Mysterious Hubs and Carbon Wrapped Alloy Frames? | The Latest Tech From Bielsko-Biala World Cup

We are in Poland for the second round of the UCI Downhill World Cup looking at the latest bike tech in the pits.

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we’re digging around looking for anything interesting and new here at the pits uh you know it’s only been two weeks since Fort William but I think some changes have been made you know some new bike parts have been rolling out uh we’re here in the Privateer pits we’ve got some sheep we’ve got a nice Barn I wish I were kidding but this actually is the Privateer pit so uh we’re going to wander around head over to the main pit as well see if we find any interesting stuff for you um but stoked to be in a new venue and excited to see what we find well we’re here in the Norco pits and I noticed that Greg’s bike has a carbon wrapped rear end unlike the rest which are machined aluminum uh and from what we’ve been told it’s just a carbon wrap on the outside of the same machined aluminum rear uh they’re playing with frame stiffness I guess after the Fort William round based on some data acquisition some video and then some Rider feedback they decided to start playing with the stiffness of the rear end uh especially for Greg uh I guess he was experiencing a bit more flex and wanted to try something stiffer so they like got that feedback Thursday sent it to the laminator Friday it’s done over the weekend and then Monday they were back to ride testing so pretty quick turnaround on this and this will be the first race that they’re testing it at it has been static tested so they they put it in the rig did some testing but it’s now going to get dynamically tested by the man himself looks just like that we are here in the intense Factory racing pits and I noticed that they are running Lewis breakes I think they’re the only World Cup team to do so uh Lewis is a break manufacturer out of China they kind of appeared on the scene recently I mean they’ve been like filtering through forums over the years but I think as of late have like really gotten a little bit more brand recognition um they get Flack for looking a lot like trick stuff breaks but there are features to them that differentiate the two the louises have a bit more adjustment and are about half the price um but pretty interesting to see them sponsoring a World Cup team uh and pretty cool in my eyes you know like a small boutique manufacturer you know putting their money where their mouth is and like actually getting breakes on Pros bikes is a pretty cool thing I haven’t ridden them myself Matt beer reviewed them he said they were good what I have here is what appears to be a new Hub system from e13 we saw some shots of it in Fort William Jesse noticed uh on a few different bikes something that’s called the sidekick Hub um kind of mysterious but from what I can tell it’s completely silent engagement it spins free like a sprag clutch Hub Hub would but it engages like a paw Hub it has like you know a few different detents throughout the unusual thing is it has almost like a soft catch to it so it feels a bit like an O chain perhaps um that’s my best guess as to like what it’s doing versus a regular Hub where you like you know there’s a hard catch right when the ball engages this kind of has like a few degrees of slop or like soft play between First Catch and like actual hard stop so don’t really know much about it but it’s a pretty interesting thing you we haven’t seen uh like a new style of hub in a long time you know people just run what they run be it a ratchet paw Hub or a sprag clutch thing but this is potentially something maybe a combination of all those maybe its own thing I’m not really sure but it’s got labels it looks pretty legit it’s Lac to production rims so maybe we’ll be seeing these soon we’ll find out but it’s even got a cool silver disc on it okay we are here at the canyon pits uh no one will tell us anything but we’ve got some speculative thoughts about the Prototype High pivot sender behind me here uh Matt has an article up on the site kind of speculating as to what the linkage is doing exactly but suffice to say there’s a lot of links driving the swing arm driving the shock from the swing arm rather um there’s some sort of concentric axle pivot going on again a high pivot and then multiple different bolt-on links that seem to you know allow for different changes of shock rate and maybe even stroke and stuff like that 100% speculation here but it’s a cool looking bike clearly the carbon is done so the hard points of the bike are pretty fixed it’s just little uh Mount things that are changing at this point we are here in the Frameworks pit uh squared away behind a little rental house somewhere near a nice River and uh we’re talking about the electronic Fox shock that they’re running uh as far as we can tell Frameworks is the only team running the rad AO electric lockout shock situation um doesn’t seem like any other teams have it so kind of an interesting story there we don’t really know that much about it still and they won’t tell us anything but we’re free to speculate um same as we saw at se it’s got some sort of remote lockout situation it blinks it’s got pretty lights uh otherwise a little mysterious like I don’t really know what the lockout is doing necessarily except potentially just fully lock loing the shock out um as to whether it has like a brain function like the flight attendant stuff I don’t really know but looks good it’s silent like in operation like when you click the button so that’s kind of interesting but uh that’s all we know it’s a lot of speculation for now it’s got these tags on the brakes so that’s another thing but those might just be position sensors mysterious she’s like that guy’s sanding at my car this is my car now so there you have it we got some new components some heavy speculation some setup changes for the new track um I’m excited to see how all this goes you know we’ve got a couple days of racing ahead of us um some Enduro as well so I’ll be heading over to the Enduro pits now to see if I can find any interesting stuff over there uh but first off I’m going to go for a ride and then I’m going to hang out with those sheep I’m going to drive my sweet new whip around but thanks for tuning in subscribe for more of this stuff and go ahead and check out the pink bike homepage because I’ll have a ton of Articles up there as well thank you