German brake company Trickstuff had a couple of new things to show us at Eurobike, though no new mountain bike brakes for this year. (we have Trickstuff’s Direttissima brakes in for testing right now though, and you’ll be able to read all about them in the upcoming issue 115 of Singletrack magazine). First though:
This is not a bike component. It’s an enormous ham.
Now that’s out the way, here are their bike parts:
Trickstuff sponsor Polygon’s downhill team, who asked for bigger rotors.It’s actually wider than the ham, though we didn’t want to contaminate the disc with a direct comparison.223mm, to be precise.Also new, though aimed at road, is this flat mount brake caliper, machined less than a week ago then brought straight to Eurobike.Inside, it uses the same components as other Trickstuff brakes, such as their stainless steel pistons.
That flat mount brake is just a prototype for now, but they say they can make it to work with other manufacturers levers as well as their own, and can supply it with different seals for use with either DOT or mineral oil systems.
This is a slopestyle specific bottom bracket…In the driveside cup there’s a standard bearing, but on the non-drive side, you can add between 1 and 5 o-rings.The o-rings don’t lock it in place, but they do stiffen it a lot, meaning if your doing tricks with your feet off the pedals, the cranks stay exactly where you left them.
They were of course showing their existing range of brakes too, which you can check on their website (these are the brakes we’re testing right now, and they’ve been used by both the Polygon racing team, and Tomas Zejda ran a prototype at the Red Bull Rampage), and they also have this very informative page on disc brake design and technologies.
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.
