Wednesday, August 06, 2008

Only the French ...


would make a bottle opener/corkscrew such as this. We Americans are way to prudish to even consider something as artistic as this. I found this in a Web Album for a French 29er Race/Gathering called French 29"ers meeting at the 24h of Bonnac la côte. Of course what drew me to this was a Qball that is in France that I will be posting next week. This work of art sits atop a French made Ti 29er made by SkydeComponents (from what I can tell - mon Francais c'est tres terrible).

It appears this bike is called the Skyde Veintinueve Tomillo from reading the order sheet(?), formulaire de commande cadres.

If French is your second language then here is a nice YouTube clip/sales pitch from the company glorifying their 29er.



Not much out there on this bike. I found some pictures someone put up on MTBR in the Ti SS archive and it's a very interesting frame design:

Eccentric bottom bracket. I wonder what the rear tire clearance is? Looks similar to this Sinister in a few ways.



Not sure who did what first and it could be that these ideas were just borrowed from some other bike anyway.

Check out the shaved seat tube in order to accommodate the rear wheel, which means that the designers are trying to shorten the wheel base in order to improve performance in handling.

Other 29er manufacturers have done this as well, namely Surly with the Karate Monkey or Ted Wojcik's preproduction Monkey Butt only in Ted's case he brought sloped the seatpost instead of bending or shaving it. Here is a shot of the Sinister. By the way, only 6 of these Sinisters were made, and this guy has two of them! Here is his bike built up.

1 comment:

-p said...

Electrical tape and a cherub with a corkscrew wiener. Magnificent.