The Summer Season was designed in Mooch Cafe in Hebden Bridge, after a ride with TimK, Benji (from Singletrack) and Ed (the digeridoo player). It came about after I’d had a couple of hours of following them round various technical trails on my rigid 29er, and TimK had fallen off at the top of some trail as his forked had dived - and also Ben hammering around on 160mm travel Magura forks which amused me with their amount of brake dive and stuff in lowspeed hoppity/hop stuff. Bear with me, it'll make sense in a minute.
Benji’s got an Evil DOC which he runs 100mm through-axles on, and really likes. We discussed the fact that people seemed to be running longer forks for two reasons:-
1) They wanted their handlebars higher.
2) They wanted a slack head angle.
Now - as far as problem solving goes - 1) can be achieved with a higher stem. 2) seems a valid enough reason to run a longer fork, though of course, if you could achieve it with a shorter fork, and still have “enough” travel, that’d be good - the shorter fork would be a little stiffer, less mushy, more direct, more stanction/slider overlap… all good stuff. 160mm forks on a hardtail? Well, it’s doable, but with that changing your effective head angle under hard braking by as much as 4degs, it might not be a good thing…
And so, the Summer Season frame came along. And from the sums I’ve done, with a 5in fork, it seems to sit at (and I’m really not making this up) 66.6degs. Which is also, spookily, the average maximum temperature in Hebden Bridge, in August.
Other details
We made it in plain gauge chromoly as it’s tougher in all sorts of ways - ie: dent resistance outside the pub, and impact strength too.
It’s finished with a clear coated, matt finish, so you can see the tubes and the welds. This WILL rust (from previous experience with our on-one Gimp frame), but it looks great, and means that you can simply ignore any paintwork damage and get on with riding it.
It’s disc only. You won’t want to run V’s on this frame.
It still has rack mounts (as I forgot to take them off).
Cable guides are under the top tube.
Normal vertical rear dropout.
| Frame size (Centre-top) |
14” |
16” |
18” |
20” |
| Effective top-tube length |
21.5” |
23.0” |
23.5” |
23.9” |
| Head Angle with 5in fork |
66.6deg |
66.6deg |
66.6deg |
66.6deg |
| Seat Angle |
73deg |
73deg |
73deg |
73deg |
| BB Height |
12.5” |
12.5” |
12.5” |
12.5” |
| Standover |
26” |
28.2” |
29.4” |
30.5” |
| Chainstay Length |
16.75in |
16.75in |
16.75in |
16.75in |
 Here's a closeup of the finish on the Summer Season frame. It's done by acid-dipping the frame, then clearcoating with lacquer. The lacquer is slightly permeable, so we are expecting it to rust a bit underneath at some point, but this is designed as a crash/bash frame so we're not concerned. If you are, then, er, look away now.
Frames are in stock ready to ship, as shown below, with more stock landing late Dec/early Jan.
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