Lennard Zinn made his way out to Interbike’s Dirt Demo (on bike, naturally), to seek out the weird and innovative products in Vegas. Here are a few of his finds.
Speedplay Syzr Sizer
Speedplay road pedals have long been the favorite of bike fitters, due to their spindle-length variations and the wide variety of cleat shims and cants they offer. Just like roadies, mountain bikers can have leg-length variation as well and might require a wider or narrower stance, but on mountain-bike pedals, cleat shims and cants don’t work, and very little variation in spindle lengths is available. Enter the Speedplay Syzr Sizer: The Syzr mountain pedal is available now in five different spindle lengths, and 1mm and 2mm shims are offered along with longer bolts to assemble the pedal as a much taller stack.
SKS Ride Air
Seating a tubeless tire can vary from a pain to impossible without an air compressor. SKS’s Ride Air is a big air container you pump up with a (road) floor pump to 200psi. Then you let it fly into your freshly-mounted tubeless tire, and, voilá, the bead is seated.
SKS also offers a chuck for its standard floor pumps, which a CO2 cartridge can be installed onto. Hook up the pump, blow the cartridge, and the tubeless tire is seated. But CO2 will destroy the sealant, so you will want to seat it with the CO2, deflate the tire, remove the valve stem, squirt in some sealant, and then re-inflate with air.
ProShift
The ProShift from Baron Controls will auto-shift any electronic drivetrain on the market, whether connecting to it with a wire or Bluetooth. It takes into account, at a minimum, both cadence and speed to determine what gear to select. It also will add in heart rate and power output to the equation for determining when to shift if you so request of it.
This ProShift hooked up to Ultegra Di2 levers and derailleurs shifts smoothly enough in the bike stand, going up and down as you vary cadence and wheel speed. It does a double-shift when shifting the front derailleur; it simultaneously shifts the rear derailleur in the opposite direction in order to minimize the cadence spike, one way or the other.
By holding down a button, you can override the system and shift normally with your electronic levers. The computer head does not do GPS, so if you want to Strava your ride, you’ll need to have two computers on your handlebar.
BodyFloat
The Cirrus BodyFloat may look like a suspension seatpost, but call it that and you will raise the ire of its inventor, Charlie Heggem. Heggem says that the BodyFloat is “a motor-mount connecting a two-piston motor (i.e., a two-legged bike rider) to a chassis.” Heggem claims that it takes out high-frequency vibrations. Denise Mueller was using one when she pedaled her bike at 147mph for a mile on the Bonneville Salt Flats a little over a week ago. He says that she came out of the pace car’s slipstream at 130mph and was able to smoothly ride it out because of the stability her BodyFloat seatpost provided.
Lenz eBike
Longtime full-suspension mountain bike builder Devin Lenz has finally entered the road market (with an eBike). The Lenz Sport Interceptor comes with big fat slick tires, five inches of suspension, and a motor with a throttle and no speed governor. The carbon-fiber-housed computer can be toggled from zero motor input up to five; it automatically assists your pedaling like any eBike, but you can also goose it with a throttle without pedaling. It is fast!
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