Supercross UL frame review

Last update: 3 March, 2007

Supercross is not new to BMX, they have been manufacturing frame, forks, cranks and handlebars for more than 10 years now. Although, for many people, it may have taken two times UCI Elite World Champion Dale Holmes to bring them back into the lime light (through the 2002 race season, until he was picked up by Free Agent).

People usually associate SX frames with the unusual rear triangle that has extra tubing for additional strength and stiffness. It's this design that has set the SX frames apart from all others, right from the early days and can still be seen in the EVO model today.

Features of the Supercross UL series frame:

• European bottom bracket
• Triple butted air-hardened 4130 cro-mo tube set
• Built in seat clamp
• Available in Expert, Pro, Pro XL, Pro XXL and cruiser sizes
• Knarled rear drop outs
• Colours - Blue, Black, Chrome and Red

The UL model frame is a move away from the traditional design, which has been working so well for SX, to what is more of a classical style frame. If you read the interview we did with Bill Ryan from Supercross you might have picked up on his comments about the UL. 'The new UL uses some real cool post weld heat treatment and a good lug design that keeps the rear nice and stiff still.'

We asked Bill about the difference in manufacturing is between the SX frames and the much cheaper frames coming out of Asia. We also asked what the difference is between "air hardened triple butted frames", regular cro-mo, "full seamless cro-mo", here's what he had to say:

"Wow, in a nut shell tubing is built one of 2 main ways. One it is drawn through a mandrel and is a solid tube shape. The other is that the tubing starts out as sheet and is rolled and then welded. Seamless is much stronger but more expensive. We [Supercross] then have our tubes go through a process called "air hardening", which is a heat treat process which raises the material strength of the tubing and changes the molecular structure so the grains line up when heated rather than scatter, so this makes a stronger weld joint than a normal frame as well. "Air hardening", like heat treating, is very expensive to do. We then, after welding, take the entire frame and put it through a heat treat process which normalizes the entire structure and again raises the strength. By doing this we are able to use a butted tube which starts out thicker at the weld ends and goes thinner in the middle. Because of the processing our frames go through we are able to run thinner walls on the tubes and not sacrifice strength."

Ok so now you know how it's built how does it ride?

This is the first BMX bike I have ridden with a european bottom bracket, come to think of it it's also the first cro-mo frame I have been on in over 3 years, so testing the UL started off as a bit of a novelty. The frame used in the test is the Pro XXL, perfect for larger riders, I'd suggest 5'10" and over. Even at 6'2" myself there was plenty of leg room and what was most surprising was there was absolutly no noticable flex in the frame.

BMXUltra.com is so serious about it's LCT (life cycle testing) regime, testing the UL frame was used at 5 races before the review was written, it's taken me to 4 out of 5 pro finals. Here's what I found during testing:

• The combination of the frame's stiffness and the low bottom bracket height makes the UL an awesome frame for gates.
• The UL is a well ballanced frame when jumping and manualling, a combination of the stiffness and the light weight cro-mo construction means it's easy to throw around and would handle abuse from the race track and trails.
• Cornering on the UL was superb, the head angle is perfect, it handles well whether railing a wide open berm or whipping the bike through the pack in tight turns.

How does it look?

The UL frame is well put together, very clean welds, durable paint in nice colours, and a slick looking sticker kit. This is a frame that will turn heads and get people talking. One conversation that comes to mind was about how they got away without using any gussets (normally used to reinforce frames).

The UL USA retail price is $389.95. Although Supercross is not distributed in Australia, at the time of review, the frames and other products can be purchased through any good American mail order company.

If you are after a quality race frame that is built to last, do yourself a favour and check out the Supercross UL, it gets the big thumbs up from BMXUltra.com.

For further information about the Supercross UL frame (including geometry) and other SX products check www.supercrossbmx.com.