newbie questions!

[julian]

hi all...

first of all an intro....names Julian (obviously...)...into all things two wheeled....mainly vintage steel road bikes these days but also MTB freeride and XC and trials/street.......41 years old so maybe old enough to know better! ; ).......manage a cycle shop so theres no end of potential donor machines for a gravity bike...live in London

first saw gravity racing in a copy of an American BMX mag back in the 80s.....thought it looked fun then, and after watching some of the stuff on youtube decided its time i had a go!

so...newbie questions....

whats the best way to start?....lash up an old BMX cheaply, enter a race and give it a go?

is there a non-race scene in the uk? ie a bunch of folk getting together for (possibly illegal?) high speed road descents?

the build rules seem pretty straight forward....but are 20x 1 1/8th (ie 451 erto) wheels allowed?

any help gratefully recieved!

[danv]

Hi Julian,
I would just lash up an old bmx enter a race and see what happens. I'm sure you will be hooked.
all my bikes have been made from old bikes rescued from skips or donated parts. So in my opinion spending loads of money on flash parts is not the way to start.
20" wheels are the rule, so any 20" wheel should be fine.
There does not seem to be a non race scene as far as I am aware. I have been riding grav bikes for about 5 years but entered my first race only last year. Before that, me and a mate would occasionally go out, find somewhere interesting and bomb it. We could not find many other people into the sport locally so we did our own thing. Still a very small following but great fun.

[Ian r]

Hi Julian,

totally agree with dan about lashing together an old BMX !

A word of caution about 451 wheels. Don't think there'll be a problem with rules, but getting decent tyres for 'em might be an issue. Think most folk are using 406's.......

Frustratingly, there aren't many of us gravity bikers around so getting us all at one event would be fab. Maybe Dalby in August?

Have fun :-)