Chris Canfield’s company, Suspension Formulas, develops and licenses mountain bike suspension designs used by brands including Revel and Canfield Bikes. Now he’s launching his own bike brand, Vampire Bikes while also continuing to race DH at the Masters level.
- In 2019 you won the UCI Masters World Championship at Mont St. Anne when you were in your 40s. What’s allowed you to be so fast for so long?
- How much of DH racing is about equipment vs. rider?
- Did you get involved in building bikes out of necessity, or was it something you really enjoyed from the beginning?
- Tell us about the Canfield Balance Formula suspension design. Is it primarily focused on pedal efficiency? What does “controlled braking” mean?
- Is designing suspension for a DH bike easier in some ways since you aren’t as concerned about pedal efficiency?
- CF3 is a newer, patent pending suspension design. How is that different from CBF?
- With the expiration of the original DW Link patent, does this open opportunities for new designs and/or improvements?
- Is it difficult working with bike brands as a suspension designer? Does your design end up getting compromised in some ways?
- What does the Vampire Bikes customer look like?
- What do you make of recent news about athletes launching their own bike brands? What do you think is driving this?
You can follow along with the launch of Vampire Bikes on Instagram @vampire_bikes and learn more about some of the suspension designs we discussed at suspension-formulas.com.
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Automated transcript
Jeff Barber 0:00
Hey everybody, welcome to the Singletracks podcast. My name is Jeff, and today my guest is Chris Canfield. Chris’ company, Suspension Formulas, develops and licenses mountain bike suspension designs used by brands including revel and Canfield bikes. Now he’s launching his own bike brand, vampire bikes, while also continuing to race downhill at the masters level. Thanks for joining me. Chris, hey, thanks for having me. Jeff. So I wanted to start by talking about your downhill racing background. So you raced at the pro and elite level for many years, and then in 2019 you won the UCI masters World Championship at Mount St Ann when I believe you were in your 40s. So what’s allowed you to be so fast for so long?
Chris Canfield 0:47
I have no idea. It’s not like I don’t have injuries or or whatever. I just love it. I mean, if I could be between the tape, like, honestly, every couple of days, I’d be happy. I mean, there’s a race series up in BC for the BC cups, where they do a back to back to back, a weekend race, Wednesday race, and then another weekend race, so that, like, people don’t have to travel so much. And it was the most fun I’ve ever had in my life. Because it was like, get done with the race and have one day of travel and start practice all over again. I was like, I could do this. The rest of my life… this would be so much fun.
Jeff Barber 1:23
Wow. I mean, what do you enjoy about it? Are you, like, a really competitive person, or, like, what is it about racing that you find so fun?
Chris Canfield 1:33
I guess I’m competitive. I don’t really see myself as the classic competitive person. I’m pretty laid back, I like the dissecting a track in a way that you don’t normally ride a trail, and the way that a racetrack makes you do weird, Off Camber, hard, techie moves just for the time, and it always pushes my limit above, like, my skill level in a lot of ways. I remember when I was first racing the opening rounds of the norba nationals, was Big Bear, and I couldn’t jump for it back then. And I remember there was, like, 40 foot jumps with like, really, like, big, tall, sharp walls for the landing pads and no room for error. And waking up in the morning going, I’ve got to jump these jumps. I’ve never jumped anything this big, but yeah, today I’ve got to go into practice and jump something gigantic and and be way over my head. And I love that. I love the the fact that you kind of get to travel around and race in different places instead of just being in the same old place. And I find that if I’m not racing, I kind of get bored. It’s okay. You just kind of riding the same old trails, doing the same old stuff, and there’s, there’s nothing to push for.
Jeff Barber 3:03
Well, so it sounds like a big part of it is that you enjoy that like strategy aspect of it, the newness always like a new challenge to kind of crack and unwrap. Then also, I hear you saying that like you enjoy challenging trails, technical trails. Like, would you say, like for fun? Would you rather go ride like a really technical trail, or like a fast and flowy, like jumpy sort of trail?
Chris Canfield 3:30
Um, I like both a lot. Okay, I would rather race a technical trail.
Jeff Barber 3:37
Is that your better suit?
Chris Canfield 3:41
Yeah. But I find that the the jump trails are kind of boring. And if you don’t have a really good scrub, and there’s nothing going on on it, on a smooth jump Line Trail, like an air DH, there’s just, like, smooth track and bumps and, yeah, you know, yeah, you’re catching air a little bit here and there. But the technical stuff is what’s challenging and fun. And, you know, I might be good at it, but at the same time, you know, there’s lots of people that have a lot better, you know, tech writing skill or mud writing skill than I do. Yeah, I, you know, I really like the the gathering of all of your friends, that you end up just making all these friends from all over the world just because they’re doing the same thing. You see them all the time at the races, and you’re like, Oh, you’re back again, and we’re gonna pile around for the weekend.
Jeff Barber 4:35
That’s cool. And I think, you know, I think it’s really helpful understanding like your background and your riding style, as we start talking about, like, suspension design and your new bike brand, how much as a racer, though, like, how much of downhill racing would you say is about equipment versus the rider? Like, how important is the bike really when it comes to being competitive in downhill?
Chris Canfield 5:03
I love that people have always said it’s not the bike, it’s or it’s just the rider, yeah, but I always used to laugh at that, because me and my brother were making a bike that had open neutral braking that was river dark in the early days, and we were competing against people that had brake Jackie lock up under braking, single pivots, yeah, and bikes that didn’t pedal well, and almost no one had a pulley wheel. River dark bike for a long time. And in those days, I would have 100% told you it’s 100% you know, the bike is a huge advantage, huge advantage, especially if you had the one or two good brakes on the market, or you were using the good tubeless system with good rubber. Those were huge advantages. Like I remember racing sugar mountain Norman national. I was, I was first year Pro. It was my best finish. That’s why I remember so well. And this was back when everybody had their World Cup teams go to the northern nationals. So Sam Hill was there. He won. And, you know, I beat John Kirkcaldy that lap. I was so excited. I took 12 and, you know, Brendan Fairclough was there, the whole, you know, the whole gamut of all those old classic racers and but Sam Hill had wet screams, and they weren’t available in America. They were available in Europe. They didn’t really sell them or import them here. And we were riding like swamp things, which were garbage mud tires, and he had, he had spikes, and he was ripping, because it was a really bad mud race, and he ripped. I mean, he got us all by a lot. I mean, it was Sam Hill and all. But, I mean, there were sections where he went full pace and just carved through stuff where we were, like, full skid, sliding around, feet out, and he had full traction, yeah. So this is kind of the one sport where your equipment can be a huge advantage, huge advantage. Like, I love the it was like 2017 or so, if I remember correctly, when Omri pirion had a common saw with the the pulley wheel like a rumor bike, yeah, and I had had one since 2001 so I knew how much faster they were than a regular bike, especially on like tech trails and bumpy trails, you know, really rough tracks, and he swept that season so hard, he shocked the whole world, and all of a sudden every brand is building a pulley wheel bike, right, right? And they woke up to the fact that, like, that is really, really fast. And I was like, Oh, I’ve been telling everybody I’m on now.
Jeff Barber 7:59
Like you know it would be a really great experiment, right? Like, what if? What if you could have a race where all the top current pros are there, but they all have to ride the same bike, same exact, like, setup. Then we really, then we would know, right? I would really love to see that. See what the difference is, right? Somebody’s going to win. There’s going to be a difference. Some are going to be faster. But, like, yeah, what is the gap going to look like between these athletes if they were all on the same equipment?
Chris Canfield 8:29
You know, I’ve thought about that same thing, and I think it’s the coolest. Like, I would love to see it, because it’ll never happen.
Jeff Barber 8:35
Because it’s like, which bike are we going to use? And also, like, I haven’t practiced on this bike.
Chris Canfield 8:40
It would be kind of cool though, just to be like, here’s a big purse. You have to ride the one bike, you know, whatever it is, yeah, and then make purse. Yeah, that would be cool. Like, one brand provides a purse. Everybody has to ride that bike, that fork, those tires, you know, that those brakes, and see who’s really the best driver. Yeah, and just coming full circle the I think nowadays, most of the bikes aren’t a bad design anymore. You know, there’s, there’s a few that still lock up under braking, which I’m a big I would never ride. I would have a really hard time as a pro racer, like wanting or having to ride a bike that just doesn’t absorb the bumps and track the ground when you’re pulling the brakes on a steep descent, yeah, especially through rock garden stuff. You know it feels like a hard tail, and it’s really hard to to be under control in that situation. So, but I mean, in the old days, wow, was it a big difference? Yeah, so, I mean, it’s not that big a deal anymore. And even all that being said, it’s still whoever is peaking in their conditioning at the time. You can tell, like. People go into like, segments of conditioning where, for like, a month they’re just peaking and they’re unstoppable. Because, you know, their their heart rate, their ability to to sprint for four minutes, is just doing really, really well. There’s no injuries. And they’re they’re able to push those runs relaxed and strong, and you see it like rat boy he he had a segment in that year where he was just unstoppable. You know that worlds where he broke his foot in Norway, he was basically just pumping down the track and gaining time on everyone, yeah, you know. And he looked like that the whole season, he was just comfortable, you know, just perfectly in that zone where his speed couldn’t be touched. And, you know, Stevie Smith had the same kind of year one time. And I think it’s just one of those when everything starts clicking, their conditioning is perfect, you know. And that’s really the rider thing.
Jeff Barber 11:00
Yeah, so many factors. Because right, even the rider on the day that you know, it could be the difference between the podium is just somebody had a really good day and somebody else didn’t have a good day that day. So we’ll never know the answer to that question.
Chris Canfield 11:16
You know, if I had to say one answer, it would be the rider. Look at Loic. He’s been in that zone and on that cutting, you know, sharp edge of the of the speed factor his whole career. Like that guy will go down as the greatest of all time. Sorry, men are, I really like Greg [Minnaar], but I mean, that dude is, he, he’s, he’s something so special in our sport that I don’t think when he’s done that, he’ll his record will ever get matched.
Jeff Barber 11:49
Yeah, well, getting back to your story, like in the beginning, you know, it sounds like you were involved in building bikes, designing bikes, pretty early on. Was that out of necessity, or was that something that you really enjoyed and found that you were good at?
Chris Canfield 12:07
Um, it was. It was weird, because I was running the office and for at Canfield brothers and my brother was, you know, our engineer and designing everything. And you know, we were, we were both racing. And so it really became a passion of mine to to really research and figure out what was winning races. What would this the secret formula was for a bike to win races. So in those early days, I, you know, linkage, the the suspension program, came out, and I basically dove into that like a kid on crack. I i loved looking at everybody’s models and what the computer program said about them, and then finding them at the resort and bugging somebody that had that bike to let me ride it, to feel what that bike felt like, and then go back to the model and say, Okay, what did the model say that this bike is supposed to do, and what those numbers said, and so I would try to ride my bike back to back against those bikes and see how I could improve our own stuff. And then I would watch all of the the race movies, non stop. I would slow them into slow mo and watch the bikes, because they had just World Cup, you know, practice and race footage in those movies. So I would, I would slow mo the race footage, and watch what bikes were doing and what the model said about those bikes, and try to make something for, you know, my own brand. Honestly, that was my own race rig, right? I wasn’t going to get sponsored by another brand, so I had to build my own stuff to be able to be the fastest stuff out.
Jeff Barber 14:06
Yeah, well, that’s interesting, because we’re seeing that right now, right? Like a lot of brands are cutting budgets and sponsorships, and it seems like just in the last year, there’s been a lot of athletes who have decided to take a similar path, right? Like Neko with Frameworks and Cam Zink’s got his own bike brand now, and then you’ve got the guys going into components and stuff, you know, Fabio Wibmer and Danny MacAskill with Cast and Wade Simmons with Godfathers Garage. Like, what do you make of this? Like, is this, is this something new or, I mean, I imagine it’s always been hard to get sponsors for professional racing.
Chris Canfield 14:49
Yeah, it’s really new. I think that with social media’s ability to market and to reach. People, I think these athletes, are realizing that I could do my own product, advertise on my own channel. I have so many followers that no matter what I build, I can have a huge enough reach to be able to make a living without a sponsor to sell my own stuff.
I mean, like Zink, he’s in the freeride market that’s really, really small, but he’s got such a huge reach that he’ll do great, you know? And then, like, Nico, that’s a lot of work to get a frame built in a lot of different locations, and do lots of testing, and come at it brand new, and, and, and do as well as he’s done with a bike that is obviously working extremely well, yeah. So yeah, it’s but these guys are, you know, they’re riding like whatever some random engineers is giving them. So they finally get to do their own thing, right, and build what they know works or could work because they’re they’re at the highest level of riding.
Jeff Barber 16:09
Yeah. I mean brands, though, some of the brands I’ve heard, you know, for them, some of their athletes, are really helpful in that regard, right, in terms of testing and letting them know what they’re feeling and, you know, maybe even suggesting improvements to products. And then, I mean, but not all athletes are good at that, right? Like, obviously you are able to take, like, what you know, from racing, and like, apply that. Do you think all athletes are able to do that?
Chris Canfield 16:37
No, not at all. Yeah. Honestly, I when athletes talk about developing products, I kind of snicker. I’ve had athletes tell me exactly the wrong opposite of what is reality, of what they’re feeling. Yeah, and because you can ride a bike really well, doesn’t necessarily mean you know what’s going on with it in the feeling of like an attribute. I mean, there’s suspension designs that lock up under braking, and multiple reviewers and athletes don’t mention it or talk about it or think about it at all. And I think it’s because they’re not riding stuff back to back if they rode a bike back to back with that other you know what they’re on, they would realize, well, what the heck is going on? Why is it really hard to ride this tech section. It doesn’t feel like my back wheel is moving or tracking the ground anymore. But they don’t feel it for some reason. So, you know, I, I think it’s more that no matter what they produce, they can sell it, and that’s a good business model. But I don’t really necessarily think that a lot of the high level athletes know how to product design.
Jeff Barber 17:51
I guess we’ll see, because a lot of these are so new. I guess the other one I failed to mention is the athertons. And, you know, it seems like people like those bikes, and you know, seems to be working out for them, but like you said, well, they not all athletes.
Chris Canfield 18:07
I mean, the Athertons just partnered with smart people like Dave Weagle for their suspension design, right? And that company that was building those under a different label, and they needed someone to put their name on, it looked like to me. And I don’t know how much you know, like tweaking that the Athertons are personally doing in that brand, but they’re obviously working really well.
Jeff Barber 18:29
Yeah, yeah, that’s a good point, too. The athlete involvement, I’m sure, varies a lot, and what you’re doing is definitely different, right? So you’ve got these suspension designs, patented suspension designs that your company supports and Canfield balance formula CBF is, I believe, is the most widely adopted so far. Tell us a bit about that design in layman’s terms, like, what? What’s the idea behind it? And kind of at a high level. How does it work?
Chris Canfield 19:05
We always try to describe it as focusing on the center of curvature being on top of the chain ring. Okay, so suspension design for pedaling is really what most people are looking for. You know, there’s, there’s certain things about breaking that that happened that people don’t really need to focus on that much. It’s just kind of you get, what you get depending on a wheel path or, you know, configuration of your suspension layout, but the pedaling is what everyone feels they that’s what their holy grail is, to try to be efficient, right? And so in suspension, there is the instant center, which is where the you. Pivot points of the links point at, usually forward into space, and that is basically a peddling balance point for the system. Okay? So what designers are looking for is to point their the line of the upper chain, which is the force line, the line that’s tugging from your cranks, you know, forward as you spin your cranks, so that top of the chain is like the force line of the world. It is like shoving forward, you know, as you’re pedaling. And if that is pointing where the instant center is. It won’t tug up on the suspension or down on the suspension. I see if it tugs up, it means the bike will be squishy and bouncy and inefficient from what they call pedal Bob, okay. And if it’s below it and tugs down on the on the suspension, it feels kind of stiff and efficient, but the trade off of if you do too much of that is that the bike won’t track the ground and absorb bumps, and it also causes all of the chain stretch pedal kick, Okay, which is basically a lengthening of the chain stay. You know, when it moves through travel and it kicks the cranks backwards, and it’s the feeling of somebody punching the bottom of your feet, like your pedals bouncing a bunch. You don’t realize that the bike feeling kind of out of control of bouncy is actually the chain system, you know, kicking your feet. Okay, so a lot of designers will just add a lot of what they call anti squat, which is the chain pointing below that instant center, yeah. And it causes it to feel very efficient in the parking lot of the bike shop to sell bikes. And it feels pretty good when you’re peddling, like, up a road. So if you live in Bellingham, all you do is pedal up roads. There’s a rare uphill trail there. It’s just like, yeah, just get on the road. Grind up. That’s not a bad thing if you’re just doing that. But on your downhill, it can cause the bike to just feel kind of rough. It’s kicking your feet a lot. It’s not really tracking the ground neutrally. So CBF, the patent, basically patents the center of curvature to be on top of the chain ring. So the center of curvature is also a a trackable thing in the in the linkage program, okay, where that is the center of the curves of the will path. Okay, think of it like this, a single pivot. It rotates around the one pivot. And so the the will path circle is like, basically the center of that circle is that single pivot, okay, but on a multi link bike, like a horse link, BPP, dw, CBF, like anything that has multi links, that center spot of the of the will path moves around because the the arc of the wheel path is not a consistent circle, right? So bikes can do all sorts of funky things with their center of curvature. It can move around all over the place. And I just happen to kind of stumble into, what if I put that spot on top of the chain ring? Because if that spots on top of the chain ring, I can teeter totter the the chain to point at the instant center that’s in front of this of the you know, cranks and track it as it moves through travel. So imagine, like, since you get to see me in video, imagine sorry, everybody, imagine that the instant center is like a smiley face out in front of your your cranks about six inches, and then your chain is rotating on top of the of the chain ring as it moves through travel, it lifts kind of up on Top of the chain ring. Well, if the the center of the arcs of the will path are there as well, both the the wheel path and the chain are moving kind of together at the same location, even though it’s a multi link bike, which gives you the good open neutral braking. And there’s some other like happy things that happen that I won’t go into in the physics of secrecy, but basically it allows the chain to to track that instant center that’s in front of the chain ring all the way through travel is tight, tighter than almost any other suspensions. System I’ve seen because, I mean, it basically just depends on what gear you’re in, or what what gear in the cassette I’m designing to just because the chain jumps in the rear, up and down a bunch, right? So the angle will miss that little instant center, just a hair, but not that much, but because I’m on top of the chain ring. That way, I can have a bike that doesn’t have the over amount of anti squat, the tug down effect, and still get it to be it feels like to me that not only is it open and neutral to track the ground under breaking, but it’s open and neutral to track the ground under pedaling without power loss. Okay? So people will be like, I can see the shock moving. I can see the link moving. It may my it’s not really all that efficient, because it’s just not locked, like a, you know, shock lock out, right, right. And I go, but did you feel like you were losing any power or momentum with your pedal stroke? And everyone’s like, no, it feels like it just tracks the ground and contractor through, like, rough stuff and up rooty rocky climbs, and it moves around even under pedal stroke, even under, you know, full power, yet it still feels like all of your power that you’re putting into your into your cranks, is only propelling the back wheel forward instead of moving the suspension up or down, yeah. And so it feels like the most energetic and efficient thing you’ve been on, yeah, that’s the best way I can describe it.
Jeff Barber 26:43
Yeah, that’s That’s great. That’s really helpful. And, yeah, you know, I’ve tested the Revel Rascal, and yeah, found that to be true. It feels like it pedals really efficiently. It’s not clear as the rider like, what exactly is going on, but, yeah, that’s a great explanation.
Chris Canfield 27:03
Well, I don’t tell you exactly everything in the secrecy of physics, I try to keep my job. It’ss what it boils down to.
Jeff Barber 27:12
Makes sense. So you know, a lot of what you’re saying kind of is based around focusing on pedaling, right? And that’s what makes like a bicycle different from, say, a motorcycle, where you have these, like pedaling forces that you need to deal with in your suspension design is so is designing suspension for a downhill bike. Could that potentially be easier, since you aren’t as concerned about pedal efficiency, or, like, what’s what’s kind of the approach there? Is it different than what you would do for, say, a trail bike?
Chris Canfield 27:48
I approach them both the same, and downhill is by far the hardest, huh? Okay? Because any flaw in the system is amplified by the amount of travel and movement that has, I see, it’s really easy to target, like 100 mil, 120 mil bike just doesn’t move that much, right? So if it, if it’s off a little bit, you’re not really, you know, bouncing and pedal bobbing, you know, three, four inches of travel, like an eight inch travel bike will have right I see. And the downhill race scene is as much as people don’t think you pedal. It’s one on the pedals 100% like there’s very few tracks where you don’t have pedal sections. Actually, when I approach a race track, I’ll dissect, you know, what chain ring I’m going to be in, you know what gear in the back I’m going to be in, in every single spot on the trail, and how many pedal spots that we have? Okay, like I will dissect, we have three pedal stop spots. I think I’m going to be able to get in four to five pedal strokes in the first one, and I will dissect it down that far. Wow, yeah, to where I know in my mind I need to be in this gear and pre shift in that spot, going into the corner, before that pedal spot. I’m going to shift one time in my pedal spa, and I’ve got to put a hard six pedals in and then get my breath back before the next one. Yeah, and, you know those, maybe it’s just me, but like, that’s it’s so important in those spots that, like, a downhill bike has to be extremely crisp in its pedaling.
Jeff Barber 29:44
Because you’re putting a ton of force in when you’re pedaling, right? I mean, you have these, like, tiny road cassettes on most mountain bikes or downhill bikes, right? So it’s not like, yeah, just just you’re spinning, like an easy gear, like you are mashing the pedals. Even though maybe it’s only for a few few strokes.
Chris Canfield 30:03
Well, I mean, it’s very similar to the other disciplines and how much force, or whatever, we just use small cassettes, because we don’t need to climb in the upper here. So we just take them off or to keep it light, yeah. But the it’s so important. I mean, the race is one in, you know, micro, you know, chunks of seconds, yeah. And, you know, every little tiny, like pump or or exit speed counts, you know, and you don’t get much time to to make mistakes, especially when it’s when it’s a short track and there’s not a lot of time on track, you know, every little thing counts super, super intensely so. And I see, like, a lot of, like, enduro races where, I mean, you’re you can make half a day of mistakes and still win, because it’s a 30-minute race.
Jeff Barber 31:06
You have a lot longer to make up time.
Chris Canfield 31:09
And have good corners. But in downhill, like, you know, having a missed shift, not being prepared on that one spot, having a bike that’s just not efficient in its pedaling, it can add up really, really quick and keep you off the podium.
Jeff Barber 31:30
Well, speaking of the suspension designs that your company is working on, CF3 is a newer patent pending suspension design. How’s that different from CBF?
Chris Canfield 31:44
This is the one that’s on the new Vampire. Okay, since me and my brother split in 2019 this is what I’ve been doing, and it’s a a way to, like, adjust your your bike into a low pivot, a high pivot, and like a mid pivot, okay, and I built it so I could have a race bike that I could set it up perfectly for the kind of race track that I was going to race, because there’s tracks that are flat and sprinty with kind of bike park jumps that are built for six inch travel bikes. There’s tracks like Mont Saint Anne or Val the soul, which are extremely rough and you would love to have a big travel rear dark bump goblin machine. There’s tracks that are kind of halfway in between those, okay, and I saw that like for most of my racing, I was on a Canfield brothers Jedi, which was an amazing bike to have, especially in the 26 inch wheel days, to have that rearward arc. But there was a lot of days where we were racing like Fontana, and there’s a, you know, a 42nd wall sprint that’s on flat ground at the end of the track, and you just don’t need a bump release pulley wheel bike for that sprint, right? You know it’s gonna hold you back. It’s a lot more advantageous to have a low pivot sprinty bike in that spot. So we built a couple of versions of low pivot bikes, like the one or the 1.2 just to have some variation for those different kind of tracks. I was like this. This looks like it’s doable. The the bike I have has it’s a horse link layout like I love to say. It looks like concessions. The shock is in front of the seat tube, protected from the tire. All the forces go down into the bottom bracket triangle, where the down tube, seat tube and bottom bracket are. So everything that’s loaded into force goes right into this little, strong, triangulated little spot. Yeah, and the bike’s got three main pivots in the seat tube. You just pull the the main suspension, you know, pivot pin, and pull your your chain, stay out, put it in the next hole, slide the pin back in, and you got a totally different bike with a totally different wheel path. So the low hole is like a low pivot, you know, negative three on sag back to forward, 1215, you know, traditional wheel path in the the middle hole runs a pulley will has a similar wheel path to like a trek sessions, or even the old iron horse Sunday, mm. Okay, where it’s about a negative nine to 10 on their back of the arc, and then comes back to zero. So it’s a very vertical wheel path, carves really well, is really balanced in the corners, has zero chain stretch. And then when you go up to your upper hole, it has a full gun, high pivot, rearward path, where it’s all the way back to negative 19, back to about negative 15 on that spot amount. So you have kind of like a choose your own adventure bike. Yeah, you know like, because you can go the whole season, and you’re traveling from spot to spot and every race, especially pro racers, they’re stuck with whatever bike that they’re on, right? And these days, there’s, you know, there’s only a couple of low pivot bikes to choose from, and then there’s a bunch of mid pivots and a few, you know, really, really high pivot bikes. But you’re, you basically just, if you’re even an amateur racer, whatever bike you buy, that’s what you’re stuck with for every single track, right? That’s all you get. Let’s go like, hopefully the tracks are built for the kind of bike that you like to ride, or the you know, the bike you have. And I was like, I think I can make this work. And most people, when I was testing it, because I had the first prototype of the CF three in 2021 and started, you know, testing it and writing it, and it was more of a test mule. I didn’t really want to build vampire or the new bike brand, but I needed to test the new suspension layout that I was working on. So, you know, got the bike and was really blown away that I was able to have all three in one with the same shot. And in those early days, I was like, what if I’m the bad customer? Doesn’t change my spring at all when the when it jumps, travel, because the lowest hole, like the bike that’s coming out first, is the downhill one. It’s called the fasterrosa. It’s the lowest hole is a 150 to 165 depending on the stroke, okay. And the middle hole is a 175 to 190 and the upper hole is a 205 to 220 okay. And they all run the the downhill length, trunnion shock, so that’s a 75 stroke down to the 67.5 stroke. Wow. Okay, so in the new world of metric shocks, you know every eye to eye shock, like the the downhill, the Enduro and the shorter trail one, they all come in four stroke lengths, okay? So you can just kind of pick which stroke you want to run for the travel segments you want to run. And every jump and stroke is five mils different in the in the travel, okay, so, like I’m I try to push people into the Olin shock, because they have the three two and a half mil shims to change the stroke in the shock by just bolting a shim underneath the bumper. So you just pull your spring off and slide the bumper up and put a shim in, bolt it in, and you’ve got the 62 and a half stroke instead of the 75 and then all of your travels move down five mil. And you can just be like, well, I want a high pivot bike, but 220 is too much for this track. I need it to be a 210, or 205, you can just pull your spring off and add the amount of spacers you need, and then that you can dial in the amount of, you know, travel that you really want, because it’s kind of nice to like some tracks. You, you need to pump right some tracks you, you don’t you want it to be like big gun, big travel.
Jeff Barber 39:14
Yeah. I mean, what do like, like the athletes that are like on the teams with all the money. I mean, what did they do race to race like, do they have access to multiple bikes? I mean, because most of them are sponsored by a brand that only has one downhill bike. So what are they doing to like, adapt their bike? Because it sounds like what you’re offering is, is something that doesn’t really exist right now, does it?
Chris Canfield 39:40
No. In the past, sometimes the the companies they were sponsored by would would give them a like a enduro bike, like when, when worlds went to Carnes Australia for the first time. That track had a 45 second flat pedal to the finish line. You came out of the jungle and it was flat for so long.
Jeff Barber 40:08
Why didn’t they move that finish line? That’s crazy.
Chris Canfield 40:11
I don’t know. They just wanted to see who could outsprint each other, like we were in a interesting a time trial. I guess, yeah, there was a lot of racers that showed up with the company’s enduro bike instead of running their downhill bike, right? But truthfully, Jeff, there’s only most of these companies want the athlete to ride the downhill bike, to promote the downhill bike, right, obviously. So you just, yeah, you get what you get. And they’re like, this is what you’re running. We’ll just give you a, you know, let’s, let’s turn the lockout on, or, you know, make it a really stiff, you know, spring weight to, you know, stiffen up the back end a lot, or something like this.
Jeff Barber 40:54
Yeah. I mean, it’s, it’s interesting, because, you know, obviously, you’re, you’re saying, this is, this is a great thing for athletes who aren’t necessarily sponsored, because they can kind of have three bikes in one. Sounds like even the people at the top. They could also use it like they have an opposite problem, which is, they have to race the one bike, and it’s not really up to them to, like, pick, necessarily the best one for the track on the day? Yeah, yeah. So you have a lot of different, I believe, four, at least four, different suspension designs that that you work with. And I’m wondering with you know, the recent expiration of the original DW link patent, does this open opportunities for new designs or improvements on that design? Or, like, how is this? Does this affect you at all or Or what does that look like?
Chris Canfield 41:51
Well, it opened up a lot of real estate when that patent came out of protection. I actually just did a layout for a good friend of mine in Taiwan, Steve Lin, okay, he’s the son of the production manager at Pacific cycles. He does a lot of product development for companies. He works with zero, Chrome mag, smaller brands, you know, and he has an office with people that are doing the same thing. You know, I was in there looking at new Leatt components and PNW components, yeah, you know, because their office is full of, you know, new stuff. And he was working with the new steel company, and wanted me to do a layout for a a full suspension enduro bike that would run a pinion gearbox he and steel he was building in steel because he had a factory that would like build it for him for the Taipei show. And yeah, and I was like, I, I’d love to, you know, hook this up and do one for you, but if I do a CBF one, you got to sign up and pay me some money. And my other clients are going to be kind of pissed. So I was like, I could, you know, what do you want? He’s like, Well, I want a multi link layout. And I was like, I could do it like a DW layout for you. So I laid out like a DW version, with a horseshoe around the seat tube so he could have a good, functioning, working, you know, bike. And, you know, I know how to lay out multi link bikes really well. And so just because the DW was out of spec, I could, I could send him those without any issues with patents. And also, I can CBF tune a DW. There’s one on my Instagram, on suspension formulas Instagram, which is, you can see there that there’s like a VPP version CBF and a DW version CBF. I have a law will version CBF, which is basically just tuning those suspension designs with my CBF patent, yeah, you know, putting that center of curvature on top of the chain ring in the protected zone.
Jeff Barber 44:02
I mean, does that work? Like, is there an advantage to doing that? That’s very interesting, that you could kind of apply your your patent to that one and then, like, what? What happens? Is that like a really, really good design, or is it like a compromised design, like, what’s um, or is it just more of a thought exercise?
Chris Canfield 44:22
Sometimes yes, sometimes no, like the DW laid out version. I actually sent that model to my brother a couple years ago, and he thought about, you know, changing up his his layouts to something new, so similar, like the shock is in front of the seat tube. But that layout, the shock has to be pretty low. So it would look very similar to like an old giant faith where the shock kind of had to hang and mount, kind of in front and below the BB area. So it would have like side plates to hold the shock. Out in front of the BB, and then have, like a front connection where the down tube comes and welds into it. And so in general, you know, if you looked at like a regular dw, that isn’t CBF tuned, you don’t have those construction restraints. And you know, those designs work great. Dave did a good job on those. So, you know that, I think that there is an advantage to CBF because of the, you know, the the your chain doesn’t fight you with, you know, the pedaling performance through through rough terrain. And as far as I can tell, with, you know, a lot of the the forums that talk about, you know, the which is better, suspension design, people are feeling that. They’re feeling like, yeah, it it feels better on a downhill, it feels a lot more, you know, less. Pedal kicky and and, you know, bump absorption, like smooth. And the climbs are really, what are really great. Except for, you know, the like, a DW, for reference, is they’re, they’re using their upper link a lot higher than the chain line, and that means that they’re way below the instant center, which gives it that, like, really crisp, you know, smooth pedaling feel like, Well, smooth when you’re on smooth terrain, peddling fill. And, you know, I could, I could do that to a cvf, but it would just cause a lot more pedal kick, just like DW does. So Right? I don’t really feel like we do it a little bit with some models, like a low travel revel, like their range, they wanted it to be a little more like punchy in its pedaling fill, because those, those guys don’t feel the downhills as much at 115 travel, right? And so they’re like, Yeah, we just want it to have that little bit more punchy feel. Let’s, let’s go a little higher. So it is kind of nice that when the patents, you know, release like you’re not constrained by, you know they’re the claims that they make that keep you from using stuff, because DW claims that, you know the real estate for him was, if your upper link points at your lower link, it’s his. And so for all those years, like you had to avoid your upper link ever pointing at your lower link, so your lower link couldn’t be super long and in front of the BB, because if the upper link pointed at it, it would infringe. And so as soon as that patent was out of spec, you’re like, Oh, now the real estate’s open. We’re not constrained by that patent anymore.
Jeff Barber 47:31
Yeah, interesting. I mean, is it difficult? You know, you mentioned working with Revel on on one of their bikes, like, Is it difficult working with brands as a suspension designer? Like, I would imagine sometimes your design is going to get compromised or or, yeah, like, what are the challenges involved there?
Chris Canfield 47:53
It’s really easy to to work with brands in that way. I find it if I could just do that, which is, I mean, let’s face it, Jeff, like building your own stuff and designing things and and warranting and sales and all the office work that it takes. It’s a lot of work, yeah, and for me to do a suspension pivot layout and do some free consulting to a brand that’s a lot easier. And then when the project is out of my hands and off to them, they go along and sell it for years and years and years, they send me royalties when they sell bikes.
Jeff Barber 48:31
Right? Is that expensive for them? Because a lot of brands have their own, like in-house thing or whatever. And I always wonder, do they do that to save money like it? Is it saving them significant money? Or why wouldn’t they just license something that works really well?
Chris Canfield 48:50
I’m a little baffled. Sometimes I think that they look at the bottom line and they’re just, they’re trying to save pennies everywhere they can. I think it’s easier for me to to sell to a brand that’s brand new, that needs the street cred, like right out of the gate.
Jeff Barber 49:11
I mean, they’re probably starting with a small team. And yeah, you may not have somebody that can design.
Chris Canfield 49:18
I think it’s like anything like if you have something that works really well, that is trusted by the customers, if you just put it on the bike and put the logo there, it immediately gives the customers confidence that this is going to ride. Well, I’m not, I’m not risking buying a brand, new brand or this product, because you know, I don’t know if it’s going to ride good. What did their engineer do? Like, is it really going to be that great? Yeah. You know, key in point the like, the Haro brand did a enduro bike, and the review on pink bike yesterday was kind of so. He was just saying, It’s okay, you know, if they would have came to me and done a CBF immediately, everybody that rode a CBF would be like, Oh, I have another option. Like that bike is definitely gonna ride. How Chris makes him ride, and I have full confidence to go out and get this bike now, yeah, and I don’t really think it’s all that much. I mean, right now, CBF is 100 bucks a bike for a brand to license, okay? And that’s $300 more in retail. So at the end of the day, you know, the it’s a big chunk of outlay for their brand, you know, because they’re building a bike, you know, for a certain amount of money, somewhere around two to 3000 in general terms, yeah. And that’s why a bike is, you know, just 3x your your your bike, right? That’s, that’s what the retails are. So your $9,000 bike is usually about a $3,000 build, give or take. I mean, it’s a little different in frame only is like, I do, you know, maybe it’s only 50% for some brands, and, you know, like 3x for other brands. But in general, you know, it’s only a little bit of more outlay. But say your $5,000 mid price build, if you put CBF on it, it’s 5300 now instead of 5000 Yeah, you know. But those the marketing that you get off that I think outweighs the the the price you pay to to use my suspension, you know. And I hope it would. I think rebel was killing it. Yeah, that brand went from zero to 40 employees in four years. Wow. It was one of the fastest growing mountain bike brands I think we’ve ever seen.
Jeff Barber 51:52
As a consumer, sometimes it, you know, with a lot of these designs, every one of these designs, whether it’s like, a licensed one or not? Like, there’s a lot of marketing involved in it, right? Like, there’s a lot of they’re all saying that they’re the best, right? And so as a consumer, it is hard to know, like, is this, and we’ve been burned by so many too, like, suspension designs that, like, say, a brand will have their own thing, and it’s like, two seasons later it’s gone, and they’re just, like, doing a different thing and claiming lots of things with this new one. So yeah, I think you’re right that if you can have this licensed, like, known suspension design that like it, because it takes a while for people to write it and to say, Yeah, like that works really well, whereas we do tend to see other designs that kind of come and go.
Chris Canfield 52:49
It’s true. I would hope that people see the value that that I offer in offering CBF. I just did another, another brand a couple years ago that’s still in R D. The brand is flow, but I think they’re going to release under the the label castle. Okay, they’re out of, well, one of them’s out of Boise, Idaho, where it’ll be based, but the owners out of Lake Tahoe, okay, they only did kid bikes before, but they wanted to do an enduro bike. And I basically laid out one. That’s the upper hole of my vampire. I had been testing it. It’s CBF tuned like high pivot with a pulley wheel. And they wanted a enduro travel just with that one setup. And they’re, they’re looking to do the, the Atherton type construction with the carbon tubes and the lugs, and build them in Boise, Idaho.
Jeff Barber 53:52
Wow, that’s cool.
Chris Canfield 53:53
But I think that, you know, for an unknown brand to come out, it really does, like, immediately put street cred on you, and you can sell some stuff, like, right out of the right out of the gate. And just, you know, hopefully I get a little cut.
Jeff Barber 54:10
Let’s circle back to Vampire Bikes. Sure, you know, you mentioned that it sounds like the first bike is going to be a downhill bike. And so yeah, is that, is that kind of the customer that you’re targeting first, or is that going to be like, kind of the primary customer you see for this bike? Is that like gravity, pretty much downhill oriented customer?
Chris Canfield 54:37
You know, me, I build for what I need.
Jeff Barber 54:42
Because you’re like, wait, there’s other kinds of mountain bikers out there?
Chris Canfield 54:46
I didn’t really even consider the rest you guys. Sorry. The truth is is, that’s what I ride, and that’s what i i built for myself. You know, it’s a still front triangle aluminum rear and. That’s what I want to ride. But I do have a titanium front more enduro focused bike coming out, maybe in the summer. Okay, if you look behind me, Jeff.
Jeff Barber 55:15
Oh, sweet. That’s it right there. I see a titanium front triangle.
Chris Canfield 55:22
I’ve got one half built right here.
Jeff Barber 55:25
That’s cool. Are you welding? Do you weld yourself?
Chris Canfield 55:29
I can weld, but you don’t want me to weld them.
Jeff Barber 55:33
Can you weld them to prototype level, at least where you can, like, get on it good enough for that?
Chris Canfield 55:38
No. I mean, I could prototype well, but I it’s easier and cheaper to have my factories do it. Okay, yeah, so the Enduro one with the tie, that one’s really focused shorter travel. So the low hole is a 140 the middle is a 160 and the upper one is a 190 okay, and that one is a lot more, you know, mainstream focused, you know what, like the normal customer can need. So the range on travel the low holes of 125 to 140 the middle is a 145 to 160 and the upper hole is a 175 up to 190 Okay, so you can really have a trail enduro and downhill in one rig. And I did a lot of enduro racing in those years I was testing this went to trophy of nations for the second time they they did it, and probably the last and the only time they they added the Masters pro category. It was so awesome was that was the race where they had the three people from the from the country all together in one train. Yeah, it was the most fun race of all time. Yeah, that looked awesome. But this bike is so focused on kind of being your whole quiver in one bike. I mean, the the downhill one, you can enduro race it because of the lower hole. It’s dropper compatible, but not long dropper compatible, where the the titanium one, my large fits a 210 pretty easily. With extra room, I could maybe do a 220 in it. The the bike is pretty awesome, though, for an enduro race bike, because enduro you have to run the same bike for the two days you race, and you’re, you’re doing up to, like, eight tracks. And sometimes those tracks have flat pedaling sections and climbs in them. Some of those tracks are World Cup downhill, you know, bumpy death tracks.
For reference, I was at National Champs Winter Park. That was only a four track race, and so the first three tracks were pretty minimal, bike parky, peddly tracks, and I was in the middle hole in 160 like the whole three first three year laps. Wow. So I got to the last lap, which was trestle DH, and I was like, wait a sec. I’ll just, I’ll just pull my pin and put it up into 190 river dark, high pivot mode and have like a downhill bike in the back. Yeah, and just smoke this track. And so Ryan Rodrigues was there, and I just had him hold my bike for a second. This is before I figured out to just turn the bike over onto its handlebar and seat to hold itself.
You just have to pull the main pin. So it’s like, pull off the pulley wheel, pull off the main pin. Slide that the rear triangle to the next hole, and put the pin back in, put the pulley wheel back in the spot it needs to go, and you’re done. Wow. So after I just switched it over rhinos, like, What the hell did you just do to your bike? And I was like, push on the seat. He just, he pushed on the seat and it, you know, just dropped into mobster travel. And he’s like, holy crap, dude. This is a down the bike.
I tell this story all the time, but I caught and passed four people on that that lap.
Jeff Barber 59:39
Wow, that’s incredible.
Chris Canfield 59:41
They were riding, you know, 150 travel forward arc enduro bikes, yeah, on a downhill track, right? And I had a 190 rearward arc, full size downhill. Let’s go, you know, set up, and it takes less than two minutes to to change holes. Yeah, you know, sometimes. Times, like, EWS, or whatever it’s called now. EDR, you don’t have time in between those. I mean, you’re you’re out of breath and, like, roll up, and they’re like, Okay, you got 30 seconds. You’re like, Are you kidding me? I just did one hour of climbing at, you know, the highest heart rate I have, and now I gotta drop again. Yeah, wow, yeah, those are so tight. I don’t know what they’re doing. I think they’re just trying to punish people for fun, right? But, but in normal, you know, enduros, you got 1520, minutes, sometimes a half hour, to drop. And you can easily, like, you know, grab a snack and then change your travel to the to the hole that fits the track. Yeah? And I was like, this is the biggest, like, unfair advantage cheater bike I’ve ever seen.
Jeff Barber 1:00:49
Yeah, game changer. Well, tell us, how did you come up with the name for the brand? I’m curious. Vampire is not, not a word we’ve seen in bikes before that I can think of,
Chris Canfield 1:01:04
Honestly, that’s why it became the brand name. The I wanted to do it for a long time. Me and my brother weren’t on always the best terms, you know, trying to work their brother. Yeah, I tried to buy him out for about 10 years straight, and just it got to the point where he finally was like, okay, you know, we got to do something. And it came down to, you know, no one’s going to buy a brand with our name on it, because it’s our name. And then, you know, it was like, you either take the brand, or one of us takes the brand. One of us takes, you know, the patent. And I was the one that did the patent, and I wasn’t going to give that to him. So I was like, All right, you just take the brand. I’ll take my patent with split ways. And so, you know, I’ve always kind of had this vampire, you know, thing in the back of my mind, you know, if I split off, like, that’s what I would use, I actually didn’t like the darkness of it, like the idea of what a real vampire is is pretty dark, and that’s not really at all, yeah.
Jeff Barber 1:02:17
Well, it’s right, it’s not like the bikes I’ve seen, the stuff you’ve, you’ve posted on Instagram, right? It’s not that, right? It’s not, I mean, like, I would think it would be like, YT, like, their stuff is really dark, and yours is not that.
Chris Canfield 1:02:33
I’m definitely not trying to push that kind of like, look or, but it is really fun that there’s a lot of, you know, imagery and and Halloween pre made stuff that I can use for displays, yeah,
Jeff Barber 1:02:49
Wait, I just got it. The holes? Is that it?
Chris Canfield 1:02:55
Somebody mentioned it on one of the forums, like, no matter what hole you’re in, there’s two bite marks, yeah, in the seat tube, like that is so funny. That’s, that’s not really, I, I really like the idea of immortal bikes. I really hate the disposable culture that we live in the three year phone the, you know, a bike that you, you crash, you know, in the rock garden, and you poke a hole in your carbon. Yeah, I don’t like that part of our world. I want stuff that would last a lifetime if you wanted it to. And Canfield, we always did that. We had big bearings, big axles. And if you look back, there’s a whole bunch of our 2021, fatty fats still running. You know, a lot of the old fatty fats from 2004 and six that are running. And I would say 90% of the Jedis that we built from 2008 to 2017 are all still alive.
Jeff Barber 1:03:59
Immortal.
Chris Canfield 1:04:01
And, you know, I’m using titanium and steel in the front triangles, aluminum in the rear, because it’s C and cable. It’s light and stiff and for the for the application, and there’s a certain amount of vibration damping that happens with a steel front triangle on a full suspension. Most people haven’t felt it. There’s only a few full suspension steel bikes or titanium bikes that have been built. And most people’s experience with that material is hardtails, right? And they definitely fill it in a hardtail land. But when you start amplifying your speed on a full suspension and doing big drops on a full suspension that has that material in the front, you realize it feels like riding low air pressure tires.
It feels really soft on your body. You really have a lot of confidence, because it just feels really smooth and. Home. A customer came over yesterday and and his, his response to the first rides on his on his Vampire was like, this is just calm. It feels just settled. Yeah, yeah, yeah
Jeff Barber 1:05:15
And we just saw, I guess that was last year Southern Gravity came out with their steel downhill bikes. So it seems like you’re onto something there, for sure.
Chris Canfield 1:05:28
It definitely seemed in the last couple of years that it came back into fashion. I luckily for me, because I’ve always loved them, I’ve always wanted to build that material, and knowing that that’s not the material for everyone, right? I mean, let’s face it, everybody wants a Ferrari looking carbon fiber bike with the cool looking tube set. So, yeah, give you all those fun edges and like, you know, you can put a, you know, a trunk in your down tube to hold your tube, and your candy bars,
But there is a lot of people that really appreciate that, that sound of of steel, that like Tink tint screw, that, that smooth feel of it, and the look of the small, round tube. And for some people, it’s, it’s crack, yeah, that’s my that’s my people. But, you know, I get it. I don’t want vampire to be a specialized a big thing. My focus in life is to build amazing bikes, and, you know, offer a little bit to the people that want them and and still have enough free time to go snowboard every day and ride my bike every day. Yeah, that’s a dream that it really is. Like, I definitely try to tell people like, Hey, I do my the best I can, and you know, I’ll be available, but I’m going to build you stuff that you’re not going to need replacement parts, and you’re not going to be dealing with warranties and a broken derailleur hanger. You know, you’re going to be, you know, one and done and happy, so you’re not bugging me on the phone like with an emergency.
Jeff Barber 1:07:15
Well, so tell us, what are your plans for 2025 How soon are people going to be able to order their own Vampire bike?
Chris Canfield 1:07:25
Technically, they could. They could bug me right now and get one. My website will most likely open up on February 8. Okay, I’m a big numbers guy, and eight is, like, the money number. Oh, right, you’ll see that everything in Asia is that same way, like in Hollywood too. They believe in that stuff.
Jeff Barber 1:07:53
And yeah, there’s not gonna have to wait till August 8, though, right?
Chris Canfield 1:07:58
No, no, I’m not gonna pull an eight, eight. But, like I did, put a PO in on a 28th which is another like money number. So if somebody was motivated enough to get an early one, they could bug me right now. And I’ll, I’ll do a I’ll give them access to the website with the passcode, okay, and I’m gonna send out emails to anyone that’s on the email list. Because if you go to vampire dot bike right now, it’s, it’s password protected, okay, and all. And then there’s a, you know, sign up for the the email list that’s on there. And I’ve got over 200 people already, like signed up in the last month and a half since putting it up, and so whoever’s on there is going to get an email sometime soon that will give them access to the website with the password, and I’ll give them a few days if they want to buy a bike before they’re Gone, because I only have about 40 bikes left, okay? And when they’re gone, they’re gone. I only built 100 the titanium batch comes in, like 20 batches, okay, so, and honestly, I sold two yesterday in this wow, wow. It’s like, well, all right, guys, it’s getting pretty low. I might have to because I only have a certain amount of rear ends for those, yeah.
So those people have access that at that time, and then if there’s any left, the website will open up on the eighth.
Jeff Barber 1:09:37
Gotcha. Well, Chris, thanks so much for taking the time to chat. I learned a ton about suspension design, and I’m really looking forward to seeing what you come up with next.
Chris Canfield
Yeah, thanks, Jeff. Appreciate it.
Jeff Barber
Well, you can follow along with the launch of vampire bikes on Instagram at vampire underscore bikes and learn more about. Of the suspension designs we discussed at suspension-formulas.com. And then there’s also the vampire website, vampire.bike, which you can go on and sign up for the email list. That’s all we’ve got for now. We’ll talk to you again soon.
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