Paul Lew has been elected TBAN’s (Technology business Alliance of Nevada) TechNevada Entrepreneur of the year. The award highlights
his inventions and achievements in the high-tech field in recent months.
Paul Lew, second from the right:
http://www.ncet.org/tban/
Lew Racing is an innovative company and wants to offer optional upgrades as soon as the technology allows them to do so. We are close to the IT industry’s approach,
where the products are constantly updated. While it can be good for the customer, it can also be very frustrating if you’re the customer who purchases just before the update!
The first Lew Racing Pro VT-1 of the latest generation have been shipped to Germany. Nils, from Fairwheelbikes Europe has had and exclusive opportunity to test them.
The rims are the area of major improvements, as explained in the two previous articles (see here), very elastic for an incredible resistance and the hubs (see here), with Tune standard available for a useful weight saving in Campa version. The normal Campa
White Industries version are 40g heavier than the Shimano one. Now, in the Tune version, they are just as light. Otherwise, the previous spokes, almost rectangular, are replaced by oval spokes
which are more aerodynamic and increase the bonding contact surface with the rim and the hub.
The built-in decals are renewed: there are 4 separate deacals reading: ‘Lew Racing’, ‘Pro VT-1’, ‘Boron Carbon’ and ‘DEX-LCM’.
The very rough finish of the original versions has been improved a lot and is now close to a « normal » product. Judge for yourself from the following pictures.
The rim valve hole is still huge. However on several rims, some material was added to reduce it to the standard valve hole size.
These hoops are still in the weight record range: 839g the set, 357g front and 482g rear. They retail at US $6,995 in Tune body, which is $1,000 more than the
original version, which is still available.
Bernhard Langerbein, the man behind BTP
components, organized a meeting in Germany for weightweenies and techno weenies! Bike/machines presentations, high speed ride, and some wheels switches allowed these passionate
guys to share their feelings.
Beside the full Spin team, Stefan and Matthias Schmolke were present. A new pretty stem was presented. 59g in 110mm, 8° angle, a custom carbon tube with thickness, weaves and resistance variations according to the stress caused by the
rider weight and bolt torque… in short a very very nice component. Only the price is not so cool at 500 euros for the stem.
Beside this prototype, Nils who is definitely present everywhere, could take a shot of a special version of the Clavicula crankset. It has only one bolt. Nothing
really special but it’s always nice to see what the manufacturers are able to do. Did you know also that THM has increased production capacity? The wait to receive a crankset is
now down to 10 weeks and 6 weeks for the forks. More information here.
A new BTP bottle cage, still a prototype, was presented. They will be available in 2008 and will only weight 9g.
Last but not least, BTP presented new hoods. We recently presented them in our article about the Scott Addict SL 3.6kg bike. They are stronger with better grip and about 13.6g the
set.
You can find more information and pictures about the meeting here: Light-bikes.de
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