It’s Fromme Friday and I’m pushing hard on my pedals. My bike is moving forward, slowly. But, I have no RAWR. No push, no thrust, no squeeeeeeeeze. And I can trace that utter lack of juice straight from my pedals to the lifeless muscles in my butt. I have a dead derrière, a cooked keister, a fatigued fanny, a tired tush.
On the positive side, my RAWR deficiency can be directly tied to riding bicycles. Namely the three days that I put some proper pedaling into Steve’s Ruined Talbot (SRT). I don’t love the look of having fenders on the SRT, but I sure do love riding it. But between turning the gear on the Talbot and riding my V1 ATB with its 11-26t cassette block, there was a lot of standing up and pushing down on my pedals this week.
Going from punching the 30c Michelins or 40c Schwalbe Amazing Alvin’s to grinding up the road with the 3″ CushCored rubber on my Waltworks (x) WZRD V2 is quite a difference on any given day, but today was an exercise in perseverance.
One that will hopefully pay off in me being stronger in the weeks to come!
SRAM 50 & 30
SRAM launched their new T-Type cable-actuated drivetrains this week. The naming convention and colour touches shout out the ESP derailleurs they released thirty years ago, just with a lot more material and no decimals.
I’m not particularly stoked on Full Mount, I’d much rather have replaceable derailleur hangers. I’m not fully on board with UDH; I’d love to return to the trend of an increasing number of frames having adjustable chain stay lengths. After setting up a lot of SRAM’s T-Type drivetrains, I would still prefer to have high, low, and b-tension limit screws.
But, all that put aside, despite having not seen them in person yet, I am excited about SRAM’s new cable drivetrain options. Why? Because SRAM 70 is an obvious increase in manufacturing and shifting quality over the NX products it replaces. And, I can extrapolate from there.
{Above photo: Disraeli Gears UK}
{Above photo: Cycles Devinci}
I’ve been less than kind for years about the terrible garbage that is SRAM’s SX drivetrain. Okay, fine, jump up to NX, it is both ‘meh’ and better in every way. But only until one considers the price range of rigs shipping with it. Compared to Shimano Deore setups in the same price ranges – whether they be 12spd, 11spd, or 10spd – SRAM’s products have been middling to atrocious.
As far as I know, SRAM has not announced any new products to slot in below SRAM 90 & 70 but I have to assume that, at least, a 50-level unit is in the works to replace SX Eagle. And that if they can keep up the 70 vs. NX quality jump in a 50 vs. SX package, with the added benefits of the T-Type shifting, that will be rad.
Will it rival Shimano’s basic LinkGlide U6000 or Deore M5130 drivetrains on performance? T-Type shifting precision is excellent. On price? I don’t know, but if the theoretical SRAM 50 is coming on bikes that folks are currently buying instead of SX Eagle then everybody is winning.
HMPL Wallet {thank you, Topher}
I needed a new wallet, my favourite local bag maker that could, HMPL, suddenly started making wallets. Perfect. I bought one online, and then I had so many missed opportunities to hop a ferry across the ocean {AKA take the Seabus across the Burrard Inlet} to grab it that I couldn’t remember if I had ordered Lilac or Fuchsia {both great choices, I’m certain}.
Anywho, Topher was kind enough to bring it across for me and I dropped in to pick it up at Obsession: Bikes {Thank You, Topher}. Went in for my wallet, stayed to chat with Lou & admired Matt’s crop duster. Apparently, I even just missed the legendary Terry Walker on the day I went in!
Where was I? Oh yeah, the wallet is great. Slimmed down from my last unit but still holds all my stuff. Made in East Vancouver by a genuinely nice person. Winning.
Fast forward to later in the week, and it turns out that crossing an ocean {The Pacific, to Japan} is really an option for folks who want an HMPL wallet of their own. Congrats to Matt on partnering with Burrito.House for distribution overseas!
[You’re] big in Japan, big in Japan!
Anglesets, The Other Way
I was chatting Chainsaw, Devinci Chainsaw, with a couple of friends. To mullet, not to mullet. High setting, low setting. And, through the process, I learned that there are some fully authentic bicycle nerds in the world who have never come around to the idea that one can, should a bike be deemed to sport ‘too slack’ a head tube angle (HTA), install an angle adjusting headset ‘backward.’
An excellent Wolf Tooth GeoShift or Works Components Angleset that sports a -1°adjustment can also be used to achieve a +1° adjustment. Mind blown? Wait until I tell you that a more extreme {Xtreme} WTC or Works -2° headset, flipped around, is now a +2° headset! Holy hypertrophy, that’s using our brain muscles.
I’m not sure why some folks are totally okay with the idea of slackening out a head tube angle but not steepening one. Sometimes steeper is better. I suppose a decade-long ever-quest toward longer, lower, and slacker setups will do that. But either way, if I had my hands on the Chainsaw again I would absolutely try a +1° headset. With both a dual 29″ and mullet 29/27″ setup.
MRP Tall Crown Race
I do not have one of these, nor a bike I would currently use it on, but the +10mm MRP Riser Crown Race is one of those bits that I’ll undoubtedly wish I had in my treasure trunk at some point.
For example, if I was building up the Banshee Enigma {AKA Freeride BMX} with a rigid fork tomorrow I’d run either an external +1cm lower headset cup (EC56) or, since I love the headset that’s in there, an MRP Riser race just to inch, or rather 1/2 inch, the effective axle-to-crown of my V2 fork up a touch.
Actually, when I get around to building the Enigma up with my 32mm R7 for the XC project I’ve been rolling around in my head, the MRP RCR would also be the perfect little 0.5° HTA/STA bumper.
But aside from asides, it’s really just a product, like the BikeYoke Aimy locking spacer, that I think more folks should know about. You might not need one today, you might not need one ever. Heck, you might never know anyone who needs one.
Or, one of your friends may be playing around a lot with stem height, or rotating their bar for storage, and a locking spacer that keeps their headset preloaded is just the thing they need. Hero!
Or, one of your friends in the 50,000:1 club may be complaining that the stock fork on their Unit is just a single centimetre too short since they installed their -2° Angleset (66° HTA Unit) and you’ll be bicycle wizard of the moment when you mention MRP’s tall race.
Widgets. Wonderful widgets.
Reverse Arch Update
Okay, step one. Zoom in. It’s bad MS Paint art! I made it. In five minutes. And yes, I really³ was genuinely surprised when I saw that Fox Racing Shox was releasing new 34 SL and 36 SL fork platforms and they weren’t using reversed arches. Lighter, stiffer, and last year’s 32 SC looks RAD {as in sweet, but also Fox R.A.D. as in Racing Application Development}.
And, there are a few more yesses/guesses. I’m 100% certain that at some point (maybe the 2029 model year) Fox will switch their whole fork lineup to reverse arches. Probably every other brand will arrive there at some point too. It just makes more sense.
And I want to clarify that this isn’t some amazing, mind-blowing, insane performance improvement that would render other forks impotent. Like most {all?} the suspension performance improvements over the last decade we’re talking about marginal gains. And unlike some of those marginal performance improvements, the reserved arch configuration has no negative trade-offs and won’t increase the cost. Heck, it would be easy enough to make it retrofittable.
Wait, so what am I stoked about? I’m stoked about how many other folks in the industry were surprised that the new Fox forks didn’t go arc inversé*. Including a few folks who work at other suspension brands.
Will we see another brand joining Manitou in the Reverse Arch universe in 2025? I have no insider information here, but we have 3/4 of the year to go, and, to be Frank, I’m feeling confident we will.
*{It’s the only A.I. I’m interested in.}
UBG Continued
In 2023 I wrote a piece for NSMB about SRAM’s Potential UBG or, Universal Bash Guard. To make a long story short, why wouldn’t brands like NSBillet, Wolf Tooth Components, etc., make chainrings compatible with SRAM’s bolt-on bash plates?
With the launch of the SRAM 70 drivetrain, SRAM has sort of taken a step toward doing this themselves by making a 3-bolt chainring that works with their bash inserts. Whereas all other T-Type cranks are using their power meter friendlier 8-bolt ring mounting, the addition of a 3-bolt option opens up the add-on bash option to decades of past-gen SRAM cranks as well as those from other brands.
I would still love to see those aftermarket brands making more options. UBG-compatible chainrings for Cinch and Shimano direct mount patterns. Maybe more sizes? Although once someone drops below a 30t ring, contact becomes rare on most bicycles.
So yeah, 50% stoked that SRAM is now also offering UBG rings for the 3-bolt mounting standard. The other 50% is reserved for when other brands jump on board and I can get a UBG-compatible chainring for my XT crankset.
Larry Talker Tunes for the Week
It’s a March thing, but somehow it works that last week’s Canadian content (CanCon, Mandatory Beaver) resulted in Irish music this week. I had never heard of Gearoid McCarthy, but as a lover of Rum Ragged, Great Big Sea, and, and, and, this whole album is the best. Although, I could listen to three hours of different artists performing ‘Heave Away’ so, maybe start there?!
Thank you, Terry Walker
From Model-T:
Last week’s tunes from Hawksley Workman put me in a mood. The result, I’ll keep the Canadiana rolling (an Irish/Canadian connection) with more “shanties” from the East Coast and across the Pond.
Following world news the last few weeks I somehow landed on Irishman Gearoid McCarthy.
A short intro: A Place Called Newfoundland
The full album: Songs From Newfoundland
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