News

/ December 1, 2002 / News

Dropouts

*This article first appeared in Ride UK (#61) and is reproduced here by kind permission of Ride UK.

I seriously thought people would be sick of this technical column by now, but it seems not. I always aimed for it to have a little useful information in each, presented in a reasonably entertaining way. Unfortunately they were tedious beyond measure and I am genuinely surprised that no one has told me to shut up yet. Since nobody has, this months will break new ground with its tedium. If anyone has any requests for future ones (assuming this one doesn’t finish the whole idea off) then I would be interested to hear from you…

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/ December 1, 2002 / News

Gearing

*This article first appeared in Ride UK (#59) and is reproduced here by kind permission of Ride UK.

Gearing used to be simple, “back in the day” (don’t you just love cliches?) it was 44-16, 43-16 or NOWT. These days we have a whole load more to choose from and yet there is very little information available to help you choose the right set-up. The following is intended to help guide you through the options but fairly obviously this is going to make it very very dull. There isn’t really a lot I can do to soften the tedium I am afraid, so I can only suggest that you stop reading right now and save this bit for your next bout of insomnia. If you really need to know what the deal is right now then by all means read on, but don’t say I didn’t warn you. Throughout this deluge of tedious odure I will make use of imperial measurements, feet and inches. You may think that we are metricated, but go for a quick ride on your 20” with its ½” (half inch) pitch chain and 2.1” wide tyres for a few miles and then come back and shut up.So, lets dive straight in with the very very basic principals so we all start from the same place.

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/ December 1, 2002 / News

Euro/USA Bottom Brackets

*This article first appeared in Ride UK (#58) and is reproduced here by kind permission of Ride UK.

BMX is a great big multi headed hydra of a beast. Rearing up on ugly great legs with lots of heads to snap at you and lots of tails to whack you round the face as you try to retrieve the golden fleece of freestyle…

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/ December 1, 2002 / News

Punctures

*This article first appeared in Ride UK (#63) and is reproduced here by kind permission of Ride UK.

I guess we have all envied after skateboarders once or twice. Usually when your back wheel has just had a little brush with coping and is making that awful hissing noise. Just then the idea of rolling round on a plank with solid wheels that NEVER go pop is pretty attractive.

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/ January 1, 2002 / News

Frame Design Details

*This article first appeared in Ride UK (#64) and is reproduced here by kind permission of Ride UK.

Over the years there have been some pretty wacky frame designs. Hutch, for example, used to make a frame called the Trickstar. This was loved by a lot of riders of the day, especially flatlanders, for its super steep head angle and abundance of scuffing room. The scuffing room came at the expense of strength at the weird head tube junction. Hutch obviously decided that it was still way too strong and went on to produce the Trickstar II, which had a specially weakened rear triangle to match. The rear triangle also helped to make the Mk 2 look like a wheel barrow (not just any wheel barrow mind, an UGLY wheel barrow) and that was that for Hutch.

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