Cycleworks

Hey everybody, we're here at the very first day of Sea Otter and we're kicking it off with what's probably the most interesting bike at the show. This is the Structure Cycle Works SCW1 and as you can tell it's pretty different looking. Now what you're looking at here is a 150mm travel bike that's front and rear. It's rolling on 27. 5 inch wheels but as you probably noticed there'some very different things going on at the front of this bike. Now what they've built is a carbon fiber linkage fork that's integrated into the frame. The designer of this bike, Lonnie Hall, they're from Calgary, Alberta, Canada and they're saying that is the absolute best way to do it. There are other linkage forks out there but by them integrating the fork into the frame they're able to have more control over the geometry. And that's the whole idea behind a linkage fork. They're able to place the pivots where they need them and use physics to control anti-dive which lets them control geometry. So the idea here, you're going down a steep hill, you grab a whole shitload of front brake, on a traditional bike what's going to happen to your fork? It goes down into your travel. This one as it gets deeper into its travel has more and more anti-dive. And the trail actually grows as it gets deeper into the travel. So let's take a closer look at the front of this bike. Now it uses a rear shock up front. It's a DVO Topaz T3 Air and it's actually the exact same shock that they use at the rear of the bike with the exact same tune. Two massive carbon links. You have some carbon fork legs and up here this is the steering linkage. This is what translates your steering input to the axle and this is also carbon fiber. Now as you can imagine there's a lot of sealed bearings here but structure tells me that all of these bearings are normal things. You can get them from any bike store except for the one up here which is a pretty special unit. They've had them in use now for something So for the most part there's nothing crazy about this bike as far as bearing or hardware goes. It'same with the rear shock. These are all things that can be serviced at the shop. So as crazy as this bike looks the geometry is actually kind of sort of Now this is the first frame size. It's a G2. It's a medi So it's not crazy long but it's definitely on the edge of this forward thinking geometry thing. Up front you're looking at a 66 degree head angle but remember that this bike isn't getting steeper as it goes into its travel. The thing is not diving all the time so you're not ending up with a 70 or 70 whatever degree head angle when you grab a ton of front brake. Out back you're looking at 435mm rear end. Again nothing crazy, nothing strange and 13mm is a bottom bracket drop. So pretty normal traditional n So back to the head angle which is 66 Now that actually gets 8 degrees slacker as the bike goes through its travel. So when this is bottomed out it's 8 degrees slacker. So the whole idea there is stability. When you're going hard you're deeper into the travel. The idea is to make this thing more stable. Now some other n Frame price. Now this is a little bit different because it's the frame, rear shock, fork, front shock. So all that is up to $5,995 American. Now if you compare that to other high end things, It's not out of line. Weight wise it's about 13. 5 pounds. That's frame, fork and two rear shocks which actually is a pound or two heavier than something comparable. But the whole idea here at first production run structure wants no troubles. These things are built I quote to be a brick shithouse. So what do I know it looks very different but what if it blows minds? If it is amazing do you care what it looks Does it look too strange or does that not matter to Let us know in the comments below.