Hello All,

First let me introduce myself. I am Ryan Carroll. I started Astrix Sports in the USA and we have expanded into developing and licensing suspension systems on mountain bikes to other companies around the world for 8 years. Over the last 2 years I have also been working at Pacific Cycles as the Chief Development Engineer. Our design group focuses on creation and development of ideas into production.

Some of the previous projects out of the Pacific Design Studio have included examples like, Jedi for Louis Garneau in Japan, the new Pacific Reach and Diamondback UK's internal gear box downhill bike the Sabbath.

When I first saw and test rode Mark's folding idea on 2 of his personal concept bikes at Eurobike last year, I was excited with the chance to work with it. Pacific and Mark worked out a deal and ever since I have been busy working away engineer and designing iF bikes.

With George Lin's grand knowledge of folding bikes and his son Michael now also getting involved in creating and making ideas, we had a good team to accomplish putting Mark's ideas into production frames. Mark has even spent much time at home and in Taiwan helping work on the project.

Recently, it has been great to get to read all the comments and curious questions about these new products. IF Reach has just finished production and is headed out of the factory around the world to all distributors to have at dealers soon I hope.

We have spent the last 10 months doing FEA and production part manufacture analysis to get Mode into full production. Michael and I have spent countless hours working with forging companies to make such challenging parts as our rear arm. We are working with one of the best forging companies in Taiwan that makes exacting parts for Apple and others in the 2 wheel motorized industry and our arm was a welcomed challenge that is now amazing.

Other challenges have included our hydrostatic formed aluminum bladed wheels. After much research and talking to just about all mag wheel makers, 26” wheels all break. Even Mark’s concept bike is on its 3rd set now. So we decided to create our own solution for a strong super narrow wheel that could accomplish our need for folding performance. This was a pretty fun and exciting challenge for us to over come.

Coming up soon Michael and I will be at Eurobike and various parts of Germany traveling around with our Mode bikes and then off to Interbike, so if any of you are around stop and say hello

… and for a teaser, here is a picture of me riding my Mode after work out to the harbor…


Regards,

Ryan Carroll