Odyssey / GSport: Get Frugal

Yeah, yeah fire engine red everything, but did you see that little flash of the new Odyssey Quadrant rim in there? There is a little more information out about this rim now. Specifically that it's pinned rather than welded, making it an economical alternative to the other Odyssey / GSport models. But, it's a pinned rim with a difference. The name Quadrant comes from the fact that it uses 4 pins rather than the standard 2 that hold most cheap rims together. This means that you wont get that annoying little step in the braking surface caused by the mis-alignment of the outer most edge of the rim wall. Simple ideas are often the best + everyone loves a bargain = winner.

There's also a new Ratchet hubguard that is forged rather than machined, so it's also going to save you some cash as well. It looks like this:



And apparently Odyssey have a new sprocket. They may or not save you money:

Living the Technicolour Dream

Ben Ward is a product designer at Odyssey and according to them he's "one of the main dudes behind our R&D". If you take a look at his blog you'll see that he's not only working his dream job like a maniac, but he also lives and breathes bmx.

Anyway, he's got a bike check up on the Odyssey site. Of course you'd expect no less than a top shelf Odyssey / GSport / Sunday decked out whip - and that's exactly what you get.



There's a whole bunch of new shit - gold Ribcages, spokes and nipples, the new Four:four bars, a prototype 9t driver and titanium hardware for the Ratchet hub. And the JC PCs in half black, half white.

I'm really waiting on those pedals. Without having actually ridden them, they seem to combine all the good things about plastics with the grip of a pinned ali pedal. And the black/white combos adds another little function in that you can run pins one side, pedal grind the other side and know which is which at a glance.





I'm wondering how they'll be available. They'll be coming as a full set only ie. four pieces fully assembled, but will you also be able to buy a full set of mouldings only ie. no spindles, or even individual mouldings?

Either way there'll be more colour combos than a pile of clothes at a clown orgy. Definitely not a bad sales ploy when you consider how many kids will be buying two or four sets at once to in order to be living the technicolour dream.

I've said before that I'm an Odyssey fan and it's not because they have endless variants of fruity colourways, but because they keep raising the bar and making improvements to the parts that we put on our bikes. Simple concept, hard to do.

The Rising of the Plegs

I made a disparaging post about Plegs not long ago. It wasn't the Plegs' fault - I was angry. Hold on a minute... it was the Plegs' fault - those things are just too damn soft. A peg that you have to rotate every other time you ride is too soft.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a G-Sport enthusiast. I own a Ratchet and it's a thing of beauty - solid, unbreakable, functional beauty. But can the same be said for Plegs? I'm still unconvinced.

BUT WAIT, just when you thought it was all over - Let the convincing begin:



I know it's old news. But a whole 2 days old and 74,000 tweets later, it's still worth a mention.

Not least because apparently this new incarnation uses a variation of the original plastic compound that according to GSport and Odyssey, and this guy Will (?), is a lot harder than the originals:

They’re really hard wearing. I genuinely think they’d last me about 2 years of continuous use on the front… I basically haven’t been rotating my front pleg much just to see how durable they really are. They have worn down loads (see picture) and still haven’t failed. My general riding involves a lot of tricks that are hard on the front peg and I’ve been going out of my way to give it extra abuse when the opportunity arises. I’m pretty sure had I worn down an old style pleg in this way, it would have cracked and failed by now, but that’s just from a subjective point of view I guess.

So there you go. Will likes 'em.

And you just know that as I type this there are at least 1000 kids who don't give a shit about how hard they, are or how long they last, sitting at their computers planning *crazy* translucent Pleg and Twisted PC Pedal combos - it's like bmx is 10 years behind the apple mac.

All that aside, the thing that really got me about riding with Plegs was the sound they make - or the lack of sound. Grinding in eerie silence is... eerie.

Soft like butter

I had a GSport Pleg kicking around - brand new.
So I put it up on ebay.
Was I unlucky?
Or does every man and his dog know these pegs are softer than butter?

Selling Price: $0.01