Scoop! New 4X Bike From Nuke Proof

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We’re just off the phone with Nuke Proof’s top design whizz, who gave us the low down on this innovative new 4X bike that’ll be piloted by Lukas Mechura on the World Cup circuit. Lukas rode for Team Chain Reaction Cycles last year (where he podiumed at Fort William) and this year will ride for Team CRC/Nuke Proof.

A whole lot of fun and trouble right there...
The new 44mm 'standard' headtube for maximum flexibility

Lukas is a big lad at over six foot, so his signature frame comes in XL and it has been built to be a Four Cross bike first, rather than being an adapted dirt jump bike. This means the frame is longer than a dirt jump bike for better stability on the 4X courses. To cope with the immense pedalling forces going through the bike, it comes with a 135mm Maxle back end to match the short travel 80mm Fox 831s up front. At the head tube end, there is the new 44mm internal diameter oversize headtube – this means that it can take 1 1/8th internal, or external cups, or a 1.5in external lower cup, with a regular 1 1/8th internal top cup. (This proto has a regular 1.5in headtube.)

FGF 695 - Enduro Beckoning
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How do they get it to stand up like that, eh?

Don't like yellow? It'll come in black for those not racing World Cups every weekend.

There will be a production version available in September – or rather two of them:

One will be as you see here, in a 135mm Maxle rear – in Small, Med/Large and Xtra Lukas sizes.
There will also be a version with replaceable dropouts, allowing rear QR, rear 135mm Maxle or the new Syntace 142mm bolt-thru dropouts.

Maxle for Lukas, but you can have QR, 142.5mm or Maxle on your one if you want.

Other clever features include the downtube logos being printed on the underside of helicopter tape. (So re-taping a scuffed up frame gives you new decals at the same time), the frame will take 2.5in tyres and has ISCG mounts as standard, with no provision for a front mech. As well as Team Issue Yellow, it’ll come in black and Spangle Black too…

Number fans take note: 67.5° head tube angle, static with an 80mm fork. And the price for the frame? “Under £300” according to early calculations…

Chipps Chippendale

Singletrackworld's Editor At Large

With 22 years as Editor of Singletrack World Magazine, Chipps is the longest-running mountain bike magazine editor in the world. He started in the bike trade in 1990 and became a full time mountain bike journalist at the start of 1994. Over the last 30 years as a bike writer and photographer, he has seen mountain bike culture flourish, strengthen and diversify and bike technology go from rigid steel frames to fully suspended carbon fibre (and sometimes back to rigid steel as well.)

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