danny macaskill carbon trials bike

Check Out Danny MaCaskill’s Santa Cruz Carbon Trials Bike

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Santa Cruz and Danny MaCaskill have teamed up on another project one which should see the trials superstar riding a carbon Santa Cruz trials frame in the future.

We’ve all seen that video where a pair of Santa Cruz Reserve carbon wheels are ridden to the point of failure.

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It’s a wonder that the lightweight carbon rims didn’t fail earlier, and this is what inspired Danny to ask the R&D people at Santa Cruz to build him a complete carbon frame and custom 24in wheelset.

danny macaskill carbon trials bike
1 of the 11 prototypes made

“Danny wanted us to make him a carbon trials bike” explains Nic McCrae, composites engineer at Santa Cruz. “I had no idea what kind of journey that was going to be, but it sounded like there’d be a whole lot of new stuff to learn working on a project like this so I just said yes, and used it as an opportunity to take our in-house R&D facility to the next level.”

danny macaskill carbon trials bike
New manufacturing techniques could be used on future frames

Not content with just building a frame, the guys at Santa Cruz also decided the project would be the perfect opportunity to develop a new manufacturing process with reusable latex bladders and braided carbon materials that are normally reserved for aerospace applications.

Almost every carbon fiber product is made with a wide variety of fiber materials, varying in grades and attributes. Our production bikes are strong as hell, and we feel we have a good handle on our toolbox of materials, but the goal with Danny’s bike was to push that understanding forward, and take advantage of emerging materials technology.

In total 11 prototypes were built and tested by Danny. One of the earlier models broken in only a short time, but this testing meant that the final version, shown in orange, has heavier duty chainstays that can handle Danny’s constant big hit abuse.

danny macaskill carbon trials bike
Not available anywhere…. yet

The final version of the bike rolls is set to star in an upcoming video and will be on show at The Sea Otter Classic later this year, but if you wan’t one for yourself you might not be in luck as there are no plans to put the bike in to production, yet.

danny macaskill carbon trials bike
WTF is going on here?

If you want to learn more about this project and what exactly is going on in the above picture, head on over to the Santa Cruz website where they have all the tech details.

Andi is a gadget guru and mountain biker who has lived and ridden bikes in China and Spain before settling down in the Peak District to become Singletrack's social media expert. He is definitely more big travel fun than XC sufferer but his bike collection does include some rare hardtails - He's a collector and curator as well as a rider. Theory and practice in perfect balance with his inner chi, or something. As well as living life based on what he last read in a fortune cookie Andi likes nothing better than riding big travel bikes.

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