Cervélo handiest formally published their new carbon ZFS-5 full-suspension cross-country race mountain motorcycle a couple of days in the past, and so they’ve already proven how the Jumbo-Visma crew used a inflexible LinkLock to transform it again to a hardtail! Unbolt the fast hyperlink, take away the usual RockShox SIDLuxe Final surprise & its faraway, then bolt in a ordinary wishbone strut as an alternative.
However why?
Cervélo LinkLock converts XCO ZFS solely into an XCC hardtail
The “why” is “as a result of UCI“.
The governing frame of professional mountain motorcycle racing, the UCI MTB International Cup laws require that cross-country racers should compete within the XCC brief song race at the similar motorcycle as they trip in the principle match Olympic-distance XCO cross-country race. However a more in-depth have a look at the principles in fact handiest specifies that it should be the similar body.
Person parts – like the ones that may be got rid of or changed at the body… as an example wheels, tires, and gearing – are allowed to be swapped out to evolve the motorcycle to the shorter, sooner, and no more technical nature of the short-track circuit racing. So whilst some racers would merely lock out their rear surprise at some stage in the part hour XCC race – why no longer take it to the following stage.
So, Cervélo engineers labored with the Jumbo-Visma crew to plan a inflexible surprise substitute for his or her new ZFS-5 solely… a hyperlink to fasten out the body… a LinkLock.
Tech Element
The Cervélo ZFS LinkLock is a reasonably easy piece of CNC-machined 7000-series aluminum, engineered to deal with the precise lots exerted at the body whilst off-road racing with successfully no motion or lack of rider power enter.
Simply bolt it into the similar mounts because the surprise & brief hyperlink. It’s supposed to be stiff and unmoving, leaving any flex or bump absorption to the carbon body.
Apparently, this one practical alloy prototype was once made with what quantities to a flip-chip insert at its attachment level to the top of the seatstays. This allowed the crew to experiment a bit of with the geometry of the ‘locked-out’ full-suspension hardtail. Did they need to mirror the placement of the fully-extended unloaded surprise.
As a substitute, Milan Vader raced the Nové Město na Moravě International Cup XCC short-track race within the ahead flip-chip place that extra as it should be preserves the geometry of the motorcycle as it could be at right kind suspension sag.
What’s Subsequent?
Neither Jumbo-Visma nor Cervélo see the LinkLock as a practical shopper product, however that doesn’t imply they’ll forestall building paintings on it. I spoke with each Cervélo’s XC product supervisor and Milan himself as of late, and each appear passionate & keen to check out out new concepts at the trail to innovating cross-country race motorcycles.
And there might be every other technology of the LinkLock. Subsequent up it will be a Three-D-printed model, topology-optimized to shave weight off this aluminum model. The crew will most likely stay taking part in with the speculation so long as International Cup classes necessitate a full-suspension XC motorcycle for the longer XCO racing whilst a theoretical hardtail is usually a higher have compatibility for the XCO brief song.
