Prody; n. [pr. proddy] 4130 chromoly, bonafide #BNEBMX local hero.

 

 

 

[More build pics at the bottom of the page]

 

 

The 2014 Prody 20th Anniversary frame by Colony is essentially a tribute to the original Brisbane made Prody frame from 1993 designed by Clint Millar (founder of Colony BMX) and Michael Canfield. This limited edition of 100 sees the return of the iconic top tube platform while benefiting from modern geometry and contemporary features (ie. integrated headset, mid BB and integrated seat post clamp – scroll down more tech info and frame specs).

 

LOVE THE PRODY! <3

 

These frames look amazing (the perfect balance of old school nostalgia with contemporary innovation) but it was the moment I rode one of the Anniversary Prody prototypes (belonging to RossDLav from www.unscenehistory.com) that I completely fell head over heels for Prody goodness. So smooth, responsive, light and thoughtfully designed. The 19″ model felt intuitive to ride and perfect for flatland. Tricks I’d battled with for hours on my old Healing Freestyler felt achievable within minutes on the Prody. Yeah, I really didn’t want to give it back!

 

Riding RossDLav’s 19″ Prody prototype in early 2014…

 

 

 

I feel so honoured to have one of these frames. AND, as a long time fan of the spy classic Get Smart and Barbara Feldon’s iconic portrayal of Agent 99, I’m super stoked to have scored frame #99/100! Those familiar with my M.O. will know that when I’m as excited as this about a frame it’ll never be a wall mounted trophy piece gathering dust in the name of posterity – I’ll build the shizzle out of it then ride the b’jeezus out of it. Life’s too short to not ride rad bikes!

 

PRODY FRAME SPECS

 

Special features: mix of old school design with modern day geometry and features, made from 4130 chromoly tubing with a heat-treated integrated headtube drilled for gyro tabs, investment cast headtube gusset, integrated hydroformed downtube gusset, old school standing platform on the toptube, integrated seat clamp, heat-treated Mid BB shell with investment cast chainstay junction, tapered chainstays with investment cast bridge, tapered seatstays with fixed U-brake mounts, and 5mm thick heat-treated dropouts. Limited edition run of 100.

 

 

PARTS LIST

 

FRAME: 2014 Colony Prody Ltd Ed #99/100, 19″ TT, 4130 chromoly with integrated headtube. Custom finished in day-glo yellow.
FORKS: Colony Guardian (w brake mounts). Custom finished in day-glo yellow.
BARS: Colony Prody Kue Bars in chrome 
STEM: Colony Squareback Stem in black.
HEADSET: Odyssey Pro Integrated Headset, 1 1/8″, polished
RIMS: Demolition Zero 48H, smoke chrome  (w stainless spokes + anodised pink nipples)
TYRES: Demolition Momentum 2.2, black skinwall
REAR HUB: Taska 48H U-Free 9T Freecoaster, 3/8″ (w clutch tightened and bearings repacked)
FRONT HUB: SunRinglé sealed, 14mm (slotted 3/8″), black
PEGS: Infinity Ka (x4), silver
BRAKES (Front + Rear): Odyssey Evo II, polished
DETANGLER: Impurity Bikes GST-K sealed gyro with built in knarps + Colony gyro plate, black
GYRO CABLES: Upper:  Odyssey Modulever dual cable with custom neon pink housing. Lower: Custom neon pink with Primo Pervert splitter.
FRONT CABLE: Odyssey  inner, custom neon pink housing.
LEVERS (L + R): Odyssey  Modulevers
GRIPS: Éclat Zap grips in dark gum
CRANKS: Colony 22s, 170mm, chrome
BB: Colony Mid BB, 22mm, black
SPROCKET: Colony CC Sprocket, 25T, black
PEDALS: Eastern Bikes resin pedals in brown
SEAT POST: St Martin 300mm, pivotal, black
SEAT: LixBMX Custom brown leather “Fragile Like a Bomb” tooled pivotal seat
CHAIN: YBN mk926N S2 Super Light Half Link, hollow pin, silver

 

 

BUILD DIARY

 

I’m super excited about what’s in store for Prody #99. I’ve had about 12months to plan the build and now it’s all go! Think flatland, think day-glo and neon, think vintage meets contemporary, think script and block fonts, custom artwork, engraved badge, hand tooled leather seat… I’m pulling out all the LixBMX stops! Excited, much.

 

 

 

 

My Build Design Sketch

 

It’s very hard to represent day-glo yellow and neon pink in an illustration, but you get the picture. Needless to say, it’ll look exceedingly more awesome in reality…

 

 

Here’s a few snaps of my Prody frame before it went off to Roberto’s Custom Powder for its custom day-glo yellow finish, along with the Guardian forks and Snafu bars.

 

 

 

 

 

Inspired by this classic image of Max and 99…

 

 

 

I’ve drawn up a two-tone pop-art style illustration of Agent 99 with her shoe-phone to use as the basis of my custom headtube badge design….

 

 

And from that drawing, here’s a mockup of roughly what the head tube badge will look like in 3D (before it’s shaped to fit the headtube). I’ll be electrochemically engraving the headtube badge from 1mm aluminium sheeting using a copper sulphate ‘salt etch’ solution…

 

 

 

Aluminium sheet and copper sulphate ready for etching….

 

 

 

My badge design printed in reverse on clear mylar (OHP film)…

 

 

 

Ironing the design onto the aluminium sheet so that the black areas of toner stick to the aluminium sheet and form an area of mask when the mylar is cooled and peeled off…

 

 

 

3 masked up prototypes ready to etch…

 

 

 

Prototype etching. There’s pitting on the high-points so the masked areas will need denser coverage…

 

 

 

To get a denser mask I’m carefully painting a layer of Tamiya model acrylic paint over the aress of relief…

 

 

 

Painted mask done and ready for the salt etch solution…

 

 

 

The etch process begins…

 

 

 

I love the colours generated in this process, very reminiscent of a coral reef…

 

 

 

Straight out of the solution. Still wet and the mask looks to have held up well!

 

 

 

Paint rubbed off and the etch is deep, crisp and clear! Ready to be cut out with my piercing saw (aka jewellers saw)…

 

 

 

Cut out and ready to have the edges filed and high-points polished…

 

 

 

Polished and ready to bend with my trust DIY buddy Bender, haha…

 

 

 

Those curves…

 

 

 

To compliment the badge, custom decal sticker-bomb artwork designed and off to the printer. I put together this sheet in keeping with the build concept and as a reflection of my own convictions, who I am as an artist and the things I feel passionate about that are vastly under-represented in the BMX scene – civil rights, female equality, giving a fuck about the environment… that sort of thing. Oh and there’s a couple of old school freestyle gems in there too… one with a little twist 😉

 

 

 

 

The parts pile begins. Demolition goodness from BMX Mafia. Pretty excited about running HP tyres, given my world has been dominated by the 40PSI ‘Tuff’ life to date…

 

The parts pile grows bigger! Goodies from Flatland Fuel and The Pedal Shoppe…

 

 

 

Loving the elegant simplicity and functionality of contemporary parts! Particularly loving this GST-K sealed gyro from Impurity Bikes – the built in knarps (similar to the Odyssey GTX-R) allow me to use custom neon pink cables and customise the length of my dual upper cable to perfectly suit my bars…

 

 

Midschool time-warp! Stoked to have got my hands on this ’90s gem! A Primo Pervert cable splitter – most people ran these on their upper Gyro cables so they could customise the length of their cables. I’ll be using this little piece of awesome to enable me to create a custom coloured lower Gyro cable in neon pink (I’m running an Odyssey Modulever upper cable setup so no splitter necessary on the top half). Oh, and if you’re going to photograph a Pervert… why not beside a bag of 96 pink nipples?

 

 

Back from Roberto’s Custom Powder in fresh day-glo yellow powder coat. Roberto is an absolute master – the two step day-glo process is tricky, and he nails it every time while finessing those special details so important on a frame like welds, serial stamps, threads and bearing races…

 

 

 

 

Tasty details…

 

 

 

The first few custom decals applied over that glorious fresh powder. The vision begins to come alive…

 

 

 

 

Jigsaw puzzle pieces. Grips, seat, pedals and bars in the pic differ from the final rig…

 

 

If you haven’t already cottoned on with the whole ‘Agent 99’ tribute, this build is an homage to female ingenuity, courage and strength, and it’s persistence amidst and despite the often ignorantly oblivious or actively discriminatory behaviour of men and boys. The BMX community worldwide is a macrocosm unfortunately teeming with the later, while the former ever-so-slowly crawl toward a new state of awareness.

 

Building on that concept, ‘I am not fragile like a flower, I am fragile like a bomb’ is a quote attributed to one of my favourite artists, Frida Khalo. Not unlike me (in my professional life), she used self portraiture to explore her fears, dreams, struggles and dysfunctions, and similarly to female BMX riders she constantly battled with disregard and underestimation, and having to fight harder than any of her male peers, despite her obvious extraordinary talent and unique perspective, to be recognised and accepted. I’ve always felt an strong alignment with this particular quote and the strength and intelligence of the concept, so this really seemed like the perfect build to bust it out in leather.

 

Initial rough concept sketch for the ‘Fragile Like a Bomb’ custom hand-tooled leather seat….

 

 

Developing and refining the concept – a little time-lapse video clip exported from Procreate on my iPad Pro…

 

 

Scoring the finished design into pre-moulded, water softened, veggie-tanned leather…

 

 

Tooling the design. I have a heap of leather tools but I always gravitate toward this Craftool A104 teardrop checkered background stamp for fill work on graphic art elements like lettering or logos – it creates a really nice rustic but even cross-hatched texture…

 

 

Finished tooled design drying out before finishing dyes and sealant…

 

 

Hand dying the finished seat in a mixture of chestnut and saddle tan waterbed low V.O.C. dye. Extra coats brushed into the the tooled accents to deepen the contrast…

 

 

Stitching the pivotal hole cover onto the finished seat after a coat of sealant…

 

 

 

Finding these NOS Eastern brown resin pedals was such a score! Gathering dust in a store in Chicago, these are far and away the best brown colour match I’ve found to suit my Prody build. All the other brands’ current brown tones are super ‘gummy’ which is all well and good if you’re pairing it with a surf blue or seafoam green frame, but for neon yellow? It’s brown’s gotta be this killer rich burnt sienna….

 

 

 

 

The hierarchy of spacers from my Odyssey Pro Integrated Headset (shhh, I think they’re meditating)…

 

 

 

Playing with headset, gyro, brake levers, and brake cabling. I’ll eventually be swapping these chunky Snafu Disco Bars and this stem out for chrome Colony Kew Bars (modelled after the Peregrine Q Bars on my Healing Freestyler) and Colony Squareback stem. Custom badge sitting pretty too…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Odyssey Modulevers! So stoked to have a minty pair of these! Sadly Odyssey discontinued them a few years ago. They’re chunky and feel great in the hand,and provide an elegant solution for upper Gyro cabling.  Thanks HEAPS to James Moody from The Pedal Shoppe for digging this one pair out of box of old unused parts he had in his store room. THAT THAR BE BURIED TREASURE!!

 

 

 

My contemporary BMX-centric parody of one of Georgia O’Keefe’s famous skulls, haha…

 

 

 

Tightening the clutch on the brand new Taska U-Free freecoaster, these things typically have a bit too much play straight out of the box…

 

 

 

When lacing rims G-Sport’s famous Wheel Building Masterclass is my bible – I’ve printed it to PDF for posterity – you can download it for your own reference HERE. I <3 lacing. It strengthens the hands and stills the mind. So much more relaxing than knitting… :p

 

 

48h 4-cross pattern interlaced under the third…

 

 

An inverted frame and forks + a whiteboard marker makes a more than adequate truing stand…

 

 

 

Preliminary build photos

 

Snapped these photos prior to fitting the final seat, grips, pedal, stem and bars. It’s really coming together super well – can’t wait to break it up a bit and add an extra dimension with the brown accents and chrome Kew bars though.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Visually those neon yellow Snafu bars are just overkill and diminish the impact of the neon frame and forks. In practical terms, they’re pigs to ride with. Awkwardly low, too narrow, too heavy, too weirdly chunky for their dimensions (sorry mid-schoolers!). The Dartmoor Funky stem looks wicked and is a gorgeous light-as-a-feather and strong as hell piece of engineering, but I do prefer the extension and lift of the Colony Squareback. Looking forward to doing those few final finishing touches and shooting some more pics!

 

 

 

 

FINISHED BUILD PHOTOS

 

Coming soon!

 

 

 

Shout-outs:

 

An EPIC thank you to Clint Millar for entrusting me with Prody 99/100. I’m forever grateful for the opportunity to build, own and ride this outstanding frame so steeped in local freestyle history.

 

To Ross Lavender, my brother-from-another-mother, without whom I would likely never have met Clint or have had the opportunity to build this incredible bike. Your unrelenting fervour for the Unscene History of Brisbane’s freestyle movement has inspired in me a whole new way of seeing BMX. Thanks for the words of wisdom, horrendous jokes and unfailing generosity of spirit, dude-brainz!

 

James Moody from The Pedal Shoppe who went absolutely above and beyond to help me source much of the ridiculously specific and ambitious parts list I had for this build! I might have dreamt it, but without you Charlie Abbott it wouldn’t have become reality.

 

To Roberto for never failing to blow my mind with his mad powder coating skills. A multi-layer day-glo powder coat finish is no walk in the park, and this is beast is flawless.

 

To Brett Tyack of Nineties BMX for sacrificing the Primo Pervert he scored at last year’s Pushies swappy for the Prody #99 cause! Legend, bro.

 

And always to James for his unwavering support and concurrent murmurings in the face of my excitable spiels about parts and ideas. And for letting me borrow his Leatherman multi-tool and wire-cutters, despite the fact that I hardly ever put them back where I found them.