Road Bike Trials Video

Well, a couple days ago the internet caught us off guard and we scrambled to post our Road Bike Trials video that we’d been working on for a bit now. The short story is that we were forced to publish a copy of our video that wasn’t the final version our editor was working on but a copy put together by the shop. So I present to you our professional MadCow as an amateur video editor, enjoy.



Now that this video has been around for a couple days it’s probably time to answer some questions and give a bit of perspective. Let’s start with “why?” To me the most important reason is that we build bikes, more importantly we build them because they’re fun and this seemed like a lot of fun.  It’s not that we think that road bikes should be used as trials bikes or that we should all be racing 240k stages with 15,000 ft of vertical on BMX bikes.  It’s just that we thought it would be fun to see if we could get close to the limits of stock road bikes. The second is that we build bikes… wait, it’s different this time.  Some of our builds are criticized as not being durable, or some of the parts we recommend might receive the same criticism.  So we wanted to take two bikes that we’ve personally built up to ride ourselves using the parts we ride everyday and test them.

The next logical question is, “did you break anything?” And the simple answer is, no.  We got a flat and one of the bikes got a bit of clear coat taken our when it was crashed (end of the video).  Also, apparently ten speed chain rings undergo a slight bit more wear and tear while balancing on concrete ledges and some burs needed to be filed off before shifting was crisp again.

Finally, “did you modify the bikes at all for the video?” The only change we made was swapping out our regular tires out for 28c commuting tires. The builds were other than that stock.  The ENVE clinchers used on Jason’s bike are built up with Tune Hubs and Sapim spokes, while the Dura Ace wheels are identical to how Shimano ships the set. Here’s a full spec list on both bikes.

Jason’s (Black)

Richard’s (Blue)

  • Frame: Neil Pryde Alize (Contact us for more Information)
  • Wheelset: Dura Ace C50
    • Tires: Conti top contact 28c
  • Handlebar: Pro PLT
    • Handlebar Tape:Lizard Skins DSP
  • Stem: Pro PLT
  • Tubes: Vittoria latex
  • Groupo: Dura Ace 7900 (shifters, derailleurs, cranks, brakes, 11-28 cassette, chain)

The Internet Strikes Back, Again…

The launch of this video was a hectic one and I’d like to tell it to those of you who think it’s worth hearing.  In a funny turn of events alluded to up above we had this video leaked early (for us?).  We were about three weeks away from launching our new website, and part of this we wanted this video featured prominently, showing of our new look and a bit of fun we had before serious work began on switching the servers over.    The video editor was working on our cuts looking through 25 hours of footage.  I was working diligently on the web site and Jason was putting together more custom bike builds. All was going well until we got an email originating from Scott Purchas, Neil Pryde’s UK man, about our video on YouTube. Apparently a clip (the one posted above) that we’d put together at the shop had apparently been emailed around and had found its way onto YoutTube via a Singapore hip hop fan. Try as we might we couldn’t get the video to go away.  First a german MTB forum, then a Polish one, then the source file on Facebook and finally a write up on road.cc. Eight hours into this and Bike Rumor is calling along with a slew of other “I thought this wasn’t released yet” calls. Meanwhile the Singapore video is getting close to 20k views.

What we ended up doing was adding a few credits to those companies that helped put this together (Shimano, ENVE, Neil Pryde, and Tune), the music we’d used (Nomeansno, wrongrecords.ca) and released our shop copy.  It’s easily missing a third of the video footage that still had to be looked over and it’s obviously really early.  But, in the end we’re all happy with it and looking forward to the second version.  Or maybe some small releases of the “missing footage.”

Fairwheel Bikes Blog