stevet1":1rw5f3hu said:
Ditto, thanks for sharing, great history lesson and useful pics.
<wonders how well the grafton/ringle/yeti disc brakes work >
No problem. . .
The ringetiafton front end. .
well, first thing was the fork had no rigidity so auto-steer was an understatement. I think all the other sets had conventional dropouts so relied 100% on the hub for stiffness. If you look at 99% of motorcycles, that's genearally all they use. The mudgaurds are hardly structural. But looking at the hubs you see the rapid progression to "through axles". As I say, this set has a donut brazed to each dropout to take a bolt, to try and stiffen the whole thing up.
The disc caliper is pretty cool, using little sintered metal pads, like only the very top end motorcycles are starting to get now. One little pad per piston, and they were magnetically retained. But like all carbon discs, you need HEAT in them before the friction coefficient comes up, and they actually try and stop you. Up until then that have the 'brakes of glass' feeling. And then the discs, these are pretty much experimental patterns, using laser cut woven sheets, so when the heat did come up, it'd just melt the resin instead. . . But hey, it taught a lot of lessons. Such as, bikes have big wheels (bigger than cars or motorcycles), and that amount of leverage needs bracing- hence the boxxer still kept a brace; and also that the front axle is a key interface, leading to the evolution of the superduperbubba D-shaped axle from the regular plain oversize superbubba.
Oh, and also that discs were effective. . .
. . and it was getting in to a new league of expense for a small manufacturer.. . .
You can see similarities in the Rockshox caliper of the boxxer era to the grafton, if anyone has some pix.
Grafton died as a business at this time too, so that broke a link in the chain and development didn't continue.
