How to Choose a BMX Bike

Video Transcript

"Hey, I'm Dylan Slay with Evolution Bike Company located in Acworth, Georgia and I'm here to tell you about the differences in what you may want or what you may not want in a bicycle. Like so first of all this is my like dirt jumping bike or park bike or just ride not race bike. I choose not to run brakes but that's like your own personal choice. The frame is a 21 inch top tube because I'm kind of like I guess I'm not like kind of tall, but it's all in preferences. Top tubes come from like 19 inches to like 22 inches. I ride like a normal drive train which is on the right side but if you look here, my friend Nathan's bike, he runs his drive train on the left side but that's just all to preference too, like not one's better than the other, it's all the same. As you see he also runs brakes because that's also just a preference if you want to run brakes if you don't want to run brakes. There's also many different types of pedals like as you see here he has plastic pedals, I too on my bike have plastic pedals. There's metal pedals, there's like aluminum pedals, there's all different kinds of pedals and once again it's all to preference. We ride plastic because they're cheap and they don't hurt when they get you in the shin because I mean that's just pain, it's just bad. As you see here we both run half link chains which is different from your standard bike chain. Your standard bike chain will come at you like this, like connect here and connect here and then keep going like this, but a half link goes like one here, connects, connects, connects, connects and it's just a stronger chain. As you come to the rim, I run a cassette rim which is my drive is built into my hub so when I pedal like it moves my whole hub like that if you can see here. Nathan also runs a cassette hub and the other ones are free wheels and then there are free coasters. Now free coasters, got a free coaster because when you go backwards, see how the cranks go backwards? A free coaster won't do that. A free coaster will disengage itself so when it goes backwards the pedals stay flat so there's no need to back pedal. But basically a cassette and a free wheel in general are the same thing, but like I said it's just a little bit higher up. Now something else that is basically all preference is going to be your seat. If you look here I have a seat that has a good bit of padding on it but also my seat has rails on it. There's two different kinds of seats, there's pivotal seats and there's rail seats. My seat is basically like has a denim cover, it has a good bit of padding and rails. This is so my seat post will go and clamp down on the rails like this making it to where my seat won't move. Now Nathan on the other half, he has a leather seat that is called and it's a pivotal design, if you see right here it's like a half moon crescent that has triangles on it and it fits into the seat post and you put it in like this and there's a Allen wrench head that goes in here and when you tighten down the Allen wrench, it tightens it to the seat so it doesn't move. That's pretty much the major components on your bike that you're going to need to know about, but like one thing that people want to do when they start out is just go out and just buy all the best stuff for their bike and I mean like you can do that but you're going to end up spending maybe a thousand dollars. Pretty much if you're going to be riding street and stuff, you want to remember to get a chromoly frame, not aluminum because that's just aluminum is more of a race thing and basically just ride your bike the way you want to ride your bike, like don't let someone else be like oh that's stupid, if you like it then ride it man, that's what it is."