For better or for worse

Proper's female front hub is officially out. That is, IMG distro got them today.

For better or for worst Proper has pretty much held the "light weight bmx hub crown" for the last few years, but the weight of these things - ridiculous.

184 grams apparently.

To put that in perspective, a Shimano 6500 Ultegra front road bike hub weighs in at an obese 198 grams. If you think about it a pair of lycra bike pants must weigh at least a couple of hundred grams less than a pair of jeans - you see where I'm going with this?

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.

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:

Viridian is the New Black

Tony Hamlin bike check up on the Transworld site and Kink have snuck a few prototype bits on his ride.

There's a little black pivotal, which is, of course, a must have item for any bmxer about town. Run it high or run it low, they're just so versatile! So it's black. And kind of textured. And looks like it's covered with the same stuff as this one. It could just be me, but it might also be a little smaller than a stock standard "slim" pivotal moulding. At least that would mean that it's actually worth mentioning and these six lines that I've typed hadn't been wasted.

Looks like Kink now have female front hub. And if you look at the pic you'll see that it seems to be called Viridian, which is the name of a greeny-blue-type colour that my grandmother uses in her water colour paintings, but obviously Tony prefers black:

And now for the interesting part - well relatively speaking. There's a proto stem called the Bold. (sorry, couldn't resist that) It's not revolutionary in that it's a run-of-the-mill front load with the sides machined out, but the shape and proportions of the cut looks pretty good. And if you want proof of that, you've only got to compare it to the recent Subrosa prototype. Although you'll still need to be an above average hacksaw technician to ensure that the steerer on your fork is cut to precisely the right length. Oh yeah... and it comes in this lovely shade of really, really, really dark grey:

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.

BMX-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.