Ftw ftw!

[72gmc]

When I saw that Neko Mulally will be riding his own bike design on the World Cup, my first thought was “I wonder if Frank the Welder will be involved” and then I opened the story and, sure enough, it’s Frank for the win!

https://m.pinkbike.com/news/neko-mul...s-in-2022.html

I’ve never had the pleasure of riding a frame from Frank’s hands but I sure do have a lot of respect for him in an indirect fashion. He seems to be a reference point for many.

Feel free to extend this thread with your stories about Frank and his bikes.

[EB]

Really cool.

Given the minuscule margins World Cup DH races are won on, it’s surprising more teams (besides the Athertons) don’t try this. They already do a lot for marginal gains - servicing suspension components between runs, swapping tire compounds, etc etc. The tiny adjustments in kinematics and handling that a custom frame allows might have a real advantage.

[dan_hudson]

Ditto. Will be interesting to see if Neko ends up getting a couple bikes ready for the season and alternating based on the needs for the wknd (relative steepness, roughness of track, importance of pedaling, etc).

Interesting he is coming off of Intense to do this. Intense formerly had some of the more respected in-house fabrication in the gravity-focused MTB world. While I understand the move to outsourced carbon due to the marketplace, always wondered why they didn't keep a small part of that in-house aluminum fab experience going to offer a "works" shop of custom rider/track-tuned frame offerings. Now one of their former riders seems to be doing just that!

Anyone aware of how long UCI's prototype grace period goes? Pretty sure a rider eventually has to be on commercially available gear, right? A-la the Athertons now offering their bikes to the public.

[redir]

It's kind of old school in a way. That's still a good thing about metal bikes. If you have a design idea you can build it as a one off concept design without having to build up all the forms and molds for carbon. Unless that's different now too IDK.

[EB]

Originally Posted by dan_hudson

Anyone aware of how long UCI's prototype grace period goes? Pretty sure a rider eventually has to be on commercially available gear, right? A-la the Athertons now offering their bikes to the public.

The grace period is one year - you have to retire the prototype after that if it’s not commercially available.

Since FTW has existing “lines” of mountain bikes I’m sure they can find a way to “offer” the bikes commercially if they need to.

[FriarQuade]

Vital has a video interview of the project

I was pretty stoked when I heard about this project. Neko is a cornerstone of DH racing in the US and I hope this grows into something way more than a privateer season or 5.

[proxient]

Originally Posted by dan_hudson

Intense formerly had some of the more respected in-house fabrication in the gravity-focused MTB world. While I understand the move to outsourced carbon due to the marketplace, always wondered why they didn't keep a small part of that in-house aluminum fab experience going to offer a "works" shop of custom rider/track-tuned frame offerings.

their DH team has been riding alu prototypes for as long as Aaron Gwin has been riding for them (two years?) / Jeff Steber still makes those frames in house.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CW6aSi6IgJc/

https://www.instagram.com/p/CKrTzt9BtAa/

[dan_hudson]

Absolutely. But current Intense aluminum/prototypes are not consumer-focused like being done by Atherton. Speculating any eventual FTW/Neko product will be more Atherton than Intense's prototype leading to outsourced fixed size carbon.

Originally Posted by proxient

their DH team has been riding alu prototypes for as long as Aaron Gwin has been riding for them (two years?) / Jeff Steber still makes those frames in house.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CW6aSi6IgJc/

https://www.instagram.com/p/CKrTzt9BtAa/