Video: Magura Concept Integrates Brake Hoses Into Handlebars for Cable-Free Cockpit
PRESS RELEASE: Magura
The new Magura Cockpit Integration (MCi) is a hydraulic brake that’s fully integrated into the handlebar. With no external cables, the MCi gives riders a tidy cockpit, better aerodynamics and greater protection for hydraulic components. The MCi is part of the new Magura Integration Series.
This new Magura Integration Series is a completely new product series. It is characterized by unique integration solutions that further optimize the design and function of the already-proven Magura products. After successfully producing the integrated HSi rim brake and the HGi heated grips, Magura has now turned its attention to the cockpit.
Magura MCi
The new MAGURA MCi has all wires and cables laid inside the handlebars. The result is a tidy appearance and enhanced functionality, offering effective protection against crashes and mechanical damage. The design of the new MCi also makes it possible for manufacturers to consistently extend the design language of the frame into the cockpit.
During the development of the hydraulic unit, the Magura specialists relied on in-house motorcycle know-how. The MCi functions in the same way as a retrofit hydraulic clutch for motorcycles.
The heart of the Magura MCi is a cylinder, which is located in the handlebar grip area. The dimensions of the expansion reservoir and the piston diameter of the MCi correspond to the dimensions used in the Magura MT series, giving the MCi the same stability and braking force as conventional Magura MT brakes. The MCi is available with 2-piston and 4-piston brake callipers.
The brake lines are also laid inside the handlebar – they are led through the stem unit and steering tube through special holes in the handlebars. From there, the lines are led to the fork crown, then into the frame and the front brake calliper. Other variations are being considered, such as cable routing through a special headset in the frame. The handlebars and stems are especially designed for use with the Magura MCi.
The MCi is actuated by a lever unit attached to the handlebar – the only visible component of the new brake. The system is equally suitable for mountain bike or urban use depending on the installed handlebar and stem unit. Thanks to the lever bearing point being close to the handlebar, however, the MCi gives riders a more direct braking feeling than all previous Magura brakes. The ratio between lever travel and braking force is also designed to be more progressive, refining the modulation of the brake.
The lever angle of the MCi is individually adjusted to each bicycle model and optimized for the best possible seating position. Special handlebar grips with a fixed core also allow a projection of up to 2cm at the handlebar end. The handle width is infinitely variable on the lever blade.
Easy maintenance and user-friendly – the Magura Easy Link
The development of the Easy Link was focused on user-friendly service and maintenance, plus of course a tidy cockpit integration. The MCi is the fist Magura product to use the new Easy Link cable coupling.
The new Easy Link coupling is a special plug-in connector that links the cockpit unit and the brake line. During a service, the cockpit unit can be easily separated from the cable within the frame. Brake bleeding is carried out by means of the proven Magura Easy Bleed Technology and a bleed screw at the handlebar end.
Presentation and fist serial model
Initially, the MCi will only be reserved for OE partners. Magura will act as MCi system supplier during the development and will specify the components such as handlebars, stem unit and cable routing together with the respective bicycle manufacturer. An aftermarket version is not planned for the near future.
Magura will initially present a trail bike with MCi as the basis for this product innovation. The trail bike will have an almost-ready serial production version of the cockpit integration, the wireless Magura Vyron eLect seat post, internal lines and a wireless Sram AXS drivetrain. This setup means that the bike is entirely free of external cables and lines.
MAGURA will present the MTB study and the world‘s fist production bike with MCi at the Eurobike Media Days (July 2-4). Magura’s partner is a German brand manufacturer who will present the MCi for the fist time on one of its urban bikes. The bike will be available to customers some time in 2019.
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It's like you've got the collective memory of a goldfish. We didn't have fancy suspension, 180mm 6pot sandwich disk brake systems, dropper posts and a ton of other stuff we take for granted, frowning when a new bike doesn't have the latest tech.
How the hell do you think we got here?
By creating a million new and weird concepts and abomination freak-bikes, that's how.
A lot of them failed to go past the prototype, others past gen 1, until the filter narrowed them down to what we have today.
If you're not happy about the new tech, go ride your Penny-farthing and shut up about it!
"It's okay to not like thinks, just don't be a dick about it."
/rant over
Haha, funny about the engineering mindset, have you seen a derailleur recently?
Imagine 1930-35, Pinkbike's comment section (newspaper version obviously):
"Who needs such complication on a bike?","Never gonna be reliable?","You believe this engineering mindset?","You think TDF mechanics would switch to that instead of swapping wheels?"
Sounds familiar?
Also, why are you using a dropper? And an internally routed one at that...
Of all the far fetch concepts we've seen over the years, an integrated cockpit as proposed by Magura who isn't my favorite brake maker by any means, does make sense. I see no reason why a little overdesign in the bar couldn't allow us to make provision for piston assembly storage in the handlebar. Most people who diss this idea probably ride a bike made up of design ideas that would have been ludacris 15 years ago...
As far as I'm concerned, the more innovation the better, so long as there isn't an engine on my bike.
PS. @Milko3D we should go ride on our illegal trails and complain about mountain biking in Tirol...
Not gonna buy gen1 Magura MCI nor gen1 The Message.
But I'm really glad there are people with disposable cash, tinkerers, who will, so when I get gen3 on sale one day it'll be proven and vastly improved.
Early adopters FTW!
And you can keep shouting at the kids to get off your lawn in the meantime
Nah, I use some sort of forward thinking. This guy just wants to spew bs then defend it with a cheeky last line. Magura sucks, end of story.
Take rear suspension, indeed it went through weird stuff, and still do sometimes, there was a problem which was lack of comfort and grip when going up or down, suspension was an interesting concept, many options tried to get where we are now.
You can even take more recent innovation like 1x drivetrain, brands needs more room around the bottom bracket area to allow decent tires, good rear end rigidity, short enough chainstays and decent weight. We tried few iterations and now have some decent options that are getting refined.
But then you have wireless (Sram) or electric stuff (Di2) that is solving non existing problems for the sake of it. I can see the point of wireless seat-post (for frame design) but nothing else. Same with Pressfit, BB30 and such, solving non existing problems while just creating a headache for the users.
Having your hoses hidden mostly creates problems and will make bike maintenance a nightmare, to solve what problem ? With 1x transmission we have 4 hoses, potentially 3 with a wireless SP how is this a problem ? Sure it may look a bit better without the hoses showing but unless you ride 2x a month and get your work done by a shop then the "prettiness" will have a very high time cost.
While I'm not a fan of having electronic bits on my bike, we shouldn't forget that there are many types of bikes and bike use cases and users.
Not everyone will go on adventures in the middle of nowhere. So wireless shifting and seatposts might not be an issue for them. Therefore the issues I have with those bits aren't valid in their case.
What do they solve? Well, self adjusting, no lag, convenience, ease of use.
Again, these might not be a problem for you and me, but there are other people riding bikes out there.
Right now this particular system is not perfect. Far from it. It will have issues.
But imagine 5-10 years from now, brakes levers, fluid reservoirs and grips/handles might be a modular and interchangeable system that's a lot easier to maintain and mix&match.
Or perhaps, they'll be an integrated module that screws to the rest of the handlebar.
Does it sound stupid? Maybe. But so did air-sprung suspension, hydraulic brakes (which also introduced more problems than they solved initially) and so on.
Or maybe it's a gimmick and a year from now no one will remember it.
I just don't see what existing problem this system solves unless you are obsessed about how aerodynamic your bicycle is. The best use of this technology would be on time trial bikes as far as I can tell.
Like I said I'm just amazed at the attitude, like:
- No! This is stupid. We have brakes and levers and they work fine, don't try new things!
Considering most people here are riding engineering wonders
@adespotoskyli: I don't know man, what problems did 1x drivetrains solve? Or hydraulic brakes?
It's hard to tell which innovation will survive and what won't, and it's perfectly fine to be skeptical, but some open-mindedness won't hurt methinks.
I'm very skeptical that the amount of aerodynamic drag created by cables is large enough to make any statistical difference... It for sure would not make any difference in a trail ride?
I've read on the internet that someone snagged and ripped/broke/pulled out a brake cable and lost brake function. But I've never actually seen nor heard of it and think it's such a minuscule issue that it doesn't warrant the extra up front set up time and cost of this?
Not that it matters, but honestly I think it looks kind of weird not to have brake cables?
ON the flip side, maybe if SCOTT partnered with with Magura on their next TwinLoc equipped bike people would stop complaining about all the extra cables...?
but also...
"I'm not a fan of having electronic bits on my bike"
riiiiiiiiiight.....
The thing is you are comparing an already improved and established version of 1x, version one was a lot less reliable.
Let's take tubeless for example. Remember how messy this was at first? It tried to solve one problem - punctures, while introducing multiple new ones: messy setup, trail side leaks, if the bead dislodges you need a compressor and so on. And right now it's pretty much set and forget. Do you remember the mockery laid on those who wanted/tried tubless back then?
How long did it takes us to accept wheels a few centimeters larger in diameter? It's ridiculous
So, when new stuff come out it's perhaps smarter to think where things could go, instead of what are the immediate benefits. Try to imagine it as complete system in a few revisions, what would that look like?
What if you could detach lever/reservoir and caliper, not having to bleed the cables in the middle or remove them and then just plug them back in? That would be so much easier to service and maintain.
Just to remind everyone, both gen1 electric cars and digital cameras were mostly an inconvenience.
You want to rotate those bars? Sorry, not an option.
You want a different brand stem? Not an option.
Different brand of bars or grips? Not an option.
Different brand of fork? Not an option.
Cut your bar length? Not an option.
You crashed and spun the bars? That will be a $500 repair because we have to replace all the internal cables we worked so hard to hide.
You want to add some spacers under the stem? We will need to bleed your brake system, replace the internal cables, and you will have to buy a new fork.
Your headset bearings need grease? We will need to bleed your brake system.
Now you want to go back to a normal bicycle? That's an option.
How many times do I have to say it. No 1st gen tech will ever be better than the established dominant standard or technology. No 1st gen disk brakes, droppers, 1x drivetrains, digital cameras, almost nothing!
It was all f*cking flawed and at times doomed to fail!
In 5-10 years when most bikes are fully internally routed one way or another, we can have this conversation again, hopefully at a trailhead while having a beer and reminiscing about how near sighted you were back then.
Peace out.
Also I don't want to go through 4gen of somebody's f*ck ups for no obvious reasons and no advantage over any other system that might replace.
As a bike mechanic, I spend WAY too much of my day trying to fish cables and hoses through poorly designed frames. If they can make it work, then sweet, I'm on board. However, as somebody who has worked on Magura products and seen how poorly thought-out they are, I can't see this working.
That said, if you've got money to throw at it then it doesn't matter - I just pity the poor bike mechanic that's going to waste his/her time trying to get it working!
I wouldn't call this innovation - what problem does it solve? Does it improve the way the bike rides? The way the bike works? No. This is what one of my colleagues calls 'pretengineering'.
Typically on jobs like that we don't make too much money because people don't want to pay 2 hours labour at $80/hr for replacing a gear cable, so we have to undercharge a little.
Also it's not fun....
The answer will be: "Suck my dick...!!!!"
But 2 questions :
- the hole beneath the clamp seems to limit the adjustability in depth and angle of the lever, how to make sure your preferences are matching this system? I guess you also can't trim your bar to another length?
- if you crash into a tree (avoid it but... sh*t happens), how does the lever rotate since restricted by that hole?
Don't know why they're not pushing this more though
Just don't crash.
So many r&d hours going to waste
My guess, they designed the system into a frame, got super stoked, went to install a fork and were like, “Balls!” (or the German equivalent of that).
As for the time being it will be an OEM setup only, it is the bike manufacturer responsibility to set it up properly.
@MoDingens:
I wonder if magura people ever crashed? Rotating the levers?
Like most german bike things, this is a valid ideas for bike paths.
German bike tech = belongs to commuters bike.
I would like to be able to service anything by myself and be able to hack some fix when I am in the middle of nowhere.
Foreseen problems: Cable rub on fork stanchion. Hydro hose kinks/damage at steerer tube any time a stem adjusted or while traveling. When raising or lowering stem height you’d have to disconnect the brake line, potentially having to re-bleed.
World Cup pro only setup with a mechanic that was willing to work extra hours for this setup only. Such a waste of resources. Spend less developing dumb stuff and lower prices and increase availability of product.
This technology should be reserved for pay by the minute city rental bikes.
www.mtb-news.de/news/2019/05/03/stoll-t1-edition-clean-cockpit-bike
Nice look so, prefer external for service so
Cheers
It takes a lot of holes here and there in structural parts just to hide a few cables.
Maybe another way to do it would be using a universal standard of easy plug-in interface and integrate metal tubing alonside (inside or outside) the tubes, connected by small flexible wires (10-20cm long) where needed (stem, BB), kinda like they do on earth moving equipment (IMO, the way a bike is build, the way form follows function, it's closer to an excavator than to a car), but it may make things heavier and intricate for no usefull reason, and getting all the brands to agree on said standard would be a mess.
So my view is there are two key points to remember
1. Innovation is good.
2. You dont have to buy it
I can remember when the internal combustion engine was still a bag of crap and unreliable and that was about 100 plus years after it was invented. Things are progressing a lot quicker for bikes and with a lot less investment. So we shouldn't stamp on new ideas IMO.
All that considered, even though I wont buy this, I like the idea of not ripping out brake and gear hoses/cables when I crash. So the sentiment of trying to solve that problem seems to be good.
AERODYNAMIC... @30km/h? Please...
Concerns about implementation relate to bar strength (extra holes in the bar), unavailability of alternative bars such as OneUp's very smart oval bar, and getting sweep, rise, and lever position to hit the sweet spot for various riders (good luck!). Then there's internal cable routing and the need for a hole in the steerer...
All in all, it may be a tough sell to design teams of MTB brands, but there's real potential here; we hope Magura keeps thinking outside the box.
If you want different brakes, then this set of brakes isn’t for you.
And if that was the case, and with all those batteries already inside some bikes, why not going the servo way, you know: shift-by-wire, drop-by-wire, brake-by-wire, steer-by-wire....
Btw, what is going on with shift knob or dropper knob with this concept?
If manufacturers wants hoseless cokpit,
they can use wireless technologies, for example
because drilling 4 holes to handlebars and 2 holes to fork headtube? no thanks...
- to be honest, i did it on road bikes, but there are not so big G forces like on AM/EN bike , its nice that somebody doin the whole wireles stuff for droper, shifting, and hidden brake hoses, but no thanks, i will be scared to ride that bike hard in the forest...
I did recently have a master cylinder fail (leaked at the piston by the actuator) but their customer service was excellent and I got a new lever in the mail two days after contacting them.
My other complaint is the lever shape and length. The MT5s don't have the options available that the MT7s have. I was able to adjust them and move the levers inboard to a point that I am comfortable with for single finger use.
Compared to bleeding any offering from SRAM the Maguras are significantly easier, not as easy as Shimanos, but I was able to get a solid bleed in about 10min during my master cylinder swap the other day.
B. No thanx
Bleeding brakes in 2020 : 200e per brake
About the complete integration : no, thanks.
f