NBD: Starling Beady Little Eye, Carbon Wasp Truffle-120, Norco Sight VLT

A quick mop-up of a trio of the most interesting new bikes to land in our collective inbox this past few days. Something for everyone in this dirty tr …

By ben_haworth

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NBD: Starling Beady Little Eye, Carbon Wasp Truffle-120, Norco Sight VLT

Love the idea of the Beady Liitle Eye, just don’t have the legs for it 🙁

 

The Truffle will be a proper weapon too.

Also love the idea of a Beady Little Eye, love having a SS HT, and the BLE looks brilliant fun.

Carbon Wasp are local to me, I visited a year or so ago when looking to buy a new Carbon FS. At the time me, they’d a prototype of a longer travel trail bike (140/150) that I had a quick go on, rode really well. In the end, went for a Bird Aeris AM full build but I really liked what Carbon Wasp were doing.

In an ideal world, there’d be a place in my life for both of these bikes/frames, but fairly certain I don’t have £6k loose change down the back of the sofa!

Love the idea of the Beady Liitle Eye, just don’t have the legs for it 🙁

My thoughts too! Looks like a very fun bike though.

I’d be happy to sling a leg over the other two bikes as well.

Would happily replace my hardtail with a geared version of the BDE (Ignoring cost. Yes I am aware the Mini Murmur exists. Also ignoring that it might pedal like a pig.)

The chain line is offset from the pivot, meaning you run zero sag to stop the pedal bob. That means hardtail geo, a super low BB, on-rails cornering.

can anyone explain this bit? how do you run zero sag on a standard shock? (ignoring the weird bikes like the Epic WC)

I would understand running it stiff and having a linear curve, would probbaly make it ride like a ~120mm bike but more active at the top.

I’m also intrigued by the ‘zero sag’ claim…

And I’m struggling with the Carbon Wasp Truffle nomenclature…

how do you run zero sag on a standard shock?

All the PSi

I was going to say that based on my current bike the max psi of my shock and indeed my shock pump is about double what is in there now… so still only getting 15% now barring any crazy leverage curves.
but… it’s a 55mm stroke for 90mm travel. So that changes things I think, but I’m not sure exactly how.

and then again, barring a bonkers regressive leverage curve, if my body weight only sags it 15% or less, it’s taking 6-7 body weights to bottom out. Trail bikes are normally about 3, dh bikes maybe 4.5 with a load of progression; reflecting the intended use. 7 body weight landings is some rampage level stuff which I’m sure the fork, front triangle and more importantly my body are not going to survive.

I had a Lenz Sport Milkmoney, from the early days of 29ers that had a pivot around the BB. Initially I ran it as a single speed, but one summer I had an 8 speed Alfine wheel built for it too. It was a bloody brilliant bike for ragging around Epping Forrest. Only sold it because it was a bit small and the adjustable dropouts kept slipping.

I rode one of the new BLE’s at SSUK in September, and it was a properly lovely thing. I could absolutely see myself on one, just need it to take a 30mm crank!

that’s a neat solution for chain tensioning/wheel size combo on that BLE. tension through the north of the dropout for lower bb/29 and through southern half for higher bb/27.5.

I know short cranks are more popular these days, but 30mm seems a bit extreme…

I’d love a BLE. The new teal colour is a beaut, too.

I really want a Beady Little Eye but I don’t have the money/space for one! (Although I guess it would replace my singlespeed 160mm Moxie hardtail).

I was confused about it when I first read about the design years ago – but it’s really cunning. The concentric BB pivot means you don’t have any chain growth so you can run a singlespeed without needing a moving chain tensioner (like a rear mech). It’s got a really long shock for its travel – 55mm for 90mm travel so the leverage ratio will be really low, making it more heavily damped and needing less pressure. And the leverage curve is strongly regressive, so once you start the suspension moving it moves more easily, the opposite of most bikes – this is how “zero sag” works!

I shall mark it down as something for the future, when my ankles can’t take the harsher landings on my hardtail!

The Beady’s special sauce is that the swing arm rotates around the BB.

The same solution that Kona had on the ‘A’ . I really badly wanted an A, especially after they added disc mounts. Never did get around to getting one, although at the time I seem to remember them being like rocking horse droppings.

“The same solution that Kona had on the ‘A’ ”

That’s a cool retrobike! Looking at the rocker/shock on that Kona, I think it’s a fairly linear leverage curve – it would need the top of the shock to swing well inwards towards the seat tube to make it regressive like the Beady Little Eye. I think that’s a key difference with the BLE.

Someone on here had fitted a Rohloff on their Kona A, quite fancied one myself as I already had the hub

55mm for 90mm travel so the leverage ratio will be really low, making it more heavily damped and needing less pressure. And the leverage curve is strongly regressive, so once you start the suspension moving it moves more easily, the opposite of most bikes – this is how “zero sag” works!

thanks CGG – though I’m still going to dipsute “zero sag” rather than just “small amount of sag”with a standard shock.

If its very regressive, is it relying on the air shock’s progression at the end of the stroke?

I had one of the previous Beady Little Eye iterations, it was a brilliant bike, so much fun to ride. Only issue I had with mine is where the swingarm clamped onto the bearings it used to move sideways over time so it was a bit of a faff but it looks like the redesign has sorted that and you no longer have to use the BMX cranks.

Re the shock – I’m going to dispute CGG to a point. You had to run a fair bit of pressure in the shock, admittedly I’m near 100kg but I was up towards the upper end of the pressure limits for the fox shock at the time which, from memory, was c.250psi. But it didn’t really sag, nowehere near a normal FS anyway. It rides like a hardtail but with some give/sympathy when you hit larger objects or land off jumps. You also tend to run the shock in the middle setting so damping is greater. Brilliant fun, regretted selling mine numerous times despite its foibles and damnit, talking about now makes me want another one!

I had an Alfine on a Commencal Absolute SX which pivoted around the BB.

It was a fun experiment but there wasn’t enough adjustment in the dropout to take up chain slack with the gearing I was using so still ended up with a chain tensioner.

“thanks CGG – though I’m still going to dipsute “zero sag” rather than just “small amount of sag”with a standard shock.

If its very regressive, is it relying on the air shock’s progression at the end of the stroke?”

I put “zero sag” in quotes because it can’t really be zero sag and the BB drop on the geometry chart suggests it isn’t – it’s 10-20mm higher than I’d expect based on hardtails like this (including their own).

“I had one of the previous Beady Little Eye iterations, it was a brilliant bike, so much fun to ride.”

I’m not surprised!

Has nobody said anything about Norco releasing pics of a bike called the SIGHT which were taken in the dark?

(facepalm emoji)