7: Major-ly Excited!

Hello, and good day to you from episode 7 of our podcast series Project Breakaway. A metaphorical and literal time in the day when we here at Predator Cycling take some time away from working in the back shop to come and share with our listeners what we're doing, how we're doing it, what it takes to do it, our ideas, our innovative success stories, and even our missteps and failures. If you find yourself with an interest in bicycles, composite manufacturing, out of the box design, or even curiosities beyond, I encourage you to stick with us, settle in, and learn a little. I'm Courtney B, co-owner and project manager of Predator Cycling. I'm here with my partner, Arm Goganian, the other co-owner, CEO, lead designer, and engineer, and general bike guy of Predator Cycling. How's it going, Arm? Good. I I like that bike guy. I believe that it was what you have as your title on your Autodesk account. Or no, Uh well, you think it's bike Twitter? I don't know. It's not something. I used to call myself just the bike guy. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that kind of sums it up. I can't remember. I think you had to update it now that you have to be more professional. Yeah. So, anyway, come on, bike guy. Let's uh discuss some bike stuff. Sounds good. So, I wanted to talk about on this episode one of our most popular custom pieces that we have manufactured uh over the past 10 years? 10 years? It's 2021. Subtract, minus, carry. It's been a while. 16 years. 16 uh since okay. Okay, we're going to talk about the the major handlebar system. Yep. So, the major handlebar is basically a custom one-piece carbon fiber stem and bar combo. Yep. And why is it named the major? Um well, I grew up racing for a team called uh Major Motion, which is named after Major Taylor, who's one of the original um he's he's the original African American uh professional cyclist. And he invented, co-invented the drop handlebar, the modern day handlebar that we have today is one of his um pieces of ingenuity. And so, we ran a when we first came out with the bars, we ran a um a contest on who could name the bar or whatever. And uh somebody said Major you know like uh uh you know And I think he said ma they said Major Taylor bars or something like that. And so, it's kind of a thing off of that. So, um just a nod to that just the original guy who did it did it right and you know, my old team was named after him. So, that's super cool. Okay. So, let's start from the beginning. Yes. Explain to the listeners uh when and how you first came to produce your Major Bar. So, we first produced our Major um Well, so we first produced it as a we took an existing bar and stem that were carbon and we we cut them up and mitered them and bonded and glued them together and then wrapped them with carbon fibers, what we did. And we were really looking for something that was just incredibly stiff. Um But what was the catalyst to make them? Did someone request them? Um So, did it did it exist before, I think? Yeah, so there's a But the the I mean, the very first concept that I've ever seen of it was Cinelli made a I think it was called Integrate, Integrate or something it was called. It was the aluminum version of a a stem and bar welded together. And that was the first thing I've seen of it. Um it was kind of a knockoff of their Angels, which was their aero bars, and this was like a road version of it. And then later on, um Calfee started making carbon uh bar stem systems where they would take a carbon tube and mount it to an aluminum knuckle that was the stem area and then mount it up to a pair of bars and then wrap it with carbon, just straight carbon. They would wrap the alum on top of the aluminum? They would bond a tube so where the stem attached to the steer tube was like an aluminum piece Mhm. that they would get and then they would uh have a a carbon tube that would go into a an existing bar that they would overwrap with carbon. Okay. Um and that was the first I'd seen of someone doing it in like carbon application like that. Um and that's kind of where we got the idea. It was from Cinelli and and Calfee later. Um and that kind of was like, oh, we could you know, we could do something like that cuz and we wanted something super stiff cuz we were at the time I was myself and um um CJ who was at working in the shop were both sprinters and we wanted a super stiff bar. And so, it's kind of for us the original and CJ actually is the one who rode the original Major, which I think is still hanging up here somewhere. Um but yeah, so he um He wrote the original ones and it was a really I mean it was he loved it and then I wrote a set and I really liked it and then it kind of just went from there. So that first version of that major bar what was the benefit for you while writing it? Well so one of the things that we did a little differently than everybody else was that we actually joined them together and then we basically made this massive gusset that comes on the side that was filled it was a core material we put inside there and then over wrapped that with carbon. So the big thing was it was just so incredibly stiff because that stem handlebar junction is the area where you get the most flex in the bar stem system like a normal system that's where just there's a ton of flex there. And so we were basically able to completely eliminate that and So for sprinting you don't want flex in your bar? No you actually don't want flex in your bars really anytime um sprinters just tend to notice it the most but like we had um later on we had our our our cycling team we had some climbers and road racers that would get on the bars and we're just like this is amazing just for climbing like how stiff the front end of the bike became. So it it just enhanced everything it made the bike climb better it descended quicker you could handle the bike better I mean there was just so many benefits to it um that it just became very popular. Right. Um I remember when I first um met you and started swinging by the shop after work that you were doing a lot of major handlebar construction. We would have a we had a 4 x 8 table and there was literally we had these little jigs that we'd set up on the on the tabletop that would hold the stem and the bar and everything in the right angle and we would just literally have them just lined up around the table it was just How many do you think you sold back then? I mean I know we haven't been working on them now and that's the point of this podcast is we're going to start looking at them again but we also get a lot of interest in them so I kind of wanted to know The original the carbon over wrap bar stem majors I mean there's got there's a couple hundred of them out there Yeah. At least I mean there's yeah there's a lot I mean I yeah there's a lot of them. So let's talk about from that first version that you made way back when in the evolution of the major Yeah. Cuz we introduced a major pilot Yeah. um five six years five six years ago? Yeah. um and talk about that evolution and then from the major pilot how we want to go forward and redesign Yeah. Well also I mean I think just a little before the major pilot I mean one of the things that made our so one of the things that we happened really quickly was we started making the majors for track specific events so we started doing them for um guy east used to ride them in six days um and they went to a couple of the national championships and um Bobby Lee actually rode a set in the in the last Olympic games The Rio Yeah the Rio games. Was that the last Olympic games? Yeah right. Well they cancelled Last year. Last year was cancelled so that was the last games. Oh yeah. So the last games. Okay. Yeah. So then will the next games be a summer game or a winter game? It's supposed to be this year. Oh. That's what it's supposed to be. But that's a winter game. But no it's supposed to be the summer games the summer games were postponed. Oh. I think maybe they're cancelled now I don't know this seems like a Google question um but um or a Bing question I don't want to be biased um Bing. Let me ask Jeeves. um my point my point was that we had basically at that point we were gearing a lot towards endurance track bars and we had at that point started making our own custom drops our own extensions we called them nubs these little like areas where you could kind of grab the tops cuz you don't have a lever we called them nubs where you have this little area where you could grab onto the top of the bars um and all of that led to the majors and the major pilots and one of the things that was that really hurt us on the majors at up until that point was um just labor like those bars took so much time to make it was just not a scalable product it's kind of the history of us in the past is just not scalable. History of Predator not scalable. Not scalable way too much Good advertising. Way too much energy was spent on performance and like making them super fast to win bike races and not on how we're actually going to make them in production like that was always a side thought Right. And and I think people just don't understand sometimes that custom work takes a while. It takes a long time. Cuz you have to design a specific design for a specific person measure it out and then actually physically do the work. Right and then at that point too you're doing a lot of hand shaping type work so a lot of molds and guides and stuff on them. There were no 3D printers assisting you 10 years ago. No um so my point is is there was a lot that led up to the pilot anyways then then the pilot came out um Yes 2000 16. 16. Okay. I'll take that. Yeah. That sounds about that sounds right. Um and that was a huge I mean that was a big evolution for us in some of our modeling approaches on how we modeled and designed parts. Mhm. Um Because it was meaner. It has a dip in the middle. Yeah, which you can probably explain why there's a dip. So there's a dip for actually there's a lot of reasons why so that bar the major pilot was originally designed specifically for endurance track racing. So that dip is actually there's there's out of simulation we actually found that that dip increased the rigidity of the front end of the of the bar and then we also well another type of dip actually did that and then we noticed that we started making them a bunch of the racers were like that's perfect for if you're riding in a Madison you're going to do an exchange your hand fits so perfectly right there and kind of guide your thumb. Explain what a Madison is really quickly. Madison is the most ridiculous bike race ever that's amazing to watch. It's two guys or gals that are racing on the velodrome. Or a guy or a gal, right? Y I thought they changed those rules. Uh you can't not no they're they're still separate. I mean you could in like a local event Oh come on it's 2021. Right? Good. Um so what you have is you have a guy that's or or gal that's racing and then when they have another rider that's riding at the top of the velodrome and they call that relief where they're not in the race they're just going around when you cross that rider that rider will actually drop down and then you kind of grab hands you hold hands and you throw the other guy in. It's literally like you slingshot someone into a race. It's so much fun it's so cool. It's Um It yeah I've watched it a couple times it's very cool to watch but at the same time you're just waiting for someone's just going to eat it. Yeah. Anyways so for that type of event the that bar did really really well and then we had special drops and the drops of profile there's all kinds of detail work into it. And that bar was a pain in the butt to make. To manufacture. There was parts of it that were way easier and then there was parts of it that were way more difficult. Because it was uh thin. It was thin but it was also anyways we don't have to go into all there's there's that's a whole three episodes in in in manufacturing how we manufacture the bar and what we did within why and anyways the the main point of that bar was we solved four or five problems with it and created an extra one. Just one? W just maybe two. Um that were just it took it just took so much to manufacture so I think we ended up making like 10 or 10 or 15 of them we made um and uh um and that's it and we we couldn't go past that. But we still have it on the website um but we haven't been offering it it's been out of stock but um the whole point of this episode is to discuss our um refresh of the Yeah. the pilot but also as you said earlier in the family of majors. Yes. So let's discuss uh the build up to manufacturing that again here maybe in Q 2 Q 3. Yep. And um what your current system is because we just talked about how much of a pain of in the butt it was to manufacture but now we've kind of figured out things with our RF 20 on how to manufacture so we're going to use that directly with them the major. Yep so there's going to be the the I say family of majors because we are going to have a family of majors again um once again they're going to be all together and we're going to basically offer them in two versions. So of the models of the major road or the major pilot which would be the track endurance bar um there would be a a stock version which would be available in um a set number of of widths and stem lengths and then we'll offer a fully custom version which would be available in multiple widths, multiple drops, and multiple stem lengths and angles. Basically it's ala carte you'll have a couple different drop designs that you can pick from and um any of those widths and stem length or angles. Are there reasons that people choose different drop length or is it just basically your arm length? So okay so this has this this gets into an interesting thing so the reason we made those bars for Bobby Lee in the last Rio games was because he had to meet he had to switch he switched bikes before the games just before the games he switched bikes and he couldn't get the bike to get past UCI restrictions to pass legality for the race and and fit him at the same time he couldn't get it to work with a stock bar. How is that even possible? Because you have I mean he said you know he wants to be farther forward but he can only go as far forward as the rule lets him and because of the shape of the bar his hand is actually like three or four centimeters away from the rule where that there's a marker basically the farthest extension of the bar is where they mark the length of the bar What is the But he doesn't actually hold it there. So he Because That's very confusing. I feel like if you're using stock parts then it should just be accepted. No. There's so many rules and so to to get to the to get your bike to pass the actual like to make it push it to the max so you can get the most performance benefit out of your fit, aerodynamics, structure, everything, you typically need to go down the custom route of some sort. Okay. Or at least hot a lot of options. So that's why that custom and also every person is different. So some people want to run, you know, 34, 32 bar some crazy narrow bars. Some people don't. Like we had a couple of guys who race six days that refused to ride anything less than a 40 because they wanted a wider bar because when they're doing exchanges on the Madison, they they wanted that extra width. I would want a wider bar. I feel more secure on a bike with a wider bar. For sure and you are. But when you're looking at the wind tunnel data, it actually shows significant quicker with a narrower bar. Well, no one's ever thrown me in a wind tunnel. Not yet. Because I I don't know if we're going to make them arm says no, but Predator major flat bars might just be a custom Courtney version. For sure. I I don't know if there's how much of a market there is for it. That's all I'm saying. Um well, mountain biking uses flat bars. But do you want carbon? Yes, you do. They do. They totally use them. But what the kind of flat bar you're talking about is not quite What is my flat bar? It's just a casual ride flat bar? Flat bar with a little latte holder, cup holder. Um a little uh And a basket for my dog. And a basket for your dog. There you go. But it's strong enough to hold all of that. So that might be a marketing point. Yes. There you go. But yeah, so the the the the manufacturing of it is is we're going to be coming out with both the custom and the stock version. And there's some little the the stock version's going to be a hair lighter than the custom version because the way we make the custom version is a little bit different. Mhm. And to expedite the the construction of it, there's a little bit more material. Yeah, there is. So there's a little extra material on it. Um and because also because each bar is different and we have them in set sizes. So we have a parametrically driven model that we can actually update and then do layup schedules and simulation on um updated for each bike, each bar system that we do. So what do you think when we get past the RF20 release here soon and we start focusing more on the major, what are we focusing first? What do we focus on first? The Pilot redesign or we going straight to the other major? The road. The Pilot I I feel like the road. I'm going to disagree with you. Would be I feel like the Pilot. Um Well, the thing about the Pilot is the hardest one. So we decided to do the hardest one first. That's usually what I do because then it's like, you know, it's downhill after that. Um the thing about the Pilot is is that all the surface modeling is done and half the tooling is already been designed and set up. Mhm. So there's much less work. I mean, there's much it's much farther along than it was. So we'll get okay. Okay. Okay. We'll get stock sizes of the Pilot first. Yeah. But then quickly I want to segue into the road bar I feel like that's going to be a hot seller. Yeah. I mean, it's in his historically it's always been a good seller. That's what the people want. Because when I say the people I mean, we literally get messages about these bars all the time. Yes. I'm I'm aware. I see it. You you always tag me in the comments. There's nothing worse than having a product that people really want and being like Right. Well, then that kind of goes back to the original problems that we had with the Major. It just they got to the point where we were actually not making any money selling the bars. Because you're spending so much time making them. We had so many hours in the bars that we revised the whole manufacturing process. So hopefully it shouldn't it shouldn't take too long. No, it won't. And it's going to it's basically I'm not I want to repeat what we've already done. But it's basically the production versions are building off of what we built for the RF20. Mhm. That's the whole system. Okay. Is what we're using for the new Majors which I'm really excited for because it actually lets us do things that we couldn't do on the earlier Majors. Right. So we can push the envelope a lot farther. Great. I'm excited to get this product back up and going. Yeah. It's and yeah, it's a I mean, leave alone the emails. I still have people that text message me about it. Like An Instagram message, yeah. An Instagram message and comments on Instagram and Plus they would look just really nice on the new red frame. Yes. So Yes. So anything I agree. Is there anything else that you'd like to add about the Major system? I'm really glad that you agreed with me to make the Pilots first. Uh yeah, yeah. In a way, sure. Okay. So if that's all you want to discuss about the Major, I'm done. Yeah. I'm done. will wrap up up. We'll do some recent news. So, as we discussed last week in last week's episode, we've been working really hard on updating the RF20 webpage. Yep. And we look forward to a big update early next week. We also may be making a new custom services page across because we do custom services across multiple industries. Yeah. We haven't been doing as much lately. We've actually been denying a few jobs just because we wanted to focus on our Red Frame. But we do offer custom services and I don't think a lot of people know that. So, I'm going to revamp an updated custom fabrication page on our website. Yep. So, you can check that out next week. And what to look forward to on future podcast? If everything plays out, we hope to have our first guest calling in next week. Yeah, that's exciting. So, we need to get our audio engineers in here. And by audio engineer, I mean you. You need to be Oh, that's me? Yes, that's you. I thought I thought our son Miko was going to do it. No. So, we're going to be talking about some of the computer hardware systems that we've been using recently and to make the RF20 and we will be using to make the major handlebar system. Yep. So, we thank you for choosing some time with us and we look forward to future breakaways. I'll try my hardest to put any mentions in our news section on predatorcycling.com. Also, look for us on Instagram and LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and in person here in Tennessee. Um, let's get back to work. So, we ask our listeners to please share, like, and subscribe. We're available on all major streaming platforms. Thanks for listening. Have a good one and find some time to break away.