Bespoked Interview: Auckland Cycle Works

I first saw these bikes when they were a very early prototype, at Bespoked in October 2022 at the Velodrome in London, where Gary explained to me how he’d used Lego to help him design his own ‘COLARP’ suspension. Since then he’s continued to work on the bikes and the suspension, so at Bespoked Manchester I caught up with him to find out a bit more about the progress.

Unique content like this takes time to create, and would normally be paywalled. But we’d like to support the independent builders and makers behind these bikes, and Bespoked. So you’re getting to read this for free. If you enjoy it, please consider joining us, and supporting what we do.

So, what’s happened since October 22 to these bikes?

(Hanging up on the wall is the bike)… which was on display at the Velodrome in London. And from that to this, the concept and the position of the linkages is actually exactly the same. But this is just so much more refined.

It’s nicely made. The front wheel and the back wheel are actually in line with each other, which is nice! It means it doesn’t by default want to turn to the left.

This one’s called Marra, made out of 853 steel, properly made by Gavin at Coal Bikes in Warsall. So, he knows how to make a bike straight and strong and pretty. And as of Monday, we’ve improved the linkage to take out the problematic horseshoe link, which breaks shocks.

You can see the fading on this can. So, this linkage eliminates any sideways loading onto the shock. And this extra linkage also makes the end stroke a teeny bit more progressive.

So, instead of loading the shock up with tokens, the progressiveness comes from the linkage. So, the progressiveness in the kinematics is done right.

So, rather than being slightly off and then corrected, it’s right from the get-go. It’d be interesting to try that with a coil shock. I haven’t done that yet.

And you’ve also managed to get yourself a patent? Can you explain what it was for and whether that was a painless process?

It was an expensive process! It still is. The patent is a statement to say how much I believe in what I’ve made. And also, in some industries, a patent is more headaches than maybe it’s worth. But I also appreciate that lots of readers, listeners, viewers in the mountain bike world understand what a patent is and understand that having a patent means it must be unique.

Nobody else is using it. The only place to get this patented technology is on a bike from Auckland Cycleworks. And I know that it works.

Now that I’ve got this bike absolutely dialled with this linkage on, I’m in the process of hunting down fast riders who are out of contract and can push the bike harder than I can, and getting back that next level of feedback. And then if said fast rider or riders then want to ride and race the bike because they like it, then that takes this from being a Gary Ewing kind of quirky project into being something that actually delivers proven performance benefits and can win races.

And has patent protection. So which bit is protected? Which bit do you own the rights to now?

Okay, the patent covers… There’s two elements, two parts to the patent. One is when the suspension compresses, the swing arm rotates in, say for instance, a clockwise direction. As that’s happening, the linkages both rotate in an anti-clockwise direction. So the rotation of the linkages is counter to the rotation of the swing arm. And that’s the first clause of the patent.

The second clause is that a drivetrain element is mounted on the lower link. And the combination of those two clauses together is what makes COLARP suspension.

And when you say a ‘drivetrain element’, what qualifies as a ‘drivetrain element’?

A bottom bracket or an idler.

Okay. And so if somebody likes the look of this, would you license it or are you just looking to keep it for yourself for now?

I don’t think anybody’s going to license it until I’ve actually made bikes and got them out there and proved that they work. I think people are maybe looking with interest at what I’ve created, but it’s a little bit removed from the current way of designing bikes, the current paradigm. So at the point where a fast rider’s got on this and proven that it works, it takes it from being a curiosity to being something that people need to pay attention to. So at that point, then I’ll be open to discussions about whoever wants to license it.

And so what is the benefit then?

It’s everything!

Rather than talking about the benefits, can I talk about the current way of designing suspension bikes?

Yeah, you can talk about anything you like! Go for it.

Okay, cool. So the current way of designing suspension bikes is dominated by, or comes from, motorbike design.

With motorbike design, there is an incredible amount of torque in the engine which can be delivered with a quick flick of the wrist and all of a sudden the motorbike goes from doing 0 miles an hour to 100 miles an hour. So the chain tension is something that has to be direct, has to be taken very importantly, but then also the suspension has to work with that insane amount of chain tension. And then the braking happens latest, happens last of all.

So the three elements are chain tension, suspension movement and braking performance. With motorbikes, you design the suspension technology and the suspension movement and the chain tension together. You work out your preferred compromise for those two elements and you lock that down and then afterwards you work out how the brakes are going to work.

What I realised is that with a high idler is that you can do those three elements in a different order. You can leave the position of the high idler which determines how the pedalling characteristics are going to work. So you can leave that until last.

If you design the suspension and the braking performance first, then first of all what you realise is that there isn’t a compromise between those two elements. What makes the braking performance better can also make the suspension work better. And then afterwards, once you’ve got that nailed down, you then simply position the idler where you want it to get the pedalling characteristics right.

So my critical reasoning skills, my spidey senses if you like, have been crackling and tingling all the way this whole project. Because every time you make a change, if it has positive effects, you also need to look out for the negative effects. And I’ve been finding it difficult to find the negative effects.

Do your independent testers concur?

I’ve had a few friends have a go. Most of the people who would be independent testers are significantly heavier, larger, not quite medium-sized – which is kind of weird, because medium should be the size of person that’s most easy to find! There’s enough feedback from my friends and people who’ve ridden it to know that I’m not on a placebo journey.

The interesting thing is that the standard metrics for measuring it don’t reflect what’s actually happening.

The calculations by which everybody designs braking – anti-rise and pedalling anti-squat – work with the bikes that already exist. And then when you take a bike which works differently, the first thing that you need to check is whether or not the anti-squat and the braking anti-rise calculations actually reflect what you think they reflect. And I think I’ve got reason to say that the calculations that are currently used in the industry don’t necessarily apply to this bike in the way that some people maybe expect them to.

From that pivot, to this pivot, to the rear axle, for the first half of the travel that straightens out. And then for the second half of the travel that actually moves very little. So it’s dramatic. It’s a parabola. It’s very rearward for the first part of the travel and then almost exactly vertical for the second half of the travel, which is brilliant because the rearwardness delivers its maximum benefits when you’re riding light and trying to carry speed. And then as you’re getting into uglier, chunkier terrain and using or bottoming out from drops and compressions, then the rear axle path is vertical so it doesn’t do weird things.

How come the adjustable dropouts?

That’s the one part that won’t be continued through into production. The adjustable dropouts are too heavy. There’s too much adjustment. I just wanted an adjustable dropout to work out, just for prototyping, where does the bike feel best. And one of the things I’ve been surprised by is that if you make the chainstays 5mm shorter, the suspension action becomes a little bit choppier, even with adjusting the shock pressure and compensating for the damping and everything else. The back end just feels a little bit choppier. And if you make it 5mm longer, then the back end feels a little bit more flaccid and you kind of lose a little bit of that edge to push against.

So it’s really, really exciting to see that the middle position is actually the position that works best because that kind of confirms that my hunch and my feeling and my calculations, my experimentation was pretty much bang on.

OK, and then the Reiver over here, what’s going on with that one?

This is a very interesting combination of factors. I’ve been riding this for ages.

The Marra is a long travel bike. So, in order to get the most out of a 180mm travel bike, you’ve got to have that kind of mindset. For most of my riding, even though I’ve been riding that as my regular trail bike, it’s a little bit overkill. I love riding it, but actually something that’s a little bit shorter, a little bit lighter, a little bit perkier… is just so much more rewarding and fun to ride on my regular rides around Hamsterley Forest.

So, Reiver is the name of the bike. It’s a more versatile platform. It’s lighter, it doesn’t have the high idler – which is only a small decrease in pedalling efficiency – but it’s still a decrease in pedalling efficiency.

So this is a completely different layout, basically, and a completely different construction as well?

Yeah, the aluminium and the carbon… The reason it’s made like this is this was it was a very complicated linkage and set of things going on down around the bottom bracket and the shock. So, machining it out of aluminium was expensive – the carbon tubing makes it easier to prototype the whole bike.

When you’re pedalling along, seated in the saddle, it pedals like a 100mm, 110mm cross-country bike. When you stand up, your weight acts through the linkage and kind of softens, pre-loads the suspension, so that releases more suspension at the back, it changes the leverage ratio. So when you sit down, it works like a 110mm cross-country bike, when you stand up, it works like a 150-160mm enduro bike.

What happens if you stand up on a hill?

The pedalling characteristics are still neutral enough that it still goes.

OK, so this is still in development, but you’ve got the Mara, that’s about to go to production, you’ve kind of made your decisions about where you’re going?

Production: if somebody places an order, I’ll make them one. That’s how vast the production volumes are going to be!

Thanks to Gary for chatting. If you’re interested in pushing his bike to race pace, get in touch with him!

Unique content like this takes time to create, and would normally be paywalled. But we’d like to support the independent builders and makers behind these bikes, and Bespoked. So you’re getting to read this for free. If you enjoy it, please consider joining us, and supporting what we do.

Hannah Dobson

Managing Editor

I came to Singletrack having decided there must be more to life than meetings. I like all bikes, but especially unusual ones. More than bikes, I like what bikes do. I think that they link people and places; that cycling creates a connection between us and our environment; bikes create communities; deliver freedom; bring joy; and improve fitness. They're environmentally friendly and create friendly environments. I try to write about all these things in the hope that others might discover the joy of bikes too.

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