American Metal

If you're a machine head, or even just somewhat mechanically inclined, you'll appreciate this:



There's a flipbook up on FBM with all the detail of their new Steadfast trails frame. The frame looks damn nice and has the added bonus of coming with a cast pewter headtube badge. But really I just wanted an excuse to lift that photo and put it here. There's just something about it isn't there? Precision metal, ready for some precision weldsmanship, and just a few hours away from being someone's object of desire. Nice.

And here's another nice one for the mechanically inclined - the making of a Fit DLR stem. Along with the precision metal, this even has the added nicety of couple of bad-asses doing there thing.There's Van Homan disregarding his personal safety and flicking the bars 6 feet up, as well as some anodiser doing the dip and filling his lungs with hydrogen and sulfuric acid fumes all in a self-less quest to feed the colour machine. Enjoy:

Holy Fit!

So to not have heard this news already you would have to be living in a non-wi-fi enabled cave or something. That is, the super-team is no more – Fit have split.

Tunney is well and truly on the ball and has already posted up a Fit obituary. Yeah OK, so it’s not really an obituary, since Fit ain’t dead and they’ve still got a legendary team, but it's pretty obvious that it's the new breed riders that keep the new breed dollars rolling in and it seems like all that is going to change. Moeller is going to have to pull a big, gold plated rabbit out of somewhere to keep Fit’s momentum going.

And then there's the rumours of a cult… at least of a new brand headed by Robbie called “Cult”. Really, if that is the name, you’ve got to give it to him for piss-take value, especially since the irony of it would be lost on the majority of kids that flock straight to it. And born-agains are usually pretty quick to renounce their bad old ways, so you gotta wonder what the hell is going to happen to all that old Fit stuff once the kids start worshipping the new Cult? Ebay glut.

Alright, so that was a bit of bullshit, but now for some semi, halfway, tenuously, somewhat related news. Lotek have a look at some new pair of samples up on their page:



Yep, looking nice, and you can also check Rich and Hoder talking the talk on some of the new Lotek stuff here.

BUT, while we're talking shoes, here's a little something from InterBike:



There is a new BMX specific brand of footwear called Almond that's about to drop. It was launched at Interbike and apparently the money behind it is from a "German brand of BMX frames" and the designers behind it are FBDesign who do work for Etnies, Es, Emerica, IPATH and Burton. So the credentials are there, looks like the colourways are there, hopefully there's some quality to match.

Flippin' Heck

It's pre-InterBike flip book mania.

Fit have one up with their full 2010 range, including 20 complete bikes with not a brakeless model amongst them. Neither is there an embed code but you can check it here.

The next is another big American - Eastern. They are slacking somewhat with just 19 completes (even a few of them are the dreaded mtb's), but they are right up there matching Fit in the unembeddable flip book challenge. You can check theirs here somewhere.

There is just so many bikes, grips, tyres, pedals, shirts and everything else that it just makes your face hurt looking at it all, let alone reading everything. But even at a skim it's interesting looking at just how different the two brands are. Fit's all quality photos and minimal layout while Eastern just piles as much shit as they can in there with photos that look like they've been taken by your mum and graphics laid out by your dad. That's harsh, but my point is that they do things completely differently, yet both sell a shitload of bmx paraphernalia.

This pretty much sums up the difference:


Absolute chaos...


...v.s Absolute clean

And when it comes to the words, I'd say Eastern has crammed about 2000 into the first few pages, including a detailed analysis of how to identify whether you're a "Beginner, Intermediate, Expert, Pro and Team" rider and a very scientific chart to decide upon your TT length. But there is also a dark side to all this information that no kid will ever read:



Since you still didn't read it, you wouldn't have seen that bit that warned of other brands hiding subpar products behind flashy advertising. Is that code for "read on to find flashy products behind subpar advertising?"

Of course for the sake of cleanliness Fit have put there message more simply with some short but thoughtful quotes:



OK, that's enough about that. I've said more or less nothing, so let's move on and pretend it never happened.

Back to flip-mania. Eclat also have a flip book for you to... flip through:

And just so you're sure that Klaus at WeThePeople is not a lazy man, you can flip the Fuse too:

Americana

Pics of FBMs full range of 2010 completes are up. Specless as yet, but looking mighty fine. And... some of them even have stoppers.



Here’s a video check of two of the 2010 fit completes. Specs are at the end.



Odyssey are now doing their Vermont sprocket in 25 tooth. That’s not exactly big news, but I’ve always thought that was a fine looking piece of sprocket – maybe doesn’t translate as well to 25t, but what d'ya do?



On the Light v.s Heavy, Old v.s New front, In the Gnar have weighed in with some sensible words on the new T-1 GB frame. This is very un-American of me, but since I’m not American… I think it’d be cool to see T1 move more of their production offshore so they could put out a bit of post-weld heat treated trickery with a T1 flavour. But you see Australian manufacturing died years ago so we don’t get patriotic about that shit.

Bite on my Pivotal

Fit's got a lookbook up to highlight some of their remarkably un-innovative new parts. I don't know if they've struck some kind of a deal with odyssey or if their PCP pivotal seat is just a ruthlessly shameless bite on the Odyssey Senior 2 pivotal or what but...



If Nuno from Odyssey's tweets are anything to go by, it's a bite.

If you compare the ribbing on the underside of the two seats you'll see that there actually are some differences. And the molding around the pivotal bolt is slightly different. I think that legally, to avoid a law suit, you have to make seven changes to the design of something for it to not be considered a copy. It's something like that. But basically, it's damn difficult and too expensive to enforce anyway.

But back to Fit. There is also their new PCP pedals. Yep plastic pedals that are the love child of Animal Hamiltons and Odyssey JCs. Apparently they were "Developed from team rider input", but you can't really imagine any of their team specifying reflector mounts on their pedals.



Makes you wonder what a that product designer that Fit was advertising for a while back is going to do there. He'll be sitting in a room with a bunch of catalouges.

Anyway, enough negativity and cynicism. Let this be a lesson: If you want the dirty street kids to buy your dirty street stuff, give it a dirty street name. Them PCPs is dope.

Want to design bikes for Fit?

This message was posted on the Ride UK site. It seems that Fit are looking for a new product designer. Pretty strange place to post a Position Vacant notice for a product designer if you ask me. Apart from posting the ad on The Come Up, this would have to be the best way of generating a flood of emails from unqualified kids all over the world, which would then take days to sift through, just in case there happened to be one from an actual designer or engineer in there.

And why post it in the UK?

I have my own theory on this:
I reckon that they are trying to pinch Chris Harrison from Federal bikes. He had an interview up on bmx union a while back and seems pretty switched on. Even more suspicious is that in the ad it says "Just in case you are currently working for another company". Hmmm... corporate espionage is afoot.

There is a massive thread on SRPFLS where just about everybody puts in their two cents about the job, the industry and just about everything else. So I thought there was no harm in adding mine.

All that aside, it doesn't really seem that there would be loads of design work to do at Fit. They're damn popular, but isn't that cause they've got a shit hot team of street shredders that blaze up on camera, rather than for pushing bmx design in bold new directions?

They're more of a marketing success you'd have to say, making great videos and having a nose for a trend. Case in point: taking a stock standard seat post and cutting to 78mm long. That doesn't take an engineer or designer. But maybe that'll change.