You see virtually everything shiny and new that the bike world has to offer when scouring the halls of Eurobike, and here are six of the most interesting things from this year's show. In fact, we've chucked in a couple of extras along the way, so let's just call it 'some' of the most favourite things. Anyway, here you go. We've not included prices, by the way, because most of them haven't been set yet.
Ridley Noah SL Disc Aero+
Ridley has made its Noah SL Disc aero road bike even more aero and clean-looking by hiding away all the cables.
It has managed this through the use of a one-piece handlebar and stem combo that takes the cables internally, and a fork with a D-shaped steerer that allows the cables to run down the back.
The twists and turns in the routing make no difference to the performance of the hydraulic disc brakes nor, of course, to the electronic shifting on this Campagnolo EPS model.
The Noah SL Disc Aero+ boasts all the other features of existing Noahs, such as the F-Split fork with a split down the centre, and the F-Surface Plus surface texturing applied in certain areas of the frame that's designed to make the air travel smoothly instead of detaching and creating drag.
Shimano CT5 shoes
Shimano’s new CT5 shoes are designed for everyday urban riding – the CT stands for ‘City Touring’. They have a trainer-style look to them and a shock absorbing EVA midsole, and there’s a hidden inner shank plate in there to add efficiency when you’re on the bike.
The CT5s come in navy, black, olive and orange and take two-bolt cleats, like SPDs, in the recessed sole.
Yasujiro Nudity Plus
Japan’s Tange has a brand called Yasujiro, named after the company’s founder Yasujiro Tange, which makes cromo steel frames.
The Nudity Plus road frameset is made from Tange Prestige tubes, has a straight 1 1/8in head tube and a BSA bottom bracket.
The Yasujiro Notcher is made from a Tange Ultimate tubeset.
It has this level of detailing throughout.
Giro Empire ACC shoes
Giro already offers its Empire ACC shoes in a reflective finish but we’ve not seen this striped version before.
The top pic above shows what they’ll look like in car headlights (we hit them with the flash for this photo). There a whole lot more subtle in normal daylight (above).
This is one of Giro’s new Empire W ACC women’s designs.
Met Trenta helmet
We’ve told you about Met’s Trenta helmet before but Eurobike was the first time we actually got to check it out properly ourselves.
The black/red helmet pictured is the straight Trenta (claimed weight of 230g, medium) while the white/black version is the Trenta 3K Carbon (215g).
Met says that the Trenta offers exceptional cooling and offers up to a 7% reduction in drag compared to a traditional road helmet. It’ll be available from December and we should have a review ready by then.
Lake CX 1 shoes
Lace-up shoes have definitely made a comeback over the past few years (see the Giro Empires, above, for example) and Lake have got in on the act with the CX 1 which is based on the brand’s very first design. It comes with a perforated leather upper and you can have the soles in either glassfibre-injected nylon or carbon-fibre. CX doesn’t denote cyclocross in Lake’s world, by the way – these are road shoes.
These shiny finishes aren’t standard but they are available if you use Lake’s custom service.
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9 comments
Presumably the Nudity frames are aimed at the Naked Bike Ride crowd?
"texturing applied in certain areas of the frame that's designed to make the air travel smoothly " actually it's the reverse. The texture promotes the transistion to turbulence, which causes greater mixing in the flow and reduces both the separation (form drag) and surface drag. A completely smooth (laminar) flow, counterintuitively, has the larger drag.
The Tange frames are very nice, plenty of us folk who've being around for a decade or three don't shy away from this quality brand, Cro-Mo always seems to put off many thinking it's inferior to the likes of Reynolds and Columbus but it really isn't.
However for accuracy the 'Tange Ultimate' tubeset is actually Tange Ultimate Superlight, 'superlight' being a variant within the Ultimate range of tubing which they've used for road framesets for over two decades. Some of the tubes are as thin as 0.3mm in places so they should come up a bit lighter than the prestige which is a bit heavier duty * but still a very nice tubeset, these also come in vary thicknesses depending on what use/rider weight/load.
*DT thickness of a Superlight is 0. 6 - 0. 3 - 0.6, Prestige road down tubes are usually in the 0.7/0.8 - 0.4/0.5 - 0.7/ 0.8 range, for each 1mm in thickness you lose about 16% in rigidity give or take.
What goes around come around.
Those Lake lace up shoes look like the football boots I had in the early 80s.
Those Tange frames
To be strict about it, they're Yasujiro frames based on Tange tubesets.
Take the Black and White Trenta 3K Carbon helmet and the stripey Empire ACC shoes
and wear them with a stripey jersey and bibs to look like Beetlejuice!
Those Giro shoes look like they were influenced by the 1980s movie "Beetlejuice."
Doppler effect shoes.