components, the headset,
the wheels, the tyres, the whole lot.
I wanna show you how to build that
and the sort of components you should be picking,
and of course how to set them up
to get the best out of the bike.
Now to do this, the first thing we're gonna do
is pick a frame.
So this is where I need your help.
So, do I go for a 29er?
Do I go for 27 1/2?
The most important thing of course is to take into account
I want it to be a realistic bike for you guys.
That means it doesn't really have to be a carbon bike
or anything super expensive,
but it's definitely gotta be an aspirational bike,
something that you would really desire to ride.
And then we're gonna figure out the rest afterwards.
So, give me some suggestions in the comments below
and maybe hit us up at the email address.
It's just at the bottom of the screen right now.
And when we've got a whole bunch of those together,
we'll throw out a poll, and then that will be the frame
I start the project with.
So we'll pick that one up next week.
So that was the first GMBN Tech show.
I hope you enjoyed it.
I hope it's given you some sort of food for thought.
Any comments you have or any suggestions,
please let us know in the comments below.
Or fire 'em into the email address on the screen.
If you wanna see the brand new EMBN show,
so that is the world of electric mountain biking,
love em or hate 'em, they're here to stay,
click right up here and find out a bit about
what's gonna be on that channel.
And if you wanna find out about what our roady cousins
are up to on GCN Tech, click right over here.
As always, if you like the video, give us a thumb's up.