Cycle Systems Online

When you come to Cycle Systems Academy you don’t just get an education, you get comradeship and shared stories and love for the bike. Some of these stories are inspiring and powerful. One such is the life so far of Chris Jones, Cycle Systems Instructor, our resident MTB and suspension specialist. From early days in the British Army, to injury and a long, difficult journey to competing and winning...

Sean is joined by Bosch technical trainer, Mark Haylett and regular guest, Mike Stead to discuss the new Bosch Smart System. Launching in 2022, this is in fact the fourth generation of eBike tech Bosch have launched,Mike has just completed his dealer training course with Mark, (who incidentally is one of CSA’s oldest friends), and so both guests are in a very good position to educate all of us in...

Today, as promised we bring you a suspension special with Mat Clark from https://plushsuspension.uk We get into not only the latest fork and shock tech, but also the importance of set up, an oft overlooked but critical factor. Here's that video of Jordie getting pummeled with "rider feedback"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pI0YFmD-Ys&list=PLWM_256O70OsN7T8BFN1tHUO4kCAz63fx&...

Ryan Downes has been creating quite a buzz with his company https://www.ryanbuildswheels.co.uk a workers co-op where all staff are paid equally and co-own the business. Being a wheel obsessive himself, Sean was chomping at the bit to ask Ryan all about his work and quite a few niggling wheelbuilding issues that keep us all awake at night. (Ok, that’s just Sean.)So be prepared to sort your inbound...

This week we are joined by Cycle Systems friend and long term podcast listener, Andy Pettitt. Andy is a very well travelled cycle tourer, a bike collector and connoisseur of fine beer and music, so we had plenty to chat about. I’m sure many of you are planning some cycling trips after a couple of years at home, so tune in and let Andy inspire you to hit the road. Want to immerse yourself in commun...

While many from the cycling world went to Glasgow for COP 26, not many did so with a journalist's pass. Luckily for us,Carlton Reid was one of the few who did. We managed to chat to him as soon as he returned and got right into why seemingly green activities like cycling were sidelined by the conference. Here is Carlton’s dispatch from the conference https://www.forbes.com/sites/carltonreid/2...

This week we welcome back Graeme Freestone King from https://www.velotech-cycling.ltd.uk/campagnolo.shtml as well as catching up on Graeme’s latest news and finding out how Campagnolo are faring in the current economic climate, we find out about Graeme’s work in South Africa with the https://buffalo.foundation/ and https://songezo.co.za/ In a far reaching and humbling interview Graeme discusses be...

The UK’s national hill climb championship, hosted by the RTCC, ran yesterday at Winnats Pass in Derbyshire. https://www.cyclingtimetrials.org.uk/race-details/22013While many of you know Xavier Disley from https://www.aero-coach.co.uk for his work in Aerodynamics (doh), drivetrain optimisation and rolling resistance, he is also a bit of a (not so) secret weight weenie! Having seen some pictures of...

Remember when the Cyclist Touring club geeks were the butt of all jokes? Plastic bags full of oily components, a 30 year old steel touring bike and a Carradice saddle bag that was older than Grandad? Well, guess what. Turns out they were preppers for 2021. Not only will their bikes go on forever with no firmware upgrades needed, but cycling touring is the coolest thing right now! With even pro bik...

Jean-Paul Ballard, CEO of https://www.swissside.com/ joins us again for an engaging chat about aerodynamics and Swiss Side’s new Pressure Measurement Rake which visualises as well as measures aerodynamic drag. We also discuss frame and wheel design, tyre technology and particularly the current ISO road bike tubeless standards and what they mean for consumers. Finally, Jean-Paul has a beef, and we...

This week we follow on from recent mountain bike pods by chatting to World Cup MC, Dan Jarvis. Mostly focussed on the world of XC racing, we look at the scene historically and in 2021. Want to immerse yourself in community and a year long learning programme in bike maintenance? Check out our Team Camp membership program.

You’ve probably read all about the new Dura Ace 9200 and Ultegra 8100 groupsets. Mostly gushing reviews and podcasts have given us the perfect marketing hook. What do a couple of grumpy mechanics make of it though, (I’m sure you’ve been thinking) as flash is all well and good, when it's not in a pan. Now we know that Di2 is now over a decade in (it’ll never catch on said John) but are the str...

Join Sean on a trip to the UCI headquarters in Aigle to meet Britain’s Simon Burney, head off all things off road. Encompassing MTB in all its disciplines, BMX, Cyclocross and Gravel, the off-road sector is as wide as it is deep. Simon’s decades of experience in Cyclocross and Mountain Bike racing are shown to be valuable assets in the world of increasingly specialist off road racing niches. Want...

We have all heard of the new cyclists hitting our streets, towpaths and trails since the first lockdown. Well, meet Noor and Sham from https://www.youtube.com/c/2MuslimNightRiders who have discovered the love of cycling and inspired thousands of people from many diverse communities to try it for themselves. Their videos on YouTube are very well shot, and show a side of Manchester only a cyclist wi...

In this week’s pod we have invited Mark Barfield back to discuss his framebuilding business and to look deeper into manufacturing standards in the bike industry. We also discuss the relative velocities of wild boar and eBikes! Want to immerse yourself in community and a year long learning programme in bike maintenance? Check out our Team Camp membership program.

As the track cycling events for the Tokyo 2020 (sic!) Olympics start today we are releasing the audio from a CSA Membership webinar in late 2019. Sean speaks to Dimitris Katsanis about his revolutionary design for Team GB and the development of this bike with manufacturers Hope and Lotus. Let us hope (no pun intended) that Team GB’s Olympic run is not Lot’s Of Trouble, Usually Serious! Want to imm...

As the Tour starts we catch up with our friend, Dimitris Katsanis from Metron Engineering https://additive-engineering.co.uk/ to find out about the intricacies in the design of the new Pinarello Dogma F bikes. https://pinarello.com/uk/en As ever, many mainstream media outlets will have missed the subtle and not so subtle details of these new superbikes and Dimitris shares some surprising results f...

Who do you turn to when you want an insider’s view on UCI tech rules, life as a workshop and race mechanic and what people are saying in the Federation of the European Sporting Goods Industry? Introducing Mark Barfield. The man with more hats than, well, Johnny Two Hats. Covering such luminary subjects as Brian Cookson’s ‘Tree of the Day’ and what he actually DID as head of the UCI, the supply of...

This week John Galloway rejoins Sean for a look at whether to buy the new Sram Rival AXS groupset for his bike. Rather than rehash press releases and a slew of in depth internet articles we decided to take a fairly in depth look at the design and manufacture of transmission components and then looked at which of these features in this, supposedly entry level groupset. Want to immerse yourself in c...

https://www.northroadcycles.com have established a well loved and respected high end bike brand based in Manchester, England. We were interested in where a small, family bike company sits in the modern marketplace of internet only mega-brands and companies that employ 100’s of engineers. Ian and Jane take us through the startup of Northroad and the growth of the company from a (posh) garden shed t...

While all the racing is done from the 2021 we have a short Giro d’Italia tech round up for you. From banned hubs to custom time trial bars, Sean tries to cover the tech on show as seen at a distance. Even though we did make it to the race, the riders were climbing the San Bernadino pass when we saw their bikes, so no close inspection was available! Hopefully things will get back to normal soon as...

The world of bespoke frame building has consolidated in the last decade to a solid and interesting part of the worldwide cycle industry. We spoke to leading UK builder, Richard Hallet back in 2018 and wanted to catch up with him to see how he was faring in 2021.You can read about Richard’s work and see the bikes herehttp://www.halletthandbuiltcycles.com/https://www.bespoked.cc/hallet.htmlWe also r...

As the Giro d’ Italia has just begun, Sean and John trawl through some of Italy’s memorable, amusing and world changing bicycle tech. Why WERE Italian marques the envy of the world and are they still? From trendy furniture, weapons of war, motorbikes and cars, the bike industry has grown from and cross pollinated with many others in Italy, as elsewhere. Join us for some of the stories. Here is a v...

A return of the ever popular and exceedingly knowledgeable ‘Campag Kid’ for a show all about the development of Campagnolo’s renowned hubs and wheelsets. We all know that Campagnolo has been the benchmark in road cycling for decades and that their hubs and later, as one of the first ever producers of complete ‘factory built’ wheelsets have been innovative and sought after. However, the nuanced and...

Taking a break from guests, Sean and John have a catch up about some of the latest tech out there in the bike world. Also, with the increasingly sparse supply of bikes and parts we delve into the shadowy world of counterfeiting in the bike trade. Here is the link to ‘Faking it’ by recent guest, Carlton Reidhttps://www.dropbox.com/s/qixhqqtfij25gw3/FAKING%20IT%20pdf.pdf?dl=0Factor mechanics epic fa...