Chris King News

News From Chris King: Many of you loyal blog readers will remember my mentioning that Chris King has a new "Mix and Match" headset program which I put to good use on my Pofahl Custom 29"er recently. Well now they have another new program that they have introduced called Wheels For Life in conjunction with mountain biking icon Hans Rey.

Basically, Hans is giving back by helping to provide bicycles to needy people in developing countries. Hans chose the colors based upon Chris King's ever popular "Dread Set" and because the colors are representative of Africa where Hans first realized the need for basic transportation for the people of that continent. Now Wheels For Life has spread out to include nations in Asia and South America, as well. Chris King states that Hans represents one of their longest running sponsorships and that supporting Wheels For Life was an easy decision based upon this history and this statement found on the Wheels For Life website:

"We keep our administrative costs and overhead as low as possible. 90 - 95% of the funds received are going towards buying bikes. Everybody in our charity works on a volunteer level for free. We only have to pay some minimal bookkeeping fees to our accountant. Hans Rey pays for all his charity related travel expenses out of his own pocket. We keep the costs down as much as we can, in order to buy more bikes."-Hans Rey

A portion of all profits from Wheels For Life products sold by Chris King goes to helping out this charity.



In other Chris King news, the problem with some 29"er frames not clearing Reba fork crowns, especially those equipped with Pop-Loc lock outs, has been addressed for those who use Chris King headsets. After seeing what folks were doing to modify base plates to help clear the fork/downtube interferance issues, Chris King has produced these steel base plates that add about 8mm to the crown of your fork to help get the fork crown knob controls to clear the down tube in the case of a crash.

You could also use one of these with a Chris King headset to slacken out your head angle a tad and use one of them fancy new longer offset forks out there now. Hmmm..........tuning options! Or, if you have monster, sausage-like digits, you could have yerself a fancy new stainless steel ring fer yer finger! Ha!

Me? I think I'll use this one to help a dusty ol' Reba I have in the Lab to clear the down tube of my '03 Campstove Green Karate Monkey, which is going to be revived as a single speed trail bike. Oh, yeah! That Wheels For Life headset will look good on that bike too, wouldn't it? Time to start saving my ducats!

Thanks to Chris DeStefano of Chris King for the info and the base plate! Chris and I have been missing meeting each other for about a year now, so it was finally good to have met him and to have gotten the personal run through on all of Chris King's new products at the Outdor Demo at Interbike. Thanks again, Chris!