Foundation from France

Europe has not been slack when it comes to turning out quality BMX parts. France is no exception. Since the days when Christophe Leveque was racing on Sunn frames, also Mavic and their legendary wheels for both MTB and BMX, France has had plenty to offer. Foundation is no exception. They offer products like cranks, spindles and pedals. I daresay their forks would be pretty good. Now you know how fussy I am about forks...and I would take these over any aluminium or carbon-fibre forks anyday. Check out Foundation today!

Cult Deathrow bars

After I posted the Cult stem the other day, I decided to have a good look at the Cult website and see what else they have to offer, BMX-wise, that can be used for BMX racing. I came across these bars. Nice and wide, American-made bars. Cult call them the Deathrow bars. According to their website here they are described as:

american made, 100% heat treated butted chromoly. two sizes available.
8.35" rise, 29" width, 12° backsweep, 2° upsweep
8.65" rise, 29" width, 12° backsweep, 2° upsweep
available in black and chrome.

All I can say is, pretty good!

Excess Components wheelsets

There have always been people in the BMX world making pre-built wheelsets. Kovachi was one. Sad to hear that he passed away because his wheelsets were the stuff of legends. Sun used to make them too, as can be seen in their past Superstock wheelsets. There is a new kid on the block, well, actually, not really a new kid. I had the chance to see a pair of these wheel the other day and I was impressed. Well-built and looking good. The company's name is Excess Components and their pre-built wheelsets can be found here. They also make other BMX product like freewheels, now almost non-existent when cassette hubs came into play. Check them out!

Happy Chinese New Year

We at Singapore BMX would like to wish one and all Kung Hee Fatt Choy. May the Dragon Year be a better year for everybody. 

Haro numberplates

Bob Haro, the freestyle legend, was pretty much an entrepreneur back in the day. He started off by making numberplates, using a hot stove to bend plastic...just to earn a little money. He made these plates for friends of his and pretty soon, everyone wanted a number plate made by Bob Haro. I never had one of his plates back in the day...I had a Zeronine plate. But most of the BMX pros back in the day had Haro numberplates.  They would not look out of place even at the races today!

Macneil Tabarnak Bars

When Jay Miron left Macneil, many in the industry thought that it would be the end of the company. Frankly, I do not think so. They still continue to churn out quality product and these new bars from them, called the Tabarnak bars, is testament to their reputation. Many riders nowadays are riding bars that would not look out of place in the 1980s, with the wide stretch and nigh height. According to Macneil's website, these bars:

...feature full post weld heat treating, multi-butted Sanko tubing, 19mm cross bar and is available with 8.25″ or 8.75″ rise. The 8.25″ rise version is 28.5″ wide with 10º backsweep and 1º upsweep and the 8.75″ rise version is 30″ wide with 12º backsweep and 1º upsweep. Available colours are ED black, green, purple, raw and chrome.

So there you have it...more colours available than a Mexican blanket. Good enough to use for racing and strong enough to take bumps at the trails. Pretty nice don't you think?

Seaspec sunglass for extreme sports

A buddy of mine is bringing these Seaspecs in. Very useful for cycling as it keeps debris from flying into your eyes. Very useful for racing as it prevents any loose mud or stones getting thrown into your eyes and bogging up your performance. And the darn things even float on water.Check out this link on the forums and give Peter a call. They are relatively inexpensive and they will protect your eyes.

Cult salvation stem

I have always been a sucker for clean-looking stems and this one from Cult looks as clean as it should. This was made by a company that makes bikes and parts for freestyle so I think that it would handle BMX racing with no issues at all. To me, a strong stem is very important and I think this stem can deliver the good when it comes to durability. Cult has an online store so you should be able to order from them

Elevn Technologies stems

I still have my DK stem from many years ago. This stem is still functioning nicely and I do not think I need to change it. DK used to be THEE company to turn to when it came to BMX stems, along with Pro-Neck and Tuf-Neck and even Nitto, for us guys in Asia. But there are new guys in the market now...there always have been.

Looks like the boys down at Elevn Technologies are no slouches when it comes to new BMX product. According to BMX News, this is the stem that they have produced. Looks like they are getting more product in the market. The specs are:

Elevn Stem Specs
1” 35mm 38mm 40mm 45mm (MSRP: $64.95)
1 1/8th 45mm 50mm 53mm 57mm 60mm (MSRP: $69.95)

Colors: White, Black, Polish, Red, & Blue

That is in US dollars for you guys. Not cheap but I dare say that this stem would be great.

S&M Bikes 20MM race fork with a thru-axle

Looks like S&M Bikes are stepping up the ante when it comes to having thru-axles. They already have a 20mm thru fork so this was the next step. And I might add, that is a very interesting way of lacing the wheel, from what I can see

Supercross Bolt LT

With all the aluminium BMX race frames out there, it is great to see that Bill Ryan of Supercross still sticking to the roots of BMX and releasing a chromoly race frame. This is the frame that can be used for racing and in the off-peak racing season (if there is any like it used to be) can be used to session the trails. It will last longer than an aluminium BMX bike and it is a lot more resilient as well. The features of the bike, according to the Supercross website are:

• Triple Butted Air Hardened 4130 Cro-mo Frame Construction.
• 4.2lb Pro Race Frame that can be used as an everyday race frame and trail bike
• Same race winning geometry as the Supercross ENVY
• Integrated Campy Style 45/45 Headtube with CNC’d LOGO
• CNC Machined Euro BB shell ( 68mm Width )
• Backside CNC’d Cro-mo Dropouts
• Built in Low Profile Seatpost Clamp with replaceable Nut and Bolt ( Quick Release Compatible )
• Uses a 27.2mm Seat Post
• Tapered Chain and Seat Stays
• Bullet Tipped Rear Stays

The bike is only very slightly heavier than its equivalent aluminium cousins but I bet that it would give a more comfortable ride. Thanks Bill. I respect your respect for the roots of BMX 

The story nobody wants to report

My friend Jack Baruth, using the pen name Jim Boswell, wrote this article for BMX Basics years ago. BMX Basics was his site and he had some very interesting articles in it, including this one. I learnt a lot from Jack and I am glad to have him as my friend, even though we have never met in person.

Recently, there were some posts in Facebook about high-end BMX frames. Some pretty influential riders were praising these frames to the skies. This sends the wrong message to kids just starting out in racing. I should know. I started out with a crappy bike but I won races with that bike. I think Lance Armstrong was right...its the rider, not the bike. I thought it would be great if I posted this article up because it is very relevant. Hopefully, someone will learn something from it

The story nobody wants to report.

Did you ever play 'make-believe' as a kid? If you did, or even if you didn't, let's play it together, now. Let's make-believe that we are the people in charge of a large bicycle company, selling BMX, trail, and flatland bikes. We spend hundreds of thousands of dollars every year buying advertising, paying for our factory team, bribing the color mags to keep them from trashing our products in print, and promoting our brand in general. It's tough work. Worse yet, we long ago lost the battle for "coolness" to the Standards and S&Ms of the world. About the best thing anybody has to say about our bikes is that they are a good value.

Still with me? Okay, good. Let's pretend it's World Championships time. We pay to fly our top riders to the Worlds. Our Pro rider doesn't make the main - oops! That's yet another main event in which we won't be represented. In fact, it's hard to find a main event which features our bikes. Looks like another wasted weekend, right?

Except... We receive an email stating that one of the World Champions used one of our bikes to win! And better yet, he used the cheapest bike we make of that type, a bike that originally sold for under two hundred dollars! Best of all, there were photos and videos taken that clearly show our bike winning the whole thing! What are we going to do? Should we sponsor this guy? Should we buy ad space? Should we even verify that the email is true?

Well, if "we" were pretending to be Seattle Bike Supply, doing business under their brand name "Redline Bicycles", we would probably do anything but what Redline has done - that is, sit on the information and not breathe a word about it to anyone. Oh, yes - that is what they have done.

As reported earlier on the BMX Basics front page, Raul Ruiz Astorga, my friend and houseguest, won the World Championship Challenger Cruiser class on a Redline 444. For those of you who aren't aware of what a Redline 444 is, it is a tri-moly cruiser weighing a solid thirty pounds and retailing in most shops for around two hundred bucks, maybe less. With the exception of the hard-to-find Huffy Radius 24", it's probably the cheapest "race-ready" cruiser to be sold in the past five or six years.

I purchased two used RL444s from a BMX Basics reader last year, a 1998 and a 1999 model, for the princely sum of $200 - and I really thought, after looking at them in the cold light of day, that I had paid too much. Only my general sense of Redline-related nostalgia permitted me to justify the purchase. "I'll have some backup frames in case I break my PL-24," I told Mrs. Boswell, but truth be told I figured the bikes would spend the rest of their lives in my basement.

When Raul told me that he wanted to race Cruiser in the World Championships, I offered him the free use of either of my 444s, an offer I also made to Andres Barrios. Neither of the bikes had a functioning crankset, so Raul and Andres installed some used cranks, some new grips and brake pads, and they were ready to rock - on bikes that weighed half again what their competition would be riding and didn't have Super Box Stays, Monocoque Construction, Mono-Tubes, True Temper OX Platinum Tubing, or any of that other good stuff. I figured that Raul and Andres would use their Cruiser laps as warm-up laps for their "real" rides in 20" Challenger.

They both made the semis with little difficulty. Andres put a foot wrong in his semi and didn't make the cut to the main, but Raul sailed through, lined up for the main, and blew everyone else away to take the World Championship (for the NBL, anyway).

It took a couple of hours for the significance of Raul's win to sink into my mind. He had won the Worlds on an entry-level bike, a bike built in Taiwan at a raw cost of under a hundred dollars, a bike that most local-track 15 Cruiser riders wouldn't be caught dead on! Not since Shannon Williams won the ABA Grands on a steel Team Murray frame - that his father cut apart, added two inches to the top and down tubes, and welded back together - has there been such a Cinderella story in this sport. This was great news for Raul, and great news for the Bolivian team, and great news for his new sponsor, Kami Racing, but it was also great news for all of us out there in Average BMX Rider-Land. It conclusively demonstrated that my constant mantra here on this website, "Spend money on your riding, not on your bike," was correct. It was news that could put hope into the heart on every kid out there on a cheap bike.

I contacted Redline. I emailed BMX webmasters all over the world. And I sat back and waited for the news to be posted, for Redline to give Raul a new Proline in exchange for the World Champion RL444, for BMX Mania! to mention it... and I waited... and I waited... and heard nothing. This news, for better or for worse, would be blacked out.

I could understand why some of the BMX news outlets would ignore it - who cares what kind of bike somebody's riding? I knew the color mags would pretend it never happened - after all, they depend on ads, and nothing pays for ads better than selling $400 aluminum frames that cost $125 to make. But why would Redline ignore it?

Perhaps they ignored it because it simply didn't fit in with the industry worldview - that Winning Costs Money. To win, you need a $1500 bike with titanium washers and triple box stays. You need a personal trainer, a forty-five-week schedule, full factory support, and a brand-new neon racing outfit. The idea that a rider could come to America, play Nintendo 64 eight hours a day, ride around my house a little bit, and win the Worlds on a $200 bike was so far over their heads they had to pretend it didn't happen. The problem is, it did happen. Raul and Andres proved once again that anyone with the right talent and dedication can win it all. No factory support needed.

I'm not saying we should all go out and buy old Redline 444s. I let Raul and Andres keep the bikes, and I don't know where to find any more. What I'm saying is that BMX is about riders, not bikes. It's about heart, not factory box vans. It's about you, not the GT Bicycles Marketing Department. If you aren't winning, stop blaming the bike, your parents, the track operator, the phases of the moon - look inside and see what you need to do to win. Assuming, that is, that you really want to win. I've been very happy in BMX with nothing but local wins to my credit.

If you do want to win, though, what better way to do it that on a four-year-old, tri-moly, bargain-basement bike? Congratulations to Raul and Andres yet again for proving me right. I think it's the first time

Haro Pro-XL race bike

First and foremost, Singapore BMX would like to take this opportunity to wish one and all a very happy New Year 2012. We hope that this year will bring more to the BMX table here in Singapore and we also hope that more people in our esteemed Singapore Sports Council will stop referring to BMX as a kid's sport. In short, we hope that they understand that BMX is here to stay.

While on the subject of BMX, we have had many emails and letters asking us about what bike can be used for racing. Of course, they want the best bang for buck BMX racing bike. This Haro Pro-XL bike above has everything for the beginner...at a relatively inexpensive price. A description and brief details of the bike are:

Like the smaller sized models below it, our Pro is built using aircraft-grade 6061 aluminum and features a sealed Euro BB and hubs. The biggest difference between the smaller frames and this one are the 3D dropouts with integrated chain tensioners (found on our Pro and up). A 21” top tube and full size 8” bars make this a perfect fit for early-to-mid teens serious about winning a title or two.                      

• + 6061 T-6 Alloy Frame with 3D Drop Outs & Chain Tensioners
• + 100% chromoly fork
• + 175mm 3-Piece Crmo Crank Set with Sealed BB
• + 36 Spoke Alloy Rims with Alloy Hubs And Sealed Bearings
• + Kenda “Kontact” Tires
• + DX Style Alloy 9/16” Pedals

Pretty good componentry for a good price. If you are just getting started in racing, this would be a good bike to start on.