*This article first appeared in Ride UK (#66) and is reproduced here by kind permission of Ride UK.
A BMX, like any other bicycle, has two wheels. You sit in-between them and point the front one the way you want to go. All the time that you are sitting (or standing) on it you are pressing down between the two wheels trying to snap it in half. As BMX’ers we then try that little bit harder to snap it in half by dropping on it from a height, crashing it into things and falling off it. Quite often somebody manages it and the front end tears away from the rest. Maybe the down-tube slowly cracks through at the bottom and then tears clean through in one go. If strength was the only consideration maybe we would think about fixing the wheels together more directly, run a big beam from the front wheel to the back and call it a day? Unfortunately we need to be able to point the front wheel the way we want to go so that isn’t practical.
