Monday, February 11, 2013

Blue Velvet


Hey, gang. 


This bike has found its way to Greg Ooley,
currently residing in Durango, Colorado.


This bike is one of those single speed-twenty niners
that seem to keep me pretty busy. 


 I guess I'll run through the details for those of us that just joined us.


 These bikes have a chain stay length starting at about 16.5". 
I've built them shorter, but they don't ride as good.
Shorter than that and they start pivoting on the rear wheel rather than carving through corners.
The shorter the stay, the less stable. That's good to a point, but when the rider's 
weight is perched over the rear axle things can get spooky at speed in the rough.


 The swinger dropouts that have been showing up on Black Cats for
the last 7 years have about .75" of adjustment.
Not as much adjustment as some designs but when designing them
my thinking was to keep them as small as possible to save weight
and that the shortest I want the chainstay is 16.5",
and the handling of the bike really starts suffering at 17.25".


The head tube angle changes depending on the person,
 their riding style, their local trails, etc.
A lot of these bikes are made for a 100mm travel fork. 
If so, the head angle runs at 69.5 degrees, give or take, 
based on the variables listed above.
The Thunder Monkey geometry is based on a 120mm fork
 and comes out slacker than that, starting at 67 degrees or so.
  
Turns out that the "new" "progressive" "all-mountain" "aggressive"
29ers so popular this season are about 4 years behind the curve. 


Greg's is built around a 100mm fork, 
and ready for the action found up in the high country.


These bikes aren't made to be hung over your mantle.
They're made for a good thrashin'.


Thanks, Greg.
Go forth and thrash.





Somewhere between Bruce Springsteen,
The Violent Femmes, and Nation of Ulysses;
somewhere between Transcendentalism
and Existentialism lies
Titus Andronicus.

Their "The Monitor" record is the real deal.


9 comments:

subversion said...

You should follow up all these lovely builds with a completed pic fro your customers. Would be great to see them all built xxx

blackcatbicycles said...

subversion,
i do get pics most of the time.

let's put it to a vote.

who wants customer pics?

mr rogers said...

Knocking the out

the more pics the better

GFunk Durango said...

Maybe the condition is that the bike has to be dirty, marred or otherwise war-torn in the photo.

This bike turned out better than I had imagined and I'm looking forward to riding the piss out of it.

hoosierinpa said...

I vote for customer pics of their bikes in the field. Also, thank you for recommending some great music. Awesome stuff!

dRjON said...

I'd like to see built pics too...

blackcatbicycles said...

ok,
all four of you have spoken!
rider pics it is!

to keep a visual continuity (yea, yea. blah, blah, blah. i'm a control freak, get used to it), i'll set up a separate page for pics of black cats in the wild and mention, and link to it, in that frame's post when i do get one.

send in your pics everybody.

Anonymous said...

Sounds great.

subversion said...

Good call dude, look forward to seeing them built ;-)