Calfee is a very interesting brand. For some, it immediately conjures images of bamboo bikes. Others, high end lugged carbon bikes. And then there’s the ultralight molded carbon fiber tandem bikes always on display at NAHBS.

Superficially, it’d be easy to just say Calfee makes some really nice, really interesting bikes. That would only scratch the surface of what they do at their La Selva Beach, California facility. The building itself is fairly massive, and it was rebuilt to resemble its original function as a tank factory. Which is why they have a 5 ton sliding lift in the middle. It comes in handy for moving around pallets and their flying gyrocopter.

Our tour will be broken up into three parts because, well, there’s just so much to see. We’ll touch on that ‘copter separately, along with all the various bikes we saw while there. Part One will show you how they make their frames, components, tooling and everything else…

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Scoped out by Saris at Sea Otter in prototype form lurking in the pits, GT has taken the wraps off the new Fury DH bike. To detail the development of the new lighter and stiffer aluminum bike, GT put together this development video.

It looks like a Bandit, it smells like a Bandit, but it’s not a Bandit. Get up close and you won’t notice anything different until your eyes glance down at the tires. The difference between 26” and 27.5” wheelsize is subtle but the burly tires are clearly emblazoned 650B.

We spoke at length with Lars Stenburg about his cleverly camouflaged test mule and personal setup. Drop past the break for the details. READ MORE ->

First spotted on the Open AXX1 at Sea Otter, THM’s new Clavicula M3 modular crank is now available through Fairwheel Bikes. The original Clavicula is a popular option among the lightweight crowd, but the introduction of the M3 opens the crank up to all of the modern drive trains. As a big improvement from our standpoint at least, the spindle has been redesigned and is now made from aluminum rather than carbon. The carbon spindle was plenty strong and stiff, but as we experienced – the need to place the crankset in the freezer before installing, and the difficulty of uninstalling the carbon spindle version was a little troublesome. The new alloy spindle should prove more durable, and quite a bit easier to install.

Chainring configuration, BB standard? Take your pick after the break.

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In the name of constant improvement and to keep their crank based power meters up to date, Stages has released another firmware update to fix a few bugs. The biggest of which seems to be an Apple specific bug specifically with the Bluetooth communication to iPhones which could experience data drops. Since Stages can’t access the source in the phone the bug has instead been fixed with a patch at the sensor. This also will help to improve the sensor’s functionality almost completely eliminating cadence spikes. Most of the improvements are geared toward the mountain bike side of things, but it is recommended for all powermeters. Starting on May 30, 2013 all powermeters produces after this point will have the update already installed.

More details after the break.

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Stan’s current 3.30 SS hub, only for QR.

At first, one of their sponsored athletes said they released a 12×142 thru-axle single speed hub a couple months ago. But, having not seen it in their Sea Otter booth, we asked the friendly Stan’s NoTubes folks helping out with neutral support at the Trans-Sylvania Epic if they were real.

Turns out no, they’re not available. Yet.

Details are less than fuzzy, but we’ve heard drawings are being worked up and a release is forthcoming. Are there bikes out there that can take it? Few and far between at the moment, but with so many singlespeed bikes using Paragon or similar sliding dropouts, it wouldn’t take much for appropriate parts to be made available quickly. Our guess: a handful of showcase thru-axle singlespeed bikes at NAHBS next year.

John Caletti’s bikes have always impressed me at NAHBS. Not because they’re super trick showstoppers or full of hidden features. But because they’re always elegant looking while being entirely rideable. You know, the way a bicycle should be.

Following NAHBS this year, I paid him a visit just before Sea Otter to check out his workshop and see how it all comes together. Caletti builds in steel, mostly, and titanium. Every frame is full custom, from the geometry to the sizing to the tube selection. Even basic custom paint is included in the price, though wild jobs can quickly escalate your expenditure.

The photo above shows where the magic happens. Every bit of it. It’s a small workshop, with everything in its place and just one bike under construction at a time. His process is very straightforward and without frills, but he knows his stuff inside and out. Scroll through to see his process…

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It may be past warmer season for some parts of the globe, but depending on the weather and location a good set of arm/knee/leg warmers can prove invaluable year round. Hinting towards a vastly improved product line (of which we have a few other reviews in the works), Bontrager’s line of warmers are up there with the best we’ve tried. With an asymmetrical left/right specific fit all three proved to fit extremely well.

More from Bontrager, WD-40, Vaude, Banjo Brothers, and Road ID after the break!

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Loaded Precision Components introduced their new X-Lite mountain bike wheels at Sea Otter, with offerings for all three wheel sizes.

The rims use their “True Bead Technology”, their own tubeless system, that supposedly makes installation and initial inflation super easy. There’s an internal beam extruded into the design to improve lateral rigidity. To keep it light, they use 32 quad-butted spokes with alloy nipples color matched to the hubs, and they’re available in red, green, gold, black, silver and pewter/gray.

Internals use three double-engagement-point pawls with 24 points of contact. They work with 9/15 front axles and QR/12×142 rear and include skewers. Roll past the break for closeups, more specs and their new stem…

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Niner showed us their new Lowtop RDO reverse-rise carbon handlebar and the new Trail stem at Sea Otter, both just prior to having production items on hand (though we were still able to weigh a few, including the new RDO setback seatpost, too!).

Now, we’ve got a look at how that Lowtop handlebar positions the rider on the bike. Shown above on the trail under a 5’2″ rider on an extra small Jet9 Carbon, it just about looks like a riser bar flipflopped. The key differences in doing exactly that is in the angles. The Lowtop bar has juts forward first, then sweeps back at a 17º angle.

Drop in for diagrams and other goodies, plus a deal on a bar/stem combo…

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