It looks like Crankbrothers will be expanding its dropper post range as we have spotted a carbon fiber offering on
Valentino Rossi's brands new eMTB.
Previously Crank Brother's dropper post range featured the cheaper Highline 3 and the higher-end Highline 7, but now it looks like it will be adding a premium Highline 11 post. Looking at the spec sheet on the VR46 eMTB, the dropper post is listed as a Crankbrothers Highline 11 that it says is a "new premium dropper post, made of carbon and titanium." In Crankbrother's other product ranges, the 11 name normally means fancier materials like carbon or titanium and lower weights.
It looks like the post will use the same design as the other Highline post with some added gold accents. The biggest change comes with the stanchion that looks to be carbon fiber. The VR46 spec sheet claims the post weighs 490 grams for 170mm of drop and a diameter of 31.6mm. Comparing this to a Highline 7 post in the same height and diameter, this is a 114 grams drop from the 7's weight of 604 grams.
For a comparison to some other lightweight full size droppers, the BikeYoke Divine is a claimed 550g and the Vecnum Nivo is 473g, but it's still unclear what the Highline 11's weight includes.
While the new dropper post looks very similar to the Highline 7, it apparently uses titanium bolts and a carbon fiber stanchion.
We reached out to Crankbrothers for more information and they declined to comment.
PS. no review tomorrow, we don't think this is one we have in the pipeline but Kaz and the USA tech team are off for Thanksgiving so don't quote us on that.
It's unfortunate people still judge them on products that were designed and marketed by staff that haven't been around for 5 years or more. Hard to knock that reputation, but it is worth recognizing their latest generation of products are quite good. Or at least the stuff I have used is. And perhaps considering that is because the company turned a corner at a point in time....they are almost a different company...and are actually doing good things now
It’s only the last couple of years I’ve been impressed SRAM Codes (and trust they won’t catastrophically fail on the trail).
If someone has only ridden their newer stuff, I can see how this 'joke' may be lost on them. If you look at the last 5 years give or take, the OPs statement is pretty factually accurate.
What I really wanna know is where exactly does one clamp a carbon bike in a workstand if the seatpost is also carbon? Say it with me...crack! Bunch of new employees, eh? Sure sounds like it to me.
1)many bikes look like Sessions
2) welds being sloppy and/or less nice than the average commenter could do in his/her garage
3) cheap bikes/gear being made overseas; locally made bikes/gear being too expensive
4) people not riding “real” trails (anymore/because of the internet/ because of IMBA); people who say they ride “real” trails actually being on the wrong bike for said trails
5) pros/journalists not knowing how to set up suspension/touch points correctly and therefore being all wrong in their choices/conclusions
6) crank brothers makes crap that breaks but their packaging is pretty sweet
I've fallen victim to more than one sub-par product from the early 2000s, but I must say, in every failing case, Crankbros were there to right their wrongs with warranty and exceptional customer service. I was hesitant to give them a shot on their $2K carbon wheelset offering, but the lifetime warranty and my past experience with their phenomenal warranty claims department was enough to push me over the ledge. I don't regret the decision. The wheels are as solid as they come. Had I a need, I wouldn't hesitate scooping up one of these posts either.
I'm not interested talking about anything but the product in THIS article. Not the weather. Not what you ate for breakfast. This dropper. That's it. Just this one thing.
Make fun of it, like it, explain why it's good, bad, whatever. We can agree or not and that's all good. Everyone can have an opinion and share ideas, maybe learn (or not).
I stated my opinion and a couple reasons why I felt the way I did. If someone can share why those aren't concerns, I'm all ears. Seriously. If I'm wrong, I'd like to know it and learn something.
As for the materials, each has strengths and weaknesses. Carbon has been shown at least reasonably suitable for some things, but much less so for others. With the items you mentioned, the carbon is only occasionally exposed to any kind of abrasion-type wear. If I look at the dust seals on my dropper, there's often grit/mud built up there even if it's cleaned after every ride that could wear through and create weaknesses faster than on traditional metal stanchions as I mentioned above. If they've found a way around this, great. I'd love to hear about it.
And then there's the crush strength issue that I also mentioned. When a mechanic goes to put it in a stand, what happens? It needs to be able to withstand those repeated forces for the lifetime of the product. I want to know that it has gone through testing for that as well
When carbon frames/rims/etc were new, I remember more than one company showing their products being tested to demonstrate to all of us that the stuff was at least up to the task. Now they're asking us to trust carbon to perform well at something new yet again...so I guess we'll see where we go from here.
Sales guy: "make it carbon anyway"
CEO: "Rnd guy #1 you are fired"
But if you want to do some high speed car testing with thermoset carbon rotors, I wanna see the fireball when your car careens out of control because brake rotors CAN’T BE MADE OUT PF THERMOSET CARBON
Carbon quill and alloy mast
Zero setback carbon head with titanium bolts; , two-bolt fore/aft/tilt adjustment etc etc
www.universalcycles.com/shopping/product_details.php?id=108835
seems legit
@locaroka 493g for a 31.6. I have two of them
@plyawn Never had issues with the seatpost clamp personally and I've had this post on 3 bikes. Sometimes I use a torque wrench, sometimes I don't, but they work in all cases.
They're good posts but the seat clamp still sucks. It's been redesigned several times, and is far better than past iterations, but they really need to ditch the sandwich design and integrate the lower part with the stanchion. Too much creaking.
There are carbon fibre brake rotors that function alright, and presumably there is a lot more friction and clamping force on a rotor. So why would a seatpost wear so quickly, when it's actuating on smooth bushings and rubber seals?
All joking aside, I agree that it can be better than aluminum if done right.
There's two things that would make me worry about this. Generally you want a very very hard, very very smooth surface (like anodised aluminium like bike bits or chromed/surface hardened steel like hydraulic cylinders) when you have an exposed shaft/rubber seal/bush arrangement. The first reason is that hard contaminants won't be able to embed/stick to the soft surface and drag through the rubber seal. The second is that the contact stress on the shaft from the bush won't deform the surface of the shaft, and it will remain low-friction.
I'm not going to judge this product, it could be engineered well and have tested fine. Maybe they've done some tricksy stuff. But my initial feelings are that it's a big concern. Carbon is so, so, such much softer than anodised aluminium that it's not even measured on the same hardness scales. You literally use entirely different tests to determine them - it's like measuring the scratch resistance of glass with one test, and then trying to determine the scratch resistance of a car tire using the same test.
But hey, lemme see the crash video if you want to high speed test some thermoset carbon rotors.
I don't know a lot about them admittedly, other than they exist. And perhaps are more commonly in automotive. Google carbon ceramic rotors and see.
I realize that a carbon, or carbon-ceramic rotor is far and away different than say, a carbon frame or rim.
Pretty sure carbon ceramic stanchions would weigh and cost more than anodized aluminum.
We will wait and see. Crank Bro's does have some proper good composite engineers, so I guess we will see what tricks they have pulled off here.
Touché, well hopefully they calculated the (static & kinetic) frictional forces exerted between the materials... I just may do that myself for curiosity!
Crank Bros: We have a carbon stanchion dropper! What could go wrong?
I don’t understand how companies like this whose products are known crap stay in business.