Cosmic Brake Alignment

This blog is already bordering on being a Fly fanzine I know, but I put the blame squarely on their stream of simple ideas. And on that note, here's another:


Surprise! It's a new removable brake mount design!


The titanium grub screw market is now officially wide open

Up until a couple of years ago kids were suffering the obscenity of having impotent and demoralised brake mounts de-cooling their life when they rode street. Inexcusable. And frame manufacturers were being forced into producing two versions of every frame just to keep these little pricks (ahem... valued customers) happy. Ying was not yang.

So desperate was this situation that Fly came up with the idea of removeable mounts and, not surprisingly, every frame manufacturer saw the chance to realign their inventory chakras and jumped on board. Fair enough, but you think that one of them could at least have chipped in and done their part in the evolution of the idea. Instead Fly have done the evolving, and now, by undoing a little grub screw in your frame, you can remove the brake bosses with brakes still attached and so avoid fiddling cables, barrels and knarps each time you do it.

That's good, but were I see the major advantage is that when you turn 30, you can just put your brakes back on without having to avoid the temptation to buy a 24" or worse still - a cruiser.

In terms of exactly how this all happens it's probably easiest if you just watch Sergio:

Since most people either ride brakes or don't, you'd have to say the original idea was a bigger deal than this in that the real advantage was for the frame manufacturers and that race has been run already. But since this design shouldn't cost any more than the current standard, it's hard to see why those manufacturers won't now switch to similar systems - it's like something for nothing. And who doesn't like something for nothing? It's just so much better than nothing for something. Follow?

From Russia with...

You remember those hubs from the new Russian brand Infect, that I posted a week back. You know, one looked bad and one looked good? I've got to admit that in a glass half empty moment, I more or less disregarded the nice simple looking one and, in my own mind, tarred the Infect brand with the light-weight, loud-mouth brush that was presented by the other.

Well, these cranks made me think again:





They're machined from bits of 7075, that most hard-ass and inflexible of all the aluminium alloys used in bmx bikes. So that's different. And they've also got that nice simple machine aesthetic thing going on. But looks aren't everything right - there does seem to be at least a little weirdness going on. That little plate with the crank bolt is odd, and it does seem weird that the pinch bolt pinches together the thread that accepts the crank bolt. Or is it that the crank bolt plate holds apart the thread that the pinch bolt pinches? Well, it must work and the look of them works for me.

But there is one final Infect mystery that I need an answer to... What the hell does their logo mean?

Bikes are Nice

Here's a little something from Fly on the new bits that they've got happening at the moment. Ideas are high, resolution is low:



Those investment cast bridges look particularly nice with different style for each of the models, though they do leave me with a little tinge of guilt since months ago I made the mistake of declaring that I was putting together a post about the investment casting technique that Fly and WTP have started using for for fork and frame dropouts. So now they've done a bunch of bridges too and I ain't done shit. Life's hard.

One thing that's distinctly missing from the layout above is the Fly cassette hub. You've got to wonder if it's hit the wall, cause none of their team seem to be riding it. There was that KP bike check the other day he was rocking Profile and Javier Ortega's got a bike check up on Transworld and he's riding a Mini too. I was really looking forward to seeing what angle Fly would bring to cassettes and how the hell they were going to get down to the 12 oz mark that they had put out there. So is it all over, or is it in an unmarked box headed for InterBike. Either way Javier's always got a nice looking bike for those that remain unoffended by the simple functionality of a brake:



Speaking of nice looking, when it comes to manufacturing precision machine porn, the Germans are going to win every time. They're just not that good at making cheap rubbish. You've only got to take a look at Svevo Bikes to confirm that. No new fangled T.I.G welded frames there. They've gone the full craftsman route and fillet braze their frames, which means that you end up with pretty much no visible weld bead:

Clean. But is this cleanliness enough for you to shell out US$850 (just a little over A$1000) for a frame? If it were, you would have to go full Bauhaus, let the beauty of the construction shine through and adorn it with nothing more than clear coat over the stone cold craftsmanship - wouldn't you? The Svevo frames hit the scales at 2180 precisely calibrated German grams. That's 4.8 lbs to you.

Final frame news for the day is that Colony have a few shots up of their new models for 2010. Whacky paint jobs are officially in:



If you would like to see a pic of all four pro models for 2010 you can search amongst the Flash web death here.

Infectious Hub Love

Infect BMX is a new company coming out of Russia (that is without website) and distributed by Underground and these photos of their hubs that have been getting a bit of attention recently:


The X-tra LITE front hub


The Transformer front hub

Those photos are nice but there are some digi scale ones that shed the light on why they've been getting the attention that they have. The X-tra LITE (see how they got creative there and dropped the "E" from extra, added a dash, spelt "light" lite and put it all in capitals - you know there's something special going on there) weighs 5.3 oz (150 g) and the Transformer hub is a bloated 6.4 oz (181 g). Personally, if I were looking to get infected I'd sacrifice the 31 gram difference, go for the Transformer and run a nice simple looking hub, rather than one that obnoxiously shouts "LITE!"

There's also the question of why they've used the titanium sleeve in the hub body - Titanium is heavier than alloy so...?

Anyway now they've clarified details of the hubs by posting up some blurred photos.

Seats are pretty much the T-shirts of bmx. They're all more or less the same, but you can try and choose one that broadcasts a reflection of your personality to the world. They're sometimes rad, sometimes bad. These ones are new from UGP and I'll leave the rad/bad catagorisation up to you:


UGP pivotals

There's also some new stuff from UGP themselves, the like sprockets and bar ends, up on their site and you can check them here.

AusBike Round Two

So I mentioned that I had a bit more stuff to post from AusBike. Well there actually isn't much, but I'll try and string it out a little - no killer, just filler.

I had seen a black version of the SE X DC track bike a while back and thought it was pretty average, probably cause the only shots you ever saw were of the badge. And as it turns out the badge is pretty much all that DC seemed to have done for the project :



The bike's nice though and for mine the looptail looks better on this sized frame than it ever did on a bmx. And if you do actually have some remote interest in fixies, singlespeeds or whatever, the spec is pretty good. Velocity rims on a Sugino hubset, Oury grips and the rest is pretty much all SE. Except the badge.



You probably haven't had a look at the SE website lately for fear of seeing something like this. But let me just tell you, they have a shit load of bikes - I didn't count them, but I'd say there's maybe 40 in total.

And on the Kickass stand I got to have a look at that new Superstar stem that I posted a pic of along with their new hubs a couple of weeks back. It's a pretty standard top load with plenty of negative space. Looks nice:



But I'll leave you with true innovations. Kids, if your friends are hating cause you ain't got no manual - solution. And if you want to keep your head together without losing your street credibility - covered.

How long till InterBike?

Flying

Kevin Porter bike check off Vinyl with a closer look at the prototype plastic Ruben pedals and their new removable brake mounts that you can take on and off without having to adjust your brakes. Nice. And the riding... very nice.



In the interests of promoting Australian music to the world, I would like to note that the song in that clip was incorrectly labeled. I would post the incorrectly labeled clip, but this is better:

Cheese, Wine and Meth

Melbourne just had a weekend of wind and rain and general anti-bike-riding weather that leaves you back to work on Monday feeling unsatisfied. But it does make for good AusBike weather. AusBike is like Australia's little version of what I imagine InterBike to be, but since there was some BMX stuff on show so I dutifully attened.

Along with the Australian distros like Triplesix, Kick Ass BMX and Elite Cycle Imports, Colony also had a stand showing off all their 2010 stuff like the Descendent completes and the new Phantom frame all built up and looking fine.

The Phantom is Liam Fahy-Hampton's new signature frame and I'll tell you something about him that you wouldn't know unless you've done the same exhaustive research that I have, unturned every stone and even read his team page on the Colony site. And that is that he enjoys fine wine and cheeses. That's a 100kg street ape that drinks shiraz and manipulates cheese with one of those upturned fork-knife things. That's cool, I like cheese. I wonder if Mike Hoder likes cheese? I always thought of him as more of a Meth kind of guy, but maybe he's just a Merlot man. Either way check this edit and you'll have to agree that he is in some way altered.

So back to Colony... Here's a few photos of new stuff and modified stuff for 2010:


Pivotals that look like... pivotals. Nuts.




New graphics everywhere and a little extra machining on their hub shells. Why? Why not?


Colony cranks now have an extra little hole on the crank bolt boss. Interesting eh?

Pretty sure the rest is business as usual. Like I said, AusBike is pretty small but I'll post up a couple more photos in the next day or two. Until then, just sit back and try to keep your excitment in check.