GARRETT BYRNES
Explain the beginnings of the bike concept.
It started with Ruben riding downhill mountain bikes in Whistler, Canada in 2005 or 2006. He came home, decided to build his own dual-suspension BMX bike. He cut up an old GT Box series race frame, and built a two-piece, front half chromoly, back half aluminum, with a swing arm pivot rear suspension, and front suspension forks. He rode that for a while and sent me photos. He kind of let it die, because his body was able to ride a normal bike. He had a lot going on - at the time he was reinventing BMX.
Yeah, that was during the “Grounded” era.
So this was a side project; he always has some kind of side project going on. He rode motocross a lot at the time too, which I’m sure was an influence. It resurfaced again 2015,16,17 to now, where he was thinking about it again. His buddy Ari and him went to his little shop in Malaga, and they pieced together a dual-suspension BMX bike and started messing around with different terrains. He’d send me photos, and progressively it moved; it was almost chapters of a book getting written. By the end, I was like, “I need to make one of these.” This is exactly the type of thing I needed to do, because riding with my son Noah in the woods with my 20” bike and try to chase him with no suspension. It was so rigid. Now I could try and make my own version of Ruben’s bike to work for my benefit.
How did Fingers Crossed come about?
Throughout this whole process, of Ruben developing his bike as full-suspension, and later me developing this bike more based off a regular BMX frame, we were constantly sending videos back and forth, almost daily. We were feeding off each other. We had to see how these bikes work; we decided to take a trip to Malaga, and then Revolution Bike Park in England. The whole premise behind the Malaga trip was “I hope this works, fingers crossed.” We would always say that. Hopefully we don’t break these forks, hopefully the frame holds together, hopefully the airline doesn’t lose our bikes because we don’t have any other bikes like this. Fingers crossed was our feeling the whole time. We went to Malaga and everything worked how we hoped, and we couldn’t have been happier. We went to England, it rained two out of three days we were there, and we were still able to ride everything we wanted and more, and everything worked once again. To this day we’re still saying fingers crossed, because everything’s worked so far, but we’re waiting to find a catch to what didn’t work. We’ve had three different sets of forks that we’ve been trying, we have a lot of things that we trade in, trade out, but for the most part our fingers crossed is hoping we can move forward with the progression of this project. Now it’s traveling and creating trips based on these bikes to see what the possibilities are, and bring our friends into it.
Tell us about the geometry.
This is a 21 ¼" T-1 SFA. The only add-ons are the dropout slots and tabs for disc brake.
What were some of the experiments to figure out frame geometry?
You could probably just put a suspension fork on, and have an extremely slack head tube angle. You would probably have to figure out a way to be comfortable with the bars higher. I talked to my friend Mike Maloney, and he created an insert for the dropout that would make my frame an inch longer and an inch lower, to make it feel somewhat more like a BMX bike. It also allowed the disc brake to be mounted on the dropout. It was a simple fix that made it feel exactly how I wanted the bike to feel. The bottom bracket looks extremely high, especially with the bash guard. At first I was not even thinking about it. Most of the time you’re riding downhill or you’re riding with pressure on the front fork. So you are already bringing the BB an inch lower. I decided to come up with a new version of the frame with the BB an inch and a ½ lower. It feels natural the way it rides.
Why is that?
More room, so you are more comfortable, and stability in the back. Once you get over like 25 mph going downhill going over rock, the more back-end you have the more stable it is. I’ve gone about 40-45 mph straight downhill on this bike with rock and loose gravel, and I haven’t felt sketchy on it at that speed.
Why disc brakes?
They are a no-brainer, because as soon as there is any wetness with 990s, you more or less lose your brakes. In the woods you are always dealing with mud or something, and you have greater speed and need braking power. Also with any mountain bike park, you need front and rear disc brakes, so you can go to any park in the U.S.with this. Plus with the progression of slope style bikes, it’s going closer towards BMX trails. Now you can take a BMX bike and ride similar stuff where you couldn’t have before.
What terrain does this bike work on for you?
This bike opens up a whole new arm of riding. You have vert, dirt, street, all these different categories. This bike is a new one, where you can ride in the woods, and places I would have never ridden my BMX bike, and places I would have never been allowed to ride on my BMX bike. You probably could ride some trails with it, but I like my original BMX bike for trails; you’re not going to ride vert or street with this.
It’s a vehicle for new terrain.
It will never replace my normal BMX bike; it’s merely a different type of BMX bike.
