Profile Racing’s Legacy: Week 33, 2001.
Following the turn of the new millennium, 2001, in preparation for that year’s Interbike, found our machine/welding shop in another year laden with new products.
On the Freestyle end, the Blackjack and Flywheel were now offered in a 36t version which was quickly taking the place of the 44t. Less broken chains, as well as your 45lb bike reduced by a pound or two.
With Jeff Harrington’s last year with Profile running both the team and our freestyle innovation, a short lived, miniature peg/bolt protector was created. First done in steel with a chrome finish, the tofu peg (“a little less beefy” than a normal peg) saw its height trickle up and quickly down over the next two years. Its final version was made from aluminum. Almost 15 years later, we’d see similar versions come back from other brands, including our sister brand, Madera, in the form of the lightning bolt.
Original, steel, tofu pegs. The later versions were made out of 7075 Aluminum.
2000/2001 saw our product color line switch from a predominate high polish (on aluminum) and chrome (on steel) to black anodize and powder coat. With that in mind, our “Gen 1” threadless stem became popular in both the freestyle and race markets and quickly became a staple in the mid-school scene.
Available in both colors, and in two sizes (53mm and 60mm).
Generation One Threadless stems.
Imperials, Flywheels, Gas Pedals, and High Flange hubs would round out our inventory offered in Black.
One other item (seen on page 13) was very new to us: seats. We did both race and freestyle seats through SDG between 2000 and 2001.
High Flange Front Hubs still in inventory.
On the race side, Dave Robichaux was belting out our 3rd generation of race frames. In our 2001 catalogue below, check out pages 5 and 6: The 24″ Cruiser, Pro and Pro XL, as well as the BGR (“Big Guy Racer”) were fresh in our inventory.
A couple pages later, you will also see the “JYD”, a short lived addition to our freestyle frame inventory, made specific for dirt jumping.
Robichaux’s baby, however, was our MTB line. With the addition of 4 new MTB hubs (making 8 total, pages 18-19), we needed support with frame and forks. So, over two years prior, Robichaux worked on his master work: The Profile Dual Slalom 2 (DSL-2) frame/fork.
Unveiled at Interbike, the DSL-2 featured a 4-link system of suspension with pivot points at both the top/middle and bottom bracket. The bottom bracket pivot point featured external bearings that sat in front of the actual bottom bracket. The crank spindle would fit through both sets of bearings.
For the 2001/2002 season, the whole Iron Horse team would run these prototype frames.
After a great response, due to extremely unfortunate circumstances, our MTB Frame/Fork production came to a complete stop.
Dave Robichaux, in the winter of 2002, died, tragically in a paragliding accident.
Considering this whole project was his baby, we wanted to honor his time, input, and sweat equity in the project…at this point, our in-house frame manufacturing ended.
We can’t thank Robichaux enough for his hard work…he is missed, dearly.