In the woods with the Brigante 650b

• • 2013 KingdomBike, Ridden
BriganteAM

After all the excitement of testing our new full susser The Hex in Ireland, we almost forgot about it’s little rigid brother The Brigante.

The Brigante is a long travel hard tail built to take on anything and designed around 140 to 160mm forks. As the sun was out in force today we decided to do a bit of XC trail ragging so we built up a Brigante Lite with some X-Fusion velvet forks 140mm and as the X-Fusion has a lower axle to crown we threw on an Cane Creek angleset on as well to slacken the head angle back to around 67.5 degrees.

Lightweight Kingdom Celstre carbon wheelset, XX1 and some of our favourite e-Thirteen pedals and we had a 26.5lb (12kg) trail killer on the loose, for a great afternoon in the sun.

My wish for 2013 is for Schwalbe to make Hans Dampf tyres better at shedding mud.

 

Brigante2

Rough Cut – The Hex AM. Testing times.

• • 2012 Kingdom Bikes, Bike Stuff, Ridden, Tech test

Rough Cut | Hex All Mountain. First rides. from Kingdom Bike on Vimeo.

The snow has finally melted just in time to test the first new Kingdom bike of 2013 and she’s a beauty. The Hex AM. All Mountain. All Titanium.

This film is a rough edit shot on location around the woods of Copenhagen last month. It covers the first few test rides on some out of the way trails and a little test track we made ourselves designed to put Kingdom Bikes through their paces.

A full write up will be coming soon, in the meantime here’s 1.22 seconds of The Hex AM.

HexAM_Shot1 HexAM_Shot2 HexAM_Shot3

But for now here’s a bit more background on The Hex AM.

Frame: Titanium certified aerospace grade Ti3AL2.5V

Frame weight: 3.15kgs, full bike including pedals 12.9kg

Travel: 140mm

Rear Shock: X-Fusion 02RLX 200×56

Wheel size: 27.5/650b

Geometry for Medium:

Head Angle 67
Seat Angle 72
Chainstay 436mm
Effective Top Tube 587mm
Wheelbase 1156mm

Specs: Tapered headtube, ISCG05, 142×12, Post mounts brakes, Cable routing for dropper seat post, etc.

The frame will retail for around the £2750, and we will produce the frame to order, and in limited quantities during 2013, so pre-order is a good idea.

 

 

Happy Days…

• • Bike Stuff, Ridden

Spring is in the air, well it feels like it is anyway. It certainly was a good day to ride in the sun and think about bikes.

I did so much thinking about bikes today that I had what can only be described as an epiphany. Possibly due to being on the fastest and definitely one of the lightest bikes I’ve ever ridden, but probably more to do with Spring being in the air.

Some background.
Being an ‘old un’ I started racing way back, 1989 to be precise. In those days fully rigid was not a quirky label applied to riders who shun suspension, it was MTB’s or All Terrain Bikes (as they were also called briefly).

I raced XC in the UK for about 6 years, 5 of those on various fully rigid bikes, until things started to get a bit more serious and I  picked up a sponsored ride with Specialized who through in some front suspension. That’s when it all went wrong after a year of being almost a pro rider, I dropped out of racing completely and vowed, never to race or wear lycra again.

What’s all this got to do with my 13th March ride?

Well fast forward to 2012 and there I was riding through the woods, 20 years on riding a fully rigid bike on XC trails and absolutely loving it. Marveling at the speed and acceleration of rigid forks, enjoying the feeling of being rattled down rooty trails…a flashback but without the bright spandex leggings…

What a funny thing life really is. I guess there’s no difference between the emotion of riding a bike in 1992 or 2012, except the technology; carbon forks, frame and cranks, gears that work, tubeless wheels and clipless pedals. All weighing in at 20lbs.

It looks like I’ve gone full circle, maybe I’ll start doing some XC races again…except this time it will be on a Double9.

 

The Brigante on tour…

• • 2012 Kingdom Bikes

Tomorrow’s the start of our Brigante on tour in the UK. 10 riders will have the bike on loan for extended test ride of this 29er titanium beauty.

In return for loaning out our new baby, we’ll be gathering feedback and reviews on The Brigante from all the test riders which we’ll upload verbatim on our blog throughout the next few months. Verbatim is a word we like at Kingdom Bike so expect all the details you’ll ever need to know about The Brigante, the good, the bad and even the ugly

As an Apéritif to the main tour, Danny Sørensen, you may remember him from winning The Swedish 4 Cross series on a Kingdom Vendetta last year, took The Brigante and his full face lid out yesterday and gave it a damn good thrashing in the woods.

Here’s some really nice pics from photographer Martin Paldan. Click here to visit his site.

The Savant.CRB Update…

• • 2012 Kingdom Bikes

Anyone interested in The Savant and wants to know what it would look like to have one sitting on a grey photography backdrop in your living room here it is:

Delivery is pushed back slightly to July this year due to a last minute change of shock position, and we expect the RRP to be around £1799 if not cheaper. That includes a Fox Float RP23 Kashima shock.

We will also be offering some different shock options, so watch this space for more updates.

We don’t make alloy frames…

• • Bike Stuff

…BUT if we did they’d look something like this, The Chumba HX1.

We’re always being asked ‘when we will start making frames like The Vendetta and The Foia in alloy or steel.’ It’s not that we haven’t wanted to or even tried to, but finding a factory that can deliver quality in low numbers is very hard indeed. We know we’ve tried.

After spending most of 2011 on a 29er the idea of a 26″ alloy Foia/Brigante hybrid had been brewing again in my mind, so whilst on a recent internet intel gathering mission, I stumbled upon a little gem, the HX1 from Chumba.

The HX1 instantly stopped my mouse fingers clicking; the lines of the frame, the flow everything looked just right. Digging deeper into the specifications and geometry I realised this is almost exactly how a alloy Kingdom Bike long travel hardtail would look.

Cue sound of  penny dropping. I suddenly realised ‘Why bother making an alloy frame when there’s already a damn good one out there that I want to ride.’

So, I contacted Simon from Progressive bikes in the UK and found that not only did he have HX1′s in stock, but this frame is currently retailing for a ridiculously low price of £299.

So there it is, not only do we not make alloy frames, but we won’t be making any long travel alloy hardtail frames in the future, at least not while we can hoon about on the rather excellent Chumba HX1. We salute you Chumba…

Anyone interested in getting their hands on a long-travel hardtail and titanium is out of your price range, then I would recommend taking a look at Chumba’s HX1 and get your mouse finger over to the Progressive Bikes website asap.

More on Progressive Bikes and the HX1 click here.

 

The Brigante Carbon

• • 2012 Kingdom Bikes, Ideas Lab

We alluded to the fact we’re developing a carbon version of The Brigante a while ago, in a few threads, so we think it’s about time she showed her face.

The Brigante.CRB, the carbon long-travel 29er.

The Brigante.CRB will be based around 120mm of travel, but be will be capable of running 140mm forks should the need arise to goon around.

The Specs look like this:
BB92 with ISCG05
142 x 12 rear dropouts
31.6 seat post
Semi integrated tapered 44 to 56 heatube
Internal cable routing (gears)
Direct mount front mech

The Geometry will be this*:
Head: 68 degrees
Seat: 73 degrees
Effective top tube: 595mm – 23.5″
Chainstay: 428 – 16.8″
Wheelbase: 1130 – 44.4
BB height: 340 – 12.6″
Headtube: 105 – 4.13″

(*120mm fork, size medium)

The Price will be an austerity measure busting £899…

Availability: July/August 2012, email here if you fancy being on a Carbon Brigante this Summer as you guessed it, we’re now taking pre-orders.

If you want more info on The Brigante.CRB drop us an email and we’ll keep you posted on developments.

BRIGANTE NEWS UPDATE…We’ll also be making this frame in a 650B specific model for Summer 2012.

Double9 on tour

• • Ridden

2012 will be the year of demo rides for Kingdom Bikes, starting with The Double9 Titanium.

The Double9 will be in the UK and Ireland on tour from the start of March and is availble for anyone who fancies riding her.

It’ll be fully rigid, with Kingdom Ti forks and a 2×10 xo groupset.

To book a demo slot this year email us with the dates you would like to have the bike, and if it’s available we’ll let you know and then you just need to send us proof identity/address and then we’ll arrange for the bike to be dropped off to you.

You can do whatever you want on the bike during the loan even use it for racing if you like, the only caveat is that we require a write up about how the bike rides and maybe some of the experiences you had. If you feel really keen you can takes some pictures and even a movie. It’s up to you. Oh and return the bike clean and not trashed.

To request a test on The Double9 email here and we’ll see if we can arrange a date.