Black Sheep Cycles’ new Highlight ST (soft tail) gets their first suspension fork. It’s a linkage design that founder James Bleakley has been working on for a while. Like their standard “rigid” forks, it’s a truss design, but adds a girder to hold the shock and take the big hits. The inherent flex built into the structure handles the small stuff and damps vibrations.
It’ll be around $2,600 for the fork and shock. It can be built for any size wheel and tire and with as much travel as the customer wants.
The frame uses their flat titanium plate in place of a lower pivot. Up top, it gets a new link with DU bushing. Complete bike is 32 pounds, not bad for a full suspension fat bike. More pics of this and their other bikes past the break…
The front shock’s compression adjustment switch is accessible through the front of the fork, but this would be a great application for a remote switch.
There were no shortage of SRAM’s XX1 group, but theirs were running a Wolf Tooth Components front chainring that has alternating thickness teeth:
This touring fat bike was commissioned by University of Iowa’s Modern Arts Museum to be displayed with some Jackson Pollock material.
It has an integrated growler mount on the extended rack and uses their trademark extending stays with frame break on the seat stays, too, so the bike can be packed down into a case. Well, in this case, thanks to the fat tires, it takes two cases! As shown, this bike would be just under $10,000. The standard Luna Vista frameset with fat tire clearance is $5,500. Head badge is by Jenn Greene (below, right) in Philadelphia and uses copper, brass and sterling silver.
If bigger is better, this might be the best: A 29+ tandem fat bike.
Imagine having to run these cables all the way through this frame!
Dual height adjustments with nested seatposts and handlebars built into the lower post.
