This design looks like it has the potential to be pretty economical to produce (especially mass produce overseas), fewer welds fewer parts. Hard to be sure though without knowing what machining on the shock interface is required post heat treat.
I hope it works out for him, I really do. Proprietary stuff is a hard sell at the best of times. Part of me wonders if he'd have more success if he just had the strut as a stand alone linear bearing with the rod end driving a normal off the shelf shock. Like yeti, except it'd be one rod on two inline bushings, sealed and greaseable. With the shock inline in a cutout in top tube. Or below the top tube/strut and parallel to it. It'd make the frame a bit more complex and spoil the clean lines/good looks somewhat, but it'd be a standard shock. Yeti is still in business, sorta proves that customers will accept sliders. But we're are a lot less accepting of a proprietary shock. Trust fork is the only recent example of a proprietary spring/damper from a new company that I can think of, but kinematics seemed to be the real issues with those. Trek's supercaliper and reactiv (spelling?) stuff doesn't count, cause trek is huge and established, definitely still going to be in business in 5 years.
The number of proprietary parts (that'd he'd have to stock for replacements) would be greatly reduced. And customers would be getting a fox or rockshox, a known entity, easier to be confident I can get it setup to my liking. There are several technical advantages to how he's done it though, not to mention it looks better.
Edit: And yeah, it looks so good! Cool to hear it rides well too.
Nov. 23, 2022, 5:52 a.m. - kcy4130
This design looks like it has the potential to be pretty economical to produce (especially mass produce overseas), fewer welds fewer parts. Hard to be sure though without knowing what machining on the shock interface is required post heat treat. I hope it works out for him, I really do. Proprietary stuff is a hard sell at the best of times. Part of me wonders if he'd have more success if he just had the strut as a stand alone linear bearing with the rod end driving a normal off the shelf shock. Like yeti, except it'd be one rod on two inline bushings, sealed and greaseable. With the shock inline in a cutout in top tube. Or below the top tube/strut and parallel to it. It'd make the frame a bit more complex and spoil the clean lines/good looks somewhat, but it'd be a standard shock. Yeti is still in business, sorta proves that customers will accept sliders. But we're are a lot less accepting of a proprietary shock. Trust fork is the only recent example of a proprietary spring/damper from a new company that I can think of, but kinematics seemed to be the real issues with those. Trek's supercaliper and reactiv (spelling?) stuff doesn't count, cause trek is huge and established, definitely still going to be in business in 5 years. The number of proprietary parts (that'd he'd have to stock for replacements) would be greatly reduced. And customers would be getting a fox or rockshox, a known entity, easier to be confident I can get it setup to my liking. There are several technical advantages to how he's done it though, not to mention it looks better. Edit: And yeah, it looks so good! Cool to hear it rides well too.