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Are we looking at the next big mountain bike innovation? A technology that will go down in history in the same category as the disc brake or the suspension fork? The first performance benefit targeted by . stems from the natural weight distribution of a bicycle – light up front, with just the fork and front wheel plus the (small) percentage of your weight; and much heavier in the rear. This gives the front end a much lower Moment of Inertia, making it more sensitive to impulse forces and therefore easier to unsettle. The benefit of the . system here is that the “connection” that is created effectively adds weight to the front of the bike when a force tries to knock it off line, adding stability, especially through rough terrain. The second phenomenon they’re aiming to solve, and one that was harder for me to wrap my head around initially, is the effects of wheel flop. When you turn the bars, you create a relative angle between the tire and ground, causing the tire contact patch to lift up. This creates wheel flop, and the weight of the rider creates a force on the steering system which makes it fall over. When you turn, you effectively lift a component of the bike-and-rider weight up by 10-12mm to get back to center, although it’s distributed between the full turn so doesn’t feel like such an effort. Over the course of a ride, this fatigues the rider slightly, and so KIS aims to reduce this fatigue by storing the energy from the initial turn, and giving it back to the rider when they are returning to center. The effects of wheel flop are perhaps the most detrimental on a climb, where it causes the rider to input more energy to pedal and push the steering back to center, and so the . system may reduce the likelihood of stalling out, or simply save energy to be used in propelling the rider forwards. Another proposed benefit of the system is the feeling of the natural center position of steering that it produces, thanks to the counter-force it adds to the steering that lets your hands feel where the midpoint is. This is only likely to be felt when riding on ultra-loose terrain, but when there’s no traction on the front wheel, being able to feel the position where the wheel is pointing straight ahead could theoretically lead to less likelihood of crashing. In the same vein, Fabien Barel was keen to point out his biggest stand-out phenomenon – the connection between the front and rear wheels. He likened the system to allowing the rider to be able to turn the bike “like a ski”, with the bars helping to keep the rear wheel in-line. In loose terrain this could lead to less chance of the rear wheel oversteering, and potentially give a competitive edge when carving hard. Certainly, there’s a lot going on with this relatively simple system, so I was very keen to get it out onto the trails and feel it for myself. Read the full written review here: Get your Loam Wolf gear here: #keepitstable #kis #syntace #canyon #canyonbikes #mountainbike ------------------------------------ FOLLOW US Website: Instagram: Facebook: Chapters: 0:00 - Intro 0:30 - . Explained 3:58 - How it works 7:00 - Riding with . 10:00 - Final Thoughts #theloamwolf #enduromtb
