http://www.willowbike.com

Bit of a longshot this one but I’m taking a couple of customer bikes for my stand at the show (haven’t built them yet) and one of the customers needs his bike for a trip at the same time so I can’t display that one anymore. So now I’m looking for someone that wants a bike/frame built but doesn’t need it until after the show (end of June). For display bikes, I’ll absorb the cost of a fancier than normal paint job.

Hit me up via the website if you’re interested.

https://www.willowbike.com/#contact

Cheers

Steven Shand

Steering must be a bit limited, bit of a wide circle.

yep, not such an issue once you’re up to speed but a real pain in the arse with slow-speed manoeuvres.

Each model is designed and built in the UK

Really? Are we sure about that? Assembled maybe.

I built this for Endura this summer. Not quite a balance bike…

https://www.cyclist.co.uk/in-depth/worlds-first-pedal-bike

https://www.instagram.com/willowbike/

I’m still trying to workout what is sustainable about a toy for us all to play on our bikes with? There is nothing green or sustainable about our hobby anymore than F1 is green and sustainable. It’s just marketing bs

If you’re talking specifically about the Intra Drive stuff then I’m not sure anyone has claimed that the sport/hobby is in itself green or sustainable. The point is that if we move beyond the question of “does anyone actually need this in the first place?”, and assume that what we all buy has to be manufactured in some way, then having an eye towards making that manufacturing process as green and sustainable as possible has to be a good thing no? Almost every brand/company now has some kind of sustainability policy and how effective this is is down to where it sits in the list of priorities amongst the other policies in place in that business. In some case it will sit low because otherwise it will hit shareholders in the pocket and in some cases it will sit high up in the list of priorities when it comes to decision-making.

I know from being inside Intra Drive that the focus and priority on sustainability is very, very high. High to the point that it can be frustrating to get things done. This mostly manifests itself in two ways. Firstly how/where we source materials/components in the supply chain and secondly design for future repairability/servicing/longevity and re-manufacturing if appropriate. I have no doubt that if we slackened our attitude towards the sustainability side of things, we would be further along on the route to market and our final price-point would be lower. How important all of this will be to our customers is something we’ll know soon enough.

In a classic share issue there are voting rights attached to shares. Will this be the case? Without voting rights a share isn’t worth anything because the directors of the company can pay themselves the salary they want but decide not to pay a dividend.

I can’t/won’t talk about the specific mechanics of this particular raise, you’d need to examine the details on the CrowdCube page. But generally, share types with voting rights attached are rare in this kind of investment round where there’s little or no chance that a single investor (or group of investors in this case) will hold a majority of shares (assuming equally weighted voting rights). The ability to vote becomes pointless.

 

Obviously anyone looking to invest in this kind of thing needs to be doing their own due diligence but if I were in the position to put (more) money into the brand, I’d not be concerned about voting rights unless my stake was likely to give me a substantial portion of ownership. And if that was the case, I’d probably not be doing it through CrowdCube but approaching Intra Drive directly.

crowdfunding is a minefield, even if the company is successful. (eg I don’t think theres been any way for Brewdog crowd investors to ‘cash out’ despite their growth and there are some well publicised high value ‘tech’ crowdfunds (an expensive coffee machine comes to mind) that delivered nothing.  Will this just be a “share” or a ‘pre-buy’ of a first gen gearbox (with no come back if you never actually get one)

This particular crowdfunding platform is a simple equity purchase. You’re buying shares in the business. The business will have a valuation and there will be an amount that we will look to raise, this will determine the percentage of shares that will be available to investors. The amount of money each investor puts in will determine the number of shares they will get and so the percentage of the business they will own. It’s not uncommon in these kinds of scenarios to have hundreds of individual investors with invested amounts of anywhere from £10 to millions of pounds. Managing these individual investors can be onerous, especially to a smaller company, using a crowdfunding platform means that all of these individual investments are managed through the platform as if they were a single investment. This is good for the business (Intra Drive) but also good for the investor as it opens up the ability to invest smaller amounts of money without the expensive administrative costs that would normally prevent someone investing.

There’s no concept of getting a ‘first version’ or indeed any kind of product. That’s not the type of crowdfunding this is.

How you get your money back is exactly the same for this as any other investment. Either through the payment of dividends paid from profits (assuming the type of shares available are dividend-paying) or through selling the shares at a later date.

It’s also worth pointing out that many people invest in these kind of ventures speculatively and without the notion of making money as the primary reason. Often people like the idea of being able to help bring a new product to market, to then follow that product and know they had a small part to play. This is especially true for companies in the renewables or ‘green’ sectors.

 

Tell us more about when Steve Shand sold Shand. That one seemed to be kept under radar (or I  was not paying attention!).

Or did that happen years ago (ties to the Trillium ‘thing’) but he still builds Shand bikes, bit as an employee?

Steven Shand here!

I sold the majority of my shares in Shand Cycles at the end of 2017. I stayed on, running the business for a little while before leaving as an employee but taking on contracting/consulting work with them. Although I am still a minority shareholder, I have no current, direct link with Shand Cycles at all. I work as a design consultant among other things for various brands (including Intra Drive). I also still build frames as Willow Bike http://www.willowbike.com

Orange had a Phase MX with an IntraDrive unit at Eurobike. They’ve been testing the latest pre-production driveunit at their HQ this summer.

@Edukator

As for crowd funding, no thanks. Buying shares which give me a stake sure, but charity – there are more noble causes.

That’s exactly what this is. It’s not charity, it’s an equity raise. You’d be buying shares in the company. Equity crowdfunding is a really easy and efficient way to raise money in smaller chucks from a lot of investors without the overhead of share agreements for each person involved. It’s very different from crowdfunded platforms like Kickstarter where you effectively put some money in to allow the business to bring a product to market and you get something back in return (like a cheaper version of the product or some kind of lower value incentive).

Did Neil MacMartin not start it many years ago

Yep. Not involved now though. (I don’t think).

It’s a neat system. I’ve ridden it and I liked it. It’s pretty small and discreet, like a lot of those systems, it’s normally the battery that makes it look clunky.

I’m not sure I’d describe them as a startup though. They’ve been around for at least 10 years.

I can probably fit this in.

drop me an email : steven@willowbike.com

I’m in Central Scotland but I’m in Inverness fairly often so could probably collect it or you could leave it at Velocity and I’ll pick it up.

http://www.willowbike.com

The likelihood is that being old it will be tuned below concert pitch (A=440). There comes a time when old pianos won’t hold the original pitch. So consider that when using your guitar tuner. Check what pitch adjacent notes are, or probably better to tune it by ear.

100% this. I bought a tuning kit online for an old piano. Used a guitar tuner and started somewhere in the middle and methodically tuned away to concert pitch. It wasn’t until I got about 5 or 6 notes in feeling pretty pleased with myself that I realised instead of just tuning the duff notes relative to the rest of the piano, I was now trying to retune the whole thing. It was a nightmare.

For UK made bikepacking kit, Wildcat have a sale on right now. http://www.wildcat.cc

And if you want to message me on here I’ll give you a code for an extra 10% off.

(disclaimer, I’m Mr Wildcat)

I thought the original plan was that both brands would keep their own identity.  Stuff changes though of course

There was an initial plan to keep ‘Trillion’ which was the Liberty brand that Shand inherited and use that to push more ‘off-road’ bikes including suspension bikes etc. That plan lasted about 5 minutes I think.

BUT I can’t immediately see any legal reason why they can’t charge you and put “VAT paid” on the import declaration.

In the EU, there is a reciprocal agreement between countries so VAT collected is distributed (via a pretty complicated system) to the other relevant member countries. Since there is no such agreement anymore, the seller would be collecting the VAT and it would be going onto the coffers of the source country rather than going onto the destination country. The money wouldn’t make its way to the correct place. I think if the goods landed here in the UK with documentation saying VAT had been paid, that would make no difference as there had been no UK tax collected and you’d likely be charged VAT calculated on the now higher (inc VAT) price.

Just do what they ask.

That’s what ‘reach’ means – BB horizintally to headtube.

No it doesn’t. I can be that though if you want it to be.

You can’t just pick some other arbitrary dimension and call it reach.

You’re a funny guy. Thanks for teaching me something. Isn’t the internet great?

We should probably get together and decide who’s going to tell the bikefitting community that they’re all wrong and they need to stop just picking arbitrary dimensions and giving incorrect labels. I’ll start, here’s quick pic from a Retül diagram.

Seriously though, what would make someone read through that post I’d written above and decide that the best course of action is to complain (incorrectly) about the use of a word? What a knob.

Seatposts, layback or otherwise, don’t affect reach

Yes they do.

They don’t affect ‘frame reach’. They affect ‘reach’ though. See the highlighted dimension in the drawing. And the part where I say “This changes your reach (saddle-tip to bar)”.

@cupotea

I was going to send you this as a message but figured it might be useful for someone that stumbles across this as a result of a search in the future.

The short answer is that I think you could get either size to work.

One thing to consider is if you’d be using a dropper post (inline) or a seatpost with a layback. This changes your reach (saddle-tip to bar) by anywhere from 15mm to 30mm. The pictures below (which are linked to pdf versions) are drawn with an inline post, a 90mm x 6º stem, a bar with a slight rise (20mm I think) and 10mm of headsetspacers. If you have any other bikes you could take a tape measure to then the highlighted dimensions are the ones to pay attention to. I didn’t get an arm measurement from you but assuming you’re not a freak then I’ve estimated that based on the rest of the dimensions. To get a reach that I think would be good for the type of riding you describe (more touring that techy off-road) then I actually think the XL would be a better fit than the large. Saying that, fitting a layback post to the large will get you a similar reach and a few spacers under the stem will get you a similar drop. Your saddle setback (how far behind the BB you are) will be increased but it’s not a slack seatangle so that’s not going to be crazy.  The large will obviously get you more standover (but less room for bottles and framebags). If I was in your position, I’d go with the XL which is probably not what you want to hear. But try and compare those highlighted measurements with something else you ride and see what you think.

@cupotea

do you have anything you can supply that has your body dimensions? Something similar to the attached pic? If so, I’d be happy to take a look for you.

I’m interested in knowing if the OP had this discussion with Brother or Keep Pedalling?

the gear cables are going to be redone with a gadget rohloff makes that turns the cables 90degrees at the shifter end

I wouldn’t bother with those if it was mine. The noodles used to be supplied with the hubs direct from Rohloff but they stopped after a while. They were super-soft and easily damaged because of where they were located. Actually made things worse most of the time. On a bike with bars like that, you shouldn’t have to do anything to get a nice cable run.  Looking at those pictures, I’m not sure why the cables were left so long. Shorter cables and the shifter rotated round should sort things out. Bear in mind, shortening the cables on the Rohloff isn’t quite as straightforward as it seems. Be patient and set aside some time. Also, make sure you read the manual as the relationship between the length of the outer and the length of the inner is pretty important.

Another vote for an Elgrand here. Had mine for 2 1 /2 years and it’s been awesome. Something like this would be my goto for £10k :

https://www.japanglasgowmotors.co.uk/listings/2005-fresh-import-nissan-elgrand-xl-3-5-auto-7-seats-mpv-4-grade-low-miles/

I have seen a Shand pinion but I don’t think they do them often.

Shand prefer the rohloff

There’s already a few pre production ones which have been at shows, gives it a year or 2 and they’ll be on the market. They won’t be for lightweight ebikes though.

The Intra-Drive Gearbox/Motor product will be available to custom framebuilders and limited bigger brands before Summer 2022.

https://www.intra-drive.com/

What happened to the Scottish start up that was developing a new eBike motor platform? I think David Hemming was working for them a while back…?

That was Freeflow. If you look at the Pinkbike article mentioned earlier, you’ll see that’s what the Starling is using. But requires some funky gearing.

Also from Scotland, we’re (relatively) close to the launch of the combined motor/gearbox from Intra-Drive. I think this could be one of the most interesting developments in the ebike sector we’ll see for a while. Moving away from the derailleur system makes so much sense.

Electrical resistance won’t slow the blades, that’s mechanical/physical resistance, like leaning against a wall. It’s possible to add a resistor or some kind of device that would absorb some of the energy from the motor before passing it into the grid, but why would you want to do that?

Electrical resistance will of course slow the blades. That’s why a dynamo hub powering a light will have more drag than a dynamo hub with the light switched off.

Probably just as well you edited out your original post to remove the part about it being basic GCSE physics.

Bin dun.

https://wildcat.cc/collections/handlebar-solutions/products/dewidget-double-dangler

That doesn’t make sense though, unless I’m missing something. If you don’t have £40k to drop on a car then you don’t have £40k to drop on a car. Spreading the payments out doesn’t mean you have any more money. In fact you have less if it costs more overall.

Wait until you find out how most people buy houses.

I have the decals here. I just like the fact you bring it up every 5 years now!

I’m not sure it’s gets posted to anymore but there’s a ton of pics on the flickr site here :

https://www.flickr.com/photos/shandcycles/

It goes waaaay back and even includes this one of @cynic-al (although not a Stoater or Stooshie)

I posted ages ago about the MG5 estate and how the roof bars it came with were cosmetic and couldn’t actually be used. Well it turns out it was just a regulatory issue and they hadn’t been tested. The new model (due nowish I think) has been tested so has functional roofrails, but interestingly the regulatory stuff was retrospective so any of the older models can now utilise their roof rails officially too.

If you’re interested in hub gears and singlespeed then you’re probably already sold on the low (no) maintenance aspect and the belt just takes it a stage further. The belts won’t ‘just’ snap on their own. It’s impossible. They may degrade over time as elements break down through accidental damage until they reach the tipping point then snap. As has already been said, a quick check every once in a while will alert you to anything wrong. I had someone call me once saying he’d noticed a crack in his belt about 150km back and it didn’t seem to have gotten any worse but could he order a spare belt anyway just in case!

Of course there are occasions when they’ll experience load in a direction they weren’t designed for (sideways), perhaps a stick or a rock gets trapped and distorts the whole drivetrain but that really is an extreme example. If you’re anywhere that would be difficult to get back to if you had to push/freewheel, then taking a spare belt is just good sense.

Choosing a chain over a belt because it’s more likely to break but easier to fix is just a stupid argument.

I’ve been riding belts regularly for about 8 years and I’ve never broken a belt. I’ve seen broken belts so I know it happens. In that time, I’ve broken 1 pair of bars, 1 saddle, cracked 1 seatpost, ripped a pedal out of a crank and broken a brake lever. Most of those were from crashes and I’d never consider taking a spare of any of those things with me when riding. The fact that most people (me included) will take spare quick links and gear hangers with them on trips tells me all I need to know about reliability.

Ton’s comment about soft peddling (sic) because he thought it was going to snap is just stupid.

The main weakness in the belt system is that to work reliably, it really needs to be run in a very straight line. A chain will tolerate a really angled chainline, a belt system won’t. In the early days of home conversions, it seemed like people weren’t paying any attention to this and so the belt was constantly running at an angle and putting stress on the outside of the belt. When you realise that the strength of the belt comes from carbon strands running the length of the belt and when distortion happens that places more load on single strands on the outside, making them more likely to break on their own, weakening the belt as a whole, then it becomes obvious why perfect chainline and proper handling (fitting/removel) is key.

You also need to pay attention to the chainline and how straight it remains while you’re putting power down through the pedals. It’s no use if the bike has perfect chainline when stationary but is so flexy under power that the belt is constantly being pulled from side to side. This is why some partner brands working with Gates, want you to test your frame for stiffness before fitting a belt system.

Belts work and chains work, it’s all good (I also have derailleur bikes with chains). However, if we were to start from scratch today and build a geared drivetrain for a bicycle, I doubt we’d end up with a chain, a bunch of exposed to the elements cogs and a big lever that forced the chain to jump from one cog to the other. If the same amount of R&D was put into making belts and internal gear hubs than was put into developing derailleur systems work despite their obvious flaws, the derailleur (and chains) would die pretty quickly.

Difficult to tell from the pic but if the frame had been welded with two passes (sometimes happens with Ti), it could be undercut from the first pass. It’ll be a weak point for sure but virtually impossible to tell if it’s something that will cause an issue long term.

https://www.passportwaitingtime.co.uk/#submit

If roofbars/rack are important to you then you might need to get creative. I.e you can’t buy an off the shelf set of roofbars for an Elgrand anymore as Thule were the only company that made them in Europe and they have sold out and stopped making them.

Really? I have a 2003 Elgrand (awesome BTW, love it) and had no problem getting a Thule kit for it last year.

Not a fan of the dropped chainstay look personally

Me neither – is there a functional reason for them?

Provides clearance for bigger tyres and shorter stays.

On a more serious note I hope all that work there are not too worried about their future and do at least get to keep their jobs and carry on making lovely bikes.

I think for the moment it will be business as usual. Shand is a completely different Ltd company as Liberty (albeit with the same owner) but isn’t technically part of the group. It doesn’t require tons of cash from Liberty to exist so it’ll be a little blip somewhere on a spreadsheet at most. The guys there work their socks off so I really hope it all works out.