Friday, September 30, 2011

Sand Blast

Jello.


This 'cross bike was bought by Josh Yablon for his
favorite special lady friend, Devon Yates.
Nice guy.


The paint is obviously inspired by the illustrious
Gulf/ Porsche four wheeler racing team.


The frame design is relatively straight forward.
No big surprises here.
Built for 38's with room to spare.




Stem to match.
Modern stems are fatter than
most steel road or 'cross bike down tubes.
Unnecessary and aesthetic killing.






Thanks Josh and Devon.



Seeing as both Josh and Devon
are punkers from Minneapolis,
maybe we should play some
appropriate music from there.
Prince? No.
How about some Dear Landlord?
Yes, let's do some of that.

Friday, September 9, 2011

Belt Drive Factory Racer

Howdy, y'all.
This is a bike for Black Cat Industries' own
hot shot racer, Greg Martin.


I swore I wouldn't do another one but, here it is:
a belt drive, short chainstay 29er.


Curves in all the right places.


This bike is made for a 100mm travel fork with a tapered steerer.
It's been a pretty popular option lately.




Greg was pretty insistent on the olive green
and robin's egg blue color scheme.
Happy to oblige.






A pic of the split-able belt drive dropout on the frame
and one of the first prototypes I made a couple years ago.
You can see the top is a socket that attaches to the seatstay
and nests the rest of the dropout, with a bolt that runs through both.


This is the magic part that allows for the short chainstays.
It's a spider that I made for the Sram cranks that offsets the
belt ring about a half inch from where it would sit
otherwise, giving room for the chainstay.
Between the custom spider and the new-ish
Center Track belt system from Gates,
things worked out without a compromise in sight.


I have several more of these that I made only for
belt drive Black Cats in the future. Get 'em while they're hot.


Say what you will,
Rumors was/is a good record.