The people that introduced me to Mountain Biking were obsessed with exploring the superb back country trails that NZ has to offer. Evenings were spent pouring over Topo maps to find candidates for the new “best trail ever”. Weekends were spent checking out these candidates. A little bit of racing interrupted our exploration but none of us had the drive or competitive edge that made a great racer. It was quite clear to us that the factory bikes we were riding at the time were a long way from the machines that we really wanted for our adventures. Stage one of creating our ultimate back country/trail bike was hacking up existing bikes, building steel front triangles, increasing suspension travel and trying to match this with long travel forks. Something made a lot easier with the arrival of the Rock Shox BOXXER XC later in the decade.

As these home built bikes evolved we made and tested geometry, suspension travel, dropper posts. Products and numbers that decades later would become normal for a do everything mountain bike. Some of these ideas are yet to become “normal” but I have no doubt they will.

Here is a little glimpse of the Journey to this point

Numerous questions saturated my brain after my first mountain biking experience in the mid 90’s. Questions that led me on a journey to make my riding experience better and ultimately deliver a bike that I believe offers the best riding experience available.

Rob Metz - Zerode Founder

“This is like riding a dolphin” were the words that came out of Steve Murphy’s mouth as he rode past on my brand new home built, carbon fibre, 160mm travel, high pivot, gearbox bike.

Steelie was a fillet brazed Cro-Moly mule, made to test out various planetary geared hubs as a DH bicycle transmission. Our design philosophy was verified with Dodzy racing Steelie to 2nd place in the NZ national DH series. Ultimately the Shimano Alfine was selected as the gearbox and the Zerode G1 was designed based on what we learned from Steelie.

Dodzy and I had a lot to learn before we could get the Zerode G1 into production. We had a few false starts but managed to bring the first Zerode G1’s to market in 2011.

The bikes quickly gained a reputation for superb suspension performance, a result of the low unsprung mass, mass centralisation and high pivot.

Performance was confirmed with national titles all around the globe

As always I was willing to accept compromises in a one off bike for myself, with Voldamort this came in the form of limited gear range. The 8 spd Alfine was geared to get me up the long steep back country climbs but I quickly ran out of gears on fast downhills.

Not a problem if you are riding back country or tech single track but not acceptable for a production bike.

Dodzy’s attention was required by another business so he had departed Zerode before the arrival of the G2.

The manufacturer of the G1 stopped producing frames, so a new manufacturer was found which gave an opportunity to refine, drop a little weight, add a new size etc. This was the birth of the G2.

Again, national titles were won from Scandinavia to South America. Eddie Masters and Rupert Chapman won World Cup privateer championships

In my dreams Zerode would have the budget to pay the best riders, provide race support and take home the biggest trophies.

In return the suspension will gobble up the biggest ugliest hits without complaint. Having spent more than a decade on high pivot bikes I was addicted to this feeling.