Monday, September 29, 2008

Through Orange-Colored Pegs

To paraphrase my man Big L (1:52), Snafu done done it again.


Yep. See-through pegs. Apparently these "turned heads" at Interbike, despite the fact that I don't remember seeing them amongst the hundreds of product photos taken by guys at Ride, Dig and Fat. Oh well, could have been an oversight.

Or maybe it wasn't.

Unlike the Odyssey/G-Sport Plegs, which took forever to produce properly, went through multiple compounds, and didn't reach the market until over a year after they were first shown at Interbike (in '06) and more like two years since they were first developed, Snafu chose to use "injection-molded bulletproof polycarbonate plastic". Which sounds a lot to me like what was used to make Atomlab's much-maligned and short-lived Ballistic pedals (which were great except for when it came to, um, impacts) or Standard's Masterguard.

Were they tested? Of course! Apparently "SNAFU pros Matt Bischoff and Jeremiah Smith conducted a little stress test with our new pegs using a 10-ton tour bus, and the peg won." Which is great if you plan on getting run over by a 10-ton bus, but I'm not sure how it's supposed to show you how they'll hold up to, say, grinding concrete ledges or hitting rail uprights. Oh, and McGoo posted this creepy video where he submits them to the ever-important "deep throat" and "throw them in a parking lot" tests. I'm sure this is how most products are evaluated in the real world:
"Hey Tim, did you test that aileron?"
"Yes sir. Bill sucked on it, then we threw it around the parking lot for a while. Afterwards, I ran it over with my truck. Twice! It's still perfect."
"Fantastic. Bolt in on, will you? This bird's gotta be off the ground in an hour."
I'd be curious to know whether Snafu is using their own proprietary mix of polycarbonate, and how long it took for them to get it right. Or whether they just used something developed previously by someone else, like what Odyssey used for their clear pedals. Because if you read about polycarbonate, as tough at it is, it doesn't hold up well to abrasion. And once plastic gets abraded enough, it breaks. Think of how plastic pedals fail—and how quickly, if you grind them on rough surfaces. And pedals are both thicker and have chromoly spindles supporting them all the way through. (What's doubly weird is, unless I'm mistaken, Snafu doesn't even offer plastic pedals yet—these pegs will be their first polycarbonate product.)


Even Plegs haven't been the miracle product some hoped they'd be. They're slower than steel on some surfaces, wear down awfully fast on others, and occasionally fail catastrophically. If you land at an angle on something rough, you could carve a substantial groove after just one grind. I know about that through personal experience. And despite mention of it a long while back, Odyssey/G-Sport has yet to produce Plegs in any color other than black. You'd think if translucent pegs were a good idea, Odyssey would already be making them.

Look, you don't have to like Odyssey. You don't have to run their parts. But even if you're not a fan, you have to admit that they generally provide detailed and educated explanations of everything they do, whether it be a weird fork or sammich pedals (more on those later). New products get announced, and then aren't released for months, if not years—not until they're right. And their team rides them first. (Sometimes they still need tweaking even after that. See: Wombolts.)

Does that sound like Snafu's M.O.? I'll give you a hint: NO. These pegs are supposed to be out by the middle of November, and I don't recall ever seeing them (or even hearing word one about them) before Interbike. Nor do I recall seeing them on any Snafu pro's bike checks. (Not sure who would run them anyway. Would Brad Simms ride polycarbonate pegs? Morgan Wade? Dave Mirra?) That's not to say these pegs haven't been real-world tested. Maybe they have. But the testing hasn't been very—excuse the pun—transparent.

Show me some video of someone riding them. Let me hear what team guys think after riding them for a while. Heck, send a set to this guy. Until then they're just another gimmick, the BMX equivalent of this. Or this. Or these. Or maybe they're just another hoax.

(You know it's bad when The Come Up and I more or less agree on something.)

••••••••••••••••


35 comments:

Mexican John said...

Vile. Metal pegs all the way thanks!

wade said...

They are probably fine for hauling homies. And they are pretty. Maybe PC bars are next? Or a non-orange PC pivotal post? Or a PC seat clamp (Addicks)? Rims?
Maybe McGoo has got you right where he wants you?

Anonymous said...

Snafu is such a joke.

Anonymous said...

those pegs have been around in the adult film industry for years. give them some time. im sure you will love them as much as the whores shoving them up their "areas"

bk said...

someone else has made DRI knock off bars before, right? didn't the first Slams use that logo?

bk said...

also, the pegs remind me more of shitty plastic bongs than anything else.

Anonymous said...

bob, dqydj. best video ever.

Anonymous said...

That video of McGoo was straight-up creepy. I'm guessing he had "a few too many" before making that and didn't watch it before posting it for the entire world to see (or maybe I just don't get it).

Plastic is truly one of the greatest inventions of all time, unfortunately plastic's fatal flaw is it's tendency to break. Specifically, polycarb plastic shatters when put under great stress. And when it shatters, it throws dozens of razor-sharp shards in all directions. So if you see anyone riding these at your park or down one of your local spots, duck! I foresee a bunch of haggard BMXers walking into the emergency room together with peg shrapnel embedded in their faces.

Anonymous said...

I love them!!!!

Anonymous said...

s&m needs to bring back the pure energy grind sticks to mock both this and aluminum "trick sticks". they could make miniature bongs out the snafu pegs for an ad, etc.

Anonymous said...

I can't believe you linked to the Come Up.

Traitor.

Anonymous said...

just got back from the Interbike where i checked out these things. the story i got was that a bus ran them over which resulted in nothing more than pinching the end shut but they snapped back to round and when asked about release date i was told "probably not til next spring".

Russ said...

Skyway pegs would hold up great to being run over by a bus, that doesn't mean I'd think about putting them on my bike. What real world riding situation does running a peg over with a bus duplicate?

Sometimes BMX is really stupid.

Anonymous said...

no metal insert like the gsport pegs? man.. those will break so easily. Not a fan of snafu stuff ever since there aluminum crankset pedal inserts fell out 2 days after buying them. crap..

Anonymous said...

you can safely let really, really fat guys (gals?) ride on your pegs without fear of breakage.

Russ said...

Unless they weigh more than 10 tons.

Anonymous said...

chris from odyssey has stated one of the ways they tested the plegs was hitting them with a sledgehammer...not any closer to real world testing at all.

Russ said...

At least hitting a peg with a sledgehammer is a test of direct impact. Moreso than rolling over them with a bus.

Back when I was 13 or so I helped my dad push his old Honda Civic back to our house after it stalled out or something. Due to—well, my being a dumb 13-year-old kid, I accidentally let the rear wheel run over my foot. Nothing happened. At all. I didn't even get a bruise.

I guess I'm just saying that rolling over a bike part with a tire is complete nonsense.

Anonymous said...

Who asked for see through pegs?

Anonymous said...

i like these, but they wont go with my bike. its not a weight weenie at all.

Anonymous said...

i can't say much but let's just say that the boys at snafu are already rethinking these things...

Russ said...

That would imply that they actually thought them once.

Anonymous said...

the rate at which the collective bmx vagina has been growing at lately is redic! can anyone tell me when this trend actually took off?

Anonymous said...

Who (originally) asked for plastic parts?

Anonymous said...

The peg (for those that choose to run them) goes through arguably the greatest amount of direct stress and pressure of anything on a bike. Running a bus over it does nothing. Even hitting it with a sledgehammer does nothing, unless of course it is a 160 lb. (average weight of a rider?) sledgehammer made of steel, concrete, wood, etc. and it is hit and dragged 30 times a day for months on end. Lately in regards to the direction of the BMX industry I find myself saying more and more "I just don't get it?!"

Anonymous said...

For low-impact riding in a non-concrete park, where you're just sliding along the coping and never airing out and slamming down on it, never mis-hopping onto a rail with your whole weight on the outer edge of a peg, and never doing an ice- or nosepick, ever, a set of these would be ideal.

So these are for the eight guys who ride like that.

And chumps.

Anonymous said...

i get it now.

rick moliterno is secretly controlling the industry to fuck everyone over with weak/lightweight/lame parts so another recession at the end of the 00s can collapse the industry and then standard can rise like the phoenix on the headtube of the 2nd lengthy and we'll all be back on stas. genius.

Anonymous said...

I'm sure that a LTF is quite a bit strongervthan the garbage that was around before the dark ages over a decade ago.

Anonymous said...

We HAVE tested the Plegs by hitting them with a sledgehammer in the past, but we now have TWO custom test rigs which emulate this kind of impact in a more controlable way by dropping a very large steel weight onto the end of the peg.

Our test impact will EASILY bend a typical 14mm axle, but the Pleg is mounted more securely than an ordinary axle to concentrate the impact in the Pleg itself. In a real-world situation, the impact energy is spread between the Pleg, axle, frame, the item you are hitting and the rider. Deceleration is far far far less acute than in our test so as a result loads are lower too...

We tests mutiple samples from EVERY batch on these rigs and if they fail then the whole batch is scrapped.

Smitty said...

George, How many lots have been rejected during the production history of the Pleg?

Anonymous said...

Kink is doing a collab frame with Empire?

Anonymous said...

you should've made the come up link a meat spin.

Anonymous said...

i dunno, whilst on the gsport pleg site the explanation and justification for plegs is almost pursuasive, half the fun of grinds is the noise and feel of it, and if you run plastics this

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=-y-AWv1QBH4

will never happen to you again. which is a damn shame.

Anonymous said...

The post from George is why I love what Odyssey/GSport is all about. They come up with great ideas based on rider input and ground them in science. Then they do research and testing to death before and after they release a product and throughout it's life. Impressive.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, Wombolts were incredibly impressive.