Raleigh Tamland 2

Gravel racing is hot, with Raleigh jumping in with the disc brake equipped Tamland 2. With a longer offset fork and a slightly extended wheelbase as compared to a cyclocross bike the Tamland is just as at home on epic rides or as a daily commuter. The bike has a double butted Reynolds 631 steel frame and Ultegra-level spec and a serious enthusiast or pro-commuter price of $2400. www.raleighusa.com

FABIKE

FABIKE stands for the Flexibly Adjustable Bike, a compromise between a road and cyclocross bike meant for today’s performance oriented rider that is looking for a single bike with a couple of personalities. Custom sliding dropouts allow for either geared or single speed drivetrains, and allow the user to swap between 120 mm track or 130 mm road rear spacing. The frame and the fork allow clearance for up to 35 mm tires and feature FABIKE’s linear pull brakes on the reverse of the fork and under the chainstay for a clean and aero look. The full carbon frame has internal cable routing throughout, with the cables fully encased even under the bottom bracket. The frame, fork, headset, brakes and seatclamp weigh a combined 1.9 kg and sell for $2600 in six different color treatments.
www.fabike.it

ACROS Hydraulic Drop Bar Shifters

Hydraulic shifting control has come up in most every engineer-nerd conversation about bikes since Magura proved that brakes could work reliably, and then when Shimano introduced the short lived Airlines downhill shifting system. ACROS out of Germany makes a flat bar hydraulic shifting system, and was showing their prototype drop bar system. Shifter bits grafted onto a Formula drop bar disc brake lever showed that the system could work even if the rapid prototyped parts on the floor were too brittle for real-world use. Interesting stuff, with the promise of precision shifts each and every time that is not influenced by the elements gunking up a cable system, even if running a “to” and “from” hydro line to the front and rear deraileurs adds complexity, and honestly the flat bar set on the market didn’t shift perfectly in their demo setup. www.acros.de