Posts tagged “davidson”  

They say that the proper number of bikes is always one more than you already have, and that's especially true when you have a done deal on a custom ti frame. Ah, but what form should that frame take? I don't need a custom road bike since I am quite happy with Bianchi's stock 49cm geometry. My Sycip travel bike is so spot on for so many purposes that the potential weight savings of a titanium construction don't quite justify replacing it.

One genre of bike about which I've been fascinated has been bikes with small-wheels or, as the Japanese have dubbed them, mini-velo bikes. Whenever I brought these up in conversation with Bill Davidson, he mentioned a now forgotten style of racing called Formula 1 BMX. Little information is available now, but it seems as that as BMX racing was waning in the late 1980s organizers tried to diversify by having street BMX races. Instead of berms and doubles, the races were held in parking lots with tons of cones marking the course. The bikes resembled mountainbikes with 20" wheels and a rear derailleur only. Ultimately the race series folded, as mountainbikes would dominate growth in cyclesport and the product market for the next few years.

When thinking about what to do with my next bike project, I remember how much fun a BMX can be. My one complaint is that the single-speed set-up with low gearing really hampered getting around town in a timely fashion. Then it struck me that a BMX with a rear derailleur would give the bike some wings.

It was a good day. Out for a ride in the bright sunshine I spotted a family riding together

with a trailer attached to an Electra and an Xtracycle with kid.

Then a PBR Kit

on a fellow cyclist training on the roads near Lake City.

Later, a S&S Belt Drive

at Elliott Bay Bicycles.

Also saw a stoked Xtracycle with a new battery pack. A chain bowl and the dirtiest Timbuk2 bag evar.

Days Like These

It was a good day and it's the days like these that Seattleites wait for during the long, wet, dark rainy season. I didn't even let the argument with a Lotus driver phase me. That was more comical than anything.

The sun is expected for the rest of the weekend and we're heading South out of the city and into the industrial Seattle. Towards Kent and Auburn where all the warehouses are, Ikea, and a big golf course.

Listening to

Shake em up, shake em up, shake em up, shake em

-- Ice Cube, It was a Good Day.

Davidson’s Will Meyers brazed lugged steel.Will has been working at Davidson for years. Here he’s brazing a head tube lug. The coolest part is how the metal glows red. You can’t see it well because of the resolution of youtube, but the last thing he does in the video is dab a little more brass wire on the joint.

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Media

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Max does the final welding at Davidson Bicycles. I talked him into welding some eyelets onto my ti road bike, thereby allowing me to run a rear rack and fender on my rain bike. The video clip might imply that the process was faster than it was in reality, and setting up is tedious. But since it was titanium, the clean up

Download now for iTunes, your iPod, iPhone, and subscribe to the Huggacast Feed for more episodes.

Media

• Watch now on YouTube
• More videos
• Huggacasts are also available in the iTunes podcast directory.

In the distance, the Space Needle pokes up through a fog blanketing the city.

Pam’s got a new rain bike and it’s pink … really pink.

The pink bike — aka “Mary Kay”— was made by Davidson Handbuilt Bicycles and painted with matching fenders.

That’s an 84 Signature and a 2008 Hotspur.

Uploaded by Hugger Industries | more from the Bike Hugger Photostream.

We’ve posted previously on the Hotspur — a handbuilt, oversized, Titanium-tube frame with a carbon seatstay — and I raced it this weekend on a rolling course in Ravensdale Washington. The bike performed as expected with a solid ride that was very similar to the Modal, but weighing less, and riding like a straight-up racing bike. Bill Davidson and Mark’s design achieved a lighter, stiffer Ti bike with that distinctive “springy-road” feel that Ti aficionados love. The bike climbed, accelerated, and descended, like I’d expect and excelled at rolling.

Most remarkable about racing the Hotspur was it reminded me of my old 853 frame — a ride that set a benchmark for my future reviews. I could subtly feel the road and the frame reacting to it. By all accounts (including our own) the new Madones, Tarmacs, et al, are all excellent racing bikes, and the intent of the Hotspur was to demonstrate that Ti can compete with carbon.

For the Hotspur frame, Bill Davidson decided that to use the Feather Tech oversize titanium tubing. The key feature is the custom milling that Feather Tech employs to create external butting on very large diameter (for titanium) tubing.

Though Davidson Bicycles’ new Hotspur frame precipitated from Bill Davidson’s ideas on what a high performance bicycle should be, Bike Hugger provided the impetus to bring the idea to reality. Bike Hugger had previously worked with Bill on the Modal concept bike, based on some of my ideas about travel bikes. Setting aside the Modal’s unique features, Bill used Byron’s off-the-shelf race bike as starting point for the Modal’s geometry and then tweaked the geometry to improve the fit. Then a funny thing happened when Byron actually got to ride the bike. The Modal turned out to fit and perform better than Byron’s regular race bike.

Which begged the question: what would happen if Bill built Byron a bike designed for performance? This gave Bill the perfect opportunity to pull out some tricks that he’d been waiting to use … some subtle refinements on the titanium materials.

Today in Portland, Davidson Handbuilt Bicycles debuts the Hotspur frameset. In an age of single-season-use carbon frames built built for some Pro Tour rider and amongst the surge in intricately crafted, lugged steel, Bill Davidson makes his own statement: a bike is a rider’s tool that should acknowledge age-old lessons while not ignoring new technology.

Tracking for its debut at the North American Handmade Bicycle Show, February 8th in Portland, the Hotspur frame is welded.

The Hotspur is another Bike Hugger project bike.

Details posted on 2/08/08.

From the Bike Hugger Photostream.

Quick, camera phone photos of the Bike Hugger Racing Bike project in progress … tacked up and ready to weld.

The concept frame and bike will debut at the North American Handmade Bicycle Show, February 8th in Portland. Details about its interesting and innovative design and fabrication to follow.

Updated

More photos added with full details on 2/08/08.

This video shows the Modal Travel Bike Concept being built at Davidson Bicycles. The Modal has Paragon dropouts and S and S couplings. The bike folds and toggles between singled, fixed, or geared modes.

See more of the Modal on Flickr and our discussions.

Jerry Baker has been riding in the Northwest since the roads were dirt, back when shorts were wool, chamois were leather, and you switched gears by removing the wheel and flipping it around. Here’s Jerry with a new Davidson

Built for a tour of Denali National park, this Adventure Travel Bike features S&S couplings, the biggest knobbies ever made, lots of room for fenders, campy shifters, and an XT drivetrain. Bonus is the retro paint. More photos in the Hugga photostream

Resurrected from the dregs of someone’s basement, is this early 90s Davidson Impulse — that’s just one of the frame models that gave Bill his frame-building cred and he’s been at it for 38 years. Bike trivia: “Davidson Impulse” can be re-arranged to “Damn Livid Spouse!” and Impulses are still trading today amongst collectors, on eBay, and that’s damn lucky to find one in a basement.

Check this Bicycling magazine review of Custom Bicycles for Specific Needs, written by Gary Fisher, in March 1978.

Sadiq Gill built the frame up with older Mavic SSC stuff, Phil Tubular wheels, and wrote that she “rides fantastic” … tripping the bike fantastic.

Wanna get a bike shop mechanic to do a spit take, say, “hey the new Trek Madone has got precision fit socket technology!” Some may just spit their coffee right out their nose, laugh uproariously, shake their head, or remind you of that year the Madones used Klein’s bottom cup design on their forks and how that didn’t work.

Win the best custom bike ever ever at the Handmade Bicycle Show being staged in San Jose, USA, in March. Nine legendary bike builders are collaborating on the one-of-kind bike and raffling it off. Given that’s 9 builders instead of one, I have to wonder if it’ll turn into a Monster Garage like mistake or work of combined genius?

My all-time fav custom bike is a Davidson. What’s yours?

Thanks to BikeBiz for the story.

Bettie, our sport-utility bike, is being built up and I took some photos today at Elliott Bay Bicycles. Eamon is putting lots of extra touches and making sure Bettie is built to last and safe. Bill Davidson has been observing the progress as well.

In the gallery, note the tires, brakes, and the fabulous Xtracycle Snapdeck custom pad made by Pam.

Tomorrow, Pam will ride it home and blog all about that as well. It’s damn cool and lots of questions are being asked by the guys in the shop and everyone else that sees it. I’ll post the Q/A. For Stokemonkey questions see Todd’s excellent site, FAQs, and blog. For the Xtracycle, see their site and user forums.

Put simply, the Bettie is a sport-utility bike that replaces a car and is built with a Karate Monkey 29-incher frame, Stokemonkey, and Xtracycle,