Cranky's Bike Shop Bicycle racks - DONE

Well,

This weekend was action packed.......

I finished up the racks with my helper at like midnight on Saturday and with some kind of urge of excitement and energy to see them on the wall and make sure Jim could get his shop ready for the grand opening.

I decided to leave LA and drive up to Santa Barbra at midnight Saturday with Brie and drop off the racks and then drive back to LA that night, then take a shower and head for San Diego for a meeting Sunday morning with Cane Creek at the Hand built bicycle show.

So with a full truck load of racks, 50 total.  We got to Jim's shop and started to set up. Jim had put up all the brackets on the wall during last week so everything was ready to go once we got there. If you look back a few post you will see the basic design  of the racks.

All the racks can be linked like blinds over windows so they can all move together with one lever 

and change angles, or they can be changed in angles one by one.

Sunday morning came quick and I was really tired from the 250 miles I drove sleepless to Santa Barbra.

With my super high quality Iphone camera I snapped some quick shots at the show, but I think you should check out 

Jeff Thrasher's Blog about the show and read more info about the show.

I also met up with Cane Creek for a while and talked to Peter about all the new things and some secret projects coming out of my shop. Its really rad to see Cane Creek at a show like that because they don't make any money going there, but it really shows the support for the frame builders and lets them know that Cane Creek supports everyone with the same attention to details - doesn't matter if you are the first time builder buying one headset or if your Trek buying millions of headsets.

 I didn't see any other big players in the bicycle industry there.

Erik of Peacock Groove wasn't there but had a few bikes on display.

This was a little road bike that he built for a customer - THIS THING IS MINI 

Jeff Thrasher and his crew invited me to go to the bar and watch the Paris road race on TV.

While I was at the bar I noticed they had some beer cans on the wall from my home town

Schell's Beer - New Ulm, MN 

It made my day :)

Monkey Likes Shiny - Makes Wired Magazine !!

Check it

Wired Magazine - U-lock tool

Trust me, it caught everyone off guard....


SO COOL !!!

prototype bike racks

I was asked a while back from a friend Jim to design and build bike racks for a new bike shop opening in Santa Barbra,CA called " Cranky's Bike Shop", we knew the time line was going to be short and that it needed to be dead nuts on, the first time.

 I designed about 30 different styles of racks and wasn't really feeling any of them, so the night before we were going to meet up with Jim and lock down all the designs, I threw it all out and started designing a kinda fresh design based off window blinds and the way they moved; how they could all be connected to all sync together or could be moved one by one based on the users choices.

A modular cantilever style rack that offers the bike shop to change the layout of the bikes and make it so easy that it could change the racks even with the changes of the sun. Loosen the two bolts and pull out the rack once you sell a bike, so that your bike shop never looks empty.

The next deal was to get the go ahead and start building all 50 them.

The bike shop "Cranky's " will use the full adjustable racking system.

The wheel trays are a reclaimed roof from a building downtown LA 

almost 200 of these brackets are on the wall 

That will offer millions of different combos of shop layouts

Stacks of them, these are just the bike holders 

I didn't take any pictures of the frame, clothing and wheel holders

U-lock tool released

well, here it is....

If you haven't seen it already on all the cool blogs around town, we let Kyle at Tracko take a peek at the U-lock tool but didn't expect the response we got today.

Here is some cool little things about it.

- Designed for the surly rider and their deep drop outs
- coming in at 20 grams lighter then a 15 mm Craftsman wrench
- 100% USA made by a very recognized machine shop
- Chrome tools are chromed by one of the most most recognized names in chroming ( Harley is their other customer)
- Broached Hex for the perfect socket fit on the axle nuts
- The production pieces will be die stamped ( like a coin ) with a everlasting imprint of the "15mm".
- Patent Pending
-  OnGuard Bulldog locks replaces one yellow cap
- Fits Evo and Gray Kryptonite locks

The first run will be shipping out end of next week so expect this one on your evo or bulldog lock soon.
They are getting the 15mm stamp put in them tomorrow, then off to polish and chrome in downtown Los Angeles!

We are always designing new things and working on new projects as you can see by the blog, which in turn keeps us super super busy, so we left this tool to be distributed by Tom Hall Ent. making it really easy to purchase at just about any bike shop across the globe.

The goal is a tool with a rider in mind, Dan, Brie and I have been testing this tool for over a year and we feel like we have covered all the bases and its time to make it available to other riders.

Not to bad at 100 grams

20 lighter then a Craftsman wrench

Plus you don't have to carry it