The Official Launch

We got to be part of the “Big Show.” The new Madone was launched to the world at the Milwaukee Art Museum in a show / launch worthy of a car company.

The new Fuel EX was quietly included in the show in an audience of dealers and worldwide media. The number one question we got: “So when can I get one!?” But we also heard a number of people asking “how come no one else thought of this?” I don’t really know. How come we didn’t think of it earlier? But I can tell you one thing – I’m glad we did it first!

The Final Stages

Testing of prototypes and pre-production samples continued in California, Arizona, and Colorado. At this point, the bikes  have 100’s of hours of testing time on them.

We're also well under way on developing a new 6” bike…

South Mountain is Base Camp

More traveling, more testing, development, and tweaking. By this time, South Mountain, Arizona was becoming a second home for us! It wasduring this testing that we really started riding the new EX back-to-back against some our competition, and we were really getting excited. We weren’t just working hard to make the bikes as good as everything else. To borrow Hammer’s term, we were leap-frogging them!

Design and engineering nearing completion and production tooling beginning.

Testing Stella and Beverly

Testing of the first production protos begins, which are fondly named Stella and Beverly. Stella was a 17.5” size frame that fits most of us pretty well. Beverly was the same design and construction, but in a 21.5” size for Travis Brown.

“Desert Snow” was created shortly after this first test in a new 18.5” size main frame. We only made a main-frame this time, and swapped the rear end from Stella onto this one to check out the new size.
From here, it was out to the trails for testing – but by this time, we were headed back Arizona to get both good test grounds, and good weather. When we do trips like this, Jose goes into Test Master mode and “forces” us to ride countless different shock and fork set-ups over and over (Oh yeah, this is rough job!). This was how, as usual, the first test session went.

Hammer's Link

By mid September, design work on the 08 fuel EX was already underway. Industrial Designer Michael Hammond  (“Hammer”) made the bonded rocker link of Patty Fatty 1000% cooler by making it 1-piece. Hammer and Steve Baumann, the Head of Industrial Design, challenged us to make the bike “faster” by making the rocker even smaller, and to reduce the angle of the seat stays for a more streamlined and aggressive visual profile.

Centerlines were re-worked and re-worked and gone over with a fine tooth comb by Jose Gonzalez and engineering.

Our first 2008 Fuel EX proto with a QR hub compatible rear end had all CNC machined frame parts and stay tubes, and a CNC’d and welded rocker link. The general shape of the bike was pretty final, and Hammer had created the visual look and shape of the main-frame tubes, but to speed things up, we simply used existing main-frame tubes from the ’07 bike. This one was named “Stella.”

Riding Patty Fatty

“Mainliner” proto was christened “Patty Fatty” by the Proto Shop (It’s a tradition that NO bike leaves the proto shop without a name!)

Patty Fatty is ridden for the first time at Marquette, Michigan by a large group of Trek testers. Our Head of Product, Joe V proclaims it “one of the 2 best protos ever!” (The other being a Session 8 proto)
The suspension on Patty Fatty is incredibly active over the small stuff, yet controlled through the mid-stroke. The technology proved itself again by allowing the suspension to stay active all the time. There was a marked improvement in stiffness and steering accuracy over the Fuel EX.

The direction for the 2008 Fuel EX was now set: keep the travel, weight and geometry of the 2007 Fuel, but add this new suspension pivot technology, floating shock, and the torsional stiffness of Fatty Patty.
During this testing and planning trip, we also came up with the name of our new pivot technology – ABP for Active Braking Pivot.

Detail Work...Adding a QR

We were pretty excited by performance of the bike at Whistler, and while we were actually riding the Session 77 proto, the “Mainliner” proto was being completed and fabricated. Concepts were created and worked out for how to use a QR rear wheel with the system, however the proto still relied on a thru axle to fully verify the concept more quickly because fewer parts were required to be fabricated.

The Mainliner had the hub-concentric thru axle rear end, a floating shock, 135mm of rerar travel, and a rocker link assembly consisting of 3 bonded parts. The bonded rocker link is something that was tried on the protos of the 2007 Fuel EX but didn’t make it to production.

Proving Grounds on CBC at Whistler

Along with the 6” multi-link bike, this Session 77 proto was quietly ridden on CBC and at Whistler. The concept was proven out with a suspension that felt more active and the braking proved to be much smoother and much more effective (the brakes were actually used much less in fast, bumpy situations).
Shandro was impressed with the active nature of it (but complained about the fork not being from his sponsor….)

Testing 5, 6 and 7" varieties

Right before pushing the go button on making this new proto bike, we made a quick change in proto course: To avoid trying too much at once, and to get a better feel for how the bikes compare to existing bikes, chain and seat-stay assemblies with new hub-concentric pivots were made for a Session 7, Remedy and 2007 Fuel EX. This way, the exact same bike could be ridden and compared with and without the hub-concentric rear pivot.

A Session 77 with a rough proto of the hub-concentric pivot swing-arm became the first ABP proto bike.
At the same time, similar swing-arms were made for a Remedy66 and a 2007 Fuel EX.

All of these protos used a steel thru axle arrangement that held the chain and seat-stays together as a way to very quickly and simply prove out the concept.

CAD models and the Mainliner

The Cad centerlines for the first bike that would feature this hub-concentric suspension were created. I nick-named this proto “Mainliner” (from the Social D album).

CAD models were created for a bike and patentability was researched and found to be a valid, patentable technology / concept.

In analyzing leverage ratios and rates, various shock layouts were tried and investigated in CAD. Remembering something Jose Gonzalez once said (when he was still at Manitou) about suspending the shock within the swing-arm / suspension system, a few different floating shock layouts were tried.

The first double forward floating shock set-up is tried. On the first attempt, the benefits of the floating shock system are immediately apparent as the leverage ratios are almost perfect.
Work on the CAD model for a first proto continued and was almost finalized.

Centerline Studies

Early 2006

In early 2006, we already had a few prototypes being worked on. We had numerous prototypes being worked on, including two dual-link style bikes being worked on ( a 5 inch version, and a 6 inch version). We were trying new stuff, improving existing stuff and generally trying to maximize the performance of suspension, braking, and pedaling efficiency.

Jim Colgrove, the father of OCLV, happened to be passing by my desk and asked an off the cuff question “why doesn’t anyone put the pivot right in-line with the hub axle?”
Because I had my head wrapped so far around multi-link suspensions designs for the past few months, my gut reaction was, “Well, because it wouldn’t do anything – you’d still just have a single pivot bike.” A short discussion about wheel paths and brake locations followed.

And then the light bulb went off. We suddenly realized that you could essentially integrate a floating brake into the suspension, all the while maintaining the pedaling efficiency and suspension performance we’d already worked so hard to maximize on the 2007 Fuel EX.

Later that day and over the next few, centerlines of existing bikes were analyzed, floating brakes studied, comparisons were made to other suspension systems, and the effect of changing existing bikes to have a hub-concentric rear pivot are studied. It was during all this examination that the exact method we used to quantify “active braking” was developed and created.

In The Beginning

The birth of an XC / Trail bike

The 2008 Fuel EX story actually begins in late 2005, riding "big bikes" on the CBC trail in Vancouver, BC. We were doing final shock tuning on the Session 10 and feeling pretty good about the bike. The geometry of the bike was dialed, the suspension felt awesome and for a 40-some lb bike with 10 inches of suspension travel, pedaling efficiency was incredible with no pedal feedback.

But there was one area we all felt could be a bit better. We really wanted a better feel through the harsh, high speed braking bumps. We wanted the bike to have more of a floating over the bumps feel instead of skipping over the tops of them.

That smoothness during braking and keeping the suspension working efficiently became the goal. But how to get there – that was the question.

Over the winter, we had plenty of bikes and projects we were already working on. But now another point of focus for each project was the braking performance. But how do you effectively measure “braking performance.” What does that really mean? Everyone claims to have active suspension and great braking response. But what does that REALLY mean outside of marketing speak?

One thing that was clear was that this solution would involve some kind of linkage system. A single pivot design would not get us what we were looking for. But developing that linkage – well, that’s the holy grail of bicycle suspension design, right?