A hands-on guide to Shimano’s new SPD-SLR

0:00This show is supported by ODO. When you buy business software from lots of vendors, the costs add up and it gets complicated and confusing. ODO solves this. It's a single company that sells a suite of enterprise apps that handles everything from accounting to inventory to sales. ODO is all connected on a single platform in a simple and affordable way. You can save money without missing out on the features you need. Check out ODO at odo.com. That's odo.com. Hello everybody. Welcome back to GeekWarning, this cycling tech focus podcast from Escape Collective. You've heard that intro before. I'm Dave Roomb. And welcome back, Ron McLaughlin. How you doing, Ron? Good job sitting here playing with my midget time, is that how you plan to sit? Renewers? Yeah. Finally invested in. Oh nice. Yeah. They're very free moving, very easy to just free, presumably very precise measurements.

1:04Did you buy them from an official retailer? No comment. Can I introduce some heartbreak for you? Yeah. Widely counterfeited product. Oh, I know, yeah. Yeah, no, I do plan to like double check this serial number and all that to make sure that these are not kind of fit. But there are some really. You made me do that extra best. So maybe you got one of those and they'll be mine. From mine came with a document that had a QR code on it that brought me to the official website. All the good counterfeits do. Yeah. As I was saying, it doesn't tell me much. Anyway, I did plan to double check the serial number. Yeah, nice. Okay. Good. All right. Welcome to the fancy California world. It's nice place to be. Maybe next week we can talk about why I need these.

2:05Yes. Yes. And why also the snooze and readers won't have seen my byline on the website much of lit. And these these developers have a lot to do with that. Yeah. Ronan is tired. No. Very good. All right. Well, with that. This week we've got a bit of a I'm going to say a bit of a jumbled episode. We've got some big news from Shimano, which we're going to talk about and get into. Say we'll probably have a bit of a cynical viewpoint on that. So we're going to get into it. Got a little bit of other tech news from around the around the world. Hopefully I'll manage to chat with Suvi before she heads off to see auto Europe because she's been writing the new Canyon Grail that I believe comes out this week. And at the end of this episode, instead of Oscar Ranch, our members will instead hear an interview with the founder, the owner of bike flights because there's been some changes to how bikes are being afraid at all the cost associated with them. And it's quite interesting to hear how bike flights are a changing guess their approach

3:09to how they're shipping bikes to try to save people money there. I think there's something anyone that's selling a bike or shipping a bike or buying a bike that's coming air freight could potentially benefit from in the near future. So we'll get to that at the very end. Ronan, this week is the week that we see the official announcement of the official release of Shimano's new pedals. The pedals that have been teased and accidentally leaked many times over, I guess most famously we saw them at Ruby earlier in the year where a van to pole and Phillips and went to do a bike change and realize that they couldn't clip into each other's pedals or one couldn't clip into the other pedals into the others. So we've said we've known about these pedals coming. They're now official Shimano SPD SLR. So it's a new generation of the road pedal. Yeah, I guess headline facts of that Shimano has released both Jureis and Altagra level versions of it.

4:10They've released some shoes to go along with them again, Jureis and now an Altagra level shoe as well, which is the first for a long time. Previously Shimano sort of skipped that price point in their road shoes. But yeah, I think we should we should talk about these pedals because SPD SL has been the market for more than 20 years and this is running that streak. Before we talk about that and we do definitely talk about that, we also need to talk about or at least mention that this is not Jureis released that everybody is waiting for. This is not a full group set. Part of me wishes that they would have just saved the way this and the pedals and the group set for one big release. Part of me thinks that's nice that they're trickling it out. Part of me long so days where there was a C-post included a group set where you had with all of this. Yeah, so I think I think it's worth noting that like to me, it's quite evident that Shimano had some things ready to go and some things are not ready to go.

5:12I think the Jureis group sets are not ready to go but the wheels are ready and the pedals are clearly ready and so I'm kind of of the opinion that I don't mind that they haven't waited to trickle it all out. And I think from like a storytelling point of view or like a customer explanation point of view, the easy approach would have just been to wait for it all at once. Because right now it's just they've created a real mess. But, but. Yes, that's what you think is the group set is probably over to an update at this point. Not in terms of like quality or anything, but it just, I mean, just staying relevant. I think it's probably over to you. How much do you think these releases that we have seen have been just like, oh yeah, we're still here. We're cooking away. Something is coming. Don't forget about us. Probably. Yeah, I mean, probably as much as just we've got this product ready so we may as well start

6:12selling it. I mean, it's yeah, new things do sell and I think for Shimano, it's as much as showing relevance as it is just as much of like just keeping the lights on, I guess, you know, like why why sit on that new pedal for longer than they have to or why sit on those new wheels longer than they have to. And I actually heard similar from inside as a Shimano that they were little, they were a little annoyed at how things were previously rolled out on the mountain bike side because, you know, we obviously saw massive lays in that the, you know, the one by wireless shifting that we now have from Shimano. But apparently like that, some of those parts were available sooner than other parts. And so I, my understanding is that like the brakes were ready to go sooner than the drivetrain, but they kept the brakes back. And some of the torque I'd heard was like maybe, maybe just maybe things, you know, the launch would have been better if those things were separated out because, you know, the custom buying brakes is not necessarily customer buying the new drivetrain.

7:13What you're saying is this should have pumped the brakes. Potentially. Or I'll just let go of them. Yeah. It depends on which way you interpret pumping the brakes. But anyway, we're getting off topic topic, but you have these new pedals you've been driving in the you have the new cleats that work with the new pedals, but the work with the old pedals. Yes. I don't have the new shoes. You don't have the new shoes, but I have, I have fondled them. Yeah. I have fondled them. I photographed them. I have put them on scales. They, that is all in my article that is live. But some people are hearing this. But yeah, the pedals I have ridden. And I went as far, because they look so subtly different to the previous SBDSL system, I actually went as far to go ride my bike with the old pedal on the left with the old cleat and the new pedal on the right with the new cleat. And yes, there's the big difference here. The big selling feature is a 2.3 millimeter reduction in stack height.

8:15That's it. Just 2.3 millimeters. I knew that that would be a thing and that I wouldn't want to ride too far with my legs that are effectively different lengths. But I have to tell you, if it were a blind test, I don't know if it would be that obvious to me. I was, I was going back and forth trying to take notes of the differences left to right, right to left. It's very subtle. These are very, very similar pedals that Shimano has introduced to complete incompatibility between. That's what I was going to say. The big selling point is this reduced stack. There is a secondary selling point in terms of their claiming that they're easier to engage the cleats into. Marginally. Yeah. Marginally as you find from riding in both pedals at the same time. They're very subtly lighter as well. Which guarantee there are people listening to this. You're like, I have to use a 2 millimeter Shimano Mesh.

9:18The all pedal on the left and the new pedal on the left and whatever. But there is a big, big side effect drawback to these updates and that is compatible with it. There's a new cleat. The SPD SLR is incompatible with the SPD SL because of this new cleat. They've changed the shaping of the cleat. In fact, it looks close enough, but it is just slightly different that they don't fit in each other. It's done. Shimano achieved the lower stack height by doing what other systems that have achieved lower stack height have done, which has kind of changed up the cleat system and how it interfaces with the shoe. We've seen that from McCoy. We've seen that from SRM and Q365 recently. We've also seen it from Speedplay where you can get a 4 bolt whole shoe and ditch their converter plate and then you achieve lower stack height. You guys doing it by, from the cleat, they're removing the previous rectangular steel washes that allow your four after adjustment in the cleat.

10:22They've deleted that. By doing that, they've been able to shorten the bolt length and basically just have the cleat sit that much closer to the sole of the shoe. That's kind of where that 2.3 millimeter gain is coming from is by Shimano moving the four after cleat adjustment into the sole of the shoe. Which not all shoes have. Not all shoes have. Shimano has been doing this for quite a while. Their new shoes further increase the amount of range on offer. I also have shoes here from Specialized, from Bond, from Lake. There's one other pair I can't remember, but they all had some level of sliding for off range. But the range is more limited than what Shimano shoes offer. So there's a good chance that the range in those shoes isn't enough for some people to hit their the fit that they want. So it's a big compromise in order to achieve a 2.3 millimeter gain. And yes, that is as small as it sounds like it really is not.

11:23It's not a substantial gain. Shimano is still not beating any records for the low stack height pedal. They're still beaten by these new SRM pedals. They're still beaten by those are Koi pedals. They're still beaten by their own Juraise AX pedals from 45 years ago. So yeah, it's a lot of effort. It's a lot of change. It's a lot of messing around for what it is. Yeah, I mean, I have shoes here. I'm going to guess I've done that, but I want to say Rafa, Trek, at least a couple of all of the shoes here that have no sliding for enough to the boxes into the shoes so that would leave you just worth the regist for after range with these new cleats. If you had a pair of shoes like that, it would either leave you with a great they were just for after range or miss no adjustment. If you wanted that low stack height, alternatively Shimano is offering another cleat. There's four cleats to choose from. You've got your regular yellow, red and blue cleats with these low stacks.

12:27So same as same sort of float options at SPDSL currently offers. Shimano is also introducing this fourth cleat, which is a yellow equivalent. So it's like the highest level of float. It's three degrees float. And that looks just like the current SPDSL cleat. It gives you back the four after adjustment in the cleat, but it fits an SPD SLR pedal. And the irony of this is that by bringing those that four after adjustment back, you lose all the benefits in the new pedal system. So it's back to the same stack height as the previous. I'm sorry. You've just lost me like unless you have shoes, which I appreciate there are considerable number of shoes that offer that adjustment. But unless you have shoes already that offer that adjustment, then you're going to end up like those new gray cleats offer the yellow cleats range of float.

13:28And so if you previously used blue or red and you have a pair of shoes that don't offer that adjustment, then the new pedals just aren't going to work for you at the moment until like all of you need to buy yourself some new Shimano shoes. And what I was about to say was that that's before we even get into the question around when there's any question, we know that these aren't backwards compatible. And so they're not forwards compatible. So if you have the old, if you have three bikes and three already have the old Shimano pedals and you buy these new Shimano pedals, you need to buy three pairs to have compatible there across your bike or you're swapping the one pedal back and forth. Yep. So just to be clear, officially the cleats are not cross compatible. I did test that. An SPD SL cleats will not fit in the new pedal body. But the new cleat will fit in the old pedal body, but it just rocks around heaps. You basically introduce a bunch of like toggle or off access play into the system.

14:32So it fits. It seems to be secure enough that like it's maybe safe, but absolutely I'm not recommending it. It's going to be a terrible system to do. So yeah, it's not compatible. You're going to be, if you own multiple sets of Shimano pedals at the moment and you want to use the same shoe across all your bikes to adopt this new system, you basically have to buy all new pedals. So. So you and I, I don't know. I think they're not great with their backwards compatible. They think, are they? This is not like recurring theme at this point. I mean, out of point, no one is to defend Shimano. I mean, they've been great for 23 years. With these pedals, I mean, like in terms of like the group sets often have seemingly things like they could wire. They draw a line in the sand. Yeah. Yeah. And they've drawn a line in the sand here and I am just left questioning why for a line that is 2.3 millimeter thick. Yeah.

15:33I would be more okay with this if there was a bigger timesable benefit to it. You mentioned the E-Coy and the SRM Q36.5. I had a chart. There you go. Oh. There's the key point. I would be more okay with that if the Q36.5 and the E-Coy pedals both like didn't they drop the bearing on the axle or they did something there to actually reduce the stack height and the pedal as well. So had Shimano combined the cleat advancements in stack height and then added more into the pedal. Then you would say, okay, well, there's five more difference here. But it's beginning to get significant or had the at least find a way to do this while maintaining backwards and forwards compatibility. Again, that would be okay. Well, I can love for that because it's not, you know, people can phase their way into it.

16:34Yeah. And I'm kind of left. I'm left wondering a few things. This is all covered in my review on the site. But I'm left wondering why Shimano couldn't have achieved similar in an SPDSL compatible cleat. Could they not have deleted out, you know, you showed a bolt and deleted out before after adjustment and made a direct fit cleat to its own shoes while retaining pedal compatibility. I'm also left wondering whether this has anything to do with the fact that the SPD SL patent expired not so long ago. And they now Shimano are facing competition using their own design that they're, you know, whether it's for Verro or Garmin or a whole bunch of brands on Ali Express at the moment that are using the SPD SL cleat all of a sudden. I'm left wondering whether this isn't just like a sales strategy for Shimano to sort of create their own closed off sales channel again with a new paid and it products. I can't, I haven't had a confirmation of that. That's just me creating a conspiracy theory. But it's, yeah, I am just left wondering like this seems like a lot of upset for what

17:41the benefits really are. It's said, I mean, Shimano has made these tweaks while keeping seemingly keeping all the great reliability that they had in before. And so I would say like, you know, your mention of like why didn't they offset the bearing, I would push back and say the bearing system on Shimano pedals is one of the things is one of the reasons why it's the first pedal system that I recommend everyone. It's just so reliable. And so I like that they didn't mess with that. I also like the fact that Jurese and Altagra pedals now have equal stack heights, which wasn't the case before. So yeah, I think that's, that's a new unique selling feature. You know, previously I'd recommend getting Jurese pedals because they were lower and they had better cornering clearance. Everyone always thought it was a difference about the weight. It was never about that. It was always about the thickness of the pedal afforded by the better bearing system on Jurese. Now Shimano has the bearing systems aren't the same, but they have at least brought stack

18:41heights equal. All that said, I do want to, you also want to mention that the stack height will affect your, the stack height of your pedal will affect your functional saddle height. If you decide that you want to maintain saddle height, I mean, this is what the question is with changing crank length is what do you do with saddle height? Some say you keep the height to the spindle to the pedal body the same. Others say you don't because then you're changing to do things without getting into that rabbit hole. If we assume someone gets these new pedals, this stack height is almost three millimeters of the risk of they dropped their saddle by three mill to compensate for that. I'm not going to say that there's a biomechanical advantage to that. I think once you make that saddle compensation, any potential biomechanical advantage is

19:41lost. But what you could well see and what I have seen personally is that when you reduce that saddle height, you can then reduce the height of the handlebars at the front end and having actually just in the last three months, been in a wind tunnel and during the session dropped my saddle height by three millimeters. I did find a six watt arrow saving by just making that saddle height adjustment. No, I didn't adjust the crank length or the pedal stack height or anything that's not exactly the same. But there could be a benefit there that some people will find. And that's why we talk about the SRM system. The little track I've been using those in time trials because you're just in stack height, getting the right order to the ground, just in front of the arrow, potentially getting faster. Yeah. Yeah, there's all sorts of other, I think that is probably the most practical performance advantage here. I think the other benefit to stack height reduction is maybe in the biomechanical space where

20:45bike fitters would probably tell you that they see better foot stability with the lower stack height system and therefore everything flows from the foot. If the foot's more stable, then the ankle's more stable, then he's more stable. The hip's more stable. I was going to say just on that, I wander off the gains and that are in moving from the cheapest knockoff 10 millimeters of stack height Shimano copy to a genuine, serious one, which was already pretty minimal. And is there going to be another gain moving from the previous generation to this one, which is 2.8, muller, whatever? I don't know. Is a genuine answer like question. Yeah. It's such a marginal difference. But yeah, I think those are the big benefits. I think, I mean, I looked into it. I think we're in, you've looked into it in the past. I can't find any good reliable studies that really prove that there's power efficiencies to having a lower stack height pedal. I know like SRM and Q365, I think, made some claim about there being a study that showed a correlation.

21:45I can't find that study. I can't. I can't make it. It doesn't. Maybe, yeah, maybe they have access to scientific papers. I don't. But yeah, I mean, there's not, I would say there's not clear cut scientific evidence that shows lower stack height pedals automatically result in better power transfer. But at the same time, there's seemingly no downside to having a lower stack height system assuming it doesn't come with like compromise in reliability or durability and all that. So the fact that Shimano has been able to keep all the good things about its system and reduce a few mill is good. But it has come at this cost of introducing this new incompatibility, which is going to confuse the heck out of people. Which is the frustrating part for us here. But if we want to put another 10 foil hats on, could be the very reason they've done it. Yes, yes. Yeah. I think so. Well, with that, I'm going to encourage people to go check out my review of the pedals.

22:48I want to encourage people to speak. Speaking of super reliable bearing systems. Yes. The other big news here was that Shimano has updated its road shoes just quickly on this is that they a few weeks ago introduced a new last, which was first introduced with some gravel shoes. It's now in the road shoes. Dinalust 2.0. Headline story is that they have previously they had regular fit. They had wide fit and they had a women's specific fit. There are now they removed the women's specific fit. There's now narrow, regular and wide. So they're just no longer gendered fits. And basically the regular and the wide have both gotten wider. So Shimano have sort of listened to feedback that their wide shoe wasn't wide enough and they've added quite a bit to it. I think about six mil in the tow box region, they've added volume.

23:49The regular fit I think gains about three millimeters. And then the narrow fit is a more traditional fit for those that like old city shoes or perhaps like the previous women's last than that new narrow fit is going to be the replacement for that. So yeah, I think that's probably just worth noting that big changes there from Shimano in terms of the shaping of the shoes and the sizing. It sounds like they're going to be more accessible than they were before. I had heard from numerous people that like their Shimano shoes, they just were so wider. So I mean, yeah, but she gets Alex to look at those, given what he's looked down to. She worth the net in the past and why it doesn't always mean wide and yeah. So where that worth comes from being as equally important as just factor is wider. Yes, yeah. Yeah, so yeah, wider and more volumeness is kind of the brief on that one. So worth looking at, but yeah, it's not a product I've used as if yet just samples are

24:53still pretty scarce on those shoes. All right, anything else to discuss on the new new Jure front? Not yet. Not yet. Okay. And not soon, but eventually, yes. Okay. All right. Well, let's take a quick break. We'll be back in a moment with some more techniques. We're back and Ronan had to disappear. He got greatly distracted by the potential that his new mid-autoria calipers might not be real. So he was spiraling. So we're going to jump over to talk about a new bike and Superlopnin. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you. What is this new bike? I know you've spent a bunch of time with it, so tell us about it. Yeah, it's a new Canyon Grail. Hardly a surprise to most people probably think that it was already launched. It's only been teared since whatever may a pro time at least, so at least for three or

25:57four months probably. By now, but yeah, it's Canyon's gone a bit more aero and kind of raised here, bigger tire clearance with their raised gravel bike. So yeah, it's a new looking bike. Yeah, okay. So yeah, a little bit more error. Is it 57 mil clearance? I think I read in your review. Yes. Yeah. So quite a jump up from the old Grail, which arguably, I think Canyon had bad timing. The generation two came out October 2023. And I would probably argue that was about the time when gravel bikes were starting to kind of split into, let's go into mountain bike tire clearance or logistic with the 45, 42, 40. And they back then decided they're going to stick with the had 42 clearance on the Grail, which was very conservative then quite quickly.

26:58And now they were like, well, we're going to join the group off of big tire gravel bikes. So this one's got 57 clearance. And quite a few other things have changed as well. In terms of geometry and obviously the frame looks dramatically different to the previous generation. Yep. So I think, in your review, I think you mentioned it, the frame's a little bit heavier than before, but obviously significantly more error in it's in it shaping. I think you've also noted that the previous generation had like a one size fits all approach to or one size fits none in terms of like the handlebar width previously. I think every bike, is it every size used to come with a 42 bar? Is that right? Yeah, yeah. That's wild. I do think now, like they had the pro version of that bar, which I think was maybe 37 wide or so. But then that was another 400 quid or so. So how many people probably upgraded to that? Yep. And the smallest frame sizes used to come with 170, I think they've now rectified that,

27:59which is really good news. So yeah, I mean, how was it? You rode the not the smaller size, but the next size, I believe, is it the two excess? No, I rode the extra small. Oh, you rode the extra small. So not the extra excess small. Yeah. I am going to get the extra excess small to ride as well because I'm curious to compare how, how when you go to the far end of the size range and I can ride both. Yeah, how that's going to compare. And yeah, it felt like a familiar bike, even though quite a few things have changed. I really enjoyed the second generation as much as there were fit problems like the handlebar was too wide for me and the cranks were slightly too long for me. But the frame itself, I did enjoy it and I do think they did quite well already back then in making it like a racey, really efficient, reactive bike. But at the same time, it was pretty stable and kind of confident bike. And it's, I would say, was always best at just going fast in a straight line.

29:02It's not a bike that I was particularly enjoying with the mountain bike trails or single trackie bits, but if you wanted to really go fast, it was, it was really good bike for that. And the new generation feels the same. It's just that you can fit bigger tires so you can make it a little bit more comfy because I did try it with the Thunderbirds as well. So quite a big clearance obviously changes the bike quite a lot. It gets heavier to ride on the roads, but then yeah, you get a little bit more traction on the single track bits. Yeah, so the bike comes stock with 45s, but those Thunderbirds I think were 2.1. Yes. Yeah. So yeah, big, big bump up in size and probably still ample room once those are fitted as well. But yeah, I think they've obviously got three different tiers of frame, I believe. They've got the CF, CF SLR. SLX. SLX, yes. Yeah. And then the, what's the next one above that? CFR. CFR.

30:02So yeah, can you affect me? Yeah, crazy. Yeah. Yeah, the first version of, of frame, and I think the lightest version, the CFR is still around a kilogram for a frame. Yeah, it was just under, is it 980 if I'm not completely wrong? I don't have the weight in front of me. Yeah. So it's so much for it. And it looked like just very roughly, it looked like you sort of add 100 grams for each tiered down a frame. Yeah, just about, yeah. Yeah. I wouldn't say that it's a very noticeable, defends. Let me see. 989 is, yeah, to see if I claimed for medium sized frame. Okay. Yeah. So added a bit of weight. And it's like the two upper end tiers to have storage built in, is that right? They do. So the previous generation obviously had frame storage as well, but it was kind of at the upper part of closer to the head tube on the down tube. So above your bottle cage mount and it was quite a small storage that one or the opening

31:06was quite small. And now they've adopted the same style that they introduced with the injuries on the a couple months ago. So it's a little bit bigger is still quite a narrow hatch. But yeah, it works. I still, yeah, you can stuff things in there. The door itself, I would say, is not my favourite in that. I just feel like it's never come off, but it just does not seem to really sit flush. And there's just a little bit of kind of it feels like it's always a bit squint when I put it on. And then when you put a big bottle on it, I just feel like it's just if I have that fear that whole thing is going to come off. Right. So the hatches underneath the bottle cages it? Yes. Yeah. Down on the tube and yeah, you can get all the accessories for it. And then obviously the gray list, the more racy bike. So it doesn't have all the mounts that the grizzle, which is the adventure bike from Canyon has. But it still comes with top tube mounts for a bag.

32:07And then it's got a little really neat kind of quick bolts attachment bolts for frame bag. So that one I really enjoyed. Canyon has partnered with his cyclite. Yes. So these kind of very lightweight bags for it. And the frame bag, especially it just it comes comes off with just you just pull it off and release it. So I really, really enjoyed that. And it sits so nice and flush with the frame. Same as the top tube bag. So they designed frames, frame size specific bags for each size, even though like the extra small than I have is not the smallest frame. And even then I can't really fit a 500 mil bottle on the top bottle cage comfortably. It's kind of it's already touching the frame bag. So I have to then compromise my bottle size and how I get it out and everything. And I think on the smallest frame size, you're going to be struggling even more. So obviously you don't need a frame bag.

33:09You can just ride without, but it is a compromise if you do decide to get one. The other thing that stood out to me as a spike and it's a feature I guess so commonly lost on a race bike is mudguard compatibility, mudguard mounts like that's just something that just seems to be deleted as soon as race is put into the marketing material. I did can you give any indication as to why they did that? I think so this is I talk about this in the review. As much as they said about this being their new era, this bike being the new era of gravel racing bikes and whatnot, they still try to also say that it's good for everyday riders, just like non-competitive riders. And I think the mudguard mounting comes from there just that they same as with the ender race, they were really clear that people seem to want mudguards and that's something that they will continue to offer and they have done with this bike as well. Part of me personally also think it's this German practicality.

34:10Yeah, they just want to keep it there. I don't really see how many people are going to use for life on this bike, like full length mudguards but it's I mean it's no harm having the option. I know I know the bell gyms, the X cycle cycle cross races love a mudguard mount as well. You know they used to train on their their wide tide bikes, you know with slicks through the winter and with full length mudguards, you'd often see them clipped on to cycle cross bikes. Maybe that trend still continues, but yeah, it's definitely an interesting bike. And I think the mudguard and like as you say like the everyday aspect I think follows into maybe some of the geometry decisions. Like as you've noted in your review that it's perhaps not as like aggressive in its fit as other race bikes and that's after Canyon has made it more aggressive than before. Yeah, I think it's the disconnect maybe slightly in the kind of how they market it and how they position it in in warts rather than then actually when you look at the numbers,

35:12the Grail Previce generation already was a long bike. So the reach figures have stayed the same and they're still quite long when you compare it to other bikes, but it's just that they haven't changed like the C2 angle at all. So it's 73.5 across the range and especially again, I think looking at like runners probably better to talk about the progressive fits and everything, but to get more error, I do think it like a C2 angle would help to to match with the longer reach if you are looking at an arrow bike, which Canyon is saying that this is an error race bike. So it's there's a few things there that I think they they have kind of tried to keep I guess similar to what what was, but they have been again dropped the stack has dropped with the mill across the range. So it's no longer and it is relatively long, which kind of sounds good, but then you're going to say almost further away because you still have the same seat tube angle across the range.

36:16All right, so it is pretty racy in the scheme of things then. Yeah, yeah, it's still it's a long bike. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, all right, well, anything else to add, but we've got other tech news to get through. Is there anything else to talk about of the Grail? Should we just point people towards the website for more? Yeah, I think just read the review. Yeah, there's plenty there. It's one of my favorite colorways that I got to to try. It's a strawberry shake colorway. It's kind of pink and white, and I must admit it's it's kind of bright in my day running. It's really out there. I did still a colorway that I would have chosen, but I really enjoyed it. Matt finished your gloss. Now it's glossy. Oh, okay. All right. I would have taken the strawberry shake to be matte, but that's a I'm happy to hear its gloss easy to clean. Yeah, maybe it's like a satin should have been, I don't know. Oh well, sounds like I did right. So all right, well, let's say a quick break. We'll be back in a moment with some tech news to get through.

37:23All right, we're back. There's a couple other bikes. I guess we just want to quickly talk about and let people know about which first and first up on the list is the new Scott Spark DC. The DC stands for Downcountry, and I just thought this was a pretty cool mountain bike. It's a looks just like the regular spark that got released in revamps not so long ago, but the it's a longer travel version. So the DC stands for Downcountry. It's kind of like a lightweight trail bike this thing, and it's 140 mill of travel in the front, 138 in the rear. Just looks like a very, very nice bike, and I'm very happy to see Scott first. They I think they were one of the first brands many years ago to sort of do this like long-legged lightweight cross-country style, almost trail bike. This style of bike seemed to have disappeared from a lot of brands, ranges in recent years, but it's nice to kind of see this come back as like a really lightweight, you know, bike you'd probably spend all day on, but maybe not necessarily want to race on. So I'm all for it, but there's a feature on this bike that stood out to me most, and that I'm definitely for is that the bike has headset

38:28cable routing, but they've also put ports into the front of the head tube in case you don't want to utilize that headset cable routing. And I'm all for it. I think this is a really cool way to give options. It's probably worth knowing that they're not the only ones that have done this. It's I think before headset cable routing became popular, we sort of had these options and then they they went away, but Scott's way they've done it, like kind of using almost the head badge to do it, is just yeah worth noting and something and I want to see more of in off road bikes. I think the track check out I reviewed recently had something kind of similar, maybe not as cleanly done, but yeah, I don't know. So what do you what do you think of it? Which way would you be routing your cables? That's a tough question. Depends if someone's going to do it for me or if I have to do it. Yeah, yeah, I think that's valid. Yeah. Yeah, if I have a mechanic to do it, I would probably go internal, but I do like this. I actually got to see the bike in April, oh nice, before sea otter.

39:33And so I really really like it. There's so many little bits on it though, like the whole junction boss and bracket area where they have the safety date and everything. It's it's a there's there's so many little plasticgy, whatever material they actually are bits on this bike, but I love the look of it. It's a super sleek. And I also do appreciate the fact that instead of just introducing like a more cost-friendly, affordable, different layout, but is something for those who don't have a pro mechanic. Next to them all the time, they have actually thought about like, yeah, the consumer, like that they might not want that internal cable routing and that they could appreciate this. So that they've introduced like a new feature instead of just a more affordable frame material or or something like that. Yeah. And I think it's really clever because I think it's worth noting that like if you if you have deep pockets and you get the top end model, then you get like the SRAM access which is all wireless. And at that point, you kind of only have like a break

40:33hose running through the headset. Pretty easy to deal with. But on the lower end models, they they have their twin lock system, which is like a remote cable for locking out the suspension. You have a cable for the dropper post. You might even have a cable running to the derailleur. And so I love the fact that Scott's no longer just trying to like force all of that through a headset bearing and that they've come up with the solution. That's like, you know, if you've got the cheaper bike, then we're not going to compromise it by forcing all these extra bends into into where they shouldn't be. We're going to just give you a clean option. So yeah, I I'm all for it. I just want to see more of it. I yeah, it looks like a great bike and I'm kind of keen to see other brands sort of boring that that idea and and executing it. So just as well. So speaking of speaking of internal cable routing, we now have specialized with a future shock and internal cable routing. What days are we in today? I don't know, like it's previously, I think, specialised had said,

41:37like, you know, while bikes have the future shock, which is that little suspension under the stem, they said it was just kind of too hard basket or too complicated or too compromised to put internal cable routing on that bike. They now have an option that can merges the two, but it looks to me like they've somewhat avoided going through the future shock. They've just kind of gone from, say, from the stem, the cable, the hoses are exposed and then they enter at the headset. So a little bit of a compromise, I guess, you know, not not over complicate things, but yeah, it's just interesting that we're now, I think, Kaylee put it quite interestingly on one of our editor calls. He made some common along the lines of like, it's the end of days for people that want external cable routing. Now that we're getting future shock combined with internal cable routing, you know, headset cable routing is one, I think, was Kaylee's point. So, so he is, is this true?

42:39I don't want it to be true. Yeah, I mean, I don't want it to be true either, but it kind of seems like it just everything's just going that way now. And I never, well, I have to say not never, but I did not believe that this was coming. Yeah, yeah. So soon. No, I'm still sitting here kind of thinking that if I wish it into existence, it'll happen, which is off road bikes, kind of reverting back a little bit and giving the options just like that Scott. So, yeah, anyway, I'm just going to keep talking about all the brands that are giving that option and hopefully increasingly stop mentioning the brands that aren't. So, but yeah, anyway, it's an interesting update. It sounds like you have to, it's not something that you can just add on to pre-existing diverge bikes. It sort of, you know, can ask to be bought all in all as one from from what I've understand, if specializes take care. And is only available for the S works?

43:42That rings true. There you go. But yeah, I mean, as always, they tend to filter those things down with time. So, I guess it's a sign of where things are probably going for specialised, but yeah, anyway, I'll continue to buy bikes with where the bearings are kept, the bearings are not cableguards. Yeah. All right. Lucky last on the news list is Wolfthuth. They have another new product that seems like barely a week goes by without them releasing a new product and without them expanding into new new areas. And this week, we get the official release of their hubs. So, first real wheel product from Wolfthuth. And I'm sure it's not the last. And yeah, the hubs are currently being released just for gravel and mountain bike with teases of mortar come. But yeah, on the gravel side, there's both straight pool and j-band variants, variety of colours. And then internally,

44:42I think it's just interesting that they've they did their own testing. They claim to have created their own designs and done extensive testing. And then, after all that, they settled on, they picked NVs in a drive free hub system, which I found quite interesting. So, yeah, it comes of a variety of different options as far as tooth count. And the stock version comes with a 40 tooth engagement system. So, yeah, knowing Wolfthuth, I'm sure these have been tested extensively and and more importantly, you know, come with the right to repair. So, Wolfthuth has always done really good job of like offering very detailed manuals and videos of how to rebuild them, along with a full range of spare parts. So, but dare I say, like, when I say that loud, I actually think a lot of Wolfthuth's competition in the space, like high end, nice, anodized hubs. I can't think of many brands that don't offer a full catalog of spares. Yeah, I don't, I can't think of any either. And they're in this price bracket.

45:45Yeah, because in this price bracket, like, I think they're a little bit more or then say a hope hub. I'd say they're more in the line of like industry nine. They're getting into the Chris King bracket. They kind of seven hundred and thirty US dollars for a set. Yeah, just for the hubs. So, yeah, I mean, Project 321, I mean, there's a whole wide industries, there's Philwood, there's all sorts of brands that make pretty colored hubs that spin on sealed bearings. And yeah, it's an interesting category for Wolfthuth to get into. I would have assumed it's saturated. But I do think there's something to it that Wolfthuth has been expanding their offerings in, you know, like, would you have a really nice custom build bike where you have Wolfthuth headset, but you don't have Wolfthuth, I mean, now you could get pedals as well. And then you're, I don't know, yeah, your hubs are from a different brand. Now you can match it all. And I think that's the, that's the big thing that is instead of getting the Chris Kings, even if it's the same color, it's just that it's not the same.

46:49Yeah, I think it's exactly that. And I think yeah, if you were going to start with like doing that build, I think probably Wolfthuth has been missing out on a lot of the market, because you're probably going to pick that like the wide industries headset or the, the Chris King headset, if you know you're going to be spending big money on getting those hubs, you know, just to match that and I so I think you're spot on with that. I think it's probably, you know, the same custom that wants a colored headset probably wants those colored hubs. So yeah, yeah, that's the market. Anyway, they look very nice. They look nice. Yeah, hopefully get a ride on them in the future, but yeah, no doubt. I'm sure they they spin well. So all right, well, that's that's the news this week. So if you have anything else to add? No, we've got it all. Yeah, I mean, we covered it all. All this had possible tech in the Cycle industry who covered it. Perfect. All right. Well, with that, we've got a bit of a change of schedule, which is the member in the section is coming up, which is you have to be on the member

47:51in the feed to keep listening. And every week we finish geek warning with this. Usually it's ask a wrench. This week it is an interview with the president of bike flights. And I caught up with them to talk about the changing way that freight companies are basically charging for shipping bikes. Quite an interesting chat. It's sort of talk about how the way they measure boxes has changed, which is catching a lot of people off guard, but also the way they stipulate that size or what's now considered truly oversized and too big for like air freight and sort of like door to door delivery has changed. And so as our bikes getting bigger and as our wheels are getting bigger, I thought this was quite an interesting chat and very relevant and hopefully saves many people hundreds of dollars in the in the future if they're looking to ship bikes. So yeah, I guess it's time to jump into that for everyone on the member feed. And for everyone else that's not head to escapecollective.com for such geek warning and stop missing out on the other side of of these podcasts. All right,

48:59so where are you off to now? I think you're you're about to jump on a plane if I'm not mistaken. I am very early tomorrow morning. I've been reconsidering my plan to cycle today or poor. Where the forecast looks bad for the morning, but yeah, I'm heading off to see also Europe. So to Jorona, where it looks lovely and sunny. Nice. I don't, is it your first time going? Yes, it is my first time going. Also to Jorona, I have never been which is shocking as a cyclist to say that out loud. I have never been to Jorona. I wouldn't say out loud that I haven't been yet. You've caught an excuse. Your miles away. Yeah, it's definitely on the on the bucket list. So I'll go visit some friends over there. But yeah, see how to Europe. It's been growing steadily for a number of years now and 10 to your actually this year. There you go. Wow. Okay. I've heard it's huge now. So it's great to hear that you're going. And I think it's a first for escape to attend. So looking forward to the coverage to come. All right. Yeah, I've got my run issues packed to run

50:05around. New camera and hand as well. So yes, exactly. All right. Hope it grows great. Good to see you. And yeah, we'll catch you soon. Yeah, catch you. Mhm