On show at the Syntace/Liteville booth was the new Eightpins Dropper. Imagine you set a team of engineers on redesigning dropper posts from the ground up, without any of the flaws that sometimes plague existing designs.
[fbvideo link=”https://www.facebook.com/singletrackmag/videos/10154148842338612/” width=”650″ height=”400″ onlyvideo=”1″]
(No video showing above? Try this link instead).
The 34.9mm seat tube standard they’ve based it around makes it so chunky, that it’s sort of like an alternate reality Soviet Russian dropper post. It’s entirely mechanical, apparently using a system of interlocking pins, but has infinite adjustment like most droppers. There will be four models available, with claimed weights ranging from 430g for the 150mm travel option, up to 550g for the whopping 220mm travel version. given the total size of the post and the internal mechanism, I expected those numbers to be higher!
Though this was shown on the Syntace/Liteville stand, the staff talking people through this post were distinct and seemed keen to stress Eightpins as a new brand. At first, it will only be available on Liteville 301 MK14 and 601 MK14 frames, from spring 2017. They wouldn’t talk about other OEM prospects. Find out more at www.eightpins.at.
David started mountain biking in the 90’s, by which he means “Ineptly jumping a Saracen Kili Racer off anything available in a nearby industrial estate”. After growing up and living in some extremely flat places, David moved to Yorkshire specifically for the mountain biking. This felt like a horrible mistake at first, because the hills are so steep, but you get used to them pretty quickly.
Previously, David trifled with road and BMX, but mountain bikes always won. He’s most at peace battering down a rough trail, quietly fixing everything that does to a bike, or trying to figure out if that one click of compression damping has made things marginally better or worse. The inept jumping continues to this day.
They put the pin *on the back*???
Designed without the flaws that plague other droppers, but you have to have a fairly unique frame with special clamp at the bottom bracket. Useful.
@allthegear One of them on the stand had it missing…
It was an unbelievably solid feeling post though.