Cycle Show 2010: Dare2B, Transition Bikes, O’Neal, Green Oil, Dare2Be

One of the few, truly new products at the Cycle Show was this new wax based lubricant from Green Oil. As you might expect from a company that likes to keep things simple, it’s called White and it’s an eco friendly dry lube that uses natural beeswax along with plant solvents to provide a thinner, drier and less grit-attractive way to keep your chain happy. Managing director Simon says it’s especially good for the bees,who get given extra food to make them overproduce the wax. The tiny earbuds they use to collect the wax from the bees are also made from natural plant fibres.

Transition had some lovely looking bikes at the show. This is the Transition Trans-Am. Yes, it’s not new but 4130 cromoly framed, 140mm forked hardtails will never go out of fashion, mostly because they’re excellent fun. There’s lots of neat detailing and the ability to run it geared or singlespeed is a bonus.

Extremely neat cable guides…

Internal 1.125″ headset maintains the clean and tidy theme..

This is the Transition Double, designed to be used for short travel slopestyle, dirt jumping and dual slalom racing, which is a longwinded way of saying it’s a bike made for thrashing about until you crash. There’s a tapered headtube up front, with internally butted 6061 aluminium tubes making up the rest of the frame. It uses the single-pivot-with-linkage suspension design we liked so much on the Bottle Rocket but with 100 or 80mm of travel depending on which way you put in the cunning ‘flip chips’…

Burly…

The machined ‘flip chip’ inserts can be seen on the swing link below…

Transition beer. Makes your life go downhill fast.

Here’s another Transition bike we can see us hurting ourselves badly on, the 4X racing and dirt jump Bank. A low slung 6061 frame, tapered headtube and the beautifully acronymic Concentric Rear Axle Positioning system lets you run a neat looking geared or singlespeed setup as well as a 10mm through axle for extra stiffness.

The Covert is Transition’s take on a do-it-all bike, or a ‘quiver killer’ in their words. The design layout is a little different to the other Transition bouncers but the principle remains the same, keeping a single pivot with one piece machined swing link driving the shock. Travel is 160mm and the geometry is nicely low and slack. We bet it’s great fun…

Not very covert in a bright orange finish though…

Here’s Sean from Surf Sales modelling the Trick X Body Guard ‘Skin Top’. Well, he’s trying not to be caught modelling it. Jon wasn’t so lucky. There’s something quite 1970s rocker about it…

To maintain some balance, here’s Iris from O’Neal showing us their new Sinner kneepads. It uses SaS-Tec SC1 foam which does the same magic trick of turning hard under impact but O’Neal chose this over the competitors due to the way the fact it actually absorbs an impact over a longer period, meaning lower energy is transmitted through the pad during an impact, giving bones time to bend rather than snapping.

As well as the Sinner, O’Neal offer back protectors using the Sas-Tech material that are certified to the highest levels of protection, while remaining lightweight and having the ability to mould to your body with your own heat. Cunning.

Dare2B had some nice clothing at the show and we’ve currently got some of their women’s kit on test, so look out for it in the magazine. They offer nicely made and stylish kit at very reasonable prices too.