Pez Cycling News - Interbike 2011: Another Round! by Charles Manantan
Original link: http://www.pezcyclingnews.com/?pg=fullstory&id=9849&status=True&catname=...
Interbike 2011: Another Round!
Monday, November 14, 2011 7:34:58 AM PT
by Charles Manantan
Volagi goes full Hydro, Gore lightens up, Giro's price is right, American Classic go Mag and tubeless and TEXmarket bring options on top of options.
Volagi Bikes were talking about a project with Pez for the better part of a year and they wanted something just a little different, but production worthy.
With just a few weeks to go before this last Interbike, one of their bare frame Liscio models landed here and the easy thought was to take their idea of cable actuated disc brakes and simply get rid of all but a few inches of the cables. That required a little help from the guys at TRP Brakes and a stop at Fairwheel Bikes, as they've become (in my opinion) arguably the premier custom project shop in the US (where "custom" goes beyond buying a frame and selecting widely available retail parts). Fairwheel reworked the frame to clear a path for the Hydraulic lines and then did the full build up.
The result was the first example of full Hydro production road that will be available from Volagi.
The Parabox unit was an easy choice as TRP have come further in developing this tech for Cross and road in a production available platform. The unit itself sits fairly neatly under Ritchey's new C260 stem and Superlogic Carbon II bars.
Mounting the actual Parabox is no more difficult than setting up a spacer under your stem, but the fine tuning is best left to those folks comfortable with new high end Mountain Bike Hydro work...
The Parabox is a slick unit but it wouldn't be complete without high end calipers and TRP's matched units work very well.
The remaining group was all SRAM Red/Black.
The entire rework project happened over just a few weeks and traveled up from Arizona to the show floor. Yet after going through the parts gathering decisions and build, it turns out I won't even get a leg over the bike... Bringing a Hydro Disc package back to Arizona for review just didn't make as much sense as sending it off to Vancouver (dammit...), so you'll see a review from a more logical climate very shortly...