SRAM invited a load of us to have a snoop round their European headquarters in Schweinfurt, Germany the other week to see the wheres, hows and whos concerning the development and testing of the XX1 drivetrain. Victor Lucas was in attendance with his camcorder and made a very nice film about the place and what went on. I look like a bit of a tool I know, but try to ignore that and focus on the what the professionals are saying about this 11 speed bit of kit. We’ve previously ridden the XX1 out in Whistler and we’re quite impressed by it’s performance.
We’ll be letting you know more of our thoughts on the XX1 and how it survives after a Winter in the thick Welsh mud at the Dirt office trails.
Us lot having a snoop round SRAM HQ in Schweinfurt.
One of the SRAM testing labs. Clean isn’t it?
The machining stages of the XX1 rear cassette.
Design Engineer Matthias Reinbold tells us how the cassette goes from a big lump of steel to the precision engineered final product.
Cut away of the XX1 cassette.
Frank Schmidt (SRAM development group leader) on the attributes of the XX1 chain ring.
Engineer Robert talks about the X-Sync rear mech.
Test engineer manager Markus Klier gives us the lowdown on the deMONSTRator test rig.
Markus talks about the XX1 shifting performance tests.
The wheel durability test.
The Liteville 301 (aka the Ball Chopper) kitted out with the new SRAM XX1 clobber that we’ll be testing. We’ll let you know how we got in a future issue of the magazine.
Photos: Sebastian Scheick.
