bikerumor.com

The new Gloworm XSV 3400 (the acronym stands for “excessive”) pumps out a blinding 3400 lumens with a beam pattern designed to keep your eyes on the trail. The new 3400 actually throws light about the same distance as their XS 1700, but beam pattern is twice as wide, casting an almost 90° “V” of light in front of you. The new Gloworm Alpha is a lower cost option at $139 for 1200 lumens with a 2-cell battery with no fuel gauge. They wanted to make something that competed on price with the cheap Chinese knockoff lights, but actually offered a quality product.

Photo submitted by Zsolt Rösler, “In Spring Wienerwald turns into wild garlic garden. You can smell it everywhere, and the trails get a special dressing gown

And you’ll have casing and tread options depending on the type of riding you’re doing, plus a new sealant that uses ground walnut shells to help seal cuts. Only the Race A model has a tubeless option for now, but all Race A versions come with their puncture-protection layer Protite under the tread (read more about that below), and Race D gets Protite bead to bead with a little extra material throughout to enhance durability. They use their Protite material in a bead to bead layer, then infuse an additional nylon breaker layer with ProTite and put that under the tread cap. Behind it is a new sealant that uses ground up walnut shells, which they say react with the other ingredients to accelerate the flow of the material into the puncture hole, yet reduces how much it’ll spray out of the hole.

Meant to make the fastest riders on the planet even faster, the new Phoenix will roll on 29″ wheels – which goes along with the current trend of World Cup racers looking for every advantage possible. However, it’s still not quite ready for production, but the version shown at the Sea Otter Classic is looking pretty close… While still using a DW Link suspension system, the front triangle looks quite a bit different than the 27.5″ version with a straight downtube and the upper suspension linkage in front of the ‘seat tube’. The shock clevis of the 27.5″ bike is gone with what appears to be a trunion mounted rear shock. As we’ve seen before, the bike is rolling on Reynolds carbon prototype 29″ rims, presumably a new DH model.