Bruce’s Build

Colony BMX is a well known Australian brand in the freestyle world that has just dropped a prototype chromoly race frame. Rider owned and operated by Clint Millar out of Brisbane, Colony is a well-established player in the in the freestyle market that celebrated its 10^th birthday last year in 2015. I’ve long harboured a desire to race a chromoly trail bike, but quickly realised that the geometry wasn’t suited. I’d already been racing a cromo Supercross Bolt for quite a while and loved the feel of steel as the saying goes.

Freestyle products have a beautiful aesthetic on the whole, where design seems to be as important as function. Whenever I dropped into LUX BMX in Brisbane to buy Vans or a Tshirt, I always lingered over the display case harbouring stems. Such a riot of colours and beautifully finished compared to race products. I never quite got why racing parts couldn’t embrace the type of design elements you saw on freestyle gear. Not a criticism of race companies, function is paramount, but so it is in the freestyle world where frames and parts can take a huge beating.

Maybe lingering over the display case took me back to my early years in BMX as a 13 year old grom and a bike shop on Elkhorn Ave in Surfers Paradise. My parents bought me my first true BMX bike from there, a Malvern Star Supermax, and I can still remember staring into the display case at the anodised beauty of parts that were a universe away from the full-suspension bike I’d started my BMX journey on back in my small country town.

Sure companies like Standard and S&M could have built me one, and their products are indeed beautifully crafted, but I wanted to ride an Australian brand of bike and through the power of social media (okay, I hit Clint on Instagram a few times with “build us old guys a race frame”), Clint relented, and left a comment: “shoot me a message Morris_84”

A few emails back and forth, plus gathering feedback from a couple of shredders I coach regularly who ride cromo race bikes, Tim and Keith Wright, and we had a design. The brief was pretty straight forward from me to Clint – make it look like a trail/park bike and cool as hell.

Fast forward a few months and last week two frames arrived at Colony’s HQ and I got the call “they’re here”. Rocking up to LUX BMX on that Friday afternoon where the frame was waiting for me took me back to that 13 year old kid picking up his Malvern Star all those years ago. Pull it out of the box and the stickerless, hotrod black steel tubed frame was revealed. Evan clamped it up on the stand and I stripped the SX. He’d built a set of wheels for me, with Fly Bike rims, and another coaching crew member had been given the hubs to match the colour to them. Not the lightest rims, but that colour! Dale B, you’re a wizard. He painted the cranks to match as well.

With a few tweaks, and a couple of beers, the GTI was brought to life on that Friday afternoon. It only then dawned on me that this was a prototype, and the first race frame Colony had ever built. Race frames are quite different from a freestyle frame in both geometry and design elements. From incorporating brake posts, to considering tyre clearance, there were a few elements that need to be spot on out of the box or this bike wasn’t hitting the start gate any time soon. The fact that it went together without much drama is testimony to Clint’s experience as a frame designer.

My favourite aspect is the fact that it doesn’t look to be running chain tensioners. A dead giveaway on a race frame when they’re hanging out the back of the dropouts, the GTI’s tensioners are so subtle that they have to be pointed out to people. A small, but significant styling element. Wheeled it out of the shop and after a couple of tries, manualed it down Tondra Lane. It felt good straight out of the box! Straight to the race track that night for a test and tune session and few full noise gates later I was happy enough to take it racing the next day.

The specs are listed below, and a release date hasn’t been announced as right now I’m riding/racing it to dial it in. It’s up to Colony to decide whether a race product fits their ethos. Meanwhile, I’ll be riding the hell out of it.

Massive thanks to:

Clint Millar – Rider/Owner Colony BMX

LUX BMX Store – West End Brisbane

Dale Gambler Beuermann – painter/racer

Vital stats

• TT length: 21.3”
• CS length: 14.25-15.25
• HT angle – 74.5 degrees
• BB height – 11.75” (sitting on 1.75s Maxxis DTHs)
• BB Type – Euro

ABOUT BRUCE MORRIS #84

• Brisbane Australia
• BMX Racer – 35+ years
• Fitness Professional – 25+ years of operating gyms and training people
• Coach 84 BMX Training – Coaching the 30+ racers. Spanning performance, fitness and healthiness