Blog

Feb 28, 2025

This Week in Tech: Updated Rapha Bib Shorts, Lots of Anodized Parts, and a Revised Devinci Gravel Lineup - Velo

Photo: Dan King for Rapha There are always new bike bits, bobs, products, and gear to share. This week includes a slew of fresh anodized parts from Cane Creek and Wolf Tooth, a new Devinci Hatchet

Photo: Dan King for Rapha

There are always new bike bits, bobs, products, and gear to share. This week includes a slew of fresh anodized parts from Cane Creek and Wolf Tooth, a new Devinci Hatchet gravel bike lineup, and new bibs from Rapha.

Old Man Mountain has introduced a range of racks and bags for bikes without dedicated mounts. Prevelo gets some newly updated kids’ bikes. Aerothan also dropped new extra-light TPU tubes, Hope Tech brought a new foam-filled gravel crank, PeopleForBikes offers a duo of updates, and the Arkansas Global Cycling Accelerator offers new scholarships.

In no particular order, here’s what’s new.

When I test products, I do my best to do something ridiculous with them. 350 km in a single shot definitely lets you know if a bib short is good and that’s the kind of thing I did when I shared my favorite bib shorts last summer.

I mean, 350 km in a ride is pretty good, right? How about 650 km (give or take a few)? That’s what Rapha and Lachlan Morton did with the latest version of the brands Pro Team bib shorts. I do feel like it’s fair to mention he did it in about the same time as 350 km takes me but I do what I can. You can read about his record breaking Wellington to Auckland ride in these bibs.

I happen to think it’s this kind of thing that keeps Rapha relevant. If you agree, the Rapha Pro Team Bib Shorts III run $295 and you can find out more info on the Rapha website. -JR

Old Man Mountain makes bikepacking racks. Bikepacking and touring as a term is basically racks vs bags, so that sounds like an oxymoron, but Old Man Mountain makes it work. The trick is racks that work with any bike, with no mounting points required. Now the company is expanding to the rest of the bike and there are new bags.

For forks there’s a new nylon cargo cage with both a proprietary mounting system and a traditional cargo foot. Matching that is a bag called the Hemlock with a 7-liter capacity. It attaches “with a simple hook of the feet and a 90-degree turn of the handle to confidently lock it in place.”

“Hemlock bags and FLIP cages are rated to 9.9lbs (4.5kgs) per side. The bottom half of the bags are made from durable and abrasion resistant Hypalon where they are likely to encounter rocks and brush while the top are made from a lightweight ripstop for better compression while also reducing weight.”

Hemlock with FLIP Cages will be available as a pair of two bags, two FLIP cages, and two cargo feet for $175 or without the Hemlock bag for $80 per pair.

There’s also a new bag for the rear racks so you can match everything. The Atlas Deck Pack is a “9-liter dry bag purpose-built to mount to the deck of a rack with built-in attachment straps.” The new bag has a 9 Liter capacity, weighs 275 grams, and is priced at $95.

Visit the Old Man Mountain Website for more info. -JR

My boy is 13 years old, and at this point, he’s more than tall enough to have left children’s size bikes behind. Still, I’ve seen my share of truly good and truly bad kids bikes over the years. Prevelo is one of the good ones. Like other premium brands, Prevelo bikes hold their value, don’t weigh a ton, and they actually use quality components that fit the people who ride them.

Also, like other premium brands, Prevelo recognizes that balance bikes are a better way to teach kids how to ride. This week, Prevelo announces a change to the two smallest mountain bikes in the lineup that adds the ability to easily convert to/from a balance bike while saving about 15% of overall weight.

More information about the new Zulu One 14-inch ($599) and Zulu Two 16-inch ($649) bikes is available on the Prevelo website. -JR

The SRAM Universal Derailleur is a small bit of genius design. Instead of a different hanger for every bike, manufacturers can opt for UDH for simplicity in both construction and retail replacement. Most of the time, the small piece is black. But how about a UDH in color?

There are actually a few options to add color to your UDH, but WolfTooth is the latest. The advantage of WolfTooth is that the brand is already well known for the Color Shop. Offering black, red, blue, purple, orange, green, gold, raw silver, espresso, and olive anodization for a bunch of little details means everything matches. While the UDH bolt and washer are anodized, the hanger itself is still black.

Available in nine colors for $44.95 at the WolfTooth website. -JR

Fans of anodized purple components rejoice! Cane Creek has announced it has added an anodized purple component option (known to me as ‘ano purp’) to its Chroma Studio. In short, Chroma Studio is an extra-cost collection of anodized parts that allow riders to get Cane Creek parts in the color they want. Components eligible for anodized purple goodness include a duo of Hellbender headsets, a Hellbender bottom bracket, its own headset spacers and top cap, and more.

Anodized purple goodness starts at $35.99 for the Crank Preloader. See more at canecreek.com. -AH

Remember how excited we got about tubeless sealant this week? Well, how about we entice you with new tubes? Aeron has a new super lightweight TPU tube called the Aeron TPU SuperLight Race Airtube. The SuperLight tube adds to its existing duo of ExtraLite and UltraProtect tubes. Like the rest of the lineup, this new tube has a removable valve core and an aluminum valve, neither of which are a given from other TPU tube offerings. The difference here, however, is the Road tubes sized for 28 to 32 mm tires weigh just 26 grams with a 65 mm valve. -AH

SuperLite tubes are priced at $29.95/£22.99/€24.95. See the full-size list at aeron-tpu.com. -AH

There’s a couple of things to unpack here. The AGCA is a startup investment firm but instead of investing in tech companies, it’s doing good work investing in cycling. “The program was sponsored by a $125,000 grant from the Arkansas Economic Development Commission and a funding match from the Walton Family Foundation.” Which, of course, means this is a Bentonville thing.

Adding to the cool factor is the building that the AGCA operates out of. It’s called The Ledger and it’s bikeable. No, that doesn’t mean that you can get there by bike, it’s literally a bikeable building. “Ledger features 6 stories of bikeable ramps that take you from the ground floor to the roof. Anyone can bike or walk the ramp during business hours.” We need more of this!

That part is old news, though. This week, the AGCA picked the first round of ten companies to get funding. Each of the chosen companies will get “access to key investors, industry mentors, and strategic partnerships with leading brands.” The list includes Blubrake, BrakeAce, Hightag, Kino Bikes, Link My Ride, Lockstop, NOCA, Posedla, Skarper, and TrailPilot.

For more information, check out the links above for the individual companies, the AGCA website, or the Ledger website. -JR

This is far from on-bike tech, but PeopleForBikes’ updated recreational biking map is worth your time. It offers urbanists, accessibility advocates, and bike nerds alike to see just how good a given census tract is at offering bike infrastructure. More specifically, it can help people analyze what types of facilities are available near a bike lane, how many miles of trail access there is per 1,000 residents, and a whole lot more.

To be clear, unless you’re an urbanist sicko like me, this information isn’t particularly easy to parse through. Folks who visit the site are greeted with this quote: “The map is not a guide for people to find places to bike. Riders are responsible for knowing all relevant regulations at trails and parks, including whether and what kind of bicycling is permitted.” Its helpful, but its not for everyone.

That said, the best part about this data is that it’s free for anyone and everyone to look at! Take a look at your community’s data on peopleforbikes.com. -AH

Hope Technology might make some of our favorite brakes and Olympic-worthy track bikes, but their latest drop is a bit surprising: foam-filled carbon gravel cranks. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen foam-filled components touting improved vibration damping (we’re looking at you, Spank Vibrocore), but it is the first we’re aware of to put vibration damping into crank arms.

Regardless of how you feel about vibration damping in your cranks, these UK-manufactured cranks sure look good. The cranks cost $695, however, making this an offering I won’t expect to see on everyone’s bikes. Read Jessie-May Morgan’s words on this crankset, or see more at hopetech.com. -AH

Earlier this week, we dropped our First Ride review of the Devinci Hatchet Pro. That new performance-centric gravel bike belongs to a new trio of gravel bikes from Canadian outlet Devinci. Alongside the Hatchet Pro is an aluminum adventure-centric Hatchet Vista and a E-Hatchet Tour gravel e-bike. All three bikes feature internal cable routing, a SRAM UDH (Universal Derailleur Hanger). For better or worse, they also all share 700c x 45 mm tire clearance.

Prices start at $1799 for a Shimano CUES-equipped Hatchet Vista. See our Hatchet Pro review for our take, or more info at devinci.com. -AH