Cycle Systems Academy

While many from the cycling world went to Glasgow for COP 26, not many did so with a journalist's pass. Luckily for us,Carlton Reid was one of the few who did. We managed to chat to him as soon as he returned and got right into why seemingly green activities like cycling were sidelined by the conference.Here is Carlton’s dispatch from the conference https://www.forbes.com/sites/carltonreid/2021/11/10/electric-cars-wont-save-the-planet-say-transport-experts-at-cop26/?sh=4993d7579782 And his article about Biden’s creepy transponders https://www.forbes.com/sites/carltonreid/2021/11/06/bidens-12-trillion-infrastructure-bill-hastens-beacon-wearing-for-bicyclists-and-pedestrians-to-enable-detection-by-connected-cars/?sh=5a9aafe35a3dIf all this is too depressing, here is Kim Stanley Robinson’s novel of what could be possible, The Ministry for the Future https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50998056-the-ministry-for-the-futureAs discussed in the pod and featured in KSR’s book, The 2000 Watt Society https://www.20

This week we welcome back Graeme Freestone King from https://www.velotech-cycling.ltd.uk/campagnolo.shtml as well as catching up on Graeme’s latest news and finding out how Campagnolo are faring in the current economic climate, we find out about Graeme’s work in South Africa with the https://buffalo.foundation/ and https://songezo.co.za/ In a far reaching and humbling interview Graeme discusses being introduced to South Africa by our friend, Sven Thiele from https://www.hotchillee.com/ and seeing first hand the massive disparity in opportunity between the haves and have nots in the suburbs and townships of Cape Town.Being a practical sort, Graeme decided to do something to help and his insight can maybe inspire all of us to make the world a better place? You can donate bikes, equipment and of course money directly at the Buffalo Foundation website above, or contact Graeme at Velotech directly. https://www.velotech-cycling.ltd.uk/index.shtml and https://twitter.com/gfk_velo even old, punctured inner tubes will

The UK’s national hill climb championship, hosted by the RTCC, ran yesterday at Winnats Pass in Derbyshire. https://www.cyclingtimetrials.org.uk/race-details/22013While many of you know Xavier Disley from https://www.aero-coach.co.uk for his work in Aerodynamics (doh), drivetrain optimisation and rolling resistance, he is also a bit of a (not so) secret weight weenie!Having seen some pictures of Xav’s tasty looking hill climb machine on social media, we decided to look at the funny old world of super lightweight equipment and the waif-like riders that excel when the road points uphill.Of course, not all of us have thousands to spend on a specialist hill climb bike like the ones used in the Nationals, but we may want to scour eBay for some equipment to lighten up our bike. Sean and Xavier discuss the best equipment for competition and day to day leisure rides for those of you who want to save a few (hundred) gramms.https://www.bikeradar.com/features/pro-bike/2020-hill-climb-national-championship-tech-galleryI

Remember when the Cyclist Touring club geeks were the butt of all jokes? Plastic bags full of oily components, a 30 year old steel touring bike and a Carradice saddle bag that was older than Grandad?Well, guess what. Turns out they were preppers for 2021. Not only will their bikes go on forever with no firmware upgrades needed, but cycling touring is the coolest thing right now! With even pro bike teams unsure if they can get components for next season we are all in new territory for bike maintenance, whether you are a pro wrench or home enthusiast, you can’t magic a Di2 mech or hydraulic caliper into existence.In this pod, John and Sean delve into the world of post apocalyptic bike mechanics and try not to get too glum while looking at the best way to keep riding in 2022.China’s 3 day week https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/29/china-hit-by-power-cuts-and-factory-closures-as-energy-crisis-bitesBack to the 1990s https://cyclingtips.com/2017/12/mixing-road-groupsets-what-works-together-and-what-doesnt-2

Jean-Paul Ballard, CEO of https://www.swissside.com/ joins us again for an engaging chat about aerodynamics and Swiss Side’s new Pressure Measurement Rake which visualises as well as measures aerodynamic drag. We also discuss frame and wheel design, tyre technology and particularly the current ISO road bike tubeless standards and what they mean for consumers.Finally, Jean-Paul has a beef, and we ain’t talking medium rare! Tune in to find out.

This week we follow on from recent mountain bike pods by chatting to World Cup MC, Dan Jarvis.Mostly focussed on the world of XC racing, we look at the scene historically and in 2021.

You’ve probably read all about the new Dura Ace 9200 and Ultegra 8100 groupsets. Mostly gushing reviews and podcasts have given us the perfect marketing hook.What do a couple of grumpy mechanics make of it though, (I’m sure you’ve been thinking) as flash is all well and good, when it's not in a pan.Now we know that Di2 is now over a decade in (it’ll never catch on said John) but are the strained supply lines and crumbling edifice of just in time economics now unable to support such a high tech product?

Join Sean on a trip to the UCI headquarters in Aigle to meet Britain’s Simon Burney, head off all things off road.Encompassing MTB in all its disciplines, BMX, Cyclocross and Gravel, the off-road sector is as wide as it is deep. Simon’s decades of experience in Cyclocross and Mountain Bike racing are shown to be valuable assets in the world of increasingly specialist off road racing niches.

We have all heard of the new cyclists hitting our streets, towpaths and trails since the first lockdown. Well, meet Noor and Sham from https://www.youtube.com/c/2MuslimNightRiders who have discovered the love of cycling and inspired thousands of people from many diverse communities to try it for themselves.Their videos on YouTube are very well shot, and show a side of Manchester only a cyclist will see. So, while we normally speak to experts about cycle tech, let’s hear what it has been like for two brand new cyclists to get into riding, how to select the right gear, where to ride and keep safe while doing so!We are sure you’ll agree that Noor and Sham exude positivity and represent all that is great about cycling and as Noor says, “a holistic lifestyle for wellbeing”.

In this week’s pod we have invited Mark Barfield back to discuss his framebuilding business and to look deeper into manufacturing standards in the bike industry. We also discuss the relative velocities of wild boar and eBikes!

As the track cycling events for the Tokyo 2020 (sic!) Olympics start today we are releasing the audio from a CSA Membership webinar in late 2019. Sean speaks to Dimitris Katsanis about his revolutionary design for Team GB and the development of this bike with manufacturers Hope and Lotus.Let us hope (no pun intended) that Team GB’s Olympic run is not Lot’s Of Trouble, Usually Serious!

As the Tour starts we catch up with our friend, Dimitris Katsanis from Metron Engineering https://additive-engineering.co.uk/ to find out about the intricacies in the design of the new Pinarello Dogma F bikes. https://pinarello.com/uk/en As ever, many mainstream media outlets will have missed the subtle and not so subtle details of these new superbikes and Dimitris shares some surprising results from the analysis of the different models.We also get into the world of 3D printing, of which Dimitris has been a pioneer in the world of bikes. Hear how he had to persuade a reluctant Team Sky to use 3D printed bars for Wiggins’ hour record attempt and how he did it.We also get into the ecological side of engineering and production, not just of bikes, but transport in general.

Who do you turn to when you want an insider’s view on UCI tech rules, life as a workshop and race mechanic and what people are saying in the Federation of the European Sporting Goods Industry? Introducing Mark Barfield. The man with more hats than, well, Johnny Two Hats.Covering such luminary subjects as Brian Cookson’s ‘Tree of the Day’ and what he actually DID as head of the UCI, the supply of goods in the bike industry (Spoiler alert, stock up when you can!) and all those niggly tech questions mechanics and cycling fans shout at the telly when they watch a race on Eurosport and (phew) an exciting new European venture for bike mechanics, this pod will be the first of several with Mark, who I’m sure you’ll agree is a very engaging and brilliantly knowledgeable guest.Enjoy the pod and peruse the links below;Mark’s ‘day job’ https://www.velometier.com/frHis side hustle https://fesi-sport.org/His former Bond villain lair workshop domain https://www.uci.org/And you can check out Brian Cookson’s Tree of the Day h

This week John Galloway rejoins Sean for a look at whether to buy the new Sram Rival AXS groupset for his bike.Rather than rehash press releases and a slew of in depth internet articles we decided to take a fairly in depth look at the design and manufacture of transmission components and then looked at which of these features in this, supposedly entry level groupset.

https://www.northroadcycles.com have established a well loved and respected high end bike brand based in Manchester, England. We were interested in where a small, family bike company sits in the modern marketplace of internet only mega-brands and companies that employ 100’s of engineers.Ian and Jane take us through the startup of Northroad and the growth of the company from a (posh) garden shed to a high street ‘Bikery’ where you can grab a coffee and discuss your dream road, TT or gravel build.Often bikes designed for World Tour professionals are not the best thing in the world for the likes of you and me. Especially me! Jane and Ian describe how they began designing bikes for their friends and have gone one from there. We get into road bike design, gravel bike geometry and of course the commercial realities of the current mess that is the world trade situation. Ian’s new personal gravel bike certainly looks nice. You can see it here. https://twitter.com/NorthRoadCycles/status/1399396238504693761?s=20Their c

While all the racing is done from the 2021 we have a short Giro d’Italia tech round up for you. From banned hubs to custom time trial bars, Sean tries to cover the tech on show as seen at a distance. Even though we did make it to the race, the riders were climbing the San Bernadino pass when we saw their bikes, so no close inspection was available!Hopefully things will get back to normal soon as we can peruse round the pits to closely look at team bikes.

The world of bespoke frame building has consolidated in the last decade to a solid and interesting part of the worldwide cycle industry. We spoke to leading UK builder, Richard Hallet back in 2018 and wanted to catch up with him to see how he was faring in 2021.You can read about Richard’s work and see the bikes herehttp://www.halletthandbuiltcycles.com/https://www.bespoked.cc/hallet.htmlWe also recommend you tune into the pervious pod where Richard discusses his particular techniques in framebuilding. https://www.cycle-systems.co.uk/podcast-with-richard-hallet-master-framebuilder/Richard is also a veteran tech journalist and we discuss the bike industry of 2021 from this viewpoint also. Richard currently writes for https://www.cyclinguk.org (formerly the CTC).He is also the author of a superb book, The Bike Deconstructed. https://www.bookdepository.com/Bike-Deconstructed-Richard-Hallett/9781616892289

As the Giro d’ Italia has just begun, Sean and John trawl through some of Italy’s memorable, amusing and world changing bicycle tech. Why WERE Italian marques the envy of the world and are they still?From trendy furniture, weapons of war, motorbikes and cars, the bike industry has grown from and cross pollinated with many others in Italy, as elsewhere. Join us for some of the stories.Here is a very amatuer production but interesting vid about the cultural history of the bicycle in Italy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdEx0Yq3XTk Here are some links to the manufacturers we discusshttps://dariopegoretti.com/https://www.colnago.com/en/history/https://pinarello.com/historyhttps://www.cyclingnews.com/news/gallery-more-than-50-years-of-pinarello/https://www.bianchiusa.com/history/

A return of the ever popular and exceedingly knowledgeable ‘Campag Kid’ for a show all about the development of Campagnolo’s renowned hubs and wheelsets.We all know that Campagnolo has been the benchmark in road cycling for decades and that their hubs and later, as one of the first ever producers of complete ‘factory built’ wheelsets have been innovative and sought after. However, the nuanced and detailed history of these components is a story known by very few.Enter @the_campagkid again for a detailed timeline from the 1930’s hubs right up to the modern World Tour level WTO wheel collection.I think you’ll agree that no-one can be considered a true bike geek without this story in their organic hard drive! See the_campagkid on Instagram and Twitter for some reference to today’s topic and to see some of his Campagnolo equipped bikes that we discuss. The C40 and C59 and both stunning examples of that period of bike design.

Taking a break from guests, Sean and John have a catch up about some of the latest tech out there in the bike world. Also, with the increasingly sparse supply of bikes and parts we delve into the shadowy world of counterfeiting in the bike trade.Here is the link to ‘Faking it’ by recent guest, Carlton Reidhttps://www.dropbox.com/s/qixhqqtfij25gw3/FAKING%20IT%20pdf.pdf?dl=0Factor mechanics epic fails. https://cyclingtips.com/2021/03/factor-finally-sheds-light-on-that-broken-ostro-vam-steerer-tube/Canyon’s broken bikeshttps://road.cc/content/tech-news/canyon-promises-solution-aeroad-seat-post-issue-281003https://www.cyclingnews.com/news/canyon-issues-stop-ride-for-aeroad-after-van-der-poel-handlebar-failure/General carbon failure nastinesshttps://www.outsideonline.com/2311816/carbon-fiber-bike-accidents-lawsuitshttps://bikerumor.com/2021/04/01/bombtracks-new-bsa-47-threaded-bottom-bracket-standard-is-the-best-of-both-worlds/ April fools https://bikerumor.com/2021/04/02/vittoria-air-liner-road-doubles-as-bead-lo