It’s Friday once again and that means a helping of the latest and greatest product that’s landed in the office for you lot to virtually prod and poke. Without further ado, let’s begin.
Kinesis Crosslight Pro6
Lucky Chipps – it may be drawing to the end of the ‘cross season but that hasn’t stopped the lovely folk at Kinesis from sending over this custom ‘pee green’ disc specific frame over for him, complete with Singletrack graphics. It was actually a prototype that Chipps has to beg Kinesis designer Dom for as the first batch had sold out. The 6000 series aluminium alloy frame is free from disfiguring canti mounts and there are loads of cyclocross racing specific details, right down to the top-routed cables on the slightly flattened top tube which make it easy to carry if you’re too soft to bunny hop the barriers.
Price: £549.99 with fork, headset and seatclamp.
From: Kinesis UK
The bike takes a 27.2 post – so your choice of uppy downy posts for a really freaky ‘cross build are limited – but it does mean you can rummage about in the garage to find a suitable item. The angles are classic race bike, Dom believing that a fast handling bike is best suited to race conditions.
Chipps plans to make an Ultegra Di2 build complete with ‘cross specific chainset – you can read more about his intentions in his blog.
The fork is a full carbon fibre 1.125-1.5″ tapered job complete with masses of mud clearance and a post mount brake.
TRP Parabox
Yeah yeah, we know, more cyclocross stuff. The TRP Parabox is designed to bridge the gap in demand for proper hydraulic discs on ‘cross bikes and the total lack of drop-bar compatible hydraulic brake levers. It clamps neatly out of the way on your steerer tube and uses your standard cable pull to activate a pair of neat little lightweight callipers. The hoses themselves use olives and barbs on the banjo fitting so shortening cables is easy and your fellow ‘crossers won’t mock your untidy cables – if they’ll even speak to you for using such newfangled wizardry. System weight is a claimed 451g plus an additional 85g per 160mm rotor.
Price: £349.99
From: Upgrade Bikes
BBB Discstop brake pads
BBB reckon that breaking-in these pads isn’t necessary, as they get a special treatment during production which hardens the braking surface to extend the lifetime and improve braking power. They’re keenly priced, come in organic and sintered versions and they’re available to fit pretty much every disc brake system out there…
Price: £10.95 for sintered Avid Elixir pads
From: Windwave
Alpkit Filo down jackets
We’ve been massive fans of Alpkit’s warm, down filled clothing and kit. It offers great value for money and the redesigned Filo jacket promises to be even better, with a 20% lighter DWR coated ripstop outer allowing the 700+ fill power goose down to loft more effectively and keep you cosier. As ever, the jacket features a removable hood with wired peak for ultimate winter warmth as well as summer usability. There’s also a women’s specific cut and some new colours…
Price: £95
From: Alpkit
Danger UK Semi-Custom Race Wear
If you’re in the market for some logo’d up downhill or MX gear then this is probably the best value option out there. You get to choose from a number of set designs before adding in your own text, choosing a font and adding in sponsor logos as you need. The kit itself is super tough, with well padded trousers and baggy cut long sleeved top to fit over body armour, probably leaning towards it’s MX roots.
Price: From £88
From: Danger UK
Danger UK Frame Protection
Made for stopping rocks making a mess of your paintwork at 60mph plus, this frame protection tape should work just as well on a mountain bike as anything petrol powered. You get plenty of it and it’s nice and sticky…
Price: £TBC
From: Danger UK
Red Bull DVDs
You’ve got to love Red Bull. It’d seem that for every can of flight inducing energy drink they sell, they nip off and sponsor someone to do something silly and then record it. Here’s a selection of their latest and greatest DVD hits, including the frankly stunning The Art of Flight, possibly the best ‘action sports’ movie we’ve ever seen. Amongst all the snow sports and petrol powered stuff there’s still space for a bit of cliff hucking on yer pushbike, with the Red Bull Rampage: The Evolution DVD.
Price: various
From: Your local DVD dealer/sports shop
Comments (11)
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In work early today boys?
Art of Flight is amazing, even for non-snowboarders.
That Kinesis is lovely Chipps… but not as nice as your Ibis…
Ruined my schedule today this early fresh stuff.
If anything shows up this morning Paceman, I’ll do another one this afternoon just for you to reset your clock 🙂
Chipps
I’ve got last year’s Crosslight Alu frame built up as a general hybrid, commute, touring, anything that isn’t mountainbiking- type bike, and I’m very pleased with it. My one piece of advice would be to go for a CARBON SEATPOST. It makes a huge amount of difference on these frames which do have a very harsh ride otherwise.
Those TRP Parabox brakes have a different caliper front and rear so use different pads! Bit silly really.
Look expensive too compared to Hope’s solution
And according to the Upgrade webpage they’re not compatible with Di2 – “…compatible with any (excluding Di2) drop bar brake levers.” So the Ultegra build’s out…
My bikes used to have different calipers front and rear. I don’t see why that should be a problem really.
I’ve.been talking to TRP about that. Their caution about Di2 is due to the slightly higher cable pull ratio of Di2 levers. However, in reality it seems to not make that
much difference. I’ll let you know…
Has someone been hiding that Danger kit away since the early 90’s? It’s freakin’ hideous….