Lal Bikes 2024 recap
There’s been lots going on at Lal Bikes this past year. As mentioned in our last newsletter, we’ve been in a bit of stealth mode to focus while we develop a frame. We’re not ready to reveal the most juicy details, but read on for some insight.
At the beginning of 2024, Sam James from Singletracks visited our shop, and we went on a ride, both on Nicolai Nucleon 16 Supre bikes. Here’s a link to Sam’s article. In there, Sam shares his riding impressions of the Supre Drive, commenting on its efficiency: “Having ridden the new high pivot Trek Slash earlier in the year, the Supre Drive feels more efficient right off the bat, a combination of the high anti-squat of the frame, and the low-drag drivetrain.” Sam also comments on the quietness of the Supre Drive: “On the way down was where I really tuned into how quiet Supre Drive is. The bike is essentially silent, especially on high-speed chattery sections of trail, where the high-pivot suspension and Supre Drive work together seamlessly as a bump-eating machine, ripping noiselessly through the forest.” Here are the two bikes freshly washed after that ride:
I made some mistakes in this whole adventure of developing and commercializing the Supre Drive, so we’ve experienced more headwind than I would like in bringing this idea to market. But fundamentally, I know that the Supre Drive will become a common type of drivetrain on mountain bikes. It just makes sense. The rider’s experience is better, with the same or better drivetrain performance while being more durable with ground clearance. The challenge is not about the rider’s experience but about business things that need to be overcome.
The biggest business challenge is frames having to be designed for the drivetrain. It was awesome for Nicolai to develop the Nicolai Nucleon 16 equipped with the Supre Drive. We learned a ton from that collaboration. However, I made some mistakes and wasn’t able to keep up with the pace that they wanted to go at, so there ended up being some technical issues that could have been avoided with a slower more methodical R&D process. Also, they made design choices that made the frame quite heavy. These technical issues combined with the bike industry’s plunge made the Nucleon difficult to sell.
I want to demonstrate that the Supre Drive can be on a more typical all-mountain bike with less travel than the Nucleon and with normal weight, so in the summer of 2023, I started designing a frame. Unlike the first two frames that I designed, this one would be not for developing new versions of the Supre Drive, but instead for sale, to be a state-of-the-art frame equipped with the Supre Drive and brought to market.
We’re using a clever, new type of suspension design. The idler pulley of the Supre Drive is positioned forward, which is needed for the drivetrain to work with wide-range cassettes, but this also has the advantage of reducing cross-chaining angles which in turn reduces wear and friction in the chain. This forward idler pulley position opens up some uncharted territory with suspension and frame design. While visiting my family in Chelsea at the end of 2023, I had a bit of a eureka moment for a suspension design. I spent the following months designing the suspension system and a 3D model of a frame with that suspension.
Alex and I decided to make the rear end of the frame (the swing arm) out of carbon and the front triangle out of steel. This is because the rear end is unsprung weight, so minimizing this weight improves suspension performance. And for the front triangle, steel rides nicely while being relatively low-cost to manufacture. To make the swing arm out of carbon, we were going to have to machine some molds. The first step, though, was to machine a clone of Alex. Just joking – first step was to do some machine maintenance supervised by safety officer Benji.
Alex has experience with composites, so he has taken on the bulk of the work of figuring out how to build high-quality carbon fiber frame parts. Carbon composites are a fascinating material, as you probably know if you’ve ever felt a bare carbon part in your hands – stiff as steel while weighing nothing. I designed the swing arm while in a tight feedback loop with Alex about how the tooling will be made and the carbon fiber laid up. With our CNC mill, Alex machined four mold halves out of big slabs of aluminum (two for each half of the swing arm). Here’s a photo on Instagram of a pair of mold halves. The following photo is Alex laying down the very first layer of prepreg carbon for our first prototype swing arm part:
In March of 2024, Alex and I were joined by a third team member, Jacob Burggraf. Jacob had recently graduated from mechanical engineering at the University of Victoria when he showed up at our door somewhat randomly and asked for a job. This was refreshing in this world of emails (like this one, sorry). Jacob’s keen about fabrication. I welded my first two frames, but I let Jacob have fun with welding the prototype front triangle for our new frame. Jacob has a strong desire to do high-quality work, which shows in the results of what he makes. Also, he shreds the gnar just like the rest of us, so we’ve been stoked to have him on board. Here’s Jacob welding the seat tube to the bottom bracket shell.
In 2024, we made great progress in the development of a new type of chain tensioner cartridge. The previous chain tensioner cartridge was a long component inserted into the down tube of the Nicolai Nucleon 16. It has hydraulic damping, which performs better and is more durable than the clutch on conventional derailleurs. However, the previous chain tensioner cartridge took up a lot of space in the down tube which has increasingly been used by storage compartments and batteries in modern bikes. The new chain tensioner cartridge is way smaller and doesn’t go up the down tube. This smaller size will make the Supre Drive more appealing to other bike companies. We’re going to prove out this new chain tensioner cartridge on our frame. This new cartridge has a spring that we custom make, which involves winding steel into shape and then giving it a heat treatment to have the bend-resistant properties needed in springs. It’s too early to share more details about the cartridge, but here’s Jacob quenching hot steel in oil as part of the heat treatment process:
I could go on for quite a while longer about the adventures at Lal Bikes in 2024, but this email’s getting long, so I’ll leave it at that. There’s lots to come from Lal Bikes. Thanks to all of you for your support and encouragement this past year. Ride on!