Dah Shinin'

I'm pretty late to the game on this, but it's pretty awesome that Profile has been posting those "How This Is Made" entries. The newest is on the Gas pedals, which might confuse some people since they're not poured into a mold. ("Wait, you can make pedals out of METAL?") It at least gives you some idea why they're so expensive.

It's good to see how bikes and bike parts are made. FBM has been particularly great at posting photos of the production process. They're proud of what they do, and rightly so. And it just feels better when you can see a frame before its been painted and stickered. Even if you can't see anything specific.

I'd give almost anything for several other brands to post similar blog entries: "Here we are poring over the latest Taiwanese catalog. Here we are picking our next line. Here we are calling the factory to finalize our choices. Here we are vociferously discussing the new hot 'colorways'."

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What is this, the '90s? The '80s?

A couple days ago I saw this Nigel Sylvester bike check. Chrome rims, bars, forks. OK. Taking that whole "shinin'" thing a bit too literally, but hey. Why not? After all, Hanson Little already had the full-chrome Mystic setup—which he told me he'd send a photo of a long time ago. Lies!

Then today I saw this:


Yep, that's a fully chromed Kink Farside, complete with skinwall tires.

A long time ago, a chrome bike was as pro as it got. I'm talking back in the mid-'80s. Then after a while it was all a bit too much—for department-store bikes only. Then you couldn't even GET chrome. It was bad for the environment, bad for the metal, bad for the eyes.

Guess we've come full circle.

Again.

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Potassium Helium

Depending on how you look at it, the bar has been either raised or lowered yet again. (We can guess which way the toptube went.) KHE is proud to introduce The Spectre, a 3.814 pound frame that's being ridden by Daniel Dhers. It's got a 20.43" toptube presumably because no one else has made that size yet. Either that, or it's a really subtle tribute to Mat Hoffman. 43!

Judging from the one photo on Fat, KHE was able to save weight by using removable brake mounts and cable guides, and by eliminating the headtube entirely. I'm shocked they left the top of the seat tube that tall—they could have easily shaved off that excess .014 pound there. I'd also like to see a properly angled photo of the bottom bracket—it looks like it's just hanging off the bottom of the seat tube. Elevated chainstays?

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Snafu, once again rationalizing their very existence and doing a so-so job of it. Look, just say you're putting out sprockets that look like every other sprocket so no one has to deal with the stigma of running a Snafu product in 2009. Honesty is the best policy.

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I don't know if the eBay thing will become any sort of regular occurrence, but I will draw attention to auctions now and then if I feel they're in any way interesting or amusing. Like these forks, which have been on eBay as long as eBay has existed. I'm half-tempted to buy a set just out of pity.

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(Disg)Race

I love looking at BMX stuff on eBay. New or old, it doesn't matter.

A simple search for the term "BMX" brought up 8,397 items today. Of course that includes lots of barely BMX stuff like this and this, but there's never any shortage of awesome.

Like this:

ATTN: Tall, weight-weenie, old schoolers.


Ignore the "race" designation (a race frame with a standing platform?) and just think of it as a 4.5 pound Standard Lengthier. For $100, how can you go wrong?

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Honestly? It doesn't get more SPRFLS than this. Amazing.

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Bring the Ruckus

Breaking news? Rob from WTP/éclat e-mailed to let me know that the yet-to-be-named stem is unnamed no more: it's called the Hannibal. There is apparently good reasoning behind this, but I can't figure it out. Feel free to guess, win nothing.

But yes, there's also the seat, the aptly named Gonzo Seat. The nose is a bit pre-dropped (although not as much as that of its namesake), and the base is a totally new design, not yet another gaudily re-appropriated Velo. It's light as hell (6.3 ounces naked, 8.8 clothed), but it also looks pretty little.



Makes you wonder why someone doesn't go all the way and just "design" a Pivotal version of the classic GT Dropnose. Anyway, yeah, nothing terribly SPRFLS to see here. But hey, it's only Tuesday.

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If anyone else is looking for a complete, here's a Fit PRK3 for a good cause. I might hold off a little while longer myself, as the weather is showing no signs of getting any better.

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Just in case you didn't click on that GT Dropnose link, remember the Robinson Ruckus?

All black trails bike? Stealth race machine? With one-piece cranks? Nope, I don't remember what the point was either. Looked neat, though.

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Smilin' is Cheesin'

Hm, I wonder if éclat's still mad at me? I never did hear from Tunney after the Great Cheese Incident (unless he authored the exceptionally petty "comeback" on the éclat site), and we used to e-mail on a semi-regular basis, too. Shame. And to think I was gonna buy his rookie card.

Anyway, éclat—the company with the most iconic logo in BMX—released a couple of new parts last week that are worth taking a closer look at. We'll start with this new biodegradable combination tube sealant and grip installer:


Oh, I'm just kidding. You guys need to relax if you're gonna make it to your first anniversary.

But éclat really did put out a few new products. The first is an unnamed stem. It's crazy, because the plate goes on the FRONT, hence the term "front-load." I know, hard to imagine, right? Maybe you'd get a better idea of what I mean if you looked at a photo:

Does it make more sense now? (Seems sort of strange that éclat would start with a frontload when everything's heading back topload. Frontload stems made a lot more sense when people were running low, narrow bars—anyone who ran Castillos and a DK stem could attest to that. They do have a Sean Burns topload in the works, though.) Note the smaller bolts on the face (is this a better option than hollow 6mm bolts?) and the iconic logo on the side.

The niftiest feature (yes, I'm being serious for a moment) is found on the back, which is cut in an "s" shape:


This allows more threading to catch without having to set the bolt heads a half-inch into the stem. Judging from the text (it's referred to as "the proven snake gap") I take it this has been done before, but I guess I ain't noticed. (Unless "the proven snake gap" is actually just something Jimmy Levan jumped over recently.) As for the pertinent measurements, 49.5 mm, 9.5 ounces. And it's nowhere near as terrifying looking as some sub-10 stems. In fact, it's quite aesthetically pleasing. Of course that's just because they removed material from the bottom instead of the sides. And, in the immortal words of Twisted Sister, "what you don't know sure can hurt you, what you can't see makes you scream."

Meh, the seat can wait 'til tomorrow.

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Hey, Tierra V2. I'm amused that the "long" rear end version is 13.65". Don't hurt yourselves.

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According to James Foster, his new frame (which was discussed earlier) "completely obliterates every other bike in the universe" and "has the best geometry of any bike I’ve ridden." Well, that's that, then. Guess I can close up shop.

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No Control

If this were a Friday quiz, which it isn't, I suppose this would be the essay question:

The primary reasoning I've heard behind people running bigger and bigger bars is this: "It gives you more control." Now personally, I think this is true up to a point. Back in the good old days of 19" Castillo Bars, when men were men and those men slid their grips all the way to the crossbar, wider bars were definitely a step in the right direction. The thing is—to me—things have now gone way too far the other way. If you're an 85-pound kid with shoulders the size of the average house sparrow's, a pair of 30" wide bars is probably going to give you less control than a pair of 25" wide ones.

But that's not even my point.

My point is this. If the reasoning for wider bars is "more control," why do many people with super-wide bars also have a) no brakes, b) super-short rear ends, and c) vestigal seats? Brakes give you more control. Longer rear ends (arguably) give you more control. And a seat raised to a reasonable height absolutely gives you more control.

So my question is this:

If you run super-wide bars because they give you "more control," why do you intentionally set up the rest of your bike to give you less?

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I picked up the current copy of Road Bike Action this week to accompany me on a train ride, and less than 20 pages in I found the most amazing bike part in the history of history. You know all that stuff I've said about pointless BMX parts? This takes the cake, eats it, then shits it on my head and eats it again.

I present to you the $1,600 carbon/ti brakeset.

Unbelievable. But hey, at least you get free shipping.

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*EDIT* Changed the title to what it should have been in the first place. Sorry, Brett and Greg, it won't happen again. (Why can't I remember what video used this? I remember Hallman riding to Bad Religion in a Standard video, but I think it was a different song. Stupid faulty memory.)

Ti, Die

There's isn't much that I don't understand about KHE's prototype titanium flatland frame. Honestly, I only have one question:

Why?

Here's KHE's explanation (which can be found by following the link above): "We'll build up a bike with all the lightweight parts we can find in our warehouse to see how far we can push the limits. How light can a serious bike become? You can check out the bike at the next Eurobike for sure."

Interesting. Stupid, but interesting. Look, titanium is a great material to make bike frames from. According to roadies and hardtail MTB types, it has a ride quality that can't be duplicated with steel or aluminum or carbon fiber. It's lightweight, corrosion-resistant, and super resilient. Of course it's also difficult to work with (just ask Eastern) and expensive as hell, which is how you wind up with things like a $3,200 road frame and a $9,000 commuter bike. Companies offer cheaper titanium, but you run the risk of getting a frame made from melted-down MIGs and old Chernobyl core rods.

BMX bikes, though? Not so much. Taj had someone fabricate a titanium Barcode and he hated it because it was so flexy (scroll about 2/3 of the way down). And you don't see those ti Grim Reapers advertised in Dan's anymore.

And I love that KHE asks "how far we can push the limits," like they may find some magical parts in their warehouse that will allow them to build a six-pound complete bike. If the ti frame weighs 2.16 pounds, and their top-of-the-line complete flat bike weighs in at 17.2 pounds (and costs $1,900), a complete built with the ti frame should weigh roughly two pounds less than that. That is, unless they decide to drill a bunch of holes in everything just to show off and make it even less rideable than it is already.

Which leads one to ponder, what exactly constitutes a serious bike? Flatland bikes may not have to stand up to 20-stair drops to flat, but they take a lot of abuse that a "regular" BMX bike never will, being pulled and spun and tweaked in multiple directions at once. Don't believe me? Check out this bike I shot at a jam this summer:


So even if you could build a 15-pound flatland bike (that would retail for roughly $3,000, of course), what's the point if it would just twist up like a pretzel the second a serious rider put it through its paces? Why not try and make a lightweight frame out of aluminum (already been done, I know) or some sort of carbon composite? Titanium? We've been down that road before. It's going to be light. It's going to be expensive. And it's going to suck.

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And now for something completely different.