Zyro 2011.

“It’s showtime!” No, not with girls in ra-ra skirts. Or men with top hats inviting you to look at the fattest man in the world.

Nope. It’s bike industry show time meltdown time. Over the next couple of months there’ll be tons and tons of them and we’ll be there to report back on shinyness for you.

First off though – it’s Zyro

We had to stare at this for three minutes while we counted backwards from 100…

Ashima

The PCB brake has had a few tweaks for this year. The outer metal hose that goes from piston to piston (the red pipe above) has been improved by adding small indents to remove any chance of it separating from the caliper body (none have  actually failed but under really hard braking some downhillers had apparently got it to loosen its grip on the caliper)  and they’ve increased pad clearance to stop any annoying graunching on gritty rides.

Put  your scales away weirdo!  Composite carbon- aluminium – and other lighter than air materials sandwiched into a disc that weighed bugger all on my very accurate “hold it in my hand and guess” scales – Ashima are claiming 60g! Out next year.

‘Alloy disc brake bolts?’ I hear you gasp. Mr Ashima claims that by completely redesigning the thread, the shoulder on the bolt and putting a smaller Torx on to the head of the bolt, they’re good to go. They’re also claiming 50% weight saving over your standard bolts..

I know it looks like he’s taking drugs, but it’s all in the interest of brake pad science. Iso-thermal pads get hotter quicker so they work more effectively but won’t transfer as much heat into the rest of the brake system for a more consistent brake with less fade.

Ashima do tons of tidy cable routing options including “Super noodles”  for V brakes (across the world Ashima sell a million rim brake pads a month!) and gear routing.

Zefal

Zefal have got some great new products and are all really competitive on prices.

Nice Double action Presta/Schrader pump – pumps to 160 PSI if your arms are big enough, all for £17.99

My own personal mud guard phobia must be ignored to bring you hot news for the lovers of “wheel shrouds”

The Nomud(!) is a mud guard that you can fit either front or rear by clipping on or off an extension to the front or the back of the guard that allows it to fit to the front or the back of the bike.

Nice Mini track pump for hydration pack users .

New Zefal packaging is simple and self explanatory .

Cute little pre-glued patch packs .

Mind blowingly un-intuitive locking device from Zefal (Well it is if you’re an under-caffeinated journo). Basically with your bike in a normal upright position, ball bearings in the quick releases stop you from being able to unlock them – flip it the other way (upside down) and you can undo them. I was completely bemused at first “surely thieves aren’t that stupid that they can’t turn a bike upside down?”

“No. but if you lock the bike so it’s upright they can’t then steal any peripheries.”

I get it now.

Cateye.

Cateye have a couple of new bits and bobs available very soon!

The Q series of watches.

There’s the Q3 has all of the standard-speed,cadence, heartrate, elapsed time that type of stuff

The Q1 has all of that plus a Altimeter plus software if you want it to see where A) You were sick and B) Cried for your mum because you ran out of sugar – stuff like that.

The Inou.

Now this is exciting if you’re into making movies, GPS and social network stuff.

Inou is a video camera with a GPS built in and camera – which you can then upload for free to Cateye’s own website and link via Facebook or add to You Tube stuff like that – the video is linked to the position relative to where you are on a map and so are the photos. It also seem to do a lot of stuff that your basic bike computer will do: average speed, max speed stuff like that.

They’ve also promised a much more intuitive interface – so no more double tapping buttons with your tongue hanging out in concentration like you’re playing Track and Field circa 1986 just to get it to record.

Lights. Some people say that it was all Cateye’s fault in the first place with the Cateye Stadium (80 Watts!) all those years ago.The Lumen wars however continues apace.

This is the new Sumo 2 from Cateye. 1100 Lumens, three power settings and useable with a helmet mount.

Tidy frame-mounted battery

If 1100 isn’t enough the Sumo 3 will melt the space time continuum directly in front of you with 1600 lumens of intergalactic power.

Minoura

First up for all of you indoor carpet gazers – The Minoura Magteq.

Apparently it’s the quietest on the market and one of the easiest to attach to your bike (or the other way around) .

Maximum output is 640 watts at 40 kph – and the has almost double the quantity of resistance levels compared to the old Minoura trainer – now with 13 levels compared to seven .

Minoura have also vastly improved the clamps on their bar mounted bit and bobs from what was really a kind of reusable ziptie in effect, to a far more robust clamping mechanism

Auxilary Video /camera clamp

And a stem mounted bottle mount as well.

I managed to control the urge to shout out “NICE RACK!!”  by biting my lip and crushing one hand under my leg but it was still hard to control myself.

The King carrier is a lovely thing that will carry 24 beers /small dog /bricks /firewood / a cute looking Man or Women like in butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, the choice is all yours – Responsibly resourced wood and all of that good stuff – I could imagine buying one and then having to build a bike to go with it. P.S – Bottle opener included of course.

Minoura’s “under  a £100.00” workstand. It’s got a fully rotating head and seems nicely made.

Got a big estate car? or one of those Renault Kango things?  The Minoura Vergo is basically a float for the front of you bike so it’ll balance upright in your car – it’s also available as a two bike version and you can also get a 15mm – and 20mm adaptor for it.

I can hear Chipps lustily moaning as he feasts his eyes on these beauties. Panaracer are doing their old Fire XC  pro tread in CX friendly 700c design now, and in white!

Panaracer make tyres for lots of people. This one is for  SOMA, the Everwear. Ultra-tough, hardwearing tyre for fixie skids kids. The red bit is to let you know you’re going to have a massive blowout as you lock up your wheel by a tattooed hottie, unless you change your tyre pronto.

Cedric’s new soft condition tyre -multiple denisity – spikey – but not too spikey all rounder

Soft condition on the right and his all rounder on the left. Available in two sizes. 2.1 and 2.25

Cedric’s Signature tyre is now available in 29er  sizes. He did comment that the high centre ridge that makes up part of his initials meant that the tyre rolled really well.

Altura

Altura are doing kiddie stuff  !

This is there Spark Bamboo – a Bamboo/polyester mix  non technical but high wicking T- shirt (probably copes with ice cream stains better as well.)

Spar baggie for the nipper as well.

Mum and Dad can have one too. But it’s called Mayhem Bamboo.

Fatigue Baggies – subliminated – stretchy durable goodness.

Apex – One of Altura’s best sellers for him and her.

Except it’s called a Quantum for ladies.

Spirt Short sleeves womens top – also available sleeveless.

Tifosi.

Tifosi do tons and tons of glasses !

It’s simple to work out though: interchangeable lens glasses are £50.00 regardless of model

Photo-chromatic lenses are £70.00 Tifosi glasses use a system where the chromatic part of the lens is imbedded with in the lens rather than is used on cheaper models where they  spray the stuff on to the lenses.

You can get different levels of inital amont of light that’s let in – Above is the Tyrant 2 with different”base” levels as standard.

Bono was modelling them.

Abus

Abus do a huge range of locks and personal protection.

Firstly I have to mention the Axel Roesler – who has a name like a rockstar – and is the most enthusiastic people I’ve ever met when it comes to all things to do with security.

Here’s the Gold Sold Secure Ground anchor chain. Something I was very interested after my recent robbery – once in place it apparently took a pneumatic drill to get thing out of the ground.

Axel recommends the City Chain as the perfect accompaniment to the ground anchor – you can order it longer lengths as well or order a few of them with the same barrel so one key undoes them all, for easily joining them together or if you have lots of bikes to lock separately to different ground anchors.

Granite X plus is the strongest U lock they do sold secure and recommended  buy us (and a few others) Abus claims their locks generally are lighter for the same amount of strength as other locks due to the quality of steel they use.

U-mini is the Abus hipster lock of choice with two prices depending whether you want a silver level of protection or gold.

The ivy Chain is there chain style lock which has been tweaked to be more comfy to carry around the neck  (in a urban stylee)

Nice little cafe ‘ immobilser’ (Axel’s words not mine) fits easily into a jersey pocket.

The Key combo (above) is another one of those “huh?” to ‘duh!” products. So you have a combi lock that you leave at the pub/round a railing with your pride and joy attached. You then get into some bizarre drinking game  based around  a map of Europe and the position of you initials in the alphabet… You then crack your head on the way out and forget a lot of stuff – like the  combination. Simply use the keys you’ve hidden in your filing cabinet under ‘Keys/combi’ and then go and unlock it. Comes complete with a metal spike to reset the combo.

Folding locks you can pop into your jeans pocket – loads of colours and up to a silver level of protection.

Abus have new lids as well – Hill Bill-  a higher coverage all mountain lid with a very comfy retention system.

Finally the incredibly bright Urbanite lid fluro yellow with loads of reflectivity and built in light – it also comes in sizes that would fit  Joseph Merrick.

‘Til the next show.

Matt

---