Interbike 08: Expo Day 2

Bleary eyed--we were up late getting the first round of Expo images posted from our stylish hotel--we wandered into the Sands Convention Center for round two of the Interbike expo. Day 2 is usually much smoother because you have at least found out where the key booths are--the ones with banners hanging from the ceiling that you can see from nearly anywhere on the show floor--so finding your way around is less of a headache.

At the Dirt Demo last year--IB 07--my favorite bike was the Giant Anthem. It was a short travel race bike that did just about everything better than it's 3" of travel would have you think. This year, we rode the new Anthem X. This is the high zoot version. The one we rode was kitted out in full XT parts.

They've bumped the travel to 4" and have made the head tube more slack. I approve. It was a blast to ride. I'd love to spend more time with the bike.

Specialized had armed guards keeping people out of their booth. Large men in pin striped suits and Jersey accents*. After we sneaked in**, we spied Christophe Sausers Epic race bike.

Click on the image for the bigger version, but the scale indicated that the bike weighed in a hair over 20.5lbs. And that's with pedals.

*There weren't and **we didn't. They were limited access to their dealers and the media. We were in the latter group. I think.

Yesterday, Jon mentioned the individual counting the cogs on the Look. While in the Specialized booth, we heard a guy--remember, media and existing Spec. dealers only were allowed in--ask if this Epic was stock. When told "no", he proceeded to ask if the stock one came with Stan's rotors, like this one did. Amazing. Particularly since Stan doesn't sell the aluminum rotors anymore.

Moving on..

I'll wrap up this bonus Tuesday post with this sweet hardtail from the Edge booth. Edge makes carbon rims and had a bunch of very nice bikes on hand to show them off. This is not a Cannondale.
Notice the brake hose and shifter cable routing? Right through the Bar/Stem combo, then out the hollow Lefty steerer tube. Very clean. The lightning paint job doesn't hurt, either.

Interbike 08: Expo Day 1 - Continued

Look
Besides their new full-suspension mountain bike, the 996, Look also had on hand a new road bike, the 566. (How does Look decide what numbers to assign to bikes? As much as I try to figure it out, I think it's just arbitrary.) The 566 has a slightly taller head-tube as well as seat-stays, chain-stays and fork designed for a little more forgiving ride.




Look also had on hand their new "monobloc carbon" crankset, the Zed. The bottom bracket for this is 50mm--which means that it will only work on their new time trial bike, the 596. It also has drilling for 130 or 110 bcd chainrings--a nice touch since if you buy the 596, you're pretty well stuck with that crank. Another thing to note about the 596 is the extra space around the wheels. Normally, on a really high-end TT bike, you'd barely be able to slide a piece of paper between the tires and the frame. Look believes the turbulence created by the normally close quarters causes more drag than it saves.


(I want to call special attention to just how well this photo of the 596 turned out. Notice the bored man on the phone in the background. Of course, the only thing that could eclipse his catatonic stare would be the guy who decided to count the number of cogs on that Dura Ace cassette right as I took the picture. How many did he expect it to have? "Nice bike, but how many gears does it have?!")


FSA
Not too much news from FSA, but clearly they've embraced the BB30 bottom bracket standard. Having purchased a Cannondale equipped with this size bottom bracket long before it became a "standard", I'm grateful that I didn't paint myself into a corner.

In addition, the prototype of this "drinking system" (aka: fairing) has made it to production. It's legal, it's carbon, and it'll keep you hydrated. Sounds good to me. Now if only I could get my hands on this and the 596, I might be a tiny bit faster than I am now.

Finally, FSA has a tubeless mountain wheel. That sound you're hearing is the collective sigh of relief from the GearReview/Lactic Acid Threshold staff.

Time
Time was on hand with various bits of gorgeous bikery (I just made that up... BAM!) like this beautiful RXR Ulteam. New for Time are their wheelsets. Though not incredibly light, the top model (there are two models) sits around 1500g. They feature a rear wheel with the rim centered between the spokes and a high spoke-tension. They say this leads to a very stiff wheelset.

Interbike 08: Expo Day 1

Aluminum freehub bodies are great at reducing the weight of rear hubs, but, as anyone who has pulled a long-used cassette can attest, cassettes can dig in and deform the softer aluminum. American Classic has recognized this and has added three steel pieces to their aluminum bodies.

This should increase the longevity of the freehub body considerably.

Moots' bikes are works of art... and priced like art, too. Their newest bike, the CoMooter, is no exception:

The fork is a WoundUp cross fork, with disc tabs. The bike comes equipped with a Rolhoff 14-speed rear hub and a Campagnolo carbon cranks. The front hub is a dyno-hub, so there is no need to recharge the CoMooter's lights. It sure is pretty, but there is no way I'd leave the $8700 bike locked up outside.

You may remember that we recently reviewed the Look 986 hardtail mountain bike. Now it has a full-squish sibling, the 996.

This 3" travel bike, like's it's hardtail sibling, is very much a race bike. Because of this focus, the 996 should have razor sharp handling and should favor climbing. Frankly, I hope to get some serious saddle time on one.

Not every bike at the show is so serious, though. Here Jon is demo-ing a triangular folding bike.

This bike, by Strida, was fun to ride, and folds up pretty small. It uses a belt drive so there is nothing to lube.


As an aside, we did slack off on the Twitter posts today. We were pretty busy running from one appointment to another. We'll do better tomorrow. Also, this is just the beginning of Expo, day 1. We'll be back with more tomorrow.

Interbike 08: Outdoor Demo Day 2

Another great day in the saddle--though, to be honest, I'm a little tired from being out in the sun all day. We had a few appointments today, so we had to organize our rides around them.


Lightweight



One of my main goals for today was to get out on some Lightweight wheels. We not only got out on the tubular Lightweights, but they also had their new (not-yet-released) clincher version. These wheels are amazing. Amazing! They want to spin, and they want to do it very quickly. I've never ridden on any wheels as fast to accelerate or as stiff as these. And yet, even with all their stiffness, they were also remarkably comfortable. The folks at Lightweight seem to know their stuff. They're now also working on some extremely light quick-release skewers and a rear derailleur (sorry, we were drooling too much to be able to handle the camera at this point so no pictures).


Shimano
We also got out on the Shimano bikes (unmarked Orbeas) with their Dura Ace tubeless wheels and the new 7900 Dura Ace. I have to say that, though the shifting was amazing (as you'd expect) and the finish beautiful, I don't like the shape of the brake/shift levers as well as the old 7800. Too bad, I was really excited for the internal cable routing.


Delta 7 Arantix


Probably one of the bikes that drew the most looks and questions for the day was with our first scheduled ride: the Arantix. As cool as it is, I was left disappointed with the ride. It's light, but it didn't ride as light as it was. It was stiff, but not as stiff or fast as the recently reviewed Look 986. For about the price of the Arantix frame (well, almost) you could have the 986--a much more capable bike. The engineering behind the Arantix is very cool, though it sometimes wasn't executed as well as you'd expect for such a high-dollar frame. Notice the cable housing wear as it entered the frame. Evidently, the carbon isn't kind to the plastic.


Spot


Though we really planned on only riding road bikes, there were too many tempting mountain rides. The draw for me to this bike was, of course, the belt drive. I wasn't disappointed. In fact, I found the whole package (29er and the inverted Maverick fork) to be such a fun ride. It was very light (Stan's NoTubes wheels helped with this) and plenty stiff. I liked this bike so much that later, when I couldn't get on a bike equipped with the HammerSchmidt, I just got this one again to ride. If I ever get a 29er single-speed, this will be it.


Turner

Meanwhile, James got out on another DW-link suspension bike: the 5 Spot. Like the Pivot's that we rode yesterday, the 5 Spot was fun to ride and generally felt lighter than it weighed. We'd like to spend more time on it.

SRAM



Our other scheduled ride was a group ride with SRAM. We both got to try their new carbon deep-rimmed wheels (I got the 80s and James got the 60s). My bike was equipped with Red and James had the new Force. The ride they had planned had lots of ups and downs and was much more fun than the standard road course. The wheels were stiff enough and not too heavy. Knowing what they weigh, I expected them to feel much more sluggish than they felt.

I could go on and on about different shifting systems--but that will have to wait for another post. We like SRAM shifting. No, actually, we love it. Very fast, very precise (as any top-tier group ought to be) and more intuitive than I expected it to be. I would love to run SRAM on my bike, in fact.


Jamis/HammerSchmidt

We finally found a bike we could take out that was equipped with the HammerSchmidt transmission. This particular item is absolutely incredible. It really is amazing to be able to change gears independent of what you're doing. It was so much fun to go into a climb in much too hard of a gear and be able to effortlessly dump it into the easier gear up front. I can't wait until this gets out on more bikes.


Okay, I'm tired and not making much sense. First day of the indoor shot tomorrow!

Interbike 08: Outdoor Demo Day 1

Well, it was a good day at the show. Not all of my flickr uploads worked, so I'm going to have to look into that tonight. We got the opportunity to ride a lot of great bikes on some crowded, but fantastic trails. Of course, some bikes worked better than others (I'm looking at you, Trek), but overall it was good.

So, what we're going to do here is basically just post some of the photos we took today with captions. If you have questions about something we saw, or want us to look into a product we didn't post about, please put in a comment and we'll get on it.


Shimano




Well, unfortunately, Shimano isn't allowing anyone to ride it (Why Shimano, why?!), but we got to play with the Electric Dura Ace Di2 7970. The rear shifts well, but the coolest part is the automatic trimming of the front derailleur. I can't wait to get my hands on this for a real test.


Pivot


Pivot released their new Firebird 6" travel bike with the DW link and floating front derailleur mount.


Trek



We rode both the Trek Top Fuel and the Trek EX. Both climbed well, but were plagued with other problems. The EX descended more like a 4" travel bike than a 5", and the Bontrager seatpost on the Top Fuel was frozen solid with the nose of the saddle pointing skyward. (When I returned the Top Fuel and explained the problem, everyone groaned and I heard someone shout back to the mechanic that was removing my pedals: "That one has the seatpost problem.")


Specialized


From Specialized, we rode the S-Works Epic and the S-Works FSR. Both bikes rode very well (and the Epic was very light), but I think we would have preferred them with a more conventional shock and without the Brain.


Moots

I ended the day on a Moots MootoXybb. This is a 29er soft-tail with Moots' famous YBB rear "shock". This bike was a kick to ride--I was surprised by how much fun I had on it, since I normally don't enjoy the 29ers.

Stay tuned for more updates tomorrow.

What You Want

You've asked. I've promised. Here they are, the beam shots.

First, let's take a look at the Dinotte's 600L. You've seen it before, but it'll be a good reference point.

Here is the 400L, with the standard lens configuration--two spot lenses:

Now, as requested--it's all about you, my readers, you know--these are the two types of lenses, though I'm not 100% positive as to the beam spread of each, so I'll call them A and B.

A:
B:
I did not mix the lenses, but put both of the same type in at the same time.

400L with lens A:
400L with lens B:


Another light that I've failed to post beam shots for is the MiNewt Mini-USB from NiteRider. Well, here it is:

Remember that this is a budget light. As such it does a nice job.

Finally, the Seca 700 from Light and Motion arrived just in time to be included in this batch of beam shots. I have not ridden with this light yet, that'll have to wait until after Interbike. For now, though, take a gander at the beam pattern.

Not too shabby... not shabby at all really. I can't wait to get some saddle time with it.

And that's it for our Pre-Interbike posts. Next week we'll be posting from Las Vegas. Don't forget to check in during the day for our Twitter posts. There will be links to images throughout the day. We'll follow that up each evening with a wrap up with even more images.