(logo swooshing)
- It's Halloween so we're going to take you for a ride
through the freak show
and check out some of the most bizarre bikes
and tech that's ever happened in the mountain bike world.
Some of this stuff is weird.
Some of this stuff is horrible.
Some of this stuff is hideous.
Some of this stuff is incredible pieces of engineering
and some of it was just before its time
I guess you could say,
but all of it is positively freaky.
(upbeat music)
Okay, so let's start back in 1991
with the imaginatively named Checker Pig CPX 3001.
This bad boy, this very bad boy right here.
Look at the shape of the bike straight out,
it's vaguely mountain bike shaped,
but look at that shock.
It's a little bit different
to what you might expect on a bike.
It's a carbon fiber ring.
I guess acting in the place of what a leaf spring would do
or at least I guess that's the theory
from the German brand and the same applies on the fork
as you can see on the images here
and it's got one up front on the fork.
Now you might also notice there's absolutely
no sign of a damper there at all
so that is just a sprung bike.
Big spring, no damper.
Alarm bells are ringing in my head certainly.
They probably are in yours too.
Now you might also have noticed
it's got an incredibly high rear pivot on there
and there's no idler with a chain going over that.
You know what that means don't you?
Yeah well.
Okay, now it is over to the Slingshot Team Issue.
Yeah, it's weird isn't it?
So the story with a Slingshot is that a designer,
Mark Groendal, was basically riding a pit bike
around some sort of motorbike race
and he had a crack on a down tube of his pit bike
and he noticed that the springy sensation of it
enabled it when it went over bumps
basically to kind of lurch forward
as the spring would sort of close itself.
So he got to work and designed the Slingshot.
So on the top tube, as you can see here,
there is a small piece of fiberglass
clamped in between the seat tube and the top tube itself
and that's actually a portion of a leaf spring
off of a Corvette.
So it's immensely strong and it enables it to flex
and then the cable that's on the down tube
has a spring just by the head tube
and that can pull it all back into shape.
Now the owner of this bike
he told us that he was out riding this bike back in a day
and he fired it into a ditch by mistake,
an over jump, ended up in a ditch
and the back wheel nearly touched the front wheel
before the cable pulled it back into shape
and bounced him over the top of the thing
and although he does say the bike
isn't exactly the best thing on earth,
it definitely saved his life.
This one scares the hell out of me.
Okay so this one on screen now is the Lawwill Leader Fork.
Yep, it's a linkage fork except this one
dates back to the mid 90s.
Now the Lawwill Leader Fork was actually
quite a good fork in it's day,
but it did suffer from a few things.
Obviously it was quite a heavy fork
and it's essentially two fork blades there
and obviously there was a lot of bearings in there,
so a lot of bearings to go wrong,
a lot bearings to go loose,
a lot of bearings to develop a bit of flop in them.
However the action that the forks did offer,
that definitely wasn't something
that was on the freaky side.
These things were actually really decent.
Believe these ones had three inches of travel.
There's a shock that sits in front of the head tube
at the top there and that's got your regular
adjustability you would see on a typical shock
with compression, rebound, and air pressure.
Now the thing with these is it had
the same sort of linear action as a telescopic fork
but had the advantages of a linkage style fork
meaning basically it doesn't dive too much under braking.
Your geometry stays fairly similar
to what it is conventionally
so in those days obviously
that would have meant quite a lot
because you had quite steep angles on the bikes.
And also your trail didn't really changed
so your bike stayed fairly stable
as it sort of progressed through that travel.
But nonetheless it's a pretty weird-looking piece of kit
and everyone's talking about linkage forks again
at the moment and I think they think
everyone's pretty freaky if you got a linkage fork
in your bike so this one that belongs in the list.
Okay, so this one is the Muddy Fox Intereactive
and often wrongly called the interactive.
It's called the Intereactive.
All in the spelling there.
I think it came out in around '96, possibly '95,
and it was designed by Dave Smart.
You can see Dave Smart's bike actually,
one of his iterations on the screen right now,
you can see exactly where this design came from.
Essentially it was a linkage bike,
it had a linkage fork and a linkage rear end on there
with a single shock being actuated
by the front and rear wheels.
Now it was often talked about in a way
that by the time the front wheel hit a bump,
the rear wheel would actually react to that bump
before it hit it but that wasn't really what happened.
That's kind of a bit nonsense.
The concept behind using a single shock on there
was it would have anti dive properties,
the bike would handle more like a rigid bike
in the fact no whatever you did in the way of pedaling
the bike wouldn't react to it,
but it would still have traction
and comfort associated with a full suspension bike.
Kind of quite ahead of its time to be honest.
I think is a pretty amazing piece of engineering
by Dave Smart.
Unfortunately when it went to this iteration,
the Muddy Fox one,
the Intereactive that actually went on sale,
the shock had actually moved to the front of the bike
and by all accounts the fork did work quite well on this.
However the combination of the linkage design on this one
and the fact that the shock was up front
and not in front of the bottom bracket
like the early designs that David actually designed,
the rear end just didn't really work that well.
It looked good from afar but it was far from good.
The Whyte PRST-1, designed by British brand Whyte Bikes.
It was designed by Jon Whyte and Adrian Ward
essentially because they got bored in an airport.
Well I say bored, their flight was delayed
because of a storm.
Now when that sort of thing tends to happen
I kind of relax and have a beer,
but no not these two, they got their Meccano out,
and they started addressing the issues of linkage forks
and how they could come up with a better solution.
Now although this does look a little bit
like the drawing I would do
after I've had that beer in an airport,
by all accounts the fork was pretty phenomenal.
It had zero stiction.
it was very, very, very supple
because that linkage design and the shock that it used.
It allowed constant geometry,
constant trail under operation,
it was very stiff under all situations,
and it also had adjustable anti dive features on it.
So you can have it all the way from pro dive to anti dive.
Now the fork itself obviously,
looking at this, you can see it.
This was part of the frame, it was a whole package,
you couldn't just have this fork
and bolt it on another bike.
So the frame itself had a really cool
monocoque construction to it.
So it was leagues ahead in terms of construction,
the way they had to do this thing.
But the interesting thing I think is the name, the PRST-1.
Apparently it took its name from the dog
from Wallace and Gromit, the mechanical dog called Preston.
And I'd imagine that the guys kind of sort of
looked at the dog and thought it kind of reminded them
of their bike a bit in the fact that
it's dog shaped and not really a dog
and their bikes kind of bike shaped but not really a bike.
Well certainly not as we know bikes now.
This one is freaky as anything.
Whoa, look at this one.
So this is the Klein Mantra.
Now Gary Klein made some of the lightest
early mountain bikes.
The Klein Attitude in fact came out in 1990
and it weighed 20 pounds.
It was an absolutely beautiful bike
and then he came out with this.
So this thing was a suspension bike as you can see here
and a cool thing about this or the funny thing about this
is that in the early 90s
when suspension was actually considered,
that it was going to be a real thing
that manufactures had to commit to,
it was kind of hilarious actually.
Turned into a a bit of an arms race
and a lot manufactures battled it out
to come out with the best design or a different design
or something that had a different USP to the next design.
That Hot Chili or Cube or whoever else
was going to churn out onto the market.
And it was a great time to be alive
because there were some things like this that existed.
Now this was a unified suspension design
and the thing with unified designs
was the whole point was to put the bottom bracket
on the rear part of the bike, the bit with the pedals.
So whatever you're doing with pedaling
you were not affecting your chain length or anything.
So you could pedal as hard as you want
and the bike would just go forwards.
No problem.
Now the pivot point was crucial in how a bike handle well
if you had a unified design.
The lower the pivot, the better the rear end worked.
It was more active, so the Trek,
I did the XTR video on way back,
that one had quite a low pivot
and actually felt moderately good.
The higher you put the pivot,
the more bipolar your bike design went.
It went from from working really well
when you sat down, as soon as you stood up
it was basically a hardtail.
Talk about a Jekyll and Hyde personality.
The Cannondale Fulcrum.
I've got a bit bleary-eyed looking at this thing.
So this is from 1998 and this is absolutely bonkers.
Cannondale pretty much what they used to do
is just pour loads of money into stuff
and develop the most insane stuff.
They were full bore or not at all.
They just wouldn't be interested
unless they could go whole hog,
let their designers go mental on the things.
That is why this one is part of the freak show
and just look at the thing.
So out back you had a twin mini link system on there.
Now this is one of the first bikes to have this
and it made for a famously plush back-end.
All the racers praised it
for how well it's stuck to the ground
and how well it pedaled because of the fact
it was almost zero chain growth thanks to that system.
The downside though is that the fact it was designed
around a single chain ring size
because they didn't want to compromise
on the suspension performance.
So that was the right way to design
a suspension bike for sure.
The only downside was because of that rear end
with those linkage, the chain ring size
they could fit was tiny.
So how do you make a Cannondale bike pedal faster
that pedals quite well, but has a tiny chain ring?
Well they developed this elaborate jackshaft system.
They essentially had a chain ring
and it had a chain running to another chain set
with a separate bottom bracket going through it
to the other side of the bike
and the left-hand side chain ring
was actually the one that gave it the gearing
for the drive side.
That was a really elaborate way of doing it,
but I kind of loved the fact that they did this
because they had to put a big plastic fairing on it
and made it look like a motocross bike,
but the problem was all those extra bits of chain
and bottom bracket and bearings
and that weighed a lot, loads in fact.
So it weighed about 50 pounds,
which is 22 and off kilograms.
That's a seriously heavy bike to pedal,
surely kind of negating the fact that
it pedaled well in the first place.
They could've just done with
another suspensions on it surely.
Kind of a bad one there for Cannondale,
but also it's amazing.
I've got to say I absolutely love this bike.
I think it's one of the coolest bikes ever designed
and I love the effort they went to to make it pedal
but that's what happened in their era.
People progressed and people were trying everything
they could to have a no compromise bike
that would do the best things
and apparently everyone still says even today
it would hold its own on a really rough course.
A serious piece of engineer for Cannondale that.
Brooklyn MachineWorks.
Wow, so this is the Super Trucker.
This first appeared in around 1997.
This was another brand that had a non conventional approach
and as you could probably tell looking at the image
everything was made from steel.
It had a steel four-piece handlebar
and look at the pedals,
it's got massive heavy duty pedals called shinburgers.
It had steel profile BMX cranks on there
with a steel axle on them.
The frame was made from steel
and in fact there's a subframe that's also made from steel.
It's even got a motocross shock on it,
it's got a jack shaft drive,
kind of reminiscent of that Cannondale Fulcrum
that we looked at earlier in the video
and that motocross shocks even got
a remote piggyback on there.
There's a Monster T fork on the front,
the huge thing developed by Marzocchi
and of course it's got those massive wide profile rims
and Nokian three inch Gazzaloddi tires.
Now whilst these things were a bruiser
and pretty much indestructible,
you could jump these off a double flight of stairs
to fly off the side of a house
or even off a volcano if you wanted.
The problem was these things were seriously,
seriously heavy.
I mean this one, the Super Trucker,
these weighed in around 65 pounds.
That's about 29 and a half kilos
and it wasn't even the heaviest one in the range.
The heaviest one was called the Rubber Duckie
and it weighed over 72 pounds,
that's nearly 33 kilos!
Can you imagine trying to bunny hop that thing?
You'd bust a gut doing that, mental!
Okay, next up is the Lauf Carbon fiber
trailing link suspension fork.
Now these things were designed in Iceland
by people who have got experience
in working with prosthetic limbs.
Now these guys really know their stuff
when it comes to carbon fiber
and this thing is as much of a work of art
as it is part of a freak show.
I think it looks absolutely fantastic
and don't get me wrong it is a very bizarre-looking part.
It was designed initially to use on gravel bikes
and road bikes and then fat bikes and mountain bikes
and it's traveled from 30 millimeters up to 60 millimeters.
It's not much in a way of wheel travel.
You probably notice it doesn't have a shock on there either.
This is completely undamped travel
and a the actual springs on it,
they're actually carbon-fiber leaf springs
and they're military spec.
They come off tanks essentially.
These things are absolutely bonkers,
but I've got to say I have ridden a couple of sets of these.
I've ridden the Grits most recently, the Gravel fork,
and although it's only got 30 millimeters of travel,
it works absolutely amazingly.
I'm really quite surprised
and it doesn't feel at any point
that you need a damper on a fork like this.
I never thought I'd say that because this thing is a freak,
but a kind of lovable freak.
Spengle Wheels.
Now this isn't something from the old days,
this is a brand new wheel from them
that actually came out last year
and it's fully made from carbon fiber.
Now Spengle knows this stuff about wheels.
They've been making it wheels since the late 90s
and their wheels have always been a little bit different
to the norm but these bad boys,
tri spoke carbon fiber mountain bike wheels.
The hub is incorporated into the design.
It has to be because of the tolerances
to actually bond this together.
It's pretty impressive stuff.
The rim is part of the actual wheel design on here
and here is the cool thing with these wheels.
When a wheel goes out a true or gets bent,
it's essentially because of the spokes.
With these it simply cannot happen.
These will stay straight as an arrow.
So if you can put up with those freaky looks,
they might be the right thing for you.
Me, kind of on the fence.
Ah, the True Bike 36 inch wheel bike.
Yeah, yeah, you heard right, 36 inch wheel bike.
Yeah, pretty much built for giants.
Now these guys when the 29 inch wheel thing
was finally getting accepted,
they came straight with their amps rocking 11
and went straight to 36 inch
because the world needs a 36 inch wheel bike clearly.
Interestingly though it's got some really cool tech on it.
Look at the bar position, it's kind of like,
it reminds me of a GP bike the way that you have your bars
down low mounted as a headstock sort of system,
kind of has to be like that to maintain the riding position.
It's actually pretty intelligent stuff,
but here's the freaky bit.
The wheels, it's got carbon fiber 36 inch wheels on it.
Now these wheels were designed in carbon fiber for a reason.
Now that wheels on previous model weigh 10 kilos,
10 kilos for wheels!
You having a laugh?
Can you imagine that?
Can you imagine how slowly that thing accelerated?
Oh, I can't imagine actually.
It must have been awful.
But jokes aside, I kind of secretly
would like to ride one of these.
I bet you could ride over a granny
and you wouldn't even feel the tins of cat food.
Ah, Trust Performance.
Now they make a fork called the Message
and a make a fork called the Shout.
Now this is the linkage fork everyone
is talking about right now.
First came up to market last year
and it's definitely a bit of a divider.
It's the Marmite fork out there,
the one that really does turn people off
or massively pull people in to take a second look.
Now it has three industry heavy hitters behind it
including carbon fiber mastermind Jason Schiers
and suspension guru Dave Weagle.
This thing really is an exceptional piece of kit.
Promises ultimate suspension action
by allowing our axle path to move backwards
and away from the bump,
so whatever you ride into is simply gone.
That's what it's designed to do.
It also maintains your geometry,
your angles stay fairly similar to the trail,
actually increases under compression,
which means it gets more stable, not less.
It's a complete game-changer
in terms of bike handling and performance.
It's a very, very different concept
and simply cannot be compared to regular telescopic forks.
Okay so it's not everyone's cup of tea,
but if you ask me it is a work of art.
But what it doesn't require before commenting,
really you need to disconnect your analytical side
and just look at what the thing does.
Pretty amazing.
However it's still a freak and it belongs in this show.
Now well there we go, there was some of the freakiest bikes
and tech around from yesterday and today.
I'd love to know what you think,
what you think is the worst thing,
what you think is the best thing,
what you think is the freakiest thing.
What you think is something that actually has legs in it.
Let us know in the comments below, don't be too nasty.
This is all a bit of fun,
just having a look at some of the cool tech
from over the years,
but do comment underneath and let us know.
Now if you want to see that Trek
that I was referring to earlier
when we're talking about the Klein Mantra,
you can see that in my old versus new video
with XTR over here and keep your eyes peeled
if you're interested in that terrifying looking
Slingshot bike, the one with the cable down tube,
there's going to be a video coming up all about that bike.
As always don't forget to give us
a huge thumbs up here at GMBN Tech.
Let us know what you think in the comments,
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