N-1wsletter #8: Shimano Di2 lever hacks, GT and Rocky Mountain are both in trouble, and France says ‘non!’ to the Garmin Varia
2024 is certainly going out with a bang.
Featured in this week’s tech round-up:
In praise of the lowly whiteboard.
Garmin Varia users in France are left in limbo.
GT might be done …
… and Rocky Mountain isn’t doing great, either.
Light Bicycle is literally going big on gravel.
The return of the titanium Chris King headset.
Wolf Tooth gets in-line.
Selle Italia bought itself some fancy new shoes.
A preview of Schwalbe’s fast-and-grippy G-One RX gravel tires.
Do you actually want your fitness smashed?
Squishy bits from USE.
Bright bits from Exposure Lights.
I’m sending my butt to the Czech Republic.
DIY Shiman-eTap levers.
As much as the idea of living somewhere with year-round perfect riding conditions sometimes sounds appealing, it never takes long for me to remember how much I enjoy four distinct seasons. For sure, it can be challenging to maintain riding fitness when it’s cold and wet outside – not to mention how it’s pitch black before most of us even get home from work – but it’s also a prime time to hit the reset button in terms of your gear.
I keep a small whiteboard in my workshop where I scribble down various bike tasks that need to get done. Most of the items on the to-do list are small. For example, my fat bike needs fresh sealant for the winter, and my cargo bike needs fresh rear brake pads (and now that I think about it, the fork on my wife’s trail bike needs a basic oil bath service). Others are a little more time-intensive, like the Vorsprung Luftkappe air piston kit and new lower legs that need to go on to my park bike, and the belt-drive kit for the cargo bike that I’ve been meaning to install since I bought it five years ago.
At best, those sorts of things are annoying – a creak here, a tick there, and so on – but other items can turn into much bigger problems if left to linger too long (like the dreaded “ring of death” where even a slightly loose headset can quickly kill a steerer tube, although I generally take care of those wherever I am when I notice it).
I have my white board mounted on the back of my overhead garage door. It’s a convenient location when I’m taking care of stuff in the workshop, and easy for me to scribble stuff down on it after a ride. But it also keeps me accountable because it’s staring me right in the face both when I head out for a ride and when I come back home. Sort of like a bike mechanic’s version of Edgar Allen Poe’s Tell-Tale Heart, it’s a near-constant reminder of what needs to get done.
As I’d imagine anyone with a job and family can attest, the to-do list only seems to grow longer, never shorter – one step forward, two steps back. These things need to happen, though, and as much as I prefer spending all of my free time riding outside, the fact of the matter is all that saddle time keeps me from getting other stuff done, and it often only takes a few pedal strokes before my bike reminds me of something I should’ve done.
Would I rather be riding instead of wrenching? Usually (but not always!). But the nice thing about winter is that it’s a perfect time to deal with that pesky bike maintenance to-do list that always takes a backseat to riding when it’s nice outside. And you know what I like even more than riding my bike? Riding my bike when it’s in exactly the condition it should be in – because I took the time over the winter to get it ready for the season.
Write that stuff down, folks. I promise you won’t regret it.
In the news
The Garmin Varia is now illegal in France
Well this is a little troubling.
A new law (decree no. 2024-1074 "relating to motorized personal transport devices" and bicycles, to be specific) just passed in France that prohibits the use of flashing lights on bikes, presumably for how they might adversely affect the vision of surrounding drivers. Most daytime running lights thankfully already have a steady setting, but this still throws a wrench into the works specifically for Garmin Varia radar users.
I’m a huge fan of how the Varia not only audibly alerts me to approaching vehicular traffic, but also how its reactive flashing pattern visibly alerts drivers that there’s a slower-moving cyclist up ahead of them – and it’s exactly that reactive functionality that’s the problem here. The Varia also has a steady setting built-in, but there’s no way to turn off that reactive flashing function. In other words, even if you run the Varia in steady mode, you’d technically still be in violation when a vehicle approaches from behind and could be slapped with a €11 fine.
From what I understand, the law specifically calls out flashing lights that alternate between being completely on and completely off, so perhaps that reactivity functionality could be retained by switching to more of a pulsing pattern. Even so, the new law has seemingly caught Garmin off-guard as there’s been no firmware update released to add that ability, or even an official statement saying one is pending.
Hopefully this issue will be resolved sooner than later.
GT’s 50+ year run is (probably) over
GT is one of the longest-running American nameplates in cycling, dating all the way back to 1972 when co-founders Gary Turner and Richard Long positively upended the BMX market. GT has changed hands several times since the late 1990s, but it sounds like the most recent sale to Dutch conglomerate Pon Holdings in 2021 will be the end of the road.
GT cancelled contracts with its BMX and mountain bike teams and athletes last week, and just a few days ago announced that the brand would be substantially trimming staff before the end of the calendar year – only a few months after GT had nearly tripled its headcount in what was then deemed a sign of more promising times ahead.
Unfortunately, these latest developments don’t sound like the usual corporate cost-cutting, and the industry-wide post-Covid slump may have hit GT especially hard – a brand that already seemed to be struggling well before the pandemic. GT says it’s “pausing” new product development and will only sell from existing stock in 2025, but this strikes me as being akin to how US presidential candidates “suspend” their campaigns instead of just saying they’re ceasing operations entirely.
Then again, maybe this is just a dramatic effort to keep the doors open? Pon Holdings says it has no plans to sell GT, and the company’s official statement at least suggests the brand might yet have one more life to live.
Best of luck to all of GT’s former athletes and employees. Tough times out there for sure.
Rocky Mountain is on shaky ground, too
It turns out that legendary mountain bike brand Rocky Mountain is also on the ropes, recently filing for court protection under the Canadian Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act, which will hopefully allow the company to restructure its operation without overly disrupting its ability to function.
Here’s an excerpt from the letter Rocky Mountain sent to dealers yesterday:
“Today, Rocky Mountain commenced restructuring proceedings in Canada under the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act, also known as the CCAA. We are pursuing this course of action in order to provide the company with time to restructure its finances, while continuing normal operations. Rocky Mountain will use its available credit facilities to provide adequate liquidity to operate while it restructures its debt.
“The court has appointed Ernst & Young Inc. (EY) to act as the Court-appointed Monitor under the CCAA through this process.
“We are committed to communicating openly with you and we will provide you with appropriate updates throughout the restructuring process.”
While Rocky Mountain certainly hasn’t mentioned as such, it’s probably fair to assume the usual isn’t beyond the realm of possibility: rounds of layoffs, suspended product development, and so on. Rocky Mountain is a fairly sizable player so if that all comes to pass, this one is likely to have big ripple effects. From what I understand, Rocky Mountain comprised roughly half of its Asian contract manufacturer’s total business", so the pain would be widespread as the rest of that producer’s clients would feel the impacts, too.
More will surely be coming out soon on this one.
Light Bicycle reveals ultra-progressive Falcon Pro WG55 carbon gravel rim
Consumer-direct carbon wheelset darling Light Bicycle has just announced a new gravel rim seemingly designed to go head-to-head against the Zipp 303 XPLR. The new Falcon Pro WG55 is aimed at gravel riders seeking an aero edge with its aggressive (for gravel) 55 mm depth. It’s also very wide, measuring a full 32 mm internally and 37 mm outside-to-outside right at the rim-tire interface, and with a maximum external width of 40 mm – matching the latest Zipps almost to the millimeter.
The two seem pretty close on the scale, too.
Claimed weight for the flagship Zipp 303 XPLR SW is 1,452 g per set, while the Light Bicycle Falcon Pro WG55 comes in as low as 1,442 g.
While there are clearly a lot of similarities, there are also a number of key differences.
For one, the WG55 uses a hooked design, which will invariably provide hookless skeptics with some additional peace of mind. And while both rims are obviously tubeless-compatible, Light Bicycle offers buyers the positively glorious option of a solid outer rim bed, completely eliminating the need for rim tape and removing a common failure mode for tubeless setups (although also making it difficult to replace nipples if you end up breaking one).
A far bigger difference is cost.
Retail price for the Zipps is US$2,100. The Light Bicycle wheels, on the other hand, are less than half the cost at just US$890 if you choose the company’s in-house Pace hubs (which, like many these days, use a dual-ring freehub design based on the recently expired DT Swiss Star Ratchet patent). Light Bicycle offers heaps of custom build options, too, and even if you choose DT Swiss’s flagship 180 hubset (which come stock with hybrid ceramic bearings as a nice bonus) and all the other available bells and whistles like custom laser etching, you still come out more than US$250 ahead.
But are the Light Bicycle Falcon Pro WG55 wheels just as good as the Zipp 303 XPLRs? I’ve been spending a fair bit of time on the latter and the progressive dimensions have been leaving a solid impression. Even if the WG55s only come close, getting that level of performance for that little money would be awfully tempting.
I’ve already been in contact with Light Bicycle and it sounds like I may be able to secure a pair for review. Stay tuned.
Chris King announces limited-edition titanium headsets
Back in the days of straight 1 1/8” steerers, Chris King offered a version of its venerable NoThreadset threadless headset that was made of titanium instead of the standard aluminum. Although it was even less prone to corrosion, there was otherwise no functional advantage – it was heavier, in fact. But needless to say, it was quite the lustworthy item. You can still find them secondhand on occasion, but with eye-watering asking prices approaching US$1,000 (a three-fold premium over what they cost new).
Chris King is now making a second go-around with titanium headsets, this time with four different fitments of its more modern DropSet model for head tubes that use drop-in bearings. The new DropSet Titanium features a machined titanium upper headset cover and top cap, along with a titanium M6 cap-head screw in place of the usual stainless steel one. The stainless steel crown race is the same one you’ll find on other Chris King headsets, though, and while the original NoThreadset Titanium wore a shiny polished finish, this new one is only being sold with a matte surface treatment and laser-etched graphics.
Retail price is US$300 with Chris King’s own stainless steel angular contact bearings, or US$420 with hybrid ceramic ones.
Wolf Tooth Components add inline mount for its Encase mini-pump
“Hi Brendan, have you all considered adding an inline mount for your EnCase pump?”
That was the email I sent to Wolf Tooth Components head honcho Brendan Moore back on October 4, to which he promptly replied with an image of a near-production part they were already in the process of finalizing. Well, now that day has come as Wolf Tooth has officially added that inline mounting clip option for both sizes of its feature-packed EnCase all-in-one mini-pump.
Why bother? Standard clips that position the pump next to the bottle cage usually work just fine, but inline clips are nice for frames that have dedicated mounts underneath the top tube. It makes for a tidier setup, and also maintains a narrower profile that’s less likely to snag on clothing.
Keep pushing, Wolf Tooth. Keep pushing.
Selle Italia buys Vittoria Cycling Shoes
Add another one to the list of things I didn’t expect: Selle Italia is getting into footwear. The legendary saddle brand has just announced it has acquired Vittoria Cycling Shoes (not to be confused with the Vittoria that makes tires, which is an entirely unrelated company).
“As we did in 2016 with Selle San Marco,” said Selle Italia president Giuseppe Bigolin via press release, “we are gearing up to expand our range of performance cycling products with a company that has always believed in technological development, in style and in the Made in Italy brand – just like us”.
Where will this lead? Neither company has offered much in the way of specifics, so we’ll just have to wait and see.
New arrivals
Schwalbe has just quietly added a new gravel tire to its range, the G-One RX. As with the G-One RS and G-One R, Schwalbe says the G-One RX represents a second generation of the brand’s gravel collection, with both lower rolling resistance and improved traction relative to the older G-One Allround and G-One Bite models that put Schwalbe on the gravel map.
Of the three latest models, the G-One RX is designed for the roughest and loosest terrain, with a tightly arranged and low-profile triangular knob pattern down the center for fast rolling, teardrop-shaped transition knobs with a more open spacing, and a paired shoulder knob design borrowed from Schwalbe’s X-One cyclocross tire for more secure cornering on sketchy ground.
Updated rubber compounds and revised ply bias angles promise lower rolling resistance than the outgoing Addix Race formula, too, while there’s also a wider belt under the tread than before to better ward off punctures.
I’ve just installed a set of 700x50 mm G-One RX Pros on my Santa Cruz Stigmata and initial impressions are encouraging. At 653 g apiece, they’re obviously a lot heavier than the old Schwalbe Furious Freds that they replaced (nearly twice the weight, in fact), but they also provide a surprisingly fast roll along with more reassuring grip on variable ground – and unlike with my first two rides on those Furious Freds, I haven’t flatted these yet.
I’ll have a full review once I feel like I’ve logged enough time on them for a proper assessment.
Also landing on my desk recently is a Smashometer from Smash Your Fitness – and yep, that’s really what it’s called. This upstart indoor cycling brand is by no means trying to go head to head with Zwift, instead targeting more casual riders and promoting a video game-like experience that focuses more on fun than suffering. There are still things like optional group rides and races, structured workouts, and challenges, but also the ability to participate on an artificially leveled playing field (in terms of power outputs). You even have to manually “steer” – both through corners and around other participants – and there are myriad ways to customize your on-screen rider and bike.
The US$50 Smashometer is worn on your ankle, and the system uses the embedded sensors to “drive” your on-screen avatar. Quite interestingly, the system isn’t power-based, but rather motion-based, and supposedly just about any stationary trainer setup will work. All in, you can get up and running for less than a hundred bucks.
Color me intrigued.
In the works
It’s probably been nearly two decades since I rode anything from UK brand USE. Back then, I (along with a lot of other locals and shop regulars) were enamored with the company’s impressively light and effective suspension seatpost, which took just the right amount of sting out of riding a hardtail. Fast forward to the present day, and USE is now using similar technology on a new gravel-focused suspension seatpost called Vybe.
The telescoping design sports 50 mm of movement via a stack of micro-cellular urethane (MCU) bumpers and short steel coil springs, and both spring rate and preload are adjustable to help fine-tune the ride. Up top is a single-bolt cylinder-style head with optional clamps for non-round saddle rails. My test sample should arrive this Saturday, along with a sample of USE’s Vybe single-pivot gravel suspension stem.
What once was old is new again? That may be, but I recall having an awful lot of fun back then, too, and last I checked, fun has never stopped being fun.
Conveniently given the time of year, USE’s sister brand is Exposure Lights, and they’ve also tossed into the box a couple of review samples for me to put through their paces during my weekly Tuesday night group rides. It’s been several years since I’ve tried anything from Exposure, too, and like everything else LED-related, the outputs have skyrocketed. The highest-powered Six Pack is rated at 5,800 lumens in a convenient all-in-one form factor with no wires or external battery packs, but I’ve requested the second-tier Maxx-D with its still-bonkers 4,800-lumen output. That’ll go on my bar, while the 2,200-lumen Zenith will perch atop my helmet.
Raw output is one thing; how well it’s implemented is another. I’m interested to see what the beam patterns are like, whether that much light might actually wash out features on the trail, and I’m super curious to see how well Exposure’s latest iteration of its auto-adjusting and speed-sensing Reflex technology works out in the real world – particularly at temperatures well, well below freezing.
And finally, I’m about to send a picture of my butt to a complete stranger in the Czech Republic. Well, not quite my butt per se, but rather a picture of the impression my butt leaves a the crush box.
Czech Republic brand Posedla will use that image – along with a questionnaire that details stuff like my riding style, flexibility, age, and gender – to produce a custom 3D-printed saddle. Four basic styles are offered (road, gravel, MTB, and TT), each with a distinct overall shape and curvature. But rather than force the user to choose between a handful of widths, Posedla says the Joyseat 2.0 can be made in 40 different widths, from 130-170 mm, and the padding is made with “stiffness zones tailored to your parameters.”
The thing isn’t inexpensive by any stretch of the imagination at US$490, but Posedla offers a 60-day return period, and if/when the thing eventually wears out, the company will print a new one for you at a discounted rate.
Posedla quotes a 6-8-week delivery time from when the images are provided, so this review will take a little bit to turn around.
Oh, and remember that crazy Ventete inflatable commuting helmet I mentioned a few newsletters ago? Unfortunately, that one had to go back to Ventete HQ as the one I had… wouldn’t hold air. I now have a replacement in hand so let the testing commence for real now.
ICYMI
You’ve heard of Colnago, the bike brand, and almost certainly also Ernesto Colnago, the person. But you also shouldn’t be surprised to know that he’s not the only member of the Colnago family, and his nephew, Alex, is now striking out on his own with a new bike brand called ACOL.
A collaboration with South Korean specialty composites manufacturer Wiawis (a titan in the archery world), ACOL is bursting out of the gate with six fully-baked carbon fiber models, plus more that are supposedly already in development.
The bikes themselves are interesting, but I’m far more curious to see what an actual manufacturer like Wiawis might be able to do moving forward. Keep your eyes on this one, but in the meantime, you can read all the details here.
Hack of the week
It’s been more than eight years since SRAM introduced the first generation of Red eTap, and while that was a groundbreaking groupset in many ways, one of its most radical features was the shift lever logic. Instead of mimicking the way existing mechanical levers worked, SRAM borrowed a page from the automotive world and made eTap work more like paddle shifters in a car: push the righthand lever for a harder gear, the lefthand one for an easier one, or both simultaneously to shift up front. It’s incredibly intuitive, but also less likely to suffer from mis-shifts than Shimano Di2, especially when wearing full-fingered gloves.
Shimano has stood its ground with Di2’s stock programming since it launched in 2008, with each lever sporting two buttons laid out just like the company’s mechanical shifters. It doesn’t have to be that way, though, and Shimano’s E-Tube app thankfully makes it easy to reprogram the buttons to operate more like SRAM – which is exactly how I’ve set up my Di2 bikes for the last several years.
Instead of having one lever operating the rear derailleur and the other one controlling the front, I have my right-hand Di2 exclusively shifting to harder gears and the left-hand one shifting only to easier ones – just like eTap. Since Shimano levers don’t have a simultaneous-push function, I program the smaller paddles to actuate the rear derailleur while the larger ones handle front shifting duties.
It’s a small change, but it nevertheless makes for more intuitive shifting in my opinion, and it’s also easier to shift when my fingers stop working because all the blood has gone to my legs and lungs. As a nice bonus, the revised shift programming mirrors the way Shimano’s satellite buttons work, so there’s no need for your brain to do any additional processing.
If you’re on a Shimano Di2-equipped bike and are still running the stock programming, fire up the E-Tube app and give it a shot. I think you might be pleasantly surprised.
And that’ll wrap up this week’s n-1wsletter! A couple of things before I sign off:
You may have noticed that there was no TL;DR review in this edition. I think I’ve decided to break those out into standalone posts as these newsletters are getting a little too unwieldy, and my fingers are tired. If you strongly prefer to keep them included here, feel free to make your opinion known in the comment section.
This will also be my last post for the 2024 calendar year. Prior experience has shown time and again that people’s eyeballs are consistently occupied with more important things during the holidays, and since my kid will be out of school for the next couple of weeks, anyway, I’m going to take the opportunity for some much-needed family time (as you probably should, too).
Maybe I’ll even ride my bike a little.
I’ll return after the new year with a fresh newsletter, and then it’ll be back to business as usual.
Thanks to all of you for the support over the past couple of months, and here’s to a bigger and brighter 2025.
Merry Christmas James & all the best for a happy, healthy & successful 2025. Thanks for your work & keeping us informed of all the news in such an easy & succinct way.
Happy holidays to you and the fam! And those two pups, too!!