So over the last few months, over here at No Life, we have fallen in love with a relatively local bike shop in Belmar, NJ, just outside of Asbury Park rightfully named ‘Belmar Bike Shop‘. Belmar is the brain Child of Kyle Rogers, a shop owner and fellow “grown-up-BMX’er turned bike nerd”, just like me, that I’ve jived with more than any other shop owner in the New York area to date. Truly have not felt a level of inclusiveness and familiarity like this in years, and it’s been a breath of fresh air. More on that soon though!
This is one of Kyle’s personal bikes, based on a frame he had made by Darren Larkin. I know Kyle had been thinking long and hard about what he wanted out of a personal bike, and this bike is pretty damn perfect, and has so many features that you probably wouldn’t even notice, it’s a true sleeper. A crusty tourer with the capability of ripping some trails and hitting a rhythm section. A true 700c ripper, or a 650b hardtail mountain bike! So many small details that could easily get skimmed over.
Kyle and I had a conversation about how much we love the Salsa Cowbell bars and the Cowchipper’s. Essentually love a good shallow road drop with some healthy flare. One of our qualms with the flared drop bar though, is that the width at the drops on bars like the Cowbell, is perfect, but the width at the hoods sometimes feels too narrow. Kyle took this as a challenge and cut a pair of Cowbell bars in half, and made his own stem in-house to fit them so he could change the overall width easily and on demand.
I’m sure before reading this, you’ve already scrolled through the photos of this build, and possibly noticed the dropper post. It’s subtle, but it’s there. That left bar-end shifter drops the post, quickly and easily. Kyle even machined down the top collar to match the outer diameter of the seat tube. It ends up just looking like a silver seat collar.
There’s so much cool stuff about this bike, that I tried to shoot to show off, like specifically, the downhill front brake, or the Stan’s rims that are arguably the lightest aluminum 700/29″ rim made. Or the cracked hood from getting brappy, fixed with a chain link??? Also, it wasn’t made in China, but when you have a shop full of friends, someone’s gonna mess with you in a harmless and clever way.
Here’s some other details from Kyle that you might not be able to see:
“I wanted to have super short rear end and lots of tire clearance so I had Darren use an 83mm English bb shell in the frame which is an old downhill standard that’s about to be re hashed in the name of the new standard dubbed “super boost”. I used race face’s extra long downhill spindle and their Easton road arms and retained a q-factor that’s still less than a typical MTB crank. This put the 44t road chainring in line for the boost rear end. By blending these standards and going wider at the bb I was able to achieve a 400mm rear end length with tons of room to spare. I wish I had spec’d a 375mm rear end because the room is there . For reference, The most common rear end length for a dj bike is around 485mm. The cassette is also kind of special, it’s made in Poland by Garbaruk, it’s a 10-48 11 speed that is all silver and light as fuck.”
Oh, and here’s how it rips for Kyle, with a full lunch picnic bagged up on board, and the dropper slammed:
[kad_youtube url=”https://youtu.be/4bxtf_jno4w” ]
