Just a week after our ‘A few minutes with David Turner’ feature, he has snuck out a few pictures of his new prototype DHR frame. Still only a work in progress, he’s managed to shoehorn a DW-Link in there where before there was a single pivot.
Given the popularity of Turner’s previous downhill designs, we can see these being rather popular when they finally appear later in 2010.
Turner’s website can be found here: www.turnerbikes.com
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With 23 years as Editor of Singletrack World Magazine, Chipps is the longest-running mountain bike magazine editor in the world. He started in the bike trade in 1990 and became a full time mountain bike journalist at the start of 1994. Over the last 30 years as a bike writer and photographer, he has seen mountain bike culture flourish, strengthen and diversify and bike technology go from rigid steel frames to fully suspended carbon fibre (and sometimes back to rigid steel as well.)
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Oh go on then, I’ll have one.
would still prefer a Nicolai ION………
TLR SO then make me an offer!
Major loads from the shock straight into the down tube, structurally very ineffecient. Poor design in my eyes.
Well, best tell Dave Turner he’s wasted a year of his life testing it then eh? Jeez…
JohnB, looks like you’re needed here.
http://forums.mtbr.com/showthread.php?p=6496425#post6496425
😀
Hey chunky, I’m not quite clear who is being the internerd here…?
It’s like my mother-in-law, ugly and pretentious.
Loads into the middle of a tube can (and do) work but the tube has to be bigger to take the loads. The compromise is increased weight.
If the aim is to build a bike that is as light as possible (and I am assuming that all bike manufacturers want to do that) then a more structurally effecient (weight v stiffness) frame will result if the loads go into tube junctions or in line with the tubes.
Most design is a compromise and it would appear that rear suspension function (in particular coil over damper position) has taken priority over structural effeciency.
Idk…me thinks the single pivot would be better. But, I’m a single pivot kinda guy, so there you have it.
Dunno if it helps any JohnB, I ain’t no engineer, from Turner on MTBR:
Glad you like it. This has been the biggest single model engineering project ever for Turner Bikes. For those that actually got to ride a proto, the changes to this bike will be lighter weight and stiffer in the junction between front and rear. The lower link that has proven to be the only problem to date has shafts that are double the the size of the proto and the alloy has been changed from 6061 T-6 to 7075, and the bearings are bigger than what Lars Peyer and Tyler Moreland have been on for months, ’cause we are not in the business of selling DH frames that last months but years.
DT
JohnB
Not if the alternative is to introduce a large amount of gusseting or additional tube joints in order to avoid having the shock meeting a tube in that position. As you say, design is about comprimise and what may simplistically appear to be a structurally inefficient design may actually work out better given the other design constraints.
Sorry to interrupt but how can they be spy shots when they have been sent to you by DT himself?
John B,
The assumption that all manufacturers, especially of DH bikes want to make teh lightest bike possible is frankly very poor. Empire, transition, Yeti, Nicolai the list is actually almost endless do not want to build the lightest DH bikes they can. Infact all of those have delibratley built bikes that are not light. As you claim to be a engineer I thought you would have more apprecaition of the reasons for not building the lightest DH bike you can.
For those that do want a light DH bike go for it, you’ll find it’s rubbish.
“For those that do want a light DH bike go for it, you’ll find it’s rubbish.”
Isn’t the Mondraker one of the lightest DH bikes around? They’re not rubbish.
The mondraker isn’t as light as could be. They could knock a good pound or more out of it, then it would be rubbish; handling like a particularly wobbly jelly and bouncing over rocks like a grasshopper with its backside on fire, before falling apart after each race weekend.
Brutal, I love it. you could go ram raiding on that.
Sorry to interrupt but how can they be spy shots when they have been sent to you by DT himself?
A good point, although they weren’t sent by DT and we had to go sifting through his website for them. ‘Spy shots’ sounds more interesting than ‘Computer generated prototype product photos issued by manufacturer’ though… 🙂
Thanks Chipps 🙂
Not even spy shots, they are both renders.
Rudolph and Blitzen?
It’s going downhill now.
Better than Dancer and Prancer.
I like the look of it, impressed that so much travel can be had from such short links.
I’ve no concerns about that shock mount. Look at pretty much any single pivot bike out there. In fact the shock on my VPFree has much more chance of tearing the mount tabs off, but I suspect theres about as much chance of that happening as there is of me tearing the head tube off.