CHRIS PORTER
Mojo and Geometron founder, obsessed with fettling and finding the limits of bike design
The Bike of the ‘Near Future’ is going to look like the bike of the present for a few years because order books in Taiwan are full for that long! Seriously though, I am still hungry to see new ideas and innovations coming through…
I don’t see geometry changing much now that almost all manufacturers have accepted that slack head angles handle better, shorter offsets also handle better, long bikes handle better, steep seat angles help the bike climb better and reduce chiropractor bills and larger rider spaces help the rider to be more dynamic and comfortable.
Proper adjustable head angle systems and bolt-on seat towers to allow head angle and seat angle changes independently of BB height and linkage adjustments which are becoming more common.
On the rear shocks I can see a possibility that we could end up on multi-spring coil spring system like on quads, SSVS and some other off-road applications. Sure, we would love to find a way of making sliding bushes work for the front fork! But with bicycle forks being made in the style they are with magnesium lowers, that’s not an option in the near future.
I can dream though! So I would say that my Botf would have a lightweight dual crown fork with adjustable offset and sliding bushes to complement the already excellent damper we have in the EXT ERA and seeing as you are asking I would either have a dual rate coil spring with a dual rate negative or I would simply have a long, separately charged positive and negative spring air system with externally adjustable negative and positive volume…
My Botf would have some kind of derailleur in the frame or gearbox solution. Because of that it wouldn’t be limited to a 12mm rear axle over a massive rear wheel spacing of 148mm! So, bigger rear axle and wheel bearings all the way out to the outside of the wheels rather than bend-in-the-middle wheel bearing spacers to accommodate the freehub. My single sprocket freehub would run above the wheel bearings and would have a switchable neutral for fast rolling chainless feel at speed… I would probably have an idler which I could adjust on the fly to give two different anti-squat characteristics for different riding feels… High pivot, low pivot, single pivot, multi pivot, VPP, Horst, none of those are the magic bullet, they can all be configured good or bad!!! I would probably have a chain path that cuts back up close to the idler if I did go high pivot to limit chain growth and limit the amount of chain tensioner needed.
Electronics… none.