Don't Stop Believing

Lots of new frames popping up this week. Had to check my calendar to make sure it wasn't Interbike time. It's not. Still, it seems like nearly every company introduced a new frame, including Eastern:


At a glance, it looks relatively normal, by which I mean it doesn't have all sorts of slots and holes drilled in it. Perhaps Eastern has moved beyond NASCAR technology. But look closer and you'll find a few, um, eccentricities. Like a proprietary (and seemingly arbitrary) bottom bracket width, and an offset-butted headtube.

Start with the wider bottom bracket. Eastern went from the 'standard' 68mm width to 82mm. Which makes some degree of sense, for the reasons they give:

"The BB is 82mm wide verses [sic] the standard BB that is 68mm wide. This spreads the bearings out to increase the strength on the spindle and bearings by putting the load closer to the bearing. The wider BB also allows the stays to be welded further apart to increase the strength and to allow for straighter chain stays and clearance for a 2.3 tire."

The traditional 68mm width always made more sense for road bikes with their skinnier tires, and even they went wider with outboard bearings (although the BB30 system represents an attempt to bring it back to 68mm—and you thought BMX was confusing). Meanwhile quite a few downhill bikes already use 83mm bottom bracket shells.

That said, there's a couple other things to take into consideration. Number one, you're gonna need a whole new (presumably Eastern) bottom bracket setup. Not the bearings themselves—those'll be of the standard mid variety—but a new, wider tube spacer and some thinner washers to go in between the arms and the bearings. And even with all that (consideration number two) I wonder what this'll do to your chainline? I'm sure it's been tested—after all, Josh Perry pulled a 720 tailwhip on one!—and it's only 7.5mm per side, but my drive side washer is pretty thin as it is.

The offset headtube shouldn't provide any problems. It could if you still had to hammer cups into it, but those days are long gone, and companies are doing far worse things to headtubes these days. If Eastern wants to save a few grams by making a simple headtube more complicated, that's their problem. Besides, it sort of goes with the similarly offset-butted Lightning Rod downtube.

Everything else is pretty normal for a late-'00s frame: Japanese (presumably Sanko) tubing, removable mounts and guides, machined dropouts, built-in chain tensioners. But I'm most excited about a holdover from the late '90s: an ovalized (at the bottom bracket juncture) seat tube. Again, this should make the frame somewhat stiffer, but it's also a homage of sorts to this. Which is never a bad thing.

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Ain't No Future in Yo' Frontload

So I noticed a tweet from @SubrosaBrand today mentioning a Hoang Tran bike check on RIDE that featured some prototype Subrosa products. Word? Curiosity killed the cat, but there's too many of the damn things around anyway. I clicked, and somewhere a tabby exploded.

Well, the only prototype Subrosa stuff I saw were the stem and the grips, and seeing that new grips are a dime a dozen these days, I figured we should check out the stem:



Or not. Hm. A milled-out, split-cap frontload stem. Where have I seen that before? It's more or less the skeleton of a Shadow stem. And here I thought toploads were making a comeback. This is what happens when 4-foot-11 12-year-old kids (or 25-year-old adults) insist on running eight-plus inch rise bars, I suppose. Not that I expected Subrosa to re-invent the, um, stem.

That said, let's see some thinking outside the box! How about a pair of 17-inch rise two-piece bars and a stem that goes in between the fork crown and the lower bearing race? Sure, you'll need some sort of extra piece to hold your forks on, and you won't be able to do barspins or tailwhips anymore, but won't that be a relief more than anything else?

That, or everyone could chill on buying super-high rise bars unless they really need them so there'd be no need for stems like this—but what am I talking about? That would just be crazy.

Mutually Assured Destruction

How do you destroy a modern BMX bike in five seconds or less? Try the Austin Church gap, of course:

SOLIDSTEEL Johno & the Church Gap from Clint on Vimeo.

I know Jimmy Levan, sir, and you're no Jimmy Levan. That said, ridiculous props for even attempting it. Solid Steel for sure.

If nothing else, this should serve as a public service message in support of straight-gauge spokes, 48-spoke wheels and (gulp—check 1:46) bars with fewer butts than a Sir Mix-A-Lot video. Not that a stronger rear wheel wouldn't have self-destructed too, but man. Dude's lucky his bike was the only thing that got destroyed. And cracks or no, I'd retire every part on it with full honors.

Obviously I have no intentions of jumping TACG™, but my new/old bike is ready for it on the off chance I lose my freaking mind:


In semi-unrelated news, there has been a Troy McMurray sighting on the East Coast. Hide the women and children.

Still Tippin' On Four:Fours

• Odyssey's got some tall-ass four-piece bars dropping that look sort of like Redline Forklifters without the number-plate tabs (or just the more recent versions) or Fred'z Bars without Fred. I'd embed the code so you didn't have to click the link, but the last time I did that it messed up the whole column aspect of the blog. I'm not blaming Odyssey—there must be a way I could adjust the width or the scale—I just don't know what I'm doing. I'd think these are what would have been the Lumb4rjacks (or was it Lumberj4cks?), and whilst I'm inclined to sigh at yet another pair of bars thrown into the mix, it's hard to not love 'em after seeing this photo:


That said, I'll stick with my Bobs.

• Whilst yesterday's post drew plenty of comments, nothing was really cleared up one way or the other. Meanwhile, Fit themselves took the Flavor Flav route. Guess we'll just have to wait and see.

• I want to believe. But correct me if I'm wrong, isn't that a 'new' Lengthy? And wasn't the Domination bike a regular STA? (As for actually buying it, who do you think you are, Rick Moliterno???) UPDATE: 'Tis apparently 100 percent legit. Must... fight... impulses...

• It could be worse, I suppose. We could all be riding road bikes, where equipment failure costs a lot more.

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Eff It

There's nothing I hate more than looking at BMXfeed and a) not seeing one of my posts in the top four, and b) seeing that I haven't updated in three days. Embarassing! I'm not the last site on the front page to update, but that's only because the Metal blog operates differently from the rest of the universe. Even Stephen Hawking doesn't get it.

Strangely, there's seemingly a lot going on, but not much to report. Rumors are flying around the internets about various companies—well, one company in particular—but details are few and far between. OK, there are no details.

I know what you're saying: "Russ! Aren't you supposed to be some kind of journalist? Man the phones! Dig some dirt! Rake some muck!" And you know what? You're right. It's about damn time this site actually broke some news. But it's not happening. You know why? First of all, I'm so far removed from the BMX epicenter that I can't even feel the vibrations. Here's a handy diagram to show you what I mean:



As for making phone calls, it seems like that would be an exercise in futility. Even if something big were happening, I'm not gonna get it out of them by placing a phone call or sending an e-mail. It's never quite that easy. And while rampant speculation is fun—"CHRIS MOELLER IS SELLING FIT TO PACIFIC SO YOU'LL BE ABLE TO BUY THEM AT TARGET!!!!"—it doesn't really do anyone any good. All we can do is wait. And, um, hope some disgruntled employee/rider/relative goes off anonymously in the comments section.

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In the meantime, you can check out some of the 2010 Fit completes on Alan's BMX, the site for a British retailer. It appears that Fit is actually expanding their line of completes for 2010, which seems utterly insane to me. But maybe putting the line in departme—oops.

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No One Expects the Spanish Inquisition!

Well, I said I wasn't gonna talk about Spanish bottom brackets anymore—and I probably won't. Much. But I couldn't resist using that post title:



Anyway, Darcy talked some more about Macneil's choice of the Spanish BB standard here, and the discussion got interesting in the comments section of the original post, with Taj talking about blowing up bearings and JPR coming up with his own modest proposal. If that discussion were to continue—either in this comment section or that one—it wouldn't be a bad thing. Personally, I still feel like it would be nice if we could decide on one bottom bracket bearing standard. After all, we're pretty settled on 1 1/8" integrated headsets and 25.4mm seatposts, and no one complains about either of those infringing on their rights to free design. (Obviously any company could feel free to make frames that took, say, 27.0mm seatposts and—what's that? Standard already tried that? Yes, and we all saw how that turned out.)

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Rob Wise has a new frame from Volume that doesn't have any holes drilled in the seattube. Whew. I actually saw it a month or so back when Rob was in NYC, but thought shooting photos of his bike would be a little presumptious. Plus, I didn't have my camera with me.

The funny thing is, it's actually three ounces lighter that the First Blood, his first signature frame, even without the "silencer" holes. Eat it, Rambo.

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So yeah, new Eastern forks. Terrific. Just a few questions/comments:

• What exactly are "heaven drops"?
• Please put the CNC controls down.
• I understand that a capped tube with a hole cut in the cap is stronger than an uncapped one, but I still don't get it.
• That 'original' "Hangfree" dropout design? Yeah, Sunday sort of did that first.
• I'm still not entirely sure why you'd buy a fork not made by S&M or Odyssey, especially one that weighs less than two pounds.
• When does the titanium version come out?

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One for the weekend. I feel like I posted this before, but what the hell.

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Almost forgot! Either Gary Ellis or Jody Donnelly is selling his bike on eBay. Tragic.

Checks Bounce

If you look at BMXfeed with any regularity, you start to notice bike checks all the time. They're like the chips in a Chips Ahoy! or the green clovers in a box of Lucky Charms or the terrible analogies on this site. Anyway, today I thought I'd just pull all the bike check photos I could find, and run them all with no rhyme nor reason. A bike check shuffle, if you will. Then I can go back to compulsively listening to "Maybach Music 2", which has plenty more rhyme but about as much reason.








(That last one is a bit of a cheat in both date and content, and I probably should have hyperlinked each photo back to the respective sites, but eff it.)

(And oh yes, the Eastern Hawkeye forks. Tomorrow. One of these days I should really look into using RSS.)