Woo! Friday comes around once more and so does Fresh Goods. After a hectic week of sore sunburnt and tired legs from going mad on evening riding, the rain has returned to dampen spirits in our corner of the world – but hopefully not for long. Anyway, think of the freedom yet to come, slurp your tea and get crumbs in the keyboard – enjoy.
KHS Yuma 29er
The Issue 75 (that’s the one after next) bike grouptest is going to be ‘sub-grand-29ers’ and the KHS slips into that category with a penny to spare. The Yuma has actually gone up in spec and down in price (by £200) for this year. Up front there’s a set of 100mm travel Rock Shox Reba SL with Dual Air spring and lockout equipped Motion Control damper. Making things go is a 2×10 SRAM X7/9 mix drivetrain and it’s stopped by a pair of white Avid Elixir 1 brakes which match the grips and general monochrome style colour scheme rather nicely.
Price: £999.99
From: KHS
The frame is made from 6061 aluminium with a semi-integrated 1.125″ headset up front. It’s double butted with a slight curve in the seat-tube and stays for extra clearance. A refreshing lack of hydroformed shapes too…
Finishing kit is mostly from Kore and the bike has been upgraded with a carbon fibre seatpost for 2012.
We like the chunky looking dropouts and brutally fast rolling Kenda Small Block 8 tyres…
Fox 32 Float CTD forks
We showed you the new Fox Float CTD shock last week and here is the matching air sprung Float fork with the new, easier to understand Climb Trail Descend FIT sealed damper. As ever, it uses the slippery and durable Kashima coating on the uppers with SKF low friction seals. You can leave the fork fully open for downhills, set an adjustable amount of platform in the trail setting with the black dial or make it super stiff but not locked out in the climb position.
Price: £719 with 1.125″ steerer, £739 with 1.5 taper steerer.
From: Mojo Suspension
SRAM Rise 60 wheelset
We test rode SRAM’s entry into the world of carbon wheelsets a while ago, but this is the first set to arrive for some longer term punishment. As with seemingly everything new nowadays, these ones are 29″ but 26″ versions are available. Using the technology garnered when SRAM acquired American wheel manufacturer Zipp, they use an asymmetrical 19mm internal width high modulus carbon fibre rim mated to cartridge bearing hubs with 24 bladed Sapim spokes.
Price: £735 front, £890 rear (29″) and £700 front, £850 rear (26″)
From: Fisher Outdoor Leisure
The rear hub uses a rather cunning arrangement of multi tooth pawls to provide an extremely rapid pickup (think halfway between a Hope hub and a Chris King) and the hubs can be switched between 135mm QR and 142x12mm through axle simply by changing the end caps.
The tangentially spoked front hubs adapt between QR and 15mm through axle too. If you’re interested in running tubeless, then SRAM have a tubeless rimstrip kit in the works and they come with a two year warranty, which should come as a relief.
Rocket Fuel Energy Coffee
If you’re a die hard coffee addict but find it a drag carrying your stove, espresso maker, and ground magic beans around with you – or simply can’t be bothered with all that faff, then behold: Rocket Fuel’s self heating coffee. A bit like those self warming meals you can buy to prepare for the zombie apocalypse, you peel off the lower lid of the can, squeeze the heating mixture together, wait a bit and then enjoy piping hot bean juice from the top. It’s hepped up with a load of Guarana to assist the usual caffeine buzz too. Picky bean drinker Chipps has supped some and declared that…
…well, if you’re interested you can get his final verdict by reading the full review in Issue 74, out 8th June.
Price: £13.44 for pack of six
From: Rocket Fuel (best Flash based website we’ve seen for a while)
Freeload Sport Rack pannier rack
If you’ve fancied trying bit of bikepacking and wanted to take a bouncy-fun-springer bike (or any bike without pannier mounts) but didn’t fancy carrying a load of weight on your back, then here’s a potential solution. Made from glass fibre reinforced nylon and 6061 aluminium tubing, the rack clamps to the seatstays (or spin it round and fit it to the forks) with nylon straps and rubber feet. Different sized arms allow you to adjust the angle of the rack and it locks in place using a special ratchet key. You can get the Tour Rack side frames (£29.99) to expand the carrying capacity and they reckon it can handle loads of up to 25kg, even if you are pulling sweet wheelies at the time.
Price: £99.99
From: Extra UK
Joby SLR Zoom Gorillapod
Patrick, our dark master of the internet, lost his hand in a terrible accident with a runaway train. It was taken clean off at the wrist and he had to have it replaced with this prosthesis. After a long investigation they finally found what had caused the tragedy – it turned out there was a buffer overrun.
Ahem.
Actually, this is a Gorillapod, friend of anyone trying to make video with an SLR (or general photo artiness) and not willing to drag a proper tripod along. You can wrap the jointed arms to secure it to trees etc, help level it on uneven level ground or simply pretend you’re an alien. Different models to support various weights of camera and lens are available, but this happily supports a mid sized Canon SLR and moderately fat lens.
Price: Around £20 depending on size.
From: Amazon et al
DHB M1.0 shoes
More great value kit from DHB. The M1.0 MTB shoe has a glass fibre reinforced nylon sole with well vented synthetic leather upper. There’s plenty of decently chunky tread on the bottom and DHB say they’ve tried to balance pedalling stiffness against walking comfort. There’s loads of reflective detail all around the shoe and the upper uses a ‘quad core inner structure’ which apparently gives a foot hugging fit without stretching and wasting energy on the upstroke. They also come in white…
Price: £49.99
From: Wiggle
RockShox SID 29 RCT3 Dual Air fork
A lightweight big wheel fork from Rock Shox for Sim’s planned Norco Revolver build. By an odd trick of proportion, it looks pretty much exactly like an old skool 63mm-if-you’re-lucky travel fork of yesteryear, despite the 100mmm of travel and thoroughly modern design. This fork uses the Dual Air spring for tuning both preload and feel and comes with rebound, lockout/compression adjustment plus Gate threshold. As ever, sag marks for the (internally adjustable) 100mm and 80mm travel settings are anodised on the leg.
Price: £699.99
From: Fisher Outdoor Leisure
Marzocchi 44 Micro Ti 29″ fork
Moving to the other end of the 29er fork spectrum we have the Marzocchi 44. Travel is adjustable from 100 to 140mm in 20mm increments using internal spacers. Damping is taken care of by the Micro TST cartridge with rebound and threshold adjustable lockout. The air spring has a volume adjuster to control feel through the travel and it uses a 15mm through axle to keep everything under control at the point end.
Price: £599.95
From: Windwave
Osprey Zealot 16 hydration pack
We’ve been really liking Osprey’s take on hydration packs. They’re packed with neat features and well made to boot. This is their Zealot pack, which is aimed at the freeridey types but with 16L of carrying capacity and a 3L reservoir it’ll probably make a great all-day pack too. The usual vented Airscape foam back is present as are the stretch and comfy foam harnesses. You get hip pockets (groovy), helmet holders for full face and open lids, a roll out tool pouch and the back zips away to give access to the full contents without having to remove any kit.
Price: £79.99
From: Osprey
Geigerrig The Rig hydration pack
Here’s an entirely new one for us – a hydration pack that doesn’t require you to suck. The Geigerrig uses a ‘hydration engine’ that pressurises the water in the 2L bladder so you can squirt water into you or your pet/partner/child’s mouth, over yourself to cool down or to clean things. It’s been given a shower of awards at outdoor trade shows and it’s made from extremely tough ballistic nylon. This model has a 5.7 litre overall capacity and hard backed ventilated back to keep it sitting nicely.
Price: £89.95
From: Whitby & Co.
The ‘hydration engine’ is dishwasher safe and has a slide-off top for easy access and manual cleaning. You can also get an inline filter should you find yourself stuck in the wild and need to fill it from any dubious water supplies.
We’ll leave you with this image for the weekend. Have fun!
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That Fox fork looks lovely…must resist buying new shiny thing……
KHS looks spot on spec, has it got a steep (70+) head angle?
Chipps, were you on the balcony during the baby dangling incident?
you can make you own “hydration engine” by wrapping your hydration bladder in something stretchy and inflating the empty portion.
True Story.
I’ve seen that ‘Hydration engine’ type of bladder before, on military bladders, a few years ago, so it’s not a new idea.
My regular non-pressurised bladder liquid carrying system seems to spew its contents everywhere quite happily as it is (boot of the car, kitchen floor etc etc…), god only knows the mess I’d get in with a pressurised system!
just realised I wrote “bladder liquid”, I think there should have been a comma in between those words to avoid any confusion!
The answer to my own question re KHS head angle is a resounding yes.. 71.5 head on 17″ and 72 on the 19″ Yikes!
“rack clamps to the seatstays ”
warranty voiding?
Guessing no manufacturer designs to have a load of weight loaded onto some (potentially overtightened) clamps on the stays?
That and won’t it make the suspension act differently? loads more suspended weight?
Although (I guess) they’ll void you seatpost warranty, at least the seatpost mounted bags and racks ought to mimic a heavier rider. Just so long as your frame has no rider weight limit
With corrected sag/preload (assuming shock will hold enough pressure) it ought to be back to normal, sort of
Plus in the pic, it looks af the bike has half to 2/3 of the travel to go (at least the shock stroke), the rack isnt far off the back of the seattube/seatpost at that?
It was all going so well until that last shot
james – i’ve used a freeload for a few years now, certainly from the first batch of prototypes. When they are well loaded they of course do make the bike a bit more rear heavy unless you have weight on the front as well. The attachment is a pretty clever ratchet mechanism and on the 4 bikes i have used it on (3 carbon, 1 ti) i’ve never seen any issues with over tightening or issues with the stays. Know what you mean though but i know of probably 20 people who use it regularly and nobody has ever had an issue. Positioning means you can keep it well out of the way for full travel – my Tallboy reaches full travel with it on no problem. They come with multiple length arms. Great product, simple and effective. Just stick some more air in your shock.
Banksy in todmorden…….
“Just stick some more air in your shock”
That won’t fully compensate though. To the sag issue yes, but where the suspended weight at the back of a full suss bike might weigh about 5kg (wheel, single ply tyre/tube, casette/chain, caliper/rotor, stays/swingarm), upping it with a rack + 25kg is going to change the suspension characteristics somewhat? Though if you’re loading up the bike (Whether it be trailer/seatpost pannier or whatever else) like that then getting the most out of the bike/suspension tune/whatnot probably isn’t at the top of your priorites?
Surely no self respecting “picky bean drinker” would drink white coffee, especially if it’s made with powdered skimmed milk !! suppose it’d do with a splash from a hip flask on cold winter ride tho’
James – indeed. Once you are carrying stuff back there you have to compromise a bit. I tend to carry about 8-10kg max on mine and it works as well as when it is not there but maybe I don’t care enough to notice. What it does do is lets me use my bike for lots,of different things and when I want to I can take off the weight and use it properly.