Fresh Goods Friday

I’ve looked at my horoscope for 2012 and it said that I should spend more time “Finding Greater Focus”. I spent a bit of time thinking about what it meant and then realised what it meant: stop faffing about reading voodoo hocus-pocus nonsense on the internet and write the first Fresh Goods Friday of the year…

Singular Gryphon

In mythology, the gryphon (or griffin) was a hybrid beasty with the head, wings and claws of an eagle and the body of a lion and this bike certainly lives up to its namesake by defying easy categorisation. Designed to use 29″ wheels, rigid forks and drop bars, Singular Sam says it’s a bike that’s at home racing, touring or commuting but is mainly just for riding. He’s taken inspiration from Charlie Cunningham’s early drop bar mountain bikes and compared to the more conventional Singular Swift, the top tube is slightly shorter and the head tube is taller, putting you hands in the right place on the drop bars.

Price: £400 frame & fork

From: Singular Cycles

The Gryphon has an eccentric BB which allows it to run as a singlespeed without any fiddly chain tensioners and the vertical dropouts have a mech hanger, so geared is an option too. It’s nothing if not versatile. The frame is disc brake only, helping the clean look.

If you’re going to create a ‘cross style build then standard drops are okay, but you’ll be wanting a set of freaky mountain bike drops such as the On-One Midges to really do it justice…

Renthal SR4 Single Rings in odd sizes

We’re big fans of Renthal’s SR4 chainrings. They’re perfect for the on-trend single ring trail biking setup as well as more rugged downhill riding, being light and hardwearing. They’ve now introduced a range of odd-numbered chainring sizes to the mix, with odd numbered options including 33T and 35T giving a complete range of chainring size increments from 32t up to 38T. Renthal also have plans to create 120mm BCD single rings which will fit onto SRAM 2×10 chainsets….

Price: £39.99

From: Renthal/Ison Distribution

DSP Bighorn adjustable seatpost

Another dropper post! Coming from Diverse Suspension, who also make the extremely keenly priced Dueller coil shock, the Big Horn adjustable post is available in 30.9 and 31.6mm diameters with 4.5″ of travel and – a blessed relief to anyone with an older bike or steel hardtail – it comes in a 27.2mm version with a slightly reduced 3″ of travel. It’s available with either a lever or cable remote and it’s air sprung.

Price: Just in £175.00 with remote!

From: Loco Tuning

The clamp has masses of adjustment – see why it’s called the bighorn?

Cable remote uses gear cables for simplicity…

Jagwire cable kits

The Ripcord MTB derailleur cable kit (left) is Jagwire’s top cable kit, with Teflon coated stainless steel inners matched to ‘LEX reinforced housing with a L3 liner’, which Jagwire say is super slippy and tough. You get 2.5m of outer cable along with a two inner cables, a load of cable donuts (doughnuts?), alloy end caps, a raincoat boot and a couple of end caps. The kits are available in a whole host of colours too…

Price: £26.99

From: Today’s Cyclist

The HyFlow universal hydraulic hose kit is designed to fit SRAM, Shimano and Formula brakes amongst others, coming with ‘Quick Fit’ universal adaptors. The Teflon lined Kelvar hoses have an outside diameter of 5mm and you get 3m of hose in a set, which should be enough for anything save a tandem. Most importantly, there’s a a massive range of colours so you can compliment or ruin your bike’s colour scheme at will.

Price: £39.99 – £44.99 depending on colour.

From: Today’s Cyclist

Jagwire Hydraulic Hose Cutter and Needle Driver

Getting a neat and tidy finish to you brake hose shouldn’t be underrated. Instead of mangling your cable ends with Stanley and hammering in the hose barb while holding it in mole grips, it’s worth consider investing in the proper tools. You’re likely to get much less stressed and have a proper, leak free fit. The Needle Driver securely clamps the hose in place and the reversible driver works with Torx (Avid) or flat (Shimano etc) barbs. The hose cutter should give a clean, crimp free cut to hoses – or rollie cigarettes. If you use liquorice Rizlas you can pretend they’re tiny cigars!

Price: £16.99 each

From: Today’s Cyclist

Chain Reaction Cycles custom wheels

As well as offering every bike-based component known to man, Chain Reaction also offer custom built wheels on their site. The list of combinations you can order is endless: Chris King hub and entry level Alex rim? No problem. All the wheels go through a proper building procedure, being laced and tensioned before being de-stressed then re-trued and tensioned to fine tolerances. The final tension is noted so the customer can refer back to it (if they have access to a fancy tension meter). All wheels use DT spokes and nipples.

These particular wheels are DT Swiss X430 32H 29″ rims laced via DT Swiss Competition spokes and Pro-Lock nipples to a pair of Nukeproof Generator sealed cartridge bearing hubs. They’re destined for Jenn’s Cotic Solaris big wheeler…

Price: £124.96 (F) £189.96 (R)

From: Chain Reaction Cycles

EDZ Merino Zip Neck base layer

Cumbrian based outdoor clothing specialists EDZ do a wide range of keenly priced outdoors kit and Sim was rather taken with this zip necked merino wool base layer. range. It’s made from a 200gm 100% superfine merino wool with a marl finish which gives the fabric a softer feel. It’s designed to be long in the body and has flat seams on the shoulders, which should make it just right for riding in. There are masses of sizes and both men’s and women’s styles available…

Price: £50

From: EDZ

Todcross!

Just because we’re in ‘meeja’, it doesn’t mean we don’t get excited when we see ourselves in the paper. Here’s our Jenn in the Todmorden News, nobly suffering during the mudfest that was Todcross.

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