Lainaus:
Yes, some of the prototypes have broken, that's the goal, to start light, and add material after issues are found. It's pretty much impossible to start heavy and then try to reduce weight and pray for no failure. It just doesn't work that way. Plus, FEA with composite construction is dodgy at best. Testing is just a far more efficient means of arriving at the end goals that we're shooting for. So to answer the call for "transparency", here's what I've got for you: 1) I didn't design the bike, I just act as an advisor to Evil, just as I do with Ibis, Pivot, Turner, Morewood, Devinci, BH, Spooky, IF, Seven and a couple other brands that you don't know about. 2) We've seen the bikes have failures in a couple areas. The chainstay yoke was too thin on one version and that cracked. It wasn't as stiff as we wanted anyways so that's a good thing. We removed material in the front end to add flex and changed the stiffness profile of the swingarm mounts in the front end as well. I think that one early frame may have cracked up by the seat tower, it certainly was blemished. We added material just to be safe as it was an area that did not make a stiffness change. The front of a couple of the swingarms broke where the aluminum insert will be. Brook did break one but the other is all good. 3) To answer the conspiracy theorists questions, no, I did not know that Brook broke one of the two swingarms until after I was on here last, but it was not unexpected. The swingarm Brook broke had almost 300 runs on it so honestly I am completely amazed that it lasted that long given that initially they were just for stiffness testing and not for big hits. They seemed to be holding up so Zink, Strobel, and Cam and Mason have been riding them without inserts. I rode it hard myself and it held together. That being said, the insert design was signed off on in June and new swingarms and frames with the latest layups will be here in the next week I am told. 4) I expect at least one more revision after this, maybe two. 5) We don't learn anything if nothing breaks in testing, so I am hoping for more failures.
"It's pretty much impossible to start heavy and then try to reduce weight and pray for no failure."