Lapierre E.I. Shock: First Ride

What happens if I exceed 22mph. I quite often do, especially in the Alps.

im not a fan from what ive read so far. set your bike up at car park. just get on and ride your bikes, enough of this faffing.

What happens if I exceed 22mph. I quite often do, especially in the Alps.

Presumably it defaults to the open setting as you’re unlikely to be pedalling at that speed?

im not a fan from what ive read so far. set your bike up at car park. just get on and ride your bikes, enough of this faffing.

Surely this is even less faffing as it’s doing all the pro-pedal on/off for you?

I often roll at above 22 mph or pedal at above 22mph and it should deal with each situation if it locks when pedalling and opens when not. Could see it getting a bit bouncy if I’m rolling down a hill on the road and want it to stay locked but then I could manually lock it or open it.

I assume above that it can’t figure out what to do quick enough and opens up.

Very clever stuff and I think it would be a great addition to the do it all bikes.

inital setup and running cost.if otb crash, what happens if computer gets bashed?

EDIT – completely wrong

You’ll be able to chip your bike in a bit…..I can see the future now..
‘Yo bruv check it out, phat weelz..slammed at the front..chipped..an BANGIN!!!… 8)

I often roll at above 22 mph or pedal at above 22mph and it should deal with each situation if it locks when pedalling and opens when not.

That makes more sense (and was kinda what I was imagining), the 0.1second reaction time results in 0.1 second= 1 wheelbase at 22mph (it does) so at higher speeds it’s going to still stiffen for pedalling, but it might not open up fully to the first rock, but it’ll still be in whichever normal setting you picked to start with somewhere in the middle for 0.1 seconds after the fork hits the bump?

inital setup and running cost.

£500, less than a lot of people pay for a ‘normal’ shock eg CCDB

if otb crash, what happens if computer gets bashed?

you buy a new one? I’m guessing the bulk of the cost was in R&D s spares might be omre sensibly priced. The computer looks pretty small and I’ve not managed t break my Garmin despite it being much bigger and having plenty of crashes.

The speed limit is just the speed at which the system can change the rear shock setting from a single input at the front wheel. It takes 100ms to switch modes, so if you sense a big front input, then start to switch the rear mode (from say locked to open) if you have more than 100ms then the mode swap is done before the rear wheel gets hit. Above that speed the mode change will not have been done, but it won’t prevent the mode change occuring.

(22mph = 9.83m/s, so 0.1s = 0.98m wheelbase)

Hmm.. but your forks are still as normal? Can we please have a similar system for the forks that is activated by the brake levers? It could have an attitude sensor too to know if oyu are climbing or not.

we all know how tempermental electroincs can be in our houses and cars. im not a fan and i dont need to test it out to be swayed.
who is there market base?id say its only use is tow paths and hardpacked trails with little features. lets see a vid on fortbill.
theres so much can go wrong with this its not worth my time or money. a ccdb may be more than £500, but how often does a ccdb need batteries, or a servo to get banjaxed,or cables to fray?
it may be up some peoples street, with loads of cash. even if i had the cash i still wouldnt entertain.

Electronics can be temperemental, but they can also be rock solid. Personally I don’t think I’d rush to the shops for one but I can see how it might be nice to ride so I don’t berate them for inventing it. As above though, it would be more useful for the forks imo.

If you are hitting lots of bumps at over 22mph the system will be detecting the bumps in quick succession and probably (I am guessing here but this is how I would program it) keep the shock open as they will have probably set up that behaviour for that situation.

If you are pedalling at 22mph over bumpy ground then you are probably going downhill and probably don’t need the help of a locked out shock like you do when climbing or on a smooth flat section.

I like it. Great innovation.

Don’t need/want this for my fairly sedate local trails. If I was rich and lived in the mountains, it might be different.

And I hate having stuff that I can’t fix myself if it goes wrong. Little black boxes full of dark magic make me sulky.

I’m still not totally convinced about it not interfering as much as it does help, I guess we will see. I’m not happy about the system only working below 22 mph, hopefully it will be quite easy to switch the system on and off from the bars.

I do use my propedal lever a lot on my Mega, so if it does work, I may potentially love it. Then again I miss having a coil shock.

For the second time, and to be totaly clear:

THE SYSTEM DOES NOT ONLY WORK BELOW 22MPH!

22mph is the maximum speed at which it can change the rear shock setting as a result of a front wheel impact BEFORE the rear wheel hits the same obsticle! Above 22mph, it will still modify the settings, but it will miss the very first impact. I can’t think of too many situations where you will be pedalling flat out downhill (so the system is in full “lock”) and then without stopping pedalling (which would cause the system to unluck) hit a large single obsticle, and if that happens, that single impact will be absorbed by the shocks normal “blow off” valving anyway.

I guess that not quite as bad as the brain shocks that I hated that had a delay.

Instead of all the time you would just get the odd hickup in damping. Now if only they could let us control the damping profile a little more instead of just adjusting between three settings and add a little more midstroke support to the Monarch. I’d like a system where I could dial in some preset High and Low speed compression tunes in for the open and mid mode and then be able to swap between them.

Will it work with the Monarch Plus?

Seeing as it’s not going to be aftermakert, will there be any way of getting it? Ordering the individual parts through a spare parts catalogue?

Frankly, anyone with a bit of electronics knowledge could just buy the servomotor and shock and knock the rest up themselves. It’s just a couple of accelerometers and 2 hall effect sensors for speed/cadence.

I would imagine the system isn’t actually THAT active, otherwise it would be pinging between modes all the time. I suspect they low pass filter the mode changes, otherwise it would be locking/unlocking on every pedal stroke or bump etc. We are only talking about moving between Propedal modes, rather than an actual modification in near real time of the damping co-efficients, so being in the wrong mode for a couple of secs is hardly an issue.

Frankly, anyone with a bit of electronics knowledge could just buy the servomotor and shock and knock the rest up themselves.

Hmmm.. then I am thinking I could add it to my forks.. actually it would be incredibly easy. Just a position sensor on the brake lever (or even a microswitch) that activated your pop lock when you brake. The pop lock could then be tuned appropriately.

Or even an accelerometer, to detect braking force. That might not activate it for slow technical step downs though.

we all know how tempermental electroincs can be in our houses and cars. im not a fan and i dont need to test it out to be swayed.
who is there market base?id say its only use is tow paths and hardpacked trails with little features. lets see a vid on fortbill.

Funny that one of the biggest proponents at the Lapierre launch of the system and for racing specifically, was that old slow coach Nico Vouilloz He thinks it’s going to make a massive difference to Enduro racers.

maxtorque – Member
Frankly, anyone with a bit of electronics knowledge could just buy the servomotor and shock and knock the rest up themselves. It’s just a couple of accelerometers and 2 hall effect sensors for speed/cadence.

Yet it took Lapierre and others years to develop it, idiots!

French and electrics…

I’m out!

It hardware isn’t particularly complicated. I suspect most home engineers would fall down on getting it all sealed, but could put it all together.

Wouldn’t want to have to write the software for it though. That’s where the time and money has gone.

I’m not sure what the point in doing this is without going the whole way, there’s no reason why the rear rebound can’t be tuned to the bump frequency being detected at the fork and I’m sure an infinitely variable pro-pedal can be done too.

Hmmm.. then I am thinking I could add it to my forks.. actually it would be incredibly easy. Just a position sensor on the brake lever (or even a microswitch) that activated your pop lock when you brake. The pop lock could then be tuned appropriately.

Or even an accelerometer, to detect braking force. That might not activate it for slow technical step downs though.

Wayy too overcomplicated.

XX damped RS forks, some kind of secondary master cylinder under the brake lever driving it, bit like those anti dive things moorbikes had in the 90’s and were rubbish.

It hardware isn’t particularly complicated. I suspect most home engineers would fall down on getting it all sealed, but could put it all together.

Wouldn’t want to have to write the software for it though. That’s where the time and money has gone.

I’m not sure what the point in doing this is without going the whole way, there’s no reason why the rear rebound can’t be tuned to the bump frequency being detected at the fork and I’m sure an infinitely variable pro-pedal can be done too.

Surely it’d be really easy to build a really simple job, cadence sensor with a magnet and reed switch, input from that into a simple timer with a transistor capacitor and resistors to give a continuous output as long as theres at least an input every second or so, output to a servo, on is propedal, off is open.

Wouldn’t want to have to write the software for it though

I could do that no bother 🙂

XX damped RS forks, some kind of secondary master cylinder under the brake lever driving it, bit like those anti dive things moorbikes had in the 90’s and were rubbish.

Hmm, would be more tuneable if it were electronics though.

And the motorbike case – interesting, but the requirements for motorbikes (at least road ones) are quite different I feel.

I wouldn’t want full anti-dive. I’d just want a little more firmness when braking hard into a corner, and when doing steep step downs, and more suppleness otherwise. The step downs I activate the pop lock myself, but the corner bit would be nice. Maybe a speed sensor too.. hmm..

I wouldn’t want full anti-dive. I’d just want a little more firmness when braking hard into a corner, and when doing steep step downs, and more suppleness otherwise. The step downs I activate the pop lock myself, but the corner bit would be nice. Maybe a speed sensor too.. hmm..

But surely the last thing you want to be doing going down steps is dragging the front brake?

Apart from the usual knuckle dragging from STW, what I think is interesting here is that someone has gone off and developed this, for 5 years, and it not being trialled and tested on WC riders, before being ‘trickled down’ to the punters.

It’s pretty confident of Lapierre to do this, as even Di2 shifting, which was endlessly derided on here as it was launched, had been developed, tested and trialled by pro teams for a few years before appearing on consumer level bikes.

But surely the last thing you want to be doing going down steps is dragging the front brake?

Well, sometimes you’d be on the brakes, but I take your point – it would not work so well for that. Hence maybe a speed or attitude sensor. Fairly safe to assume that at low speed and steep angle you want firmer forks, isn’t it? Maybe manual override for that.

I stil think the fsct that they’re just switching the propedal on and off is a bit lame, they can, and should continually adjust the compression and rebound in tune with the shock speed and position. This should be available on forks too.

I like the front brake/anti dive idea. I’m surprised they haven’t done this hydraulically already.

I’m sure it’s just a stop gap to magnetic active suspension

I stil think the fsct that they’re just switching the propedal on and off is a bit lame, they can, and should continually adjust the compression and rebound in tune with the shock speed and position. This should be available on forks too.

Compression and rebound are usualy speed sensitive anyway, the rebound will be less damped towards bottom out by virtue of there being more force pushing it and therefore higher speeds, as the force drops the speed drops and the damping ramps up to prevent top out. Compression is usualy speed sensitive in the same way, although the speed is determined by the impact not the shock, the position sensitive damping is usualy achieved by air pressure on the damper pushing on the shim stack, so as the air in the damper comporesses it puts more and more porce on the shims to prevent it bottoming out. Bessides, shocks move very quickly, the computer needed to run it would eat battery life even before it had to start on the solenoids opening and closing the dampers several times a second. This systems seems much more sensible in that it simply tunes an existing damper so that you’ve alwasy got the right tune all the time rather than having a tune that works on 90%of the track, but not the pedaly bits (or vice versa, works on pedaly bits bit not the rocks). Think about Fort william DH, rocky up top, then there’s the ‘motorway’.

I like the front brake/anti dive idea. I’m surprised they haven’t done this hydraulically already.

Motorbikes did it in the 90’s, the brake lines went through a little box on the forks, more pressure = more low speed compression damping, they were abandoned as they were generaly rubbish and didn’t offer anything that normal shimmed dampers didn’t.

the computer needed to run it would eat battery life even before it had to start on the solenoids opening and closing the dampers several times a second.

Yeah I figured solenoids wouldn’t really be the best. A small stepper motor adjusting the flow circuits would be more suitable.

Motorbikes did it in the 90’s

Just ’cause it’s not right for them doesn’t mean it couldn’t work for us

they were abandoned as they were generaly rubbish and didn’t offer anything that normal shimmed dampers didn’t.

This would.

Compared to a modern microprocessor, the mechanicals in the shock are acting in glacial terms! These days $4 buys you 80MIPs across 32bits thanks to the rise in mobile devices, $7 buys you 800MIPS! The latency in the Lappy system will be entirely in the mechanical actuation of the shock. This is a trade off between power, mass and response. Ideally, either a Moog valve would have been chosen to direct act on the hydraulic circuits or a move to the Magnetoreheological fluid system would have been made.

It’s taken 5years because it’s an affordable (probably) production system. You could easily knock up a similar systemm yourself using MIL spec connectors for environmental sealing, any number of cheap embedded development boards (ARM, AVR, PIC etc), and some simple sensors (Hall effect for cadence via Interupt Compare timer to get pedal speed, 2x accelerometer into a 10bit ADC, pass filtered and threshold gated for mode changes. Then use an RC servo to actuate the shock as required. Pretty easy to do. However, it would cost more than buying the existing system that has been through a “cost down” excercise to make it production feasable.
On the plus side, you could write your own code, and then you’d have something else to blame when you fall off………… 😉

Seems like a good idea, I’d even say that I like it but:

I am not charging my bike.

Waking up in the morning and thinking hey I’ll go for a ride, ahh crap bikes not charged 🙁

Can you geniuses invent me a Flux Capacitor to put in my DeLorean? I want to travel back in time 5 minutes and not start reading this drivel. 🙄

Typical STW: ‘I could make something better than this in about half an hour out of some twigs’. 🙄