Mountain Cog
Hosted by an enthusiast and a mountain bike industry expert featuring laughter and passionate guests.
Mountain Cog
092 - Evolution of SRAM's Mountain Bike Technology: from Gripshift to Transmission and beyond. (Jimmy Nordloh, SRAM Field Guide)
Mountain Cog dives deep into the evolution and future of SRAM's mountain bike components with industry veteran and SRAM Field Guide Jimmy Nordloh.
Discover the fascinating history behind SRAM's acquisitions, including: Zipp Wheels and Time Pedals, while exploring breakthroughs like the Buttercups suspension technology (surprisingly inspired by chainsaw grips). Learn why properly bedding your brakes is crucial for optimal performance and the true story behind SRAM's approach to component serviceability. Jimmy shares insider knowledge about SRAM's future, manufacturing facilities in Taiwan, and their commitment to bike shop partnerships, making this episode essential for anyone interested in mountain bikes.
SRAM MTB Products
SRAM MTB: https://www.sram.com/en/sram/mountain
Rockshox: https://www.sram.com/en/rockshox
Truvativ: https://www.sram.com/en/truvativ
Zipp: https://www.sram.com/en/zipp
Quarq: https://www.sram.com/en/quarq
Time: https://www.sram.com/en/time-sport
Hammerhead: https://www.hammerhead.io/
Velocio: https://velocio.cc/?__woopraid=gtJLkWVFnj0g
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james is over here playing the piano. I think I'm gonna sell my piano. I haven't played it in like a year. I have one. Yeah, that's not gonna. My kids haven't played it actually.
Speaker 2:No, that's not true. We got a. We got a real piano from nana and pop pop like an acoustic piano like, yeah, like a big-ass one, not an e-piano. They had to hire people to bring it into the house.
Speaker 1:A.
Speaker 2:Steinway, something like that. Yeah, and my son is on it all the time. He loves it, and so my wife is pretty stoked about that because he has a pretty good ear for music. He's always listening to music and stuff. Yeah, I thought you guys played that live every time. No, but he, you know that's him right. Oh my god, would you stop telling people that yeah, I do every episode, but he listens, so he should know that. Yeah, he's probably, he's heard you say it.
Speaker 1:Six, times I'm gonna have to write a new one. I think you're just gonna start cutting me out. Yeah, I'm just gonna be like did you know? And then I'll just it'll be a blank, and then 15 seconds later I'll be like you should like overlay.
Speaker 2:Like a chicken noise, did you know?
Speaker 1:I gotta get. I'm gonna program one into one of these things here so we can get can you dig it?
Speaker 3:like a chicken sound that would be awesome, complete with the soundboard.
Speaker 2:Dane clucking again.
Speaker 1:All right, you got something to tell us yeah, dad joke.
Speaker 3:To start us off. Let's see, penguin takes his car into a shop.
Speaker 1:It says Like the penguin from Batman or a penguin.
Speaker 3:That's a hot topic right now, but no, just a penguin.
Speaker 1:Tuxedo penguin it's a hot topic right now, but no, just a penguin.
Speaker 3:Tuxedo penguin he's very lost from the polls Takes his car into the shop. Ask the mechanic how bad is it? He goes. Well, looks like you blew a seal. Oh, he goes. No, it's just ice cream.
Speaker 2:Oh, a two-parter.
Speaker 1:That was a double punchline.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't think we've had a two-parter. That was a double punchline. Yeah, I don't think we've had a two-parter.
Speaker 1:I've got one I want to tell, but I'm just going to save it in case we need one for the next. Do it in the middle.
Speaker 3:Just randomly, we've had a couple of those.
Speaker 1:What was it? Dave Slagle did one. He had it all planned out too. He's like do you have any final thoughts? He's, that's right it was.
Speaker 2:It was like the microbiologist joke or something like that oh, that's right.
Speaker 1:I rode with a microbiologist. That's fun. Would you like to introduce yourself, my friend?
Speaker 3:Sure, absolutely One thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:Absolutely Big fans.
Speaker 3:Thanks for coming, you guys are the background noise to a lot of my driving.
Speaker 2:Nice Podcasts are awesome for driving.
Speaker 3:Yes, I know right, I'm Jimmy. Jimmy Nordloh James, that's my legal name. But I can't think of anyone that would probably call me that. Yeah, I am the SRAM field guide for the Southwest Arizona, new Mexico. Been with SRAM for about seven years now, started in the warranty support team, the 1-800 hotline for dealers across the US. Did you work with Alana? Yes, you did.
Speaker 2:Yes, absolutely, she's still there. I don't have a crush over her.
Speaker 3:I have like a professional crush on Alana A lot of people say that Not like a girl crush but she's just such a cool person. She's made a lot of good happen for Zip. Yeah, no, she was the department manager for a time there, but yeah, she's a fixture there at the indie office.
Speaker 2:Yeah, she's helped me with so many boxer forks. You have no idea, okay so?
Speaker 1:before we get started, you just said something that made me think I didn't even put two and two together that Zip was part of SRAM. Oh, yeah, so like, maybe you could start out by educating us on, like, what are all the product brands that kind of fall under the SRAM umbrella?
Speaker 3:I think I get that a lot, a lot of. Uh wait, sram owns that. What? Yeah, it's crazy. Uh, no, I mean, sram is a company that's grown by acquisition mostly. Um, you know, we, we find organic. Yeah, that's what I do, oh, finding people that are good at what they do and you know, bringing them into the fold. Um so yeah, sram uh owns the brands RockShox, zip, truvative, quark, hammerhead and, most recently, the apparel brand.
Speaker 2:Velocio. Oh, I didn't know that.
Speaker 1:I know all those brands except for Quark?
Speaker 3:Tell me about Quark. So Quark was the standalone brand of the power meter technology for a long time Now, more so. It's kind of just like absorbed into the inline road power meters. But we still, you know, call out the the licensed cork technology, and that office is up in Spearfish Spearfish, south Dakota.
Speaker 1:Spearfish South Dakota, black.
Speaker 2:Hills, offices everywhere, colorado Springs yeah, I'll.
Speaker 3:I'll list those off to a U S locations Chicago global HQ, indian, indianapolis, zip manufacturing warehouse and uh, warranty and retail support. And then you got Colorado Springs, the home of rock shocks. Um, now kind of our new flagship building. Um, there's uh, we moved recently to a to an all new facility there. That's, that's awesome. Uh, probably, I think, our biggest us location now. Um, quark and spearfish, um, kind of a smaller outfit. Um, you know, those are all the engineers that started out working on the power meters. So it's a smaller, more agile team there, the the, you know, kind of the nerds behind data guys.
Speaker 2:I was just thinking that like they don't need much space.
Speaker 3:No, yeah, exactly I mean, where they started was basically a shed, turn it into, you know, a huge product, um, and then, uh, lastly, san Luis Obispo, um, and that was the home of true vative, uh, before the acquisition, um, and that's still another like an engineering forward office.
Speaker 2:So, again, pretty pretty skeleton crew, true vatives still there. They're still doing stuff, so it's not. I mean, I noticed the cranks kind of got, you know, absorbed.
Speaker 3:Yeah, same thing like Quark. Um, you know the the Truvative technology, still called out and licensed, I think still is. You know one of the terms of of the acquisition back then? Um, but yeah, truvative was basically, uh, you know how we got our bottom bracket and crank, uh, you know business and products uh, up and running. Uh, like, for instance, they were the ones that pioneered dub Yep, oh, I didn't know that?
Speaker 2:Oh, I didn't know that. That's cool.
Speaker 1:So, like when you say the word absorbed, when you say that basically what you're meaning is the core technology, the intellectual property gets like rebranded now as a SRAM product or another one of your brands. It doesn't call out true native all the time, but it's still part of the same family.
Speaker 3:Exactly, Uh think avid as well.
Speaker 2:I was just about to say you missed one.
Speaker 3:I know I know we, we don't really call that one out as much anymore.
Speaker 2:What is it?
Speaker 3:The little roll of a jig on the back of the derailleur is's still an avid thing that is still stamped with the avid mark.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, on all uh equal mechanical for anybody who worked at avid that's like so so shram acquired avid yes that was again one of the early uh acquisitions did I still keep a set of bb7s in my oh, that's a great mechanical disc brake, right, yeah, I just like, eventually I'm going to build them up. They they're so easy.
Speaker 2:They're great, especially if you're building a monster gravel. It's perfect, because then you can run regular road stuff on it, but then put disc brakes on it.
Speaker 1:That's awesome.
Speaker 2:There's a different leverage ratio if you use road levers. Did you know that there's a road BB7.
Speaker 3:Yeah, a short pull versus long pull, oh no shit.
Speaker 1:Well, that would explain some problems I've had.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, Some people have mixed those up. You run the flat bar on the short pull road caliper. You're going to have about a millimeter of lever throw and the other way gets a little mushy. Yeah, exactly it still works.
Speaker 2:I mean, you probably won't die, maybe yeah.
Speaker 1:So I keep hearing all the bicycle strategists guys like me but for the bike industry they talk about further acquisition, further consolidations happening. So I'd love to get some inside information. Who are you guys going to buy next?
Speaker 3:Well, Juan, that is way above my pay grade. No, each one comes as a surprise to me.
Speaker 2:What would you buy? What's a brand that you see? That's out there, that's ripe for the weekend. Well, I tried to buy Gorilla Gravity, but it didn't work.
Speaker 3:Well there you go. I thought you could, I thought you could go clear. No, they've already sold. Oh yeah, that's true, I forgot they ended up selling all those Can't do Pro's Closet.
Speaker 1:They went bankrupt. Pro's Closet went bankrupt.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but then they just oh interesting, another former employer of mine.
Speaker 3:Oh, really no way, we'll talk about that.
Speaker 1:I don't know. I think that I would probably go to the source, although I'm a little worried about China invading Taiwan.
Speaker 2:I think there's a couple e-bike motor companies that are right. Did you see what?
Speaker 1:happened yesterday.
Speaker 2:Sorry, keep going, we'll come back to the China topic.
Speaker 1:Keep going.
Speaker 2:No, tell, shot off the airspace. Yeah, but they're all fishing boats. They're not fishing boats. They told us they were.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly, I was going from the official report.
Speaker 2:No, I've been sworn off the news so I haven't heard anything about the news Other than bike stuff. I am definitely absorbing bike news.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think by the time that we well, it would be interesting to ask him if he knows who these guys are. Cause, by the time we publish this episode, we will have published at least the first faction bike studio. Oh yeah, episode. Are you familiar with faction bike studio?
Speaker 2:No, you'll have to listen.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, it's pretty cool. This is a. We're really excited about this episode, yep, where we get into deep technology with the top of their R&D organization. Yeah, I want to talk geometry. You want to talk geometry? Yeah, yeah, that's geometry.
Speaker 2:Suspension kinematics, I feel like. So I'm trying to think. Sram doesn't have shoes. They don't have helmets.
Speaker 3:There's a lot of stuff that SRAM could have. You know, there's so many players in that space already. I mean, so I guess, on the topic of of acquisitions, uh, really, the only two that occurred during my time, um, everything was, you know, already well-established. Um, I joined SRAM in 2017. So I don't think. Yeah, I think the most recent acquisition to there was probably, I think zip was the last one in 2007.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Um, and that's when they outfitted the whole indie office. Um, but yeah, most recently in the last two years have been hammerhead and Volosio. Um yeah, Hammerhead is a really cool tie-in. I mean having a bicycle computer, that's, you know, just completely native to all SRAM access products has been a huge advantage. I really genuinely never rode with a head unit before uh trying out my hammerhead, and you know now I'm like the kind of person that doesn't go out on a ride without a computer and a power meter.
Speaker 2:So you know how um, kleenex is like what we think of for nose tissue. You know that's garbage and so you're is hammerhead like a.
Speaker 1:I thought you were talking about hammer, like the nutrition. No, no, yeah, that's kind of why I said you're like talking about bike computers. I'm like what the hell? But it's not a bike computer.
Speaker 3:It's a gps right yeah, yeah, I mean, I mean it's a full ensuite. Yeah, gps, so like can you?
Speaker 2:does it start playing well with all of these other things that are on the bikes that play well? It's not just SRAM stuff, For sure.
Speaker 3:Yeah for sure, it's also AMP plus compatible et cetera, and then it just kind of streamlines specifically the SRAM integration. It's super, super easy, do you?
Speaker 1:guys get jacked up by the Strava API change. No, ooh, I didn't hear about that.
Speaker 2:So what does that mean?
Speaker 1:All the roadies are freaking out. They totally have overwhelmed it. But Strava came out and changed their API or they're about to change their API in the next couple weeks and it's going to prohibit integration with some other products some other apps.
Speaker 2:Help me with what an API is.
Speaker 1:Oh, Jesus Christ. This is the protocol that enables kind of two disparate systems to talk to each other.
Speaker 2:It's kind of like a bus system.
Speaker 1:So think more like software code.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:This is like it kind of this is how you talk to her, this is how you use this, the language, something like that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, like a translation protocol.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's how I understand it. I'm not a software engineer but uh. But I know everyone's freaking out about the API, but I think they're all overreacting. Oh okay, Time will tell. By the time this podcast episode comes out, people will already know.
Speaker 2:So they changed it to like shut out people.
Speaker 1:Shut a couple different yeah, a couple apps out that were using their data in ways that they didn't think were appropriate or were violating their intellectual policy.
Speaker 2:So they switched to Pig Latin and didn't tell anyone what the translation was. No, no, they announced it.
Speaker 1:They said we're going to turn off the shoot to you, you, you and you.
Speaker 3:Oh, okay, and everyone thinks oh my God, Strava's not going to work with anything anymore.
Speaker 1:That's not true, but it'll be interesting to see how it plays out.
Speaker 3:Who did shut out?
Speaker 1:I did not notice any interruption. You're getting deeper. I probably shouldn't have brought this shit up. Well, now you know, what's funny is the death of strava.
Speaker 2:Finally, no, it's, I actually like strava for a lot of things.
Speaker 1:Like you know, you can find trails, you can get, find people you know like lacy stalks people on strava says stalk is the wrong word but like finds interesting badass women to ride with yes is a better way to say it. Yes, she. She's my wife, by the way, which I actually think is smart because you can go.
Speaker 2:Hey, this, this person is riding at the same level. I am, maybe we can hit a ride or something, and I won't be waiting the whole time or they won't be waiting. So I actually think Strava should integrate that.
Speaker 1:Ooh, find someone that rides like you. Yeah, you should suggest that as an idea.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I know because I'm smart. You are very smart, so I got some SRAM trivia.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, go for it. See, so, uh, I got some sram trivia oh yeah, see if we can stump jimmy.
Speaker 3:I doubt it, seriously doubt it yeah what was the first product?
Speaker 2:I would say that people think was sram first product that people think was sram our actual first product. Or just I want to say, you know, I'm afraid to say it was your first product because it wasn't called SRAM. That's true, it's GripShift. Yes, exactly, yeah, that's what. So GripShift was the start, right? Yep, 1987. Yeah, they started with a derailleur. Well, they started with shifters and then derailleur, and then they just kept going.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, josh, what do you think?
Speaker 2:SRAM stands for.
Speaker 1:I know what he's going to tell you. I already have my own acronym.
Speaker 2:No, I was going to say what does it translate to in Poland? Oh, is it Polish.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sram.
Speaker 2:Polish.
Speaker 3:You've heard this right? Yeah, I think it's a euphemism, it's shit or something. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:Anybody who doesn't like SRAM loves that trivia.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, you shouldn't have told me that.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, oh yeah, it is funny because you put it into Google and it happens.
Speaker 1:I have a friend coming back from Poland next week that I'm going to meet and have lunch with her, and I'll ask her if SRAM means poop in Polish.
Speaker 3:Okay, all right, confirm what's your guess for those four letters what's my guess for? I'm gonna look at the acronym right there uh speed racing awesome machine that I like it honestly that probably sticker yeah it's kind of more exciting than the real answer what's the real answer? Uh, it's just an acronym. It's uh. It's an acronym of the uh founding members ofAM first initials. So Scott Ray and Sam and Sam Yep Sam was the last one, scott Ray and Sam Ray being the middle name of our longtime CEO Stan.
Speaker 1:Stan.
Speaker 2:Day.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay, so they just took random letters from Scott Ray and Sam and made SRAM out of it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, an amalgamation of their first initials.
Speaker 2:You think they had to navigate. How long ago was that, do you think?
Speaker 3:I forget when the name actually got assigned, but I know that it was right before Interbike that year and they didn't have a name for the company yet, so that's what they came up with.
Speaker 2:I wonder if you've got to navigate this world. So people ask about guru bikes all the time. Yeah, um, hey, you know there was a guru bikes there was a bike company called.
Speaker 1:I still get those. If you google guru, guru, it still comes up they have a guru guru fit system.
Speaker 2:So if you notice, uh, tyler's fit system is called vandruff and so that he doesn't deal with that oh, that's interesting and that's not why he did it, but that's one of the happy things. It's a good excuse. Exactly, yeah, and I wonder if they had to figure something out. Have to think about that. I know Santa Cruz's bike, the Solo, had to be changed to 5010. And then somebody else had to change their name.
Speaker 3:Oh, envy, just for IP. Envy used to be Edge.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, edge Composites. And they had to change their name after a couple years because somebody in Europe once they went global they had to pay attention Interesting.
Speaker 3:That's a good point. I think that was probably one of the motivations to just yeah, picking just the names that I can't copyright this. Just slam some stuff together and making a unique name.
Speaker 2:I guess they didn't Google.
Speaker 3:Polish, which is ironic because there's a lot of Poles in Chicago. Oh, there you go.
Speaker 1:I didn't think that you would be Googling in 1986.
Speaker 2:I'm just saying, that's true. There you go.
Speaker 1:OK, I'm facing south, looking at your bench, and I'm seeing two signs of shimano and shram. Why is the shram sign better, bigger?
Speaker 2:well. So hey, you want to know some some guru trivia? Yeah. So jimmy came in one time and he gave us a shram sign. Yeah and uh, I like shram, I like them both. Yeah, you know, I really do. Um, but he put it right over, uh, willie's bench, oh, and willie's a a Shimano guy yeah, and he so. Willie complained to our Shimano rep and the Shimano rep brought in the Shimano sign. Which just cracks me up. It's like West Side Story. Yeah, it is. Yeah, we're all going to come out snapping our fingers.
Speaker 1:Where's the micro shift? I'm expecting to see that. Oh, whatever, yeah, that's not going to happen, although my whatever yeah, that's not going to happen.
Speaker 2:So, although my kids' bikes have micro shift, Do they? Really yeah On their old ones, not on the new ones.
Speaker 1:So the new ones have SRAM All right. Jimmy. So, you've heard us talk on this podcast before you know like exclusively I run Shimano. Today I have run SRAM in the past for sure.
Speaker 3:Yeah, uh, gx level or above. I think back in the day it was called X nine, uh, yep, yeah, yeah, that was a while ago.
Speaker 1:A long time ago. Yeah, x5, x7. I didn't mess with the X5 or X7, but X9 or above. So exclusively Shimano, everything, brakes, drivetrain, everything. Sell me on SRAM. Tell me why I'm wrong.
Speaker 3:It's such an open-ended question.
Speaker 1:I know.
Speaker 3:And honestly, you know, honestly, you really can't get, you know, a bad group set these days.
Speaker 2:No, they both do great, for sure, and we mix them all the time, but don't tell Jimmy that.
Speaker 3:So I see it all the time. Oh God, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Like that's, like the mechanic, like I don't know. Holy grail for us is to know what can work with what you know, and to, and then, and then Shimano coined the term a compatibility and B compatibility, and so that's a, that's a thing that means that a is it's designed that way.
Speaker 1:B means you may be able to get to work, but we're not going to guarantee it. So, um, do you get all this in the dark web? Is that how you figure it?
Speaker 2:out.
Speaker 3:Yeah, actually, yeah, we go into the alley, out back, and the homeless people tell us so you know, I I would say that if we're starting from like current state, like right now, like you're going, you know, into a bike shop to either buy a complete bike or a drivetrain. I mean number one, the the biggest thing, even from my time starting at SRAM, is just like how much time, money, commitment has been invested in getting our quality you know, to near.
Speaker 3:I mean, nobody can say perfect, but I mean it's, it's night and day from you know the kind of stuff that I supported from the warranty team you know six, seven years ago. Um, and on top of top of that, like as these products have developed, there has been the active you know effort to make them as serviceable, replaceable, customizable as possible. So, like leaving you know those kind of like backwards compatibility options, um, yeah, small individual replacement service parts and I think going forward for for anyone, that's that's ultimately what's going to make it kind of the best value.
Speaker 2:Drivetrain, I mean, yeah, it's hard to argue when you can get a full xt group set for you know the cost of you know one xg cassette yeah, yeah, that's yeah, that's true, and that's kind of something we've talked about is like there's a at certain price points there's a winner and at certain price points there's, you know, not a winner, performance, you know. And so it depends on your motivation. And once you hit a certain like uh, we were talking on one uh podcast about uh, srams, you know, kind of there's a fairly good separation between each group as far as performance goes, and so as you move up, there's a good reason to move up, and with Shimano, there's sometimes not a good reason to move up, and so we see a lot more bikes outfitted at the lower end with Shimano stuff and a lot of bikes at the high end with SRAM stuff.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's. That's where it really stands out.
Speaker 2:That's not. I don't think that's a conscious thing other than you know, when somebody's looking at a $10,000 bike, it's very competitive and a lot of them just want wireless and they want transmission. You know it becomes the clear winner. But when somebody is looking at a $3,000 bike, they kind, they kind of want dior. You know, if they're going to make a compromise between like a dior and like an sx or something is shram a public company uh, no, no still totally private.
Speaker 1:Okay, that explains why I can't find the third quarter performance. I was gonna start asking a bunch of questions about revenue and profit and what percentage of r&d is is of revenue, but you can't tell me that's I mean, yeah, he's just, he's like the lead stoke guy.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:He's not the accountant I'm all vibes, not numbers.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but the reason I was asking is is you're saying hey, listen, we've invested significantly? In all the things that you talked about, right, small parts, maintainability, reverse compatibility, all that kind of stuff to make it easier for the user to use your products, right? Um, I was just curious at like, what percentage of your revenue are you actually investing to do that? Oh, that I don't know.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I don't know offhand, but I you know. I do know for certain that you know SRAM has been very smart to bring in a lot of very smart people as we've grown, so that we don't you know, make the kind of mistakes that a growing company often does.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, I mean, obviously the pandemic was unprecedented times for every bike manufacturer, but it meant that we really capitalized on that. And you know, take that huge boom, and I know that a lot of that basically goes right back into, uh, our, our manufacturing. R and D, I mean engineering and manufacturing, are a hundred percent the thing.
Speaker 1:So not hookers and blow. Maybe in the old days you guys were cool.
Speaker 2:Maybe, in the old days, that was the inner bike days. Yeah, I mean.
Speaker 3:SRAM really did start with a very punk rock origin. Those guys were wild.
Speaker 1:Well, they've done a good job at rebranding, because I do not see them as a punk rock brand. I just don't.
Speaker 2:I remember back in the day we would have people that wanted American-made bikes. And so you always got the SRAM, grip Shift and SRAM derailleurs.
Speaker 3:That had the American flagmade bikes. So you always got the SRAM grip shift and SRAM. Derailleurs it had the American flag on them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they actually had an American flag one, and so there was kind of this definite American-made. But they've just become so much more global since then and manufacturing for everybody has moved to wherever it's most efficient, you know, and rather than just in a place to be in a place.
Speaker 1:You know, I've researched this extensively and I've concluded that it's better manufacturing in Taiwan than there is in the United States.
Speaker 2:They've got the practice. If we had, 20 years.
Speaker 3:You should see the facilities there. They're incredible.
Speaker 1:We're going to go to the Taipei Bike Show next year.
Speaker 3:Oh, nice, awesome. That's the goal.
Speaker 1:Assuming that China doesn't take over Taiwan.
Speaker 3:I know, yeah, fingers crossed I might be visiting myself and I think late spring to the the SRAM facility, which.
Speaker 2:I'm really excited about. I keep hearing about is pretty amazing.
Speaker 1:Jimmy, can you get us into it if we go over there? Yeah, absolutely Hell. Yeah, that would be cool.
Speaker 2:So for sure we're going to have to start doing of stuff oh yeah, we can do that.
Speaker 1:We just don't want to show us us no, as soon as we have like a 40 female demographic. As soon as they see our faces, dane, we'll just walk arm and arm and we'll wear gopro's chesties.
Speaker 2:So they can't actually see us yeah, so and it's just, and we'll just hold handlebars in front of us as we walk through oh, here's some good trivia for you.
Speaker 3:Uh, josh, how many people do you think sram employs?
Speaker 1:let's see. So I just heard on one of the bike strategists podcast which is outstanding, the one that I sent you something that surprised me, and I haven't independently verified that, nor would I, but would I be able to because SRAM is a private company, but I heard that SRAM and Shimano are the two biggest companies in the bike industry. That probably tracks yeah, so I'm going to guess 3,000.
Speaker 3:That's a pretty good guess, is it? Mm-hmm, is it? What do you think?
Speaker 2:12. 1,200.
Speaker 3:I think there's 12. Oh, 1,200. You're guessing 12,000.
Speaker 2:No, just 12 people.
Speaker 1:Jimmy's 9% of the company is sitting right here we just talked to Outbound.
Speaker 2:There's six people. I bound six people.
Speaker 3:I had a funny interaction like that. When I asked a power sports shop that was bringing in some new e-bikes, like you know, they were just asking some stuff about tram. Um, and you know, coming from the power sports side, like these huge companies, like PR, mobility, is KTM, oh so gas gas. Yeah, you know all those you know that's like a $20,000, or sorry, 20,000 employee corporation.
Speaker 1:It sucks that they're going out of business, though.
Speaker 2:I don't think it's the whole thing. I think it's a division. They're going out of business.
Speaker 1:The whole thing. I'll send you some articles. Oh shit, We'll get to that later.
Speaker 3:But just like the reference point of the bike industry, they're like, oh, you're the bike rep for this brand. They're like, oh well.
Speaker 1:It's about 5,800. Oh, that's not bad. That wasn't a good guess. That was 50% right. That's better than mine.
Speaker 3:Like I said, most people either go like, yeah, 500 people, or like 12,000.
Speaker 1:Okay, so you're much bigger than I realized.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I mean about 3,000 of that is Taiwan alone.
Speaker 2:Wow, oh no shit, dude. They make a lot of stuff, so a lot of you guys have your own manufacturing.
Speaker 1:SRAM does their own manufacturing.
Speaker 3:SRAM owns its manufacturing facilities in Taiwan.
Speaker 1:So that's the difference between some of the other companies.
Speaker 3:Exactly Everyone that manufactures a SRAM component is a SRAM employee.
Speaker 1:Do you guys manufacture for anyone else? No, okay, want to.
Speaker 2:You gotta ask. I mean, it's true. Well, I mean, is there, is there any brands that we don't know about, like uh, uh, I mean yeah, component wise.
Speaker 3:I mean, it's just so neat. I mean that that's obviously a much more like viable option in the, you know, frames and OEM space. Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, this, you know this, this, this engineering studio was cool Cause it kind of compartmentalizes all the the jobs design. You know he's talking about faction bike studio now, yes yeah, it hasn't dropped yet, so hasn't.
Speaker 1:Well, they will. By the time this comes out, they will okay, yeah, so jimmy doesn't know what we're talking about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so this, this is an engineering firm that kind of is behind the scenes, you know, and then you can go hire meridia or whoever you know, giant or whoever, to build your frame and then you can clv yeah, you can hire, you know. Uh, oh, geez geez, I just spaced, we Are One. We Are One in Canada. Yeah to do your hoops, and then you can hire you know so we Are One's making hoops for other people, yeah.
Speaker 2:Industry 9. And I think they're doing the birds, if I remember correctly. Yeah, don't quote me on that and don't get me in trouble, but I think they're doing the bird hoops and they're doing the i9 hoops well, I know what I'm doing tonight.
Speaker 1:Right, the illusion of choice, whiskey and some googling, so um so and and that guy's cool because they're manufacturing them.
Speaker 2:So and then you get somebody else, you know, uh like five dev, uh, to make your cranks, you know, and so you could build a whole bike just by hiring people to do it, you know I mean you could build a whole bike by hiring people in tucson to do it right here. I don't know, man, you know, like who's gonna make the cassette?
Speaker 3:uh, a nuco on 22nd and pantano really scent is probably one of the most impressive pieces of manufacturing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean remember, I'm making I know, but I'm making a set would just cost twelve thousand dollars.
Speaker 1:I'm making super precision, like multi tens of millions of dollar products that have so they could manufacture, yeah, you guys could easily bang it out.
Speaker 3:Raytheon could make the whole thing yeah.
Speaker 1:Right, but we wouldn't do that. But I'm saying from the supply base in Tucson I could, I could sort. We should do that.
Speaker 3:And the bike would only cost the government a hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 1:Dude are you kidding me Like a hundred million dollars, Dude? Are you kidding me Like?
Speaker 2:$100 million we're talking about government contract. Toilet is a million.
Speaker 1:One of the federal acquisition regulations says that every piece of metal in a defense product has to have been smelted in the United States. Yes, do you know how fucking hard it is to find a screw and prove that it was smelted.
Speaker 2:You're paying like $8 for a screw. I know it's impossible. I don't understand that. Do they do? Yeah, it's about product.
Speaker 1:I mean it's good intentions about protecting the industrial base. We want to have the capability United States to do that. And so they're spending their money in a way that's and it's a good idea but in practice it makes it impossible, and that's why you've Toilet was like a $100,000 toilet or something like that. Yeah. I don't know, we don't make toilets. I'm glad bikes aren't like that.
Speaker 3:That's Tram's next product. Yeah, toilets.
Speaker 1:All right, so keep selling me man. Yeah, what else? What else? Why should I switch? Why should I not buy that sweet Pivot Firebird in extra large on sale over there with full XTR before I leave tonight, Cause I'm seriously thinking about it?
Speaker 3:Well, you know there is the whole aspect of like having you know the kind of holistic group set on your bike of a fully SRAM to rock shocks zip is that you know they're all sharing very similar design language, like engineering language, that they're all pretty similar to work on.
Speaker 2:Um, you know, share batteries for instance yeah, I do like that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Versus, you know right now, um, you know you can have a fully wireless, you know, flight attendant bike. Uh, you know that you can interchange the batteries with the drive train. Meanwhile, if you want to have the same kind of setup from our competitors, you know you've got internal di2 batteries, tubes, a fox neo battery now, yes, and you know you have.
Speaker 2:Or the old fox live stuff which is a different battery than that one which is their dropper I think the neo shares the dropper yes uh, the shock.
Speaker 2:They're learning so yeah, that's my biggest thing with uh shimano. That I always tell josh is like they. They just wait a long time to do stuff and then they do a good job. Realistically they do a good job. They're just way behind everybody, like their drive they're. I've been studying up on uh e-bikes lately, yeah, and their drive system is just getting beaten like you wouldn't believe. Like left and right, people are just bailing on their drive system and I don't know when they're gonna have a new one come at the oe level.
Speaker 3:You mean just like yeah, I mean bosch is taking that bosch is kicking everyone's butt, yeah, and and.
Speaker 2:And. I don't think it's because bosch is cheaper, you know, I think it's just because shimano's just not really come out with anything very new other than you know. Maybe a software update, software update, you know, or something like that.
Speaker 3:That's, that's, you know, the con. The big contrast between the two Shimano is the, you know, tried and true Leviathan of manufacturing and design. They can bring something to market in mass, produce it and have it be really good Um whereas, you know, we move a little faster and significantly faster yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And that's, and that comes with growing pains Like.
Speaker 3:honestly, you know I think SRAM does get some some grief for that sometimes of, uh, you know, to the consumer perspective it can be. You know it can feel like you know a product release that isn't fully ready yet and you know that's kind of the question of, well, would you rather have it 90% of the way done and use it right now and, you know, fix it when any potential problem arises, or wait five years for it to be perfect?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, and that's, and that's kind of what it is, is it's?
Speaker 2:I don't even think they know it's 90%, they think it's a hundred, but it just hasn't gone through every possible scenario Exactly, yeah, or something pops up, so like up. So like I was going to ask you, I got a question for you uh, what do you think is the product that tram has made in the last five years? We could do that to 10 years. Uh, five years, uh, then years opens up is the worst one, that you don't want to hear about anymore, and the best one that you can't shut up about.
Speaker 3:These are great. Yeah, these are great. So like if it's opened up to 10 years, I mean it's obviously 10 years.
Speaker 2:It's avid elixir, yeah, and that that haunted us.
Speaker 3:Yeah, haunted us for a long time, yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, you changed the name. Yeah, the brakes are no longer called avid, so we were just talking about that.
Speaker 1:How is that? Why the name was?
Speaker 2:rebranded. One of the reasons. It's one of the reasons to just get rid of that, the association, that stigma, yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, For for anyone listening that might not have suffered through the avid elixir bleed process, the elixir has been.
Speaker 2:The juices were bad. It's funny Cause the so okay, here's my perspective as somebody who's not working for SRAM. So, and as long as I've been doing this, there was a problem with the Juicies. The Juicy brakes had an issue where the main master cylinder pistons would kind of swell and get stuck inside the brake lever and they would get a sticky piston and it was basically not move and it would kind of keep your brakes on and then you couldn't bleed them. You had to pull them apart and rebuild them.
Speaker 2:So they redesigned the brake and they came up with this amazing design of a cone kind of style or taper bore um piston yeah that would get rid of this problem yeah and they call it an elixir and they were like this is this is going to change your life, this is the best brake ever.
Speaker 2:And then there was another problem. So I would say, yeah, those two like. Ironically, I feel like one of the worst things that's happened is after the Elixirs. They came out with guides, which I loved and I still rock them on my bikes, but they went back to the same piston as the Juicies and they ran into the same problem because, as far as I know and tell me if I'm wrong uh, on the the, on the um guide break, there's only one part that they don't make. Is that?
Speaker 1:right, got us, yeah, yeah, it's the one part that the problem part is the one they don't make the one problem, yeah, and I think it's absorbing fluid, I think it swells.
Speaker 2:I've heard mixed reviews on what causes it, but I know how to fix it.
Speaker 3:From what I understood. Is that so? Yes, Josh, like I mentioned earlier, we do produce essentially every single SRAM component. Dane is right. Yes, the one subcomponent that we did not manufacture in-house. In those breaks Was the master piston for guides. They were purchased from vendors in nearby town. Everything gets made on the same mic.
Speaker 2:It's just a weird material that they wouldn't normally.
Speaker 3:No, so it's the same material. It's the same delrin material. From what I understood, is that basically just the starting dimension was slightly out of spec, meaning when it got to its upper ranges of thermal expansion then it was out of spec. Yeah, so had it been, you know, at 100, the right spec that we had requested. It was designed to ideally accommodate for that kind of expansion. But yeah, obviously, if you're starting out at an overall bigger resting diameter, when that expands past that, then yeah, so all you had to do is put an ice cube on it to get it to work.
Speaker 1:That's true.
Speaker 2:Ironic. Yes, that actually is true.
Speaker 1:I just made that straight up. No, I made that up, but it makes sense Genuinely.
Speaker 3:I'll tell an antidote. This was when I was working at the pros, closet actually 2016. So guys were like fresh out, I was a longtime Shimano rider, you know kind of just because like it's what was in bike shops, it's what would work.
Speaker 2:They go through cycles too.
Speaker 3:Well, I mean, like the, the xt group of of 2016, like the 11 speed what gen was that like?
Speaker 2:uh, shit, I don't know because they have numbers and so it's like I don't even know if they were by strand because it's easier to keep track of all the product tiers. And names there is that there's so many 81, 30, 81, 20 yeah, yeah 8 000. Were they at 800? I'm not sure.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was whatever preceded the 8000 group, where it got like yeah, the glossy finish, you know with the silver brakes.
Speaker 3:Yep, yep, yep. I lost it after those. So, yeah, that's what I rode for a long time and yeah, I was working at the Pro's Closet in Boulder summer of 2016. I bought my first all SRAM bike um, sram GX. Um, that was the year that Eagle came out. Uh, so sorry, not GX. Um, it was XO, cause it was just that at launch. Uh, xo Eagle. Um, you know, pike Monarch, reverb um and guide RSC brakes. I was like sick, my first full SRAM sweep and a first ride that we go out like little little company launch ride. Go to left hand canyon it's middle of the summer, so it is pretty hot. Bike's been on the back of the car on the drive there and, uh, you know, climb up you know, not using the brakes, then no problem.
Speaker 3:Yeah, do the 1200 foot ass kicker of left hand canyon or whatever it is. And uh yeah, immediately when I start the descent, the first time I pull my brake levers. They just you know stay in.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean.
Speaker 3:I come to a stop and then my brake levers will not release. I can't even push my bike, the wheels won't spin. Yeah, oh, no yeah, the failure mode of these brakes being full brake on makes it for?
Speaker 3:yeah, so I carry my bike on my shoulder down to the Creek crossing that we're at and dip it in the Creek and flip my bike upside down so the lever bodies sit in the cool running water for about, you know, five minutes or so and I got through the rest of the ride. Um, got back to work after that and immediately took the guides off and put those XTs back on. Yeah, and then the very next summer was when I was then working at sram, uh and then covering and replacing the uh the guide levers you were the guy that everybody talked to on the phone yeah and you're like here's some new ones yeah exactly I got we.
Speaker 2:We would get a box of them, uh, just to change out for people.
Speaker 1:So there was no delay yeah because, just for a warranty.
Speaker 2:Yeah because one of the things that happened was SRAM recognized there was a problem and they just tried to fix it as fast as possible. But we saw it more in the desert, Just because of the heat.
Speaker 1:It's just the heat.
Speaker 2:But until we really knew what was going on, we would have somebody come in and be like, yeah, my brakes don't work. And we're like, great, we'd write them up at the register and get them a ticket and we'd roll it into the back and put it into the back until the next day when we work on it. And then the tech would get it and he's like what's wrong with the brakes? They work great, because it had cooled off inside. And it took us a while before we realized what was going on, and then we started using a hairdryer to test them, and so then you could get the heat up inside the shop and see if they were sticking.
Speaker 1:Oh, interesting. So did you guys have recourse against the supplier?
Speaker 3:You know. Actually I'm not really sure what happened there. That's probably some deep knowledge there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that is. I'm going to keep asking the deep knowledge questions. That can't help it.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm just imagining there's like one lawyer that knows actually what happened. Yeah, yeah exactly.
Speaker 3:I would definitely put my foot in my mouth, but I will say, like one of the really interesting like considerations of doing business in Taiwan is that you really cannot burn bridges like that, Even even if we, you know, had recourse with them.
Speaker 1:like the relationships are more important. Exactly, it's such. It's such a dollars you'd get back.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's such a small pool over there, like I was saying, like everything basically gets manufactured in the same, like you know, square mile in this industrial section of um uh, taichung, um. So yeah, I mean sure you could go after them, but you know, ultimately they know everybody else that owns all the other factories and whatnot. And, like you know I mentioned, sram is in the unique position of owning most of its manufacturing, so we don't really have to worry about that as much. But you know, even just keeping face in in businesses is huge in Taiwan, china especially, like I mean yeah it's like it's, it's an honor culture.
Speaker 3:So anything perceived as you know, a slight or offense like can can actually yeah, it can have big business implications. Like, um, do you guys know? Um, uh, rodeo labs out in Denver Uh, they do these really cool. Like uh, bespoke gravel bikes Well, not really bespoke anymore, it's almost like production level. Um shout out Steve If he listens to this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Um but, send it to him, yeah, and he's got he's.
Speaker 3:He's got a really good article about um, you know they, they do um their frame manufacturing overseas, um, and he had a really good blurb about, like you know, kind of just like hounding not like hounding, just like you know kind of prodding one of his like suppliers just like, hey, you kind of like left us, you know, hanging on this Um, like what, what can I do better to like in the future? Like you know really pragmatic response to it. Uh, and it turned into, you know, basically this whole like kind of like you know, k-pop drama kind of story thing, like, where they, you know their response was like well, we're just never going to make frames for you again. He's like what?
Speaker 1:I just, I just need the four frames that are on order, yeah exactly yeah, and the story has a happy ending.
Speaker 2:He, I think he reconciles with that vendor but he's just like wow, I've had customers like that that I. I kind of wish they'd send me a, an email that says hey man, uh, what did I do?
Speaker 1:All right, so, um, I'm going to take us on a little. We're going to come back to what he thinks the best product is Cause.
Speaker 2:the next is to find out the best.
Speaker 1:I'm using a Rock Shack product right now that I'm just fucking in love with, and so I'm going to break form.
Speaker 3:I'm going to guess. Okay, guess, it's the Reverb Axis, nope.
Speaker 1:Nope, take another guess. Nope, dane installed it in one of my products something that came out recently, the Charger 3 my products, something that came out recently, the charger 3.1 damper that's exactly it with buttercups as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I told you, the buttercups are.
Speaker 1:Oh my god, dude, I had a baseline zeb on my rock shot or on my rocky uh e-bike yeah uh, power play altitude, right, yeah, yeah, and uh, dane had me take it off to try another shock, which or another fork, which which was good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, when it worked, I had some problems with it and uh, by the way, that's on my bike right now and I love it. Yeah, I'm sure you do.
Speaker 1:It's completely. It's just because you're fat.
Speaker 2:That's what it is. It's totally. It probably is. No, it's not. You something happened, something changed? Yeah, because I just changed the settings. I even told the guys when you, when you see the guys next, you can ask them. So I was like what the hell did he do to this?
Speaker 1:you did it no, I didn't touch that. I'm not even gonna name the.
Speaker 2:I think maddie did you get your? Own recommendation set up on a trailhead no, uh, oh, this was, this, wasn't a rock shock product. The one we're bantering about is it doesn't matter different product.
Speaker 1:We won't, we won't name it. So meanwhile I had that on my bike and I had this kind of baseline Zeb and I'm like and then I saw all the stuff about the 3.1 and I'm like, oh, and Dane's like dude and buttercups and I'm like, alright, dude, order it. So I had him install it on my. So I made my baseline Zeb an ultimate basically. Holy shit, an ultimate. Basically, yeah, holy shit, yeah, much different whole.
Speaker 2:I'm like I'm selling, I'm selling everything and buying this one for all my books. Yeah, I just did another one. There's another lyric that's coming in and I'm doing the same thing oh my god, dude, just the, uh, the full 3.1 assembly.
Speaker 3:Are you doing just the drop in into a charger three? No, it doesn't have buttercups, so it's so you're doing the full assembly so help me out out with that Cause.
Speaker 2:There is the. It's a lyric, but it's got a high speed and low speed charger. So I think it's a three. Oh, is that right?
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And then but it doesn't have buttercups, so it's a select plus, and so you can't just stick buttercups on the end of that.
Speaker 3:Uh, no, we don't have you full damper assembly and air spring assembly?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, so they were changing the travel already and I'm like I'll get you the buttercups and they're like okay, and I'm like, but it's only half the story.
Speaker 3:Like it's only half the story and you're not going to get the whole benefit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so I'm like I think you know, and cause he was asking me, he me on the rear shock, uh, it's a super deluxe, uh select about maybe putting it as an ultimate, and so that's one of the calls that I made to you guys about that new um, you can now take the rear shocks, the rock shocks and upgrade the damper, the reservoir, body, reservoir.
Speaker 2:So these are the ones with a separate reservoir, and you can convert them into essentially ultimates um, which is much more cost effective than buying a new rear shock. So and that's really cool that that modulation is is something that I really push for, because, as a dealer, it allows me to stock one product and modify a bunch of different other products, which is really cool.
Speaker 1:Well, I'll tell you what if you're a heavy dude on a heavy bike, which is what I'm, which is what that is yeah.
Speaker 2:That setup is yeah, that.
Speaker 1:Zeb with that. 3.1 in the buttercups is fucking awesome.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think I've said on this podcast a couple of times, the new uh rock shock stuff, the buttercups essentially you know, anything with buttercups is just such a game changer for them.
Speaker 2:It's really moved them up so many places than they used to be and it's always been good product. But I've been a DVO fan because of the suppleness and now there's a diehard, like serious competitor to that that I am. Two of my bikes are RockShox now, so, and that's saying a lot, uh, now I'll tell you, the van has DVO on one side and RockShox on the other.
Speaker 1:So I just depends on how I park it.
Speaker 2:So all right, so I just depends on how I park it.
Speaker 1:So all right, so I just took it. I just had to break form and give you guys some kudos on something I'm really enjoying. So, from your perspective, what's the most popular?
Speaker 3:product. What can't you shut up about? I guess a quick trivia on buttercups. You know where the inspiration for that technology came from.
Speaker 2:Engine mounts no. I mean it's an engine mount, yeah, yeah. So basically, so don't know.
Speaker 3:Uh, but specifically a chainsaw grips.
Speaker 2:No way, oh wow, no shit.
Speaker 3:Uh, as I've heard it um some rock shocks. Uh product folk were um. You know there's there's also an office up in uh Vancouver and Columbia another technical support office there. Uh and also there's some, uh, some brand folks that live out there and they're really obviously involved in the community and whatnot. Um, but yeah, like talking to some like big time, you know timber folks, loggers, yeah, trail builders.
Speaker 3:you know the people that you run into on the Seymour mountain, but uh yeah you know, someone saw it like oh you know, they're basically isolating the grip from the rest of the chainsaw body with this kind of you know, elastomer plastic or rubber.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we applied that to lower legs. Yeah, so basically the lowers are mounted to one piece and the damper and the air shaft are mounted to another and the air shaft are mounted to another and there's basically a. You know it's not going to come apart, but there's basically rubber bumpers on either side, so that you get this extra level of suppleness that comes from that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, what they're really tailored for, too, is like the high-frequency kind of vibration of a fork. You know, it's not like a shock absorber. Like it still translates a lot of the force that you get through yep, an axle and lower legs yeah it's specifically that kind of like really high frequency stuff that just like contributes to fatigue over a long day.
Speaker 1:It's worth noting that I'm running rev grips on that bike as well I got like double, double damping or something triple damping.
Speaker 2:I want to try those out just to see that, plus some fast flex bars?
Speaker 3:I don't have any. Is that the ones with the pivot in them? Yeah, you won't even be able to feel the trail yeah, it's, they're like suspended bars, yeah I'm sure there's a max weight limit on those things.
Speaker 2:I don't know, man downhillers use them, so I think you could, oh, maybe but yeah, that's uh favorite products, best products um yeah, most most, most, yeah, like what you can't stop talking about or couldn't Like really, like it doesn't have to be current, you don't have to go with just current. He's going to say transmission. Well, that's why I'm saying I'm just not. I don't want to corral you into the latest and greatest because that's your job all the time, but what is it that you think made?
Speaker 3:Well, I'll close out on guides because like guide was also, you know, one of the toughest moments in, yeah, you know, sram's recent history. Yeah, and, and that was like I said, you know, uh, I had come from being a shimano break guy for a long time, um, and then I, I mean the guide break is what made me finally appreciate our breaks and like kind of the difference in and feel and approach to just you know, I'm glad you care.
Speaker 1:I'm glad you clarified because I didn't realize that the guides actually fixed the juicy elixir problems.
Speaker 2:Guides still have a problem. They still used to have a problem, but now that it's fixed, it was basically a manufacturing flaw, you know, or tolerance issue.
Speaker 3:On one piece. On one piece. The rest of the brake was solid.
Speaker 1:But that's not on anything new that we can buy now. Yeah, the rest of the brake was solid, but that's not anything new that we can buy now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's not old stuff. No, even the new G2s and stuff like that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, all of our current dot brakes still basically follow the same design of the guide, so the design was solid. It was a great brake, just unfortunately plagued by that one, just the manufacturing.
Speaker 1:It was bad luck. I just want to make sure for our listeners to understand that, that that that manufacturing issue has been resolved.
Speaker 3:Yes, as of I mean 2018. And to give you a clue?
Speaker 2:I fixed those. I have so many bikes with guides on them from that era and I would fix them because what Jimmy was saying is the tolerance of that piston was out and when it would heat up it would bind inside. It would basically be taller than the seals.
Speaker 1:So were you grinding them down or something?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I put them on a lathe and I take them down and I know he's shaking his head like god damn it. Why are you doing that? But I'm I'm running those brakes today. They're on my downhill bike. I run guides on my downhill bike and they are great brakes.
Speaker 3:Like I couldn't give them up the only disclaimer there for the average joe is that yeah if you run it down too much, then you have not enough diameter and then you're gonna yeah, to have great bite paths. Yeah, but Dane's a professional.
Speaker 2:Don't do what Dane does. I am a professional.
Speaker 3:Do as he says, not as he does.
Speaker 2:Yes, I am a professional and honestly the right way. So, remember, I was a team mechanic, so this is a fix that we would do on a Friday before a race on Saturday. The real fix is you can just get the new pistons.
Speaker 3:Or the real fix is you can just get the new pistons or a new lever assembly. That's what we eventually got to just swap. It's so easy to swap a lever assembly on SRAM brakes.
Speaker 2:They would send us boxes of levers because it's literally, you just basically put a new, you know? Crush olive and barb on and then pop it on and do a quick bleed. You didn't even have to do a full bleed, honestly, wow. And then it was done and so it was super easy and that's how they helped people, you know, through that problem. But we had some friday race on saturday issues and we came up with a fix and I had I have two or three sets of those brakes. They're still rocking and they're great.
Speaker 2:So, um, the new pistons if you get the rebuild kits are intolerance yeah, so we haven't had any problems with any of the new stuff within the tolerance yeah, it's, it's been within the tolerance not intolerant.
Speaker 1:They're totally intolerant, but uh yeah resolved and contained for for many years now.
Speaker 3:So yeah, yeah, but uh, yeah, I mean that doubles as kind of like one of the like quote-unquote worst and best products.
Speaker 2:Um, because, yeah, like I said, that was like I mean caused a lot of problem but function when they were working great. They were better than pretty much on them everything on the market.
Speaker 3:And that's, and that's what I kind of had to commit to, to like learning myself, cause I mean, I'll be honest that first summer, taking all those calls, I was like I should just quit this job. I mean that's gotta be rough.
Speaker 1:I mean every day it was nearly a hundred phone calls of yeah, I've got these guides and they don't work and I'm just like, I'm so sorry You're like you've got a guide with a problem. Press three, that's how it.
Speaker 3:That's how it ran for for a while. But I mean just being firsthand, like you know, obviously there were some very upset people, and for good reason, but like for the most part, like when we finally got, you know, the fix rolling and everybody could, you know, communicate. It, like you know, went a long way when shops were like, hey, you know, this, that was yeah we know what's going on.
Speaker 2:Just how do we fix it? Yeah, so yeah.
Speaker 2:And that you know that kind of shaped my view of both the break and SR sram yeah well, you know, yeah, we're not perfect, but there's something about taking care of your, your customers yeah, it's, it's important and the bike industry has kind of has a reputation of kind of testing on the customers some some companies are better than others, for sure. I mean. I remember canondales in the back in the day. They'd be like oh, that's not working, we're just going to change it and like and that was a thing.
Speaker 3:I mean, we're just such a small industry. Like we don't always have the resources to. Yeah, like like you said before, it's not like anybody is deliberately trying to release a product that isn't done. It's just that they just tested as much as we can within one finite window, to everything we can imagine. And then there's the real world.
Speaker 2:Oh, by the way, josh, the real world. Oh, by the way, josh, and I discussed this on the last podcast which will come out after we record this.
Speaker 1:One can't keep it straight.
Speaker 2:I need to chart out of our this is like two episodes ago listeners but uh, we are open to uh creating and hosting a a uh research and development uh facility here in tucson, help us break stuff. Yes, so not only break stuff, but um honestly, that's that you know. Gm has a desert proving ground for that reason, and so I do see some product releases by SRAM out in the desert here.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And you'll see them. There's a few testers. We can definitely test pedal strikes here.
Speaker 2:Oh my God, yes, yeah, and heat and extreme heat.
Speaker 3:Yeah, oh my God Guys, I forgot one of our brands.
Speaker 1:Oh Jesus, What'd you forget? Time Pedals.
Speaker 2:Oh Time Pedals, oh wow.
Speaker 1:Look at that.
Speaker 3:Fired.
Speaker 2:I was just thinking about that, and those are my favorite pedals.
Speaker 3:I rode time even before I worked at SRAM.
Speaker 1:I want to cut this out and paste it right when you were listing all the brands yeah, there you go, he won't do that. I probably will, just because you said, I won't.
Speaker 3:But yeah, I would say the product that I can't shut up about and it's going to make me sound like such a shill because it is probably the most premium product we make. It's the Reverbaxis. Oh yes, really, I will never go back to a cabled dropper. I mean just install service alone. And just like the immediate feel of a wireless remote to a cable. I'm so spoiled when I do ride a mechanical dropper lever. I'm like my thumb. I know so much effort.
Speaker 2:I feel like you should have changed the name of it.
Speaker 3:You just reverb in general yeah.
Speaker 2:When that wireless came out, they should have called it a different name.
Speaker 3:Well, you know, the thing is it is a reverb.
Speaker 2:I understand that but here's why.
Speaker 2:There's a again. Back when droppers came out, there was only one good one and it was the reverb, and every bike had it. So there was a billion of them out there and they had some failures, you know, and they had some design problems that they went through. Another tough one, and they also use like a hydraulic actuator instead of a cable and all of those stigmas are stuck to it and it is not that product anymore. It is a totally different product and it performs so much better than what people think the reverb name has Does that make sense.
Speaker 3:I mean you definitely have a point. I mean that is the reason that we ultimately moved away from the Avid branding. That's why the guide naming?
Speaker 1:eventually changed to G2. Yep, yeah.
Speaker 3:Again, like not the only reason why, but like those are definitely.
Speaker 2:It has a side effect of getting rid of some of the stigma.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and Reverb again. That was another product that had some iffy reception early on.
Speaker 2:Bumpy road of research and development. And it's crazy because, again, I've been around and using all these products during this and back when reverbs were around, there was nobody making a good dropper. I mean, it was the best smoothest, that was 2010.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's when the first reverb came.
Speaker 2:I have a great my one of my vintage products on the wall is going to be a gravity dropper. You know creaky mess of a dropper with a pin.
Speaker 3:And that was like at the same time era.
Speaker 2:It was the same time as the reverb, and the reverb was so much better.
Speaker 3:But it was expensive.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but there has been a period of time where reverb didn't really change too much. They got rid of some of the problems kind of late, and so everybody else came out with pretty good working stuff.
Speaker 3:Yeah so.
Speaker 1:I haven't tried a reverb yet, because I can't afford it.
Speaker 2:Well, especially the access. That is the complicating factor.
Speaker 1:So you guys do anything about that. Do we have anything to look forward to?
Speaker 3:Well, I mean the current reverb axis is coming up on nearly five years old, so I mean product what's the product life cycle at tram?
Speaker 2:do they have like a set one, or is it just kind of go?
Speaker 3:it's not set um. I I would say you know, like a lot of the bike. Well, I guess more on the component side, like I you know, oem frame manufacturers run on like a one to two year cycle yeah, I of just color changes and stuff, I feel like hard parts, components are usually closer to three to five year cycle.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, you know, unless you're Shimano, and then it's, it's measured in decades. Yeah Right, unless it's Shimano, saint and then, it's measured in um, yeah, centuries.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's the century Saint, yeah.
Speaker 1:The different, the century saint, yeah, the different monarchies that it outlasted. Oh my god, bashar asad is gone. Yeah, he's gone, they're still the saint did outlast the syrian regime. Oh my god this is now a politics podcast no, no, no politics nope
Speaker 3:but yeah, I mean, if, if that, you know, tells you anything, the writing's kind of on the wall there. We're definitely butting up against that five-year window. Um, but yeah, the reverb axis has been a really solid product and you know it is just, it is that b1 generation reverb, just essentially eliminating that hydraulic remote, which was the issue for again another thing that I intimately supported and troubleshot.
Speaker 2:It's a C1, right, because it's got the purge valve.
Speaker 3:No, so it is the B1 reverb. It just had the vent valve added as well, so the C1 is actually a completely different design from the reverb axis.
Speaker 2:I mean, I know my kits are different, but I mean they all look roughly the same in size.
Speaker 1:So what would it cost me to get into?
Speaker 2:a Reverb Access MSRP right now $800?
Speaker 3:$850? Yes, it's dropped down from $899 to, I think, $699.
Speaker 2:It's $699 now because it doesn't come with a remote.
Speaker 3:Yes, it's $699 MSRP for post alone, and then you have to pair it with your Access Control of Choice.
Speaker 2:Yes, and so the key is that there's different remotes and ways to pair it, because they now have a gravel access dropper, uh, so you can get a gravel version. So you know you don't want it to come with a lever.
Speaker 3:That you don't need that, you don't need yeah, uh, so they split it up so yeah, you can operate a reverb access post with any access so is it like 100 bucks for the controller?
Speaker 1:uh, it's 150 for a pod basic, so 850 to get into a reverb, yeah and you can.
Speaker 2:So here's the crazy thing is you can get like uh, the what is it? Access to button pod instead of the rock shock reverb lever, which is like a one button, and then you can assign buttons on the access app, which we haven't talked about, which we need to talk about. Yeah, um, just in general, all of the access stuff you know, because we have we have jimmy here and we need to talk about that stuff um, but the uh, um, we're both. All of us are looking at the clock right now going.
Speaker 3:It's been an hour.
Speaker 2:We're gonna have to do two of these you know, just to get it all in, but. But basically they split it up because you could have it on a road bike and it may have a built-in lever in your shifter, or you could have it on a mountain bike with one type of lever or a mountain bike with another lever. You can run two by.
Speaker 3:Uh, yeah, I mean, yeah, we're talking about this, just like you know, previously, with mechanical drivetrains, like there were still a lot of people interested in running a mix of road levers with mountain, yeah, drivetrain, yep, and basically, what axis does I mean? This is another point towards you, josh is eliminate that consideration of oh, is this going to work with this shifter?
Speaker 1:yeah every axis doesn't have to worry about the pull ratio.
Speaker 3:Exactly, it's a button, yeah and it does whatever I mean. So even just look at, uh, you know 13 speed yeah, we had explore release earlier in august. That's the same shifter we don't need any more buttons. We don't need any more pauls.
Speaker 2:The shifter does as many shifts as the derailleur does so you can change from 12 to 13 by just by pairing to the cassette and derailleur, and that's it because all all the buttons doing is sending a signal to the thing, whether it it's derailleur or dropper and says do your thing.
Speaker 1:Yep, exactly it doesn't care about pull ratios or any of that stuff.
Speaker 2:Exactly, yeah, which is really nice. I always say it's a language, so you just assign the language, and then it speaks Greek to the front derailleur, and it speaks French to the rear derailleur, and then that way they don't communicate, they don't miss communicate.
Speaker 1:Je ne parle pas français, yeah yeah.
Speaker 2:And if you want to switch them? You just make one button speak French and the other buttons speak Greek.
Speaker 1:That's awesome, just like my girlfriends.
Speaker 3:Yep, exactly it could be a rap lyric, just kidding, but yeah, to that same point. Josh, like that's another thing I think in our corner is just like the whole access ecosystem means that you can basically take any of our access enabled components and they will work together.
Speaker 2:yeah that's cool, it's it. And I gotta tell you from the you know our shop experience. The reverb owners are probably the the happiest zealots yeah, they really love that post, and it's.
Speaker 2:I have one issue when I repair them that Troy taught me to fix too, and since he taught me that, we fix them in-house, which is great, so when they need service, there's no issues. Not a common problem, just something that comes up occasionally. It's actually really common and it's a pain in the ass, but it happens to be because of the vent valve. What is the problem?
Speaker 1:What are the users experience?
Speaker 2:so when, when you have these posts, you may have some air migrate onto the other side of the the piston and enter the oil, which causes, like a spring effect or a suspensioning is what we call it. Okay, um, there's a vent valve that helps purge that air uh out and basically moves it around. But you have kind of a certain amount of times that you can do this and sometimes the, the ifp, which is inside the post, gets stuck up near the top way out of the way where you can't get it out, and when we have to pull that out, they have to. A pretty retarded way of pulling it out that works, uh, but you use a bunch of zip ties it's kind of dumb uh, it's in the service manual it's totally.
Speaker 2:You're like 35 zip ties and you just shove them in there. It's the weirdest thing.
Speaker 1:It is so funny but um when it's like how I get grips on. It's weird.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's so weird um, but it's, he's right, it's. It's like you'll see a picture of some guy stuffing a bunch of zip ties in the reaver but, um, the ifp can get stuck so far up there that the zip ties won't get under it to pull it out. Because what they're trying to do is you're pulling out a very sensitive piece of rubber that gets kind of stuck, you know, because it's rubber and you're trying not to scratch the inside, because if a scratch happens, it can bypass air or oil past, and so you have to be careful. One of the reasons that people bring reverbs here to get them serviced is because it's not a super easy, user-friendly.
Speaker 3:It is probably the most service-intensive component.
Speaker 2:Yeah and so, but that one problem, the first couple that I ran into. I had no idea what to do and I had to send them to RockShox. And you know RockShox will take care of people and they're awesome. But it's a time, no matter what, even if you're the fastest, if you, even if you're not, a two days just shipping just shipping.
Speaker 2:Time is like a week basically at least yeah, and then you have in in time and, and we're known for being couple day turnaround, and so, um, troy, uh, lafferty, laffey, yeah, at Colorado Springs, awesome Loves Land Cruisers. Yep, no, not Land Cruisers.
Speaker 3:He's going to be mad. Land Rovers, land Rovers. Yeah, he'll be so mad that I said that.
Speaker 2:He loves Land Rovers. He taught me a trick to get them out, and man, it works awesome this is the spoke. Yep, yep, yeah, and so now we can replace the IFP and service it and get it running. I just did one a couple of days ago, so Josh, that's.
Speaker 3:That's the last thing I'll add here. Sram versus Shimano.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah.
Speaker 3:Who at Shimano can you call you?
Speaker 2:know. I will tell you that at Shimano we do have good tech guys and usually it's trying to have a great tech. They do, they do and they do a great job, and usually it's compatibilities that we're trying to figure out with them. But they just recently started letting us service a little bit of their brakes Not a whole lot, they have. Their systems are kind of Do their brakes actually need service?
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Contrary to rider belief. Yeah, yeah, so and so there's a bunch of issues that will come up that aren't serviceable. They do a good job, but nobody has the kind of ability for us to work on this product in the shop like SRAM, and nobody supports the bike shop as much as SRAM. I don't want to disparage Shimano because they do a good job. They really do. If I call my rep.
Speaker 3:They just have a different approach.
Speaker 2:Yeah, some of their ecosystems are just closed and they're not really up for repair. Like you don't take apart a shimano shifter, like you don't, you know it's gonna not go back together. So it won't, and we've known that for years. And there's mechanics that we'll try and there's mechanics that will be meticulous enough to maybe get it back together at a business sense.
Speaker 1:You know, I think I've taken apart both SRAM and Shimano and I've had much better success getting the SRAM.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's like seven parts in a SRAM and and, and they make them serviceable and they tell you that they're serviceable. You don't have to go on the dark web to find out about it and yeah, so there's. There's a lot more serviceability in the SRAM stuff that's kind of built in. Uh, and I know Chris Manny, I can shout out, manny. I can hear him in my ear going because you don't need to.
Speaker 2:You know like I could totally hear Chris Manny, like I know what he'd say. You know, but when you're a mechanic, you you don't want to hear, uh, that's just send that back.
Speaker 1:You know, you don't want to hear that you want to fix it like mechanics love to fix stuff and it's it takes away our love when we have to send something back so this is this has been worth it, because the serviceability thing was never something like when you and I talked about it. We didn't bring that up yeah just didn't come to the conversation and I definitely can relate to that yeah like personal personally relate to, so that's interesting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's cool stuff, so we got to do another episode with him. I think so, because we didn't talk about we didn't talk about flight attendants, we didn't talk about the mavens. We didn't talk about mavens. Can I ask a maven question? Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Okay, so you switched to mineral oil? Yes, are we going in future and other SRAM breaking products?
Speaker 3:We're always working on new stuff.
Speaker 1:That's a good answer.
Speaker 3:Thank you, Captain. Obvious, that's a good non-answer. He's like I don't know.
Speaker 1:I mean you think we made a specific fluid for just one break? Yeah, that would be stupid.
Speaker 2:All right. You heard it here first Mineral oil coming on all future SRAM breaks. Is that all you want to know about the mavens? That's it. You're like like one of the biggest changes in their brake system ever and you're like mineral oil, using mineral oil it's not the reason they have the db8s, by the way huh, they have the db8s, our mineral tool yeah, those came out a while before.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh shit, I didn't know that and they're inexpensive.
Speaker 2:You should be on them.
Speaker 3:I will preach my point on other products I can't stop talking about, and it is Mavens, because it is just on my personal bike and I loved codes. I had no issues with codes. After learning and loving Mavens, I can't go back between bikes.
Speaker 2:I got to tell you not between bikes. I gotta tell you, you know, not to keep dragging this out, because our listeners I think our listeners would want to know this, because this is something that comes up in the shop and I gotta ask you about it because I have a theory brakes are always a very, very touchy subject too. Yeah, like, yeah, they kind of get stopped pun intended.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, I couldn't come anyway, so, uh, so we're experiencing a lot of bikes coming with codes and customers are saying things like they don't stop. I can't stop, and it is blowing my mind because the code is one of the more powerful brakes on the market and I'm trying to figure out what's going on. What is causing that reaction, and is there a level of code that is less than what I'm used to?
Speaker 1:I mean, they come from Shimano, where that's got that on off.
Speaker 2:So that's my theory, my theory. Here's my theory, not to to prompt you into an answer, but cause I really want to know if there's something other than this. But Shimano does have like an on off but it's like a light switch versus a dimmer. And then when you pull a Shimano, as you pull, you don't get any more power. It's pretty much it's on off.
Speaker 3:Yeah, whereas most of a SRAM brake power comes towards the end of the lever shift.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but you have to use a lot more finger power, which I'm used to as a downhiller. I'm pulling hard. You're great with finger power. Yeah, I can finger power like you wouldn't believe. I power through my fingering like you wouldn't believe, but I don't know. Oh my God.
Speaker 3:I thought that was good.
Speaker 2:Oh my God, I was trying to get the word bang in there, but it didn't work.
Speaker 1:That's probably good that you didn't.
Speaker 2:But, like I said earlier, I'm a light breaker. I use guides on my downhill bike, I use two piston on my trail bikes because I'm trying to keep them light. I don't use a lot of brake, I don't brake hard, and so so my experience is like you don't need all of this brake. Why? How would a code not give you enough brake? So that, have you heard that?
Speaker 1:And can you attribute it to anything?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I would. I would say the number one thing when people say my brakes don't stop is one.
Speaker 1:They're usually poorly bedded. This is, this is my psa bed your brakes and people. They'll never work.
Speaker 3:Like what is bedding your brakes mean jimmy bedding your brakes is the process of actually transferring your brake pad material to the braking surface of the rotor.
Speaker 1:So your road. Isam's recommended process for bedding your brakes 50 repetition 50.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:For how long for each repetition?
Speaker 3:So basically a repetition would consist of getting your bike up to about just like trail speed and coming to a slow, gradual and not complete stop, kind of a rolling stop 50.
Speaker 1:I've always done 10.
Speaker 3:Dude. Even 50 is arguably not enough.
Speaker 3:And a lot of people do rely on. Well, I'll bet it on the trail, I'll get them nice and hot on my local segment. Yeah, and then beyond that too is just also matching your pad material and rotors for your ride type. I feel like there's been a lot of hype around you know, specifically like steel-centered compounds. Just, you know, trying to beef up brakes in the biggest way you can and it's not always the best option for your ride. Lookout like, especially here like an organic pad will always stay just ambient and warm enough and will not encounter enough moisture to you know where, versus a steel pad, um, you know, really performs at its best when it's at a higher temperature, which you're not really ever getting your brakes to around a lot of the local riding here.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And are made to withstand yeah moisture and debris and stuff Again, stuff that you don't really encounter as much in the desert.
Speaker 2:I love it when I do shit and don't even know I'm doing it right, because I'm more of an organic pad, mainly for quiet.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I want quiet.
Speaker 2:Yeah, doing it right, because, uh, I'm more of an organic pad, mainly for quiet, yeah, quiet, yeah me too. And then, um, metal pads on my downhill bike because I don't want them worn out by the first run for a bike park bike.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely, when you're doing laps and you know you could be doing in the rain yeah yeah, and then beyond that too, like well, I mean, there's a lot to be said too about just brake lever setup too, and our brakes definitely favor a certain kind of setup, usually pretty far inboard yeah, on the on the bars so pulling at the very end of them yes, pulling at the very tip of the lever blade do you think?
Speaker 2:have you guys done any studies on how much lever? Because, uh, there's a competitor that I ride also.
Speaker 2:That is in the middle between the two yes, yes, yeah they have a modulation but you don't have to pull as hard. And so in Shimano's I got to tell you and so many people are going to be mad at me but every bike that I get with Shimano brakes on, I pull them off immediately and sell them. It's not because it's not a good, yeah. And so if I have multiple bikes and they have different brakes, on them. I half the trail. I'm trying to figure out how to break this is what kills me and Lacey she's got Shimano's on one yeah.
Speaker 1:And she's got tram on the other and then we just put pays on a third and I feel like I'm pretty sure she's alien.
Speaker 2:I think she's coming Because you said she came from what Safford, safford.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's not real. It's pretty much a foreign country. It's like Mars.
Speaker 2:No, not alien like that, Like yeah, she's an alien.
Speaker 1:Like she's an extra yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm pretty sure they just took a ship, and Safford is a ship with just some buildings. So that's my thought, but anyway, my thought, but anyway um no offense to our safford continue but but the pull of the lever?
Speaker 3:I my theory, like I said, is that with codes you've got to pull and then start pulling harder for more braking and if you're used to shimano, you pull the just the shimano rate and then you never get to the power yeah, and then, on top of that, if you don't have a bedded in brake system, you're hitting that wall and then you're not generating the friction so it feels like you're pulling the lever as much as you can. You know like it's clamped as tight as it's going to be, but then you also don't have the friction aspect. Yeah Cause.
Speaker 2:I'll go out in the parking lot and I'll ride the same bike that the customer's like. These don't work and I'm flipping over the bars you know, I'm not even kidding, Like this has happened multiple times and I'm like and we pull the brakes off, you know, and the customer ends up buying Shimano, and I think it's a style difference. I really do so so yeah, personal preference.
Speaker 3:But again, bed your brakes. People check it, look for hotspots. Your brake rotor offers zero stopping power until it is bed in, I think a lot of people think of just like the clamping mechanism of a break and don't really take into consideration that it's very much.
Speaker 2:Oh, just contaminate your pads and see how fast.
Speaker 1:Like it's crazy All right, so let's recap and then we'll finish up, and I can't believe I'm going to say this publicly, but I want more SRAM, so will you come back on and talk with us again.
Speaker 3:Yes, let's do it in the spring, there'll be.
Speaker 2:There'll be some cool stuff to talk about later on.
Speaker 1:Awesome man, I don't want to wait that long, but if we, if we recap the stuff that we talked about, let me see if I can, how I do, and then you can, you can correct me where I missed it.
Speaker 1:Right. So like I challenged Jimmy to like talk me into SRAM, he talked. He talked about um, specifically with the access stuff, how everything works together. I don't have to worry about does this part work with that part. It all works together. The reverb is supposed to be awesome, although I got to sell my third child to um, that's true to buy one yeah, uh, the mavens are great. All future shram brakes are going to come out with mineral oil, which is the key selling point.
Speaker 2:Uh, just, kidding, just kidding. Oh man, we're gonna have a talk about.
Speaker 1:I know that's an episode alone full episode on brake oil so I know I'm just fucking with you.
Speaker 2:I know, but yeah, what I missed man that was a good recap, I would say top to bottom um, and that your local bike shop likes to work on sram yeah, well, I and and we didn't mention this, but we mentioned in different podcasts is sram, and not that shimano hasn't done this, but SRAM has made a big push to be a partner with the bike shops. They realize that the bike shop is where people go, they congregate, they can find rides, they can find friends, they can find advice and that is something they find valuable. And that is something they find valuable and they've made an investment into the bike shops as far as that goes. And the bike shops in general respond to that Like, hey, thanks.
Speaker 1:I'd like to shout out to our female listeners as well there's also a lot of single guys working at bike shops.
Speaker 2:Oh, my God.
Speaker 1:Come on by and take your pick. Scoop one up.
Speaker 3:I mean Shimano's done great things for the industry.
Speaker 1:You'll never hear me. I mean, shimano has done great things for the industry. You know you'll never hear me with exception trashing any of their products.
Speaker 3:But, um, you know, one of the big things too is like well it's. Cycling is just an aspect of what Shimano is doing.
Speaker 2:The same things, they're doing it at their pace and then SRAM does their pace and and they're not always the same, and sometimes Shimano kills it. They do Honestly, they, they come out with something and they just kill it.
Speaker 3:Um, sram has just lately been so much faster to things we so we like to we we engage with, like the enthusiast segment of this of this hobby, which is the people that are at bike shops that, you know, like new stuff, like to put it to its limits and, you know, test for future stuff, like, yeah, we would rather be, you know, making something and bringing something new and hearing your feedback than just in our own, you know, silo make something that we think is perfect by ourselves and I gotta tell you something that I'm personally making a big change in my life to not pick sides, and that's true.
Speaker 1:You're trying to do that in lots of things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so I have moved away from one brand in my suspension to adopt more brands. And you know, I'm going to do that with my drivetrain, I'm going to do that with other things to to make sure that I am well-rounded person.
Speaker 1:As a bike shop owner, that's a good idea.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and, and I don't want to just pick something just because you know it's Raiders or Cowboys, you know, I'm just you know.
Speaker 3:I don't want that either. I like a bike shop employer that entertains everything.
Speaker 2:If you see a bike out there with one brand in the drive train and one brand in the brakes, that's very common, you know, and I think that's a good way to approach it. You know, and it may be surprising that it's the opposite on one bike and the opposite on another. You just get what's good for you.
Speaker 1:So, jimmy, you got any final thoughts for our listeners?
Speaker 3:Well, I feel very strongly about the brake bedding.
Speaker 2:Have you? Do you know any shops that use those machines?
Speaker 3:Yes, actually I've seen a few pop up recently.
Speaker 1:They're pretty cool.
Speaker 3:I think that could be a really big game changer.
Speaker 1:Oh shit, what are you talking about? I might have to buy one of those things. Oh, you won't want to do it. They're very expensive.
Speaker 2:I think, you could make one out of a cooler motor.
Speaker 3:I'm pretty sure you really could.
Speaker 1:It's essentially just a machine, just put a rubber band on the brake lever and more or less to prescribed extents and I really do think that you know that is something again.
Speaker 3:we could get into a whole nother episode of that, but I think I think so Primarily.
Speaker 2:You know, if you live in an area with like bad weather and stuff, like we don't even want to go test ride when it's raining not that it rains here much, but if it's snowing or raining you're not taking your bike out, and so they may be not getting bread in and the the bike gets stuck on the floor for sale with the thought that we'll do it later, and then the customer goes and takes it home and doesn't have the experience. So this machine lets you do it in the shop, so you don't have to go around the block, you don't have mechanics like coming back, like out of breath, like me.
Speaker 1:So did you know? Ben Chandler is going to go buy one of these. Oh, yeah, absolutely, but shout out to Ben at.
Speaker 2:Ben's bikes. To all those people listening, this is a prime place to make something, because right now there's two brands that I know of and they're very expensive and I this is like a.
Speaker 1:I'm cutting this out. Okay yeah, they need to sell this service. We've been looking for a product. We've been looking for a product rollers.
Speaker 2:You just take the back and put a motor on it. That's it. That's all you need.
Speaker 3:I'll close with an almost anti-sales pitch, which is before you decide that you need to go out and buy something new, just check the settings and set up on your current product.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that is very good.
Speaker 1:Jimmy. Thanks a lot, brother. Thank you, guys I appreciate it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we'll do it again.
Speaker 2:We could do another hour. I know it's fun. Yeah, it is, it's awesome, it's fun, and then other people get to hear it?
Speaker 3:Can you dig it? Can you dig it, can you dig it?
