- This is the World Cup Ft. William Downhill.
I'm gonna take another tour of the pits to see
if I can find some more cool tech.
(upbeat music)
So we're over at Santa Cruz checking out
their new Nomads, they also have the Juliana Stregas.
Same bike, this is the ladies version,
come in sizes small through to medium in the Juliana.
And small through to XL in the Nomads.
So, it's definitely a new design.
You can see it's lower link driver now.
Looks much more like a mini V10 than
the old Nomad with the shock up top.
It's got metric shocks so you've got that big bearing in
the bottom there, much more reliable than bushings.
It's boost front to rear, couple of really nice touches.
We've got these bolt on guards so that's for the
pickup when you do the shuttle in.
Also one under the bottom there, it's not
stuck on anymore, it's actually bolted on to the frame.
Nice little washer there to stop the chain from
slapping on that chain stay and also these brand new
Santa Cruz carbon wheels with a lifetime guarantee.
So we're at Magura checking out the MT7 disc brake system.
It's their gravity disc brake system.
It's got this HC3 lever, actually the Danny Mack
signature model and this is super adjustable.
You can adjust the reach on the front there,
but also the bite point so you can get it going
from feeling super firm to going the other end
of the scale and actually getting a lot more modulation.
It actually moves that plunger to push in that piston.
Another neat little touch actually, you can
service this brake just using a T25.
So, there's your bleed port, you can adjust that plunger,
tighten the calliper up, but also really neatly actually
just take the brake pads out using that T25.
Just remove that there and actually there's no springs
involved with this, they're just magnetic
from the disc brakes to that piston.
We're in the YT pits, we're not allowed a close look
at it, but if you look from here, you can see
on Aaron Grin's bike on the left hand side,
an actual lever and a cable going
to his DHX to a Fox rear shock.
And that is a lock out, forward ins are notoriously
heavily tracked the final straight, the motorway.
So some of the riders are actually fitting these
remote levers to lock that shock out to get
the bike working as best they possibly
can in that pedalling section.
We're in the Trek factory racing pits and this
is Greyer Mud's helmet and check out that peak extender.
The weather here is pretty bad, it's raining.
In the old days, in my days, you used to just
tape, gaffer tape an old lens to your peak,
to keep the rain from coming on to our goggles.
Bell have made this extension to go on that peak.
Much neater, does the trick.
So so we're still seeing a mix of coil
and air shocks on downhill bikes.
This is a prototype from Nassau I saw on tour.
Brand new air shock, the best thing about air shocks,
they're really tunable adding volume spaces to them.
They're slightly less sensitive on the small bumps.
But this is a super light prototype shock.
It's almost 100 grammes lighter than Fox DHXT.
So we're over in the Santa Cruz pits checking out
the 29 AV10, one of the problems with the downhill
29er bikes is actually finding the
space for the rear wheel to travel.
Especially on the smaller frames like the
large here that Lars Vergiary is using.
And actually this is hand made Fizik Gobi saddle.
See, it's been cut at the back, that's a prototype.
All that leather's been glued back on.
They've actually now made a production version of this
so it's a 29er specific downhill saddle made by Fizik.
So we're in the Norco pits and this
is their brand new downhill bike.
It's actually a prototype, it doesn't have a model name
just yet, this is Sam Blenkinsop's, the kiwi rider.
You can see there's a big linkage going on there.
It's also got an idler jockey wheel over top
and actually stops some of the influence that
chain has on that suspension.
So this is actually quite interesting.
This is Jack Redding's Nicholi, you see underneath
this green gaffer tape, there's actually lead weights.
So, is lighter always faster, apparently this is
actually a bit of an experiment with
Chris Porter, who's a suspension guru.
He's trying to get some weight put on the bike in certain
spots to make that bike feel a lot more stable.
Ft. William is a really rough course.
Does it work, who knows but I'd
like to actually try it myself.
So we're over at Intense and they have their prototype
29er downhill bike, you see it's hand made,
aluminium frame, there's no name for this bike just yet.
So there's really cool stickers on it.
Also, one of the two teams have these
brand new Rockshox 29er forks upfront.
We've got Jack Moyer and Dean Lucas, top riders
jammed on these 29er bikes and Jack Moyer
actually qualified third place on that brand new 29er.
So there you go, there's some really cool tech
from the pits here in Ft. William.
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