WeThePeople 2010 Parts

Yep another flippin' WeThePeople book. This time it's the 2010 parts catalogue:

Probably the most noteworthy bit would be the new cassette - the Supreme Switch. It uses the Q-lite like the old Supreme, but you can switch the pawls around in driver so that like the Ratchet you can run it left or right drive. That's pretty much a win for the shops and distros, but the win for the kid who's going to ride it comes with the fact that there is a total of six bearings in there and 4 in the driver alone and that's got to equal longer bearing life. Doesn't it?. Despite the fact that there's a lot of bearings in a little driver, the weight is still down to a very respectable 16oz.


The Supreme Switch: Six pawls, six bearings, two drive sides, 16 ounces.

So they've got five frames all up and not a single mandatory sub 4.5 lb trend whore in sight. In fact non of them are even sub 4.8 which is admirably modest, but the Elektro has gone full born-again-virgin and covered up with an extra ounce or two. That said all bar the Elektro have a 13.22 rear end - and that is kind of slutty.

There are plenty of investment cast parts welded into the various frames and forks in the form of drop outs, bridges and seat clamps. But with the Mike Brennan / Max Gaertig Warriors frame not only do you get two pros for the price of one, but you get all the tricky bits including those dropouts which you would have seen already:



I'm loving the way the back end of this frame looks. The smooth curve made by the inside of the dropout and the curved bridges gives it a kind of old school looptail look, while at the same time using a technology which is new to bmx and an innovation in frame design.

If you were to say to me:

"This ain't no innovation, just a useless bit of fashion!"

I would probably say to you:

"But bro, they're creating 3D forms that are inherently stronger than a 2D cnc'd or lasercut design and moving the weld away from the stress point at the tip of the rear triangle. What's more they allow for tighter fit between the dropout and stay tubing that allows for a neater and stronger weld. If you'd pull your head out of your ass and you might smell the innovation!"

Then we'd have a punch up.

Klaus from WTP / Eclat actually has different things to say about them and you can listen to them here. But first you'll have to drink a warm glass of corporate milk.

According to a couple of little guys that I've had words with the set up costs for investment casting makes it an option only for the big guys, which is a shame, cause it would be interesting to see what other variations on shape and form would come up. There is definitely a lot of potentially to subtly change the look of a bmx frame by adding in some more interesting "designed" shapes or logo details for people to hate on. But remember... hate is great.

Salty Females

There was just a little unfinished business from my WeThePros post the other day about the 2010 WeThePeople completes.

Klaus, who takes care of design for the WTP, Eclat, Salt and Fuse brands and obviously has plenty of more important things to do than email me, was good enough to clear things up. The spec on the Trust and the Zodiac included an "engineered polymer bb". That's actually a machined PVC cone spacer on the cranks, that apparantly works perfectly and has the added bonus of being a touch lighter than aluminium. And then there was the "sealed bearing / polymer bearing" on the rear hub of the Envy, which turns out to be a pretty much a Salt version of the Eclat Teck Cassette hub that uses both a sealed bearing and a polymer bushing.


Your mission, if you choose to accept, is to identify the polymer bushing

Just as a little bonus round, here's some pics of some of the 2010 Salt components that comes on their completes, but are also available aftermarket. They're new and improved for 2010, designed in-house by WeThePeople and are one of the things that really lift their completes above those that use generic catalogue parts:


The Salt 9t cassette is depressed. He trys his best and by normal standards does really well, but it's hard living in the shadow of an older and more talented brother


Let's face it, not everyone gets to have a first rate female. Some are just lucky to have one


Designing your own rubber is officially putting in work




And finally, here is the man that has played a big hand in bringing all this bmx style to your screens. Don't blame me it's Tunney's fault:

WeThePros

It's a cut-throat business the re-posting of bmx product news. It's the quick and the dead. You snooze, you lose. Post something up 12 hours after it drops and you're nothing. Nothing!

The WeThePeople 2010 completes have already been levitating in cyberspace for days, but now there is this nicely re-packaged official release that allows me to keep my dignity:



What can you say other than that WeThePeople are the rulers of completes. Even the most salty of critics would struggle to come up with legitimate complaints about the above flip-book and bikes in it. Maybe it isn't exactly your flavour, but the package as a whole is pro. The bikes, the spec, the artwork, the photos, the info, the presentation. Pro.

They've broken the range up into series, which start with "Novice", and then in true marketer-speak jump straight to "Expert" and then mangage to find 3 more levels above that. So it's: Novice, Expert, Pro, Master and Elite.

They also give a pretty good rundown of what you actually get from the frames at each different level. For example if you buy a Novice Series bike you know that at least your down tube is Chromoly. On an Expert Series you get CrMo downtube and chainstays, on a Masters you can the top tube to the CrMo list, until you work your way up the range to full heat treated CrMo of the Envy. On top of that you can check the spec tables at the back of the book to see at which stage the bars step up from hi-tensile to CrMo, or whether the dropouts on your forks are heat-treated or not.

It seems like a pretty obvious thing to do - to give people all the information so they can make the choice of what they want to buy for their money, but it just doesn't usually get laid out like that - in fact the more suspicious conspiracy theorists amongst you might even believe that manufacturers were trying to hide exactly what their completes are made of. (?)



So there is a lot of information about the bikes. That's good. But there is also some nice details: Some integrated pivotal posts that you can lop off if you're not into them, plenty of integrated seat clamps of course, bikes with front and rear specific rims, seat / post combos, removable brake mounts, 8.2" rise bars and female front hubs. Plus loads of nice eclat spec, especially at the top end.

A couple of interesting details are the "Salt Mid sized BB sealed bearing (polymer bb)" on the Zodiac and the polymer bearing in the "Salt Cassette 9t sealed bearing / polymer bearing" on the Envy. What's going on here? I don't know, I'm going to bed, so I'll just leave you to speculate on that with some firey and informed banter in the comments. Ha..... ha.... ha.

Spanish Soap Opera

Darcy Saccucci is an admirer of small bottom brackets. And those undervalued bits of tube have been at the centre of untold amounts of net chatter and drama recently as a result.

Darcy is the product designer at MacNeil and the man responsible for the pivotal seat post - one of the biggest design innovations made by a bmx company. There's actually a nice Brian Tunney interveiw with Darcy on the Dig website where he talks about designing the pivotal and the general ins and outs of being a bmx product designer if you're interested. But either way, he's got credentials.


^^ I've been looking for an excuse to use that drawing ^^

Back to the drama: It all kicked off when Darcy made a blog post a while back titled Spanish BBs are the Shit. He just laid out a few arguments for MacNeil sticking with the Spanish set up over the Mid.

Basically he put it down to saving some grams, about a hundred or so when you include the smaller bearings and bb shell, as well as what I suppose you could call "style issues":

"I think it looks way better. With all of the frame tubing diameters getting smaller in the last couple of years the Mid BB looks a little big and bulky."

I mean, I just don't think anyone else really gives much thought to how their bottom bracket shell looks in proportion to the rest of the frame. But I suppose when you spend hundreds of hours zoomed in modelling all the little CAD details of a bunch of frames it begins to get important. Anyway people went to town on this little piece of MacNeil propaganda. There was a SPRFLS post about it and Darcy got savaged in the comments there as well as on the MacNeil blog. Then Darcy made a retaliation post, then another on SPRFLS etc.

It was like a little bottom bracket soap opera. Those humble little machined pieces of tube that work so hard for so little thanks really got their five minutes in the sun.

And despite some comments from industry types like GSport George and JPR from FBM, and a whole range of anonymous and semi-anonymous people geting opinionated, nothing was really resolved and we still have two bottom bracket sizes. Which, as someone somewhere pointed out, is a damn site fewer than road bikes and similar sub-cultures of bicycle enthusiasts.

Can't really blame Darcy though, he was just towing the company line and all. How much say do designers even get? In my experience they just get orders - mostly to do with "cheaper alternatives". Of course I'm sure that bmx is a selfless industry that prioritises quality product over profits with the good of the brotherhood a in mind.

I run a Spanish and have never really had any problems with it. Mind you I also run a 19mm spindle and in my opinion that's probably a more worthy debate to be having - What's the point of 22mm spindles? Aren't they just a left over from the days where heavier was better? If we stick to a single sized spindle the bb stuff should just work itself out.



People were a little lighter on Darcy for the weight saving stuff. I guess like it or not there is no questions that light weight parts sell.

WeThePeople are even putting out a little adapter kit so that you can run Spanish BBs in their Mid shells to save some weight. Here's what they've got to say about that:

"ah yeah and we're also gonna do a new BB version So we can use a Mid BB shell, Alloy out casing and the Spanish bearings - means you can keep the standard BB, but lighten it up if you prefer or are not so hard on bearings"

Weird. It's all about the bb's.