Santa Cruz Easy Rider
Price: Less
From: The depths of the Santa Cruz Bicycles Engineering Department.
www.santacruzbikes.com
This bike ticks all the boxes to qualify for a place in Singletrack’s “Bike Pron” feature: Would it draw a crowd if it were leant up against the food tent at Mountain Mayhem? Is it a bike that we’d all like to ride, even if we wouldn’t want to own it? Is there a good story behind it? So that’s a resounding ‘yes’ to all of those. Now just cast your eyes over the machine. To downhill race purists, it might appear sacrilege, especially given that it’s an ex-Mark Weir race bike, but it was due for retirement anyway, so what better fate than to become the Santa Cruz Bikes’ beach and beer cruiser? We asked Joe Graney from the engineering department at Santa Cruz Bikes to explain the thoughts behind the project and some of the performance criteria that they had to incorporate…
“The biggest problem with the V10 chassis we started with is that it had all this suspension travel. I mean, that’s great for ‘downhill racing’ or whatever, but it doesn’t really work all that well for rolling with beer in hand. Too ‘useful’.
So we started out by decreasing the rear wheel travel by 9.5in to 0.5in by installing a custom tuned Fox DHX Air shock – and then letting all the air out of it. The bottom-out bumper adds just enough comfort for rides that can last up to five minutes without stopping to pose.
With a lowered back end the cranks got awfully close to the ground, causing cornering stability concerns. The fabrication and installation of a tall fork with ‘just enough’ flex along with a 24in front wheel really started getting the handling dialed in and gave a muscle car aesthetic. Front wheel chopper-fl op can be an issue on a machine like this, but it was taken care of in style with the addition of a freestyle BMX handlebar which gave extra leverage and reach for kickin’ back while lookin’ pimp. You can’t really ‘cruise’ unless you’ve got ape hangers.
Even with the performance achievements detailed here, however, comfort wasn’t ignored. The bike had the luxury addition of ergonomic grips. When you’ve only got one hand on the bar, it’s that much more important that it doesn’t fatigue. And since you’re using one hand, how many brakes do you need?
Besides loving just standing next to this hulk and basking in its glow, it’s always the center of the party with its ‘F*** Off’ bottle opener – the perfect mix of alcoholism and bad attitude that panties moisten and drop for. The custom CNC billet machined belt buckle fork mount was the crowning touch to a machine that was built with neither compromise nor equal.”
And so there we have it. But what’s it like to ride? We were lucky enough to spy the behemoth leant up against a wall in the Santa Cruz workshop/warehouse and took it out for a spin.
To say that it’s fit for its intended purpose would be an understatement. This is a bike that you absolutely cannot ride unless you are completely relaxed. There’s no question of standing up, or of getting anywhere in a hurry, so why rush? The more you sink into the comfy saddle, lean back and slow down your reactions, the easier it becomes to ride. The extreme fork rake and ape hangers mean that the steering happily fl ops from one lock to the other if you’re not careful. So it’s all about carving lazy turns and just being able to spin it round with a typical American muscle car turning circle.
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Hasn’t this been in the magazine already? Fresh content please
Some people dont buy the magazine, cos they live abroad or for other reasons. Less rubbish comments please.
i’m with thrunton.
it’s not only been in the mag, it was in *ages* ago so it’s not really news is it? Fresh content please.
Is the SRAM XX 2010 story on the front page not fresh enough for you? As Scotia says, some people don’t buy every issue of the magazine and we figure the some people would like to see some of our older articles.
chipps, SRAM XX story is super fresh and origional most of your content is.
I suppose my point is that I’ve stopped buying some other magazines because I know that most of the content will appear on the website less than a month after publication. Is that the way you want to go?
Perhaps put an indication on the article title that it’s been in the mag, that way people can’t complain? Well, they can, but there’s less cause to as they can just look at the “new” stories.
I’m full of good ideas, me.
It’s good, but it needs some styling attention.
I suggest a pair of Hookworms and some chrome treatment on all those unmatching bits as a starting point. A coaster brake hub would be nice too if it would fit to lose that brake lever.
Personally I’d also go for some of those wide and low swept-back bars you see on beach cruisers and the like, and maybe build some leading link forks with a couple of RP23s doing the springing.
And then finish it off with a glitter paintjob on the frame, a great big chrome headlight clamped to the headtube and a pair of high mounted chrome mirrors, angled not towards the rear-view but directly and vain-to-the-power-of-shamelessly at the rider’s own face.
Awesome.
Its new to me! Thanks for posting it up.
I didn’t read the issue that the Easy rider was featured in.
I’ve now enjoyed it and hopefully other people have/will.
Therefore, it’s very worthwhile.
And anyway, isn’t “Bike Porn” not “Bike Pron”?
We put a lot of time and effort into the reviews that go in the mag. They last 6 weeks and then get lost and forgotten. We’ve decided to start publishing them again after a reasonable length of time on the website to build up an archive of reviews that will extend the life of the work we do and build up a good library of information for all our readers. There are an awful lot more web readers than mag readers.
no complaints here – add more interviews too.
@jackthedog – any actual styling might indicate they gave a damn. I’m feelin the ‘drunk in a workshop full of parts’ vibe.
Marks’ right; I have issues going back to No1 and when the hell do I read them? There’s a thing… what about an online index? Maybe then people would buy more back issues and PDFs – Beer money!
You mean like a ‘Mag Archive’?
Something like the one that we’ve had for years and is linked at the bottom of every page on the site? 🙂
I live overseas and have seen this before and skipped straight past it the first time as a bit of a waste of time. Now wasting more time writing about it!!