Thursday, 25 March 2010 02:36

 OK that’s probably got you wondering… Well what it is I caught up with Dialled boss man Mike Wong at the south regional round 3 in sunny Gosport.
Like I say the sun was shining and a beautiful light seemed to ping of Mike’s bike, on closer inspection the finish was a zinc plate number. So what’s this all about I had to ask?

Oh yeah, the finish is zinc plate.  I wanted black chrome (ala Mongoose Pro Class and Harry Leary Turbo) but the finisher didn’t do that.  So I went for zinc plate instead as I don’t like cleaning my bikes and zinc plate is rust proof!
Ok I’m loving that Mike, but apart from the finish this bike still doesn’t look stock to me? Yer my new bike is a prototype Reynolds 853 cro-moly cruiser.  It’s not really a pre-production prototype, just something I wanted to try out myself.

 So go on Mike please tell, what’s in the mix?
 I like really thin wall tubing (0.9mm at the ends and 0.6mm in the middle) and a slacker than normal head angle.  BMX companies these days seem to be competing with each other to see who can make frames with the steepest head angles and twitchiest steering.

 But with tracks getting faster, jumps getting steeper and berms getting slicker, I actually think they are taking geometry in the wrong direction. 

 Therefore, on my frame, I’ve made the head angle 1 degree slacker than the production cruisers (71 degrees instead of 72), which actually makes it feel more stable over jumps and in turns.  I may even go another degree slacker for the next iteration.

 Waaaaa! This all sounds pretty good stuff and like you say going against the grain, will we see more of this?  I don’t really have any plans to release frames with slacker geometry as BMX’ers tend to be quite set in their ways and less willing to try new things, so at the moment, this frame is really just an exercise for me to test out a few of my own frame design theories.

 See that what I like about Mike at Dialled theres no slacking off he has fun while working… jammy git!

 Cheeeeeeeeeers!!!