Manitou’s new Dorado fork for 2009

      

Manitou’s new Dorado fork for 2009

Originally uploaded by Velo Fello

I’ve not seen anything in the press, so they might be wanting to keep it under wraps, but then again they were showing it at Taipei show so it must be public right…?

Anyways, possibly breaking some sort of embargo or not, here in all it’s glory is the “new” Dorado fork from Manitou. Possibly the only product I have ever lusted after – though I don’t really know why.

Sure it looks pretty, and if they have sorted out the dampers (as they promised me they have) then why shouldn’t it work just as well as it looks?

Looks darn fine to me, with those big lairy decals it’s pornographic even. I’ll be trying to strip off the decals as soon as I get my hands on a set – I’m going for the underground ninja look this season….

A good weekends workshop fettling

During which time i managed to reduce three perfectly serviceable bikes into…

one. Good work.

I now have several piles of kit, which I am going to use to re-build the bikes that did, until I came along, work just fine.

It was fun though… and my new Aggressive XC bike is finished. Ready to go and do some…errr… aggressive XC.

Super stiff and short 4x frame, with a Pike 140mm air fork on the front, superlight Mavic wheels with big 2.35 Schwalbe tyres. Superb fun ripping the XC.

Old faithfull

I went for a ride today – on ‘old faithfull” my trusty rusty 853 hardtail. Recently pimped up with the addition of Shim’s new XTR with RF shifters…

These new shifter pods have just a genius action, soo smooth, so easy to use, as the upper trigger button can be both pulled (like all Shimano) or pushed (like..errr the other company called S..omething)…

I still rode like a spanner though…

Tolerance

Originally I thought I’d use this blog to show off a few nice/rare/new bike bits. You know tease you lot with sexy kit and…well…show off…

So how’s this for a sexy front end…?
USE Atom Bars
USE Race Stem
XTR shifters (old school)
Avid Speed Dial Ultimate vee-brake levers – check out that precision, finish…

Now at this point I have to point out: these components have the tightest tollerances known! You cannot slide the bars into the stem – you have to take off the face plate and gently rock the bars into the clamp. You cannot slide the brake levers onto the bars – you have to remove the clamps and press it onto the bar. The quality and care of these components shines though, a true pleasure to build!

Now shown:
Cane Creek Ergo II bar ends and Loc-On grips

All now fitted to my “hack bike” – a old sample alu frame with 700C wheels I use in place of a road bike.

Do you caress your bike?

“So Velofello, What is Caressability” I hear you ask?

It’s the touchy-feely, “I-want-one-of-those” niceness that seems to make all the difference to to a product’s perceived value, and thereby goes from mere “item” to “object-of-desire”.

I have a feeling it’s a term we’re going to be getting increasingly cozy with in the bikeworld; time for the wise to stop selling products, and start selling dreams.

Remember the first Fox forks you saw; tell me you didn’t stroke those machined alu top caps? Likewise the engineers at SRAM seem to have caressability in mind (Form over function? Discuss…)with all their MY07 products – the X.0 RD is so darn funky I’d have slept with it.