That wasn’t from normal riding though. If you put a bc on the ground and jump on to it from a high place then it will probably bend.
You have bent some of your plates too doing stupid things.
I haven’t heard of Bedfords ever getting bent from normal riding situations.
Do the lowerd plates come in a short version?
you could probably alter them to make them short
Yes but darren wouldnt like that.
I just saw a pic of the bedford lowriders. They look cool if you get a 24" like Evan Byrne said. So maybe bedford is the way to go.
Darren,
I would dispute this statement: The basic design for drop plates for impossible wheels is many years old, I remember seeing them in the 1980s. Although I will say that Darren has been very much at the forefront of their development in the last few years taking them from the crude plates to the sophisticated plates that he is sell now. I would expect the development to continue on from where it is now. Shoe protectors? hooked clips for shoes? “D-spindles”? clipless? external bearings (like unicycles)? All to come!
The new Nimbus Plates are also quite different to the plates that Darren is producing. It has a double formed vertical plate double welded at the bottom that offers considerable strength over the older single bent designs. This design is made from 6mm thick plate steel, which although heavy is proving to be very durable.
Roger
Are there ever going to be long nimbus plates?
You really do not want to strap your feet into the plates (like with clips or something) that would be really dangerous. If you attached the plates with external bearings wouldn’t that put too much sideload on the bearings? I think you would have to have a fork like the bottom half a uni frame so they won’t flex.
Oh and what is a D spindle?
Sounds like some cool ideas.
Hey darren, Start making these…
Those are really nice, they make hopping much easier and are nicer on shoes.
Darren, Jeff said the ones you made him dug into the side of his foot and hurt so you have to put the thing higher up on the plate (would work really nice on the lowriders because there is so much extra room on there.) I think the position you had it before was close to the same height as the bolt on the old platforms.
Clipless can be dangerous… but lets see what happens.
The clips/straps could be something like Ewan has made, just offering vertical support.
External bearings… I have 2 designs that I will work on in the new year. One is basically double bearing each side. This means that the plates wont have any bolt at all, it will be a smooth side so your foot position can vary more. The other is to put a hoop over the top of the wheel linking the 2 plates together… this I think will extend the possibilities for BCing more, although it is also the hardest to get right I think it may take some playing? Has anyone else tried this yet?
“D” spindle is exactly what is says… it is a slot that is ground along the spindle so that it is D shaped. You then cut a “D” shaped hole in the plates. This would then stop the plates from coming loose or moving.
Roger
Maybe I don’t fully understand but wouldn’t that let each plate rotate independently of the other one?
Yeah, Evan and I have talked about that and he made me a prototype thing to test out. We were able to ride one footed for a while. We were planning on making better versions once we saw how it went but we lost interest.
Here is a pic of what he put together…
Other possibilities we thought of for that were putting a curved cup shaped thing to lean your leg into. We thought about possibly making it move along with your leg but that would be kind of tricky because you don’t want it completely independent of the plates or it could fall when riding.
The biggest problem with that I had was that when I ride I tend to move the plates back and forth and when the fork is attached directly to them then it moves back and fort too and it was hitting my in the legs and sometimes before I went to hop my leg would get stuck inbetween the edge of the mailbox looking thing and the tire.
That is exactly what I am doing on my trials bc except I have an axle that is like that but it has 2 flat sides. They are sold from bmx websites and I am pretty sure they are meant to allow you to fit a 14mm axle in 3/8s dropouts on a bike fork. Darren is sending me platforms without any holes so I can drill holes that shape in the plates.
Spencer
Hey Spencer, would it be possible to put a handle on that hoop over the wheel and would this be good for hopping.
We were thinking about putting a handle on it for in air no footers and stuff. You don’t want it for hopping though, it just wouldn’t work. Just use the bolts on the plates for hopping, it is less awkward and you can get much higher.
Im with spencer on this one, hopping with that would 1, look retarted. 2, make hopping SO HARD, it would proly be a skill in itself to be able to hop one handed. This is what makes taps and double taps actally a tough trick. Though its simple, its hard to keep ballanced in the air while not using your arms for ballance.
are there any pictures of the lowrider plates yet?
i think darren is making it his mission not to have photos of anything on his site.
but here are the lowriders.