Black Sheep Bikes Speedster Project: Small Batch Hardtails – Josh Hicks | The Radavist | A group of individuals who share a love of cycling and the outdoors.

Today, Black Sheep Bikes from Fort Collins, Colorado, is offering a first for the framebuilding operation: a production hardtail mountain bike. Photographer Josh Hicks penned a few words and delivered a fun gallery showcasing these new bikes Black Sheep has dubbed the Speedster Project. Let’s check it out…

Almost three years ago, James Bleakley at Black Sheep Bikes hinted at his first-ever small batch set of frames since the inception of his custom framebuilding brand dating back to 1999. His words in the post he shared in March 2022 were a short reflection about his intentions to offer an affordable, modern geometry hardtail ready to purchase and build to your liking with zero lead time.

Enter “the Speedster project”: a limited production run of his typically custom-only, twin top tube hardtail, of which he has been offering as a frame design since 2006. The project was initially planned for a steel run of bikes, but supply chain issues continued on from COVID-19, causing instability in sourcing materials, which led James to ultimately put this project on the back burner.

As an avid single-speeder and purveyor of hand-crafted goods, I was stoked to get my hands on one the day I saw the photo of the orange speedster he leaked that day. I visited James at his shop in Fort Collins, Colorado, shortly after to photograph and film a few projects for him, and to my surprise, I left it with a single-speed titanium speedster prototype.

I used this bike as my daily mountain bike over the last few years, testing the capabilities and geometry all while waiting for a true Speedster frame of my own once the project was brought to life.

Fast forward to the present day, with only a few changes in the plan, production of the first small batch of Speedsters has been completed. The first batch is only six frames and two are already spoken for. This run is titanium, one size, medium/large-ish, and features internal dropper routing, two bottle mounts, and has Paragon Machine Works sliding dropouts for maximum versatility.

Black Sheep Bikes Speedster Quick Hits

Price: $3,750
Material: Titanium
Frame size: M/L (rider height 5-8” to 6-2” with leg inseam of 29-32″)
Wheel size: 29×2.6, boost spacing
Headtube angle: 67º with a 120 mm fork
Headtube angle: 66º with a 140 mm fork
Headtube size: 44mm
Bottom bracket: 73mm
Chainstay length: 440mm

Geometry

Compatible with 12-speed gearing, or singlespeed, and 120mm-140mm suspension fork, or a rigid fork of 510mm axle to crown. The Speedster is an all mountain ripper, bikepacking mule, and a timeless piece of art on wheels packed into one tried and true design.

Two batches will be made per year with no plans for steel yet, “but maybe, depending on interest” James said. “A small size and an XL size are in the works too for future batches, so getting feedback from potential interest in different sizing or material would be cool” he added.