[suspectsean]

 

[suspectsean]

 

[suspectsean]

 

[Keski]

Nice. Thanks for those. bikeradar has some pics here as well...

The fat bikes of NAHBS 2014 - BikeRadar

 

[suspectsean]

 

[suspectsean]

 

[RickyB]

Post #1, 3rd pic, carbon Lefty! That's a first in fat bike fabrication, so I'd really like more info on how he pulled that one off. Looks like its TiCycles from Portland, but some help would be great.

 

[mtuck1]

Post #1, 3rd pic, carbon Lefty! That's a first in fat bike fabrication, so I'd really like more info on how he pulled that one off. Looks like its TiCycles from Portland, but some help would be great.

Yes, it is Ti Cycles. It was one of my favorite fat bikes of the show. The bike was built for a customer with rear suspension, titanium, painted black, and of course the new carbon lefty from Cannondale. He fabricated adapters to mount the lefty with it's OE clamps intact. I tried to get a photo but it's not very helpful. Great bike though. There was another bike even more intriguing from REEB. Mid fat with a 18 speed Pinion gear box. That thing was very cool! Speaking with Dave Levy (founder/president) at the Ti Cycles booth he mentioned there were only 2 in the country at the moment and they are waiting on parts to put together a bike with it. I have no idea what it would be like to ride but it is extremely interesting.

 

[gcappy]

That's a real ugly abortion on the installation of that Lefty in the first picture. Why didn't he just use the correct clamps from MCS? I wouldn't have shown that to any one!

EDIT:
Thats right the new carbon Lefty has fixed clamps. Oh well that's why the abortion? Worst thing I have seen done to a bike in a long time.

 

[Drevil]

I just dumped a whole buncha pics on my flickr account

Nahbs 2014 - a set on Flickr

 

[Gigantic]

That's a real ugly abortion on the installation of that Lefty in the first picture. Why didn't he just use the correct clamps from MCS? I wouldn't have shown that to any one!

EDIT:
Thats right the new carbon Lefty has fixed clamps. Oh well that's why the abortion? Worst thing I have seen done to a bike in a long time.

I dunno, there was one done in the midwest on a lefty with cast mounts last year, that was even less elegant than that one. this one is kinda genius. Not pretty, but I appreciate his ingenuity. I'm still waiting for someone to machine the clamps off altogether and fit a Mendon-style clamp.

 

[Drevil]

I dunno, there was one done in the midwest on a lefty with cast mounts last year, that was even less elegant than that one. this one is kinda genius. Not pretty, but I appreciate his ingenuity. I'm still waiting for someone to machine the clamps off altogether and fit a Mendon-style clamp.

Lefty SuperMax

 

[gcappy]

I dunno, there was one done in the midwest on a lefty with cast mounts last year, that was even less elegant than that one. this one is kinda genius. Not pretty, but I appreciate his ingenuity. I'm still waiting for someone to machine the clamps off altogether and fit a Mendon-style clamp.

Frankenstine was an engineering marvel too but he sure was ugly!

 

[JYB]

Yes, it is Ti Cycles. It was one of my favorite fat bikes of the show. The bike was built for a customer with rear suspension, titanium, painted black, and of course the new carbon lefty from Cannondale. He fabricated adapters to mount the lefty with it's OE clamps intact. I tried to get a photo but it's not very helpful. Great bike though. There was another bike even more intriguing from REEB. Mid fat with a 18 speed Pinion gear box. That thing was very cool! Speaking with Dave Levy (founder/president) at the Ti Cycles booth he mentioned there were only 2 in the country at the moment and they are waiting on parts to put together a bike with it. I have no idea what it would be like to ride but it is extremely interesting.[/QUOTE]

Thanks for the pics! mtuck1, I hope that you don't get "jumped" by the tire width police that lurk in these forums. Several days ago, somebody posted about Schwalbe coming out with a "mid-fat" tire. I asked if they were talking about a 29+ tire, and people came out of the woodwork claiming that 29+ is "wannabe fat" and that "mid fat" is categorized as 4.2 or something. Some people take themselves too seriously. Thanks again for the pics.

 

[mtuck1]

I dunno, there was one done in the midwest on a lefty with cast mounts last year, that was even less elegant than that one. this one is kinda genius. Not pretty, but I appreciate his ingenuity. I'm still waiting for someone to machine the clamps off altogether and fit a Mendon-style clamp.

That's being done...

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Miles-of-Smiles-clamps/219802261531852

 

[mtuck1]

Another very cool bike from the show! Spoke with Nick Frey for a while and came away very impressed. Those guys are very passionate (as is everyone else at that show) and I think they are onto something with the complete bike at $3,200 (less the fancy paint shown on this one). Just as an aside, Nick rode a bamboo bike at Leadville last year to a top 20 finish in a little over 7 hours. He was wearing the big old gold buckle to prove it.

 

[TiCycles]

Ti Cycles Gunther LFS

Thanks for posting the photos of our Gunther LFS build from NAHBS2014. Our adapter allows the use of a Carbon Lefty fork as designed by Cannondale. Yes, it is easy enough to machine down the stock clamps and make new ones ala the nice part that Mendon Cycle Smith makes for older Leftys... but such an approach is not a practical, rider-oriented solution to the issue. Not only does it require several hours of work in a machine shop for each individual fork, it will obviously alter the fork in a way that is not compatible with the original design and completely void any warranty or technical support from Cannondale. The Miles of Smiles clamps do have a cleaner look, but that is an expensive fork to take straight from the box to a "no-going-back" alteration that renders it junk if anything goes wrong. And there's a lot that can go wrong, from machining the clamps to getting the right torque on the new clamp bolts. One mistake would be very costly.

We are working on bringing our Fat Lefty adapters to the market and right now are providing them to our customers only. Please let us know if you'd be interested in putting this fork/adapter on a fat bike.

- Ti Cycles

View attachment 878059 View attachment 878060 View attachment 878061 View attachment 878062

Yes, it is Ti Cycles. It was one of my favorite fat bikes of the show. The bike was built for a customer with rear suspension, titanium, painted black, and of course the new carbon lefty from Cannondale. He fabricated adapters to mount the lefty with it's OE clamps intact. I tried to get a photo but it's not very helpful. Great bike though. There was another bike even more intriguing from REEB. Mid fat with a 18 speed Pinion gear box. That thing was very cool! Speaking with Dave Levy (founder/president) at the Ti Cycles booth he mentioned there were only 2 in the country at the moment and they are waiting on parts to put together a bike with it. I have no idea what it would be like to ride but it is extremely interesting.

 

[gcappy]

Like I said very cool engineering but it's uglier than anything I have seen to date! There has to be some consideration to aesthetics not just to the engineering feat of making some thing work. The rear suspension looks good. Can you make a frame with 190 centered spacing that will fit Lou on a Clownshoe? I would be interested in that. I would use my now front end.

 

[bme107]

Yes, it is easy enough to machine down the stock clamps and make new ones ala the nice part that Mendon Cycle Smith makes for older Leftys... but such an approach is not a practical, rider-oriented solution to the issue. Not only does it require several hours of work in a machine shop for each individual fork, it will obviously alter the fork in a way that is not compatible with the original design and completely void any warranty or technical support from Cannondale.

I don't follow your logic. Either it's OK to increase the distance from the headset steerer axis to the Lefty axis or it is not. One is not more warranty voidable than the other.
Rider oriented solution? Buy a fancy metal bit from a shop and bolt it on in both cases. There is no machining on the end user's side.

The older Lefties have removable clamps. Project 321 and others made steerers/clamps for these for quite some time to mate with traditional 1-1/8" systems on other bikes. Was that a warranty void? Maybe, I don't know.

The MCS version just makes the offset greater with longer clamps. Your version makes the offset greater as well, just by different means. The failure mechanism is still the same and driven by the fact that there is a longer distance between the headset axis and the Lefty axis. The forces come up from the tire go out and around and come back to the headset either way. In reality, is the increase enough to actually fail the Lefty? Who knows.

I wish you luck and hope that the price point is significantly below the MCS units, because aesthetically IMO there is a great difference to make up for. The resulting stack height is also quite large.

 

[RickyB]

I know all carbon Lefty's are bonded, and it looks like a rivet or pin is holding the clamp to the leg for good measure. But I'm wondering if anyone has ever taken a grinder to it and tried to get those apart. For that matter, why couldn't Cannondale just sell a Lefty leg with internals?? It would only be a matter of skipping the last part of the assembly process, and then it would be up to the owner to attach to a bike via MCS clamps and Project 321 stem. For fat tire bikes, that really is the best solution IMHO. You might just have 2 different sets of offset clamps, one for 4" tires, and another for 5" tires. That new Carbon Supermax Lefty 130mm 29er fork would be the BOMB!