Jan Begemann

Not before July. First samples will be produced end of June. At this stage the only thing we can show is the new Raleigh logo on our Probike website.

Hi guys, we were experiencing some server issues, sorry for that. Everything is up running again now. We are busy with an all new Raleigh website which will launch end of July. For now the Raleigh site links to our Probike website. There you can still find all infos about our bikes and previous model years. By the way, there is more than 1 person working at Probike. We can concentrate on Scott AND Raleigh (and Maxxis, BBB, Slime, ...) at the same time :-). In fact I'm working on Raleigh bikes only. If you have a question and you can't find the answer on our website you are welcome to contact me directly: jan@probike.co.za Jan Begemann2010-04-28 09:52:00

They introduced daylight saving for the same reasons in Europe, and after all the years of daylight savings they know now for a fact that it doesn't save anything. The only reason why they still stick to it is, because it would be too expensive to move back. This is not a joke, this is the truth. It simply doesn't work.

Hi guys, just to make some things clear: It was Probike's decision to discontinue the sponsorship. We had and still have a very good relationship to Doug Ryder and his team, but after many years Probike has decided to change their business and marketing strategies. There will be no team riding Raleigh bikes in 2010 as we don't see any better team to sponsor than MTN. Just to give you some facts on Volcan: 1. Victor did the product management, but he is not the distributor. 2. Emotion Cycling (Stewart Miller) is the distributor in SA. 3. The bikes are not made by Cervelo. In fact Cervelo does not even have a frame factory. But they have the same distributor in SA. 4. I don't know much about the Volcan bikes, but 10.5 kg for a aluminium suspension bike actually is not too bad. And don't compare this weight to your carbon Specialized pimped with carbon wheels, etc. I wish all the best to Doug Ryder and his team. Even though Kevin will not ride Raleigh next year I wish he will win the Cape Epic. And even though the road team will not ride Raleigh anymore I wish the will win a stage in a big European pro race and make it to the Tour de France some day.

? I'm amused... ? On average' date=' I ride about 16 000km offroad per year. ? Each 32 000km?I go through: ? 4?sets of derailleur?pulleys (R800)? 8?chains (R1000) 2?sets of chainrings (R1300) 2?cassettes?(R1000) ? 2?sets wheel bearings (American Classic wheels) (R600) 1 rear derailleur (R700) ? I drilled the cable guides to accept full length outer housing. ? It's a fact that I spend a lot less on my bike than most?people. I don't pay R300 for a bike clean. I power wash it (5 mins) and once a month or second month do a bearing/lube service (1 hour) (pop the bearing seals out, add new grease, clean if needed) ? ? How much does the everage rider spend per year on bike services and time in the shop? + parts because of poor maintenance? ? How much water can enter a chain? or how much water can enter your chainrings and cassette? you have to be really stupid to argue with this one - or never have used a pressure cleaner and inspected / disassebled the parts afterwards... ? Using parrafin does a lot more harm, it goes past seals and wash out grease. ? If you don't aim the pressure spray near the seals, it can't get in. Period.[/quote'] Don't call me stupid, I don't call you stupid either. And I also don't hold my "cycling career and experience" up here to proof I'm right even though I could beat you easily on this one. Back to the facts: Obviously you don't damage a chainring by using high pressure. And you are right, if you don't aim the pressure spray near the seals, everything will be fine. But how do you clean your chain and cassette without spraying your rear hub? Maybe that's why you needed new hub bearings, because normally those bearings should last nearly forever? I also never ever needed to replace my rear derailleur because it was worn out.

The question should not be "Why do you lube?". That is very clear, to make your chain run smooth with less friction and less wear. The question actually is: What are you trying to achieve by cleaning the chain? Do you want to maintain your drivetrain or just make it look nice and clean? When I clean my chain I don't want to remove the oil, I want to remove the dirt. So why using degreaser? That removes what keeps your chain alive. Use degreaser whereever you want to remove oil and grease from places where it shouldn't be, like frame, chainrings, etc. Using degreaser on your chain just makes the chain wear out quicker. Clean the chain either like Johan suggested with water and soap or put dry lube on a piece of cloth and use this to clean the chain. After that take another clean piece of cloth and wipe off the oil from the chain surface. Or if you want to support the spare parts sales of your LBS use a high pressure cleaner. After 2 years of doing the neutral service at the Epic I can say that 80% of all failures in parts like rear derailleurs, BBs, cables, etc. came from cleaning the bike with a high pressure cleaner. @Brighter-Lights: FYI the water intrusion from high pressure cleaners is more than 100 times higher than from rain or soapy water.

Many downhill riders use 10-speed cassettes, no matter if Shimano or Sram. Both offer 10-speed flat bar shifters you can use on a mtb. The reason for 10-speed: 1. A 10-speed road cassette is lighter than a 9-speed mtb cassette. 2. There is no point in a 32T sprocket on a downhill, so if you run a 11-32T cassette you just use 4 or 5 gears. A road cassette of 11-23T makes a lot more sense. 3. There is always marketing involved! Obviously riding something "different" always gets attention. Riders like Greg Minnaar are pro riders. This means they have contracts with their sponsors. And if Sram tells him to ride 10-speed cassettes, Greg must ride 10-speed. If he could just ride what he'd like to ride I guess you'd still see him on a Honda bike.

@Johan Regarding custom frame builders you are right, nearly all of them were/are brazed. Using lugs was more the "old" style, with the first mtb specific tubesets the many frame builders started brazing without lugs or just one lug for the BB shell. Looks very neat and is obviously lighter than using lugs. The reason why they did not weld, was simply because the welding was very hard to control. The temperature is a lot higher, and if you don't get it right, you "burn" the tube. The Taiwanese on the other hand saw that welding is a lot more cost efficient and practical for mass production. So they designed special welding machines and brought the welding process on bike frames to perfection. They mostly did not use any welding robots. In the 90's labour was still cheap in Taiwan and welding a frame with the right machines doesn't require high skills. I would not say what the Taiwanese did and still do is cheap sh*t. Actually the best steel frames I have ever seen come from Taiwan. So custom made steel frames are mostly brazed, frames from mass production (which is clearly the majority) are mostly welded. @Mr. T 6061 tubes are impossible to get in SA. Even Morewood did not manage to get them here. They used some other 6-series alloy in the beginning and have started importing custom made 6061 hydroformed tubes now from somewhere overseas. If you want to build a recumbent bike you better don't go for steel. The frame won't be stiff enough. You will also need some very special tubes and cnc parts, so I think your only chance in fact is Morewood. They can weld aluminium, the have cnc machines, they can do heat treatments and have more experience in aluminium frame building than anybody else in the country.

We are aware of this problem, and I agree with you. It's just not that easy to decide which is the right way to go.

Having real life statistics, for e.g.?number of carbon frames manufactures vs. number of brands, etc.?will go a far way to address peoples questions/ignorance. Raleigh? You willing to publish these? And I'm not talking Brandon's marketing talk. The factories in Taiwan and China don't even allow me to take pictures. If I would start publishing who's frame is made by which factory, I would put Probike in a very difficult position and myself out of the business for the rest of my life. But I can say, that there is another brand in market (not Silverback), very successful and well presented in SA, that is using the same frame factories as we do. Not just on one model, on nearly all models. Their frames look totally different to ours, and even technically they don't have much in common, except being bike frames. Looking at the designs you would never expect these 2 brands using the same factories. And believe it or not, neither they nor we did this on purpose, it just happened by accident. For the first years we didn't even know about it. What I want to say is, that if you do your own designs, the influence from the factory is very little, especially on aluminium frames. The look, geometries, tube dimensions etc. only depend on what you ask for, the factory at the end is just the one forming and welding tubes according to your specifications. And they don't even care what you ask for. If you give a frame drawing with 2 downtubes and no seattube, they build it. If you send them a drawing of your garden furniture, they build it, and the only query you'd get is, that this stuff doesn't fit in a bicycle box.

Depending on the frame model our frames are more or less designed by Probike (me) or specifically for Probike. In the 2009 range none of our frames is a "off the shelf" standard frame. The last time we had one off the shelf was in 2008 (the Dedacciai carbon frames). All our aluminium frames are our own designs, but some tube shapes like for example the carbon rear stays of the RM 6.0 are off the shelf. Designing our own rear stays would be very expensive and give no advantage. The current suspension frame is a design I did with Timo Woelk, an engineer from Munich, when I was still working for a German company (Trenga DE). Since this year Raleigh and Trenga DE are both using the same design and share the costs on all further developments. Our carbon frames are still the ones where our own part is not that much. The frames are based on open models, but modified according to our requirements (like different carbon material, different dropouts and our own geometries). Our one big problem here is the costs of designing an own carbon frame. Having the Raleigh license for Africa and India means in fact, that we can sell our high end bikes only in SA. So our quantities compared to worldwide selling company like Trek are very very small. Designing a carbon road frame and making the molds would cost around USD 70,000 to 100,000 plus the costs you have to produce the frames. We'd end up with USD1000 per frame before painting. But I am already working on a solution for 2010, currently on a new mtb hardtail frame. The idea is to let us do the design, so that we get exactly what we want. We get the exclusive rights on this design for South Africa, and the Chinese factory can sell it to other companies anywhere else in the world. So being far away from other markets like America, Germany or China in this case is an advantage for us :-).

The story of Raleigh as a brand name is a bit complicated, and I am not sure if what I write here is 100% correct, but I'll try my best. The original Raleigh company based in UK had a branch in South Africa since I can't remember (long time) producing bikes for the local market. More than 10 years ago the whole Raleigh group got sold, and the new owner cut Raleigh International into many little pieces and sold them. As far as I know he only kept Raleigh UK, Raleigh US and obviously the rights on the brand name. So everyone using the Raleigh brand name is paying licence fees for his area now to Raleigh International. Right now you will find Raleigh licencees all over the world, and most of them do their own bike ranges, that suit the best to the local market. We for example have the license for Africa and India, Derby Cycle Germany for Germany, Austria and Switzerland, Shepherd's in New Zealand for NZ and Australia, and so on. Probike on the other hand was founded by Peter Miller (don't know if the company's name actually was Probike at that stage) more than 30 years ago (in PE). I don't know the full story, but his business was quite successful, somehow he got involved with the Raleigh guys in SA, sold his business to them about 15 years ago and started managing Raleigh SA. By the time Raleigh International got split into pieces he and Brandon bought the company back. Over all the years Raleigh/Probike made Raleigh bikes for the SA market, but only the cheaper models. The mid level and high end bikes only started when Brandon got into the business. I agree with you that "Raleigh" is originally a British brand name, but at the same time Probike/Raleigh has a very long South African history and is as much (or even more) a South African brand as Silverback. Raleigh is part of this company's history, and the UK is their roots. But noone ever thought about changing the brand name. Maybe you should see it in similar way as you see people's history. I don't know your name, but I'm sure it would still give me an idea about where your family comes from and you could tell an interesting story starting many years ago somewhere in Europe and ending in SA. And no matter if your surname is du Plessis, Chesterton or Retief, and no matter where your family originally comes from, I'm sure you see yourself as a South African.

Raleigh is as much a local brand as Trek, Specialized and Cannondale are American brands. The company is registered and based in South Africa, R&D and product management is done in South Africa. Nearly all people employed by Probike are working and living in South Africa, and the entry level bikes you can buy from Game are assembled in Port Elizabeth. OK, you can say now that I as the product manager am not South African, but the guy who designed the new Specialized Epic wasn't American either. And of course our frames are made in Taiwan and China. And so are (nearly) all other frames as well. But does that make us a Chinese brand?