Ashima 2013 - Interbike 2012

[Webot]

The Ashima virtuoso Wayne Moore had some tasty tidbits he brought with him from Taiwan, including a new floating rotor, an updated two piece rotor, and a revised PCB.

Wayne's latest brake rotor is the Flo-ToR, which is an actual floating design, and has .3mm of float. It uses a stainless steel outer ring attached to a colored aluminum spider, and they're connected together with an innovative outer aluminum nut with an inner steel bolt to maximize heat transfer. It is meant as an All Mountain rotor, and will come in 160mm, 180mm and 203mm sizes, and the 160 weigh 75 grams.

The AiNeon is a two-piece brake rotor that is comprised of a stainless steel outer ring attached to a colored aluminum spider. This year he has switched to an aluminum connector, instead of steel, for better heat transfer between the different materials. The use of the aluminum carrier and their lightweight rotor design, keeps the weight at an uber light 71 grams for a 160mm size, making it one of the lightest two-piece rotors on the market. According to Wayne, the power should be comparable to their AiRotor, with improved heat management due to the higher conduction rates of the aluminum spider, which he measured at approximately 100 degrees. The outer ring looks exactly like their new Ai2 rotor, with the same cutouts and wavy braking surface. In another weight saving design, one version uses just three rotor bolts, which is a practice done by many weight weenies, and many pro riders. The AiNeon will only be available in 160mm and 180mm sizes (soon a 140), with Red, Blue, Black and Gold aluminum spiders, and will come in either three (Ti bolts) or six bolt (Al bolts) versions.

To go along with their three bolt version of the rotor, they teamed up with Token, and created a hub that only has a three bolt interface, and it's appropriately named the AiNeon Hub.

This carbon fiber rotor will likely never see production, but it's a pretty cool product.

Wayne has been poking around with his PCB (pancake brake system) for a number of years, making design changes as needed for quality, strength, durability, power and modulation improvements. This year he switched the master cylinder to an aluminum body, added a top-mounted cap, and he has tweaked the diaphragm, making it out of PTFE, which is stiffer the previously used rubber, which should give the brake a firmer feel. The brake is slowly picking up more bits and pieces from a traditional design aspect, but still retains the very innovative PCB or pistonless technology.

In Wayne's typical think outside the box mentality, he came up with "Brake Fluid in a Bag," which reminded me of an IV bag. When Wayne would talk with different bike shops, some would ask for a small quantity of fluid, and others wanted more, and the bag would easily allow customized amounts to be added. In addition, the air can be squeezed out of the bag, alleviating moisture from the air getting into the fluid, which is huge issue with DOT 3. Brake fluid tends to sit around in bottles in any shop for long periods of time, and this innovative design, increases the shelf life and keeps the fluid uncontaminated.

Ashima bought the Rite Toolz company, which brings a great plethora of tools into the Ashima product space. I really liked their top of the line chain breaker tool that Wayne showed me, which had quite a few features, and it's fully adjustable for every chain size, and once you know the chain's sweet spot, it lets you set the distance that the pin gets pushed out.

Wayne also showed me his updated hydraulic PCB pistonless road bike rim brake, which has been evolving since its original viewing in 2010. It uses a carbon fiber arch, wishbone brake fluid injector lines which connect directly into the back of the PCB interface. He has also tweaked their PCaC carbon rim brake pad with more surface area to extract heat away from the rim.






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