BMX Breakdown: Sunday Model C Pro

Image via Complex Original

Cruisers? Aren't they for old people? Not necessarily. If your only experience with 24-inch wheels are race cruisers and department store mountain bikes, you should definitely check out the Sunday Bikes Model C. Check the gallery as Sunday Bikes owner and pro Jim Cielencki gives us a little of the backstory of the 2011 Model C Pro. And if you like what you see, you can pick one up here for $850.

"All the guys are a little skeptical about the Model C at first because they’re so enamored by the 20 inch. But a lot of people in BMX get on it, and then they understand. I feel like a drug dealer, because when someone goes ‘oh, there’s the 24,’ I put it in your hands and you ride it, and most people have judged it and they’ve discounted it or have a negative opinion of it, but they ride it and they understand. Because there’s never been anything like this. They don’t have anything to go off of. They get on and they go oh, OK, I get it. And they’re pretty open to it."

“Ben [Ward, then of Odyssey] talked to us about it, he said ‘hey, what about this?’ and I don’t know exactly what the idea was, but I just envisioned doing handrails on a cruiser for some reason? Remember when [Matt] Beringer did a handrail on the 16-inch? And it was like, that’s funny, that was awesome. And then it was like, what if you do it on a cruiser? All the cruisers I ever rode, they were really low – they were all race-style, so you couldn’t really do anything on it? You didn’t want to do anything, because you’re like, ugh, it’s a race bike. I was into the idea, all right, let’s do it. And then once we got it together — being an older guy, and especially coming from a skateboarding background, I’m a huge fan of Mark Gonzales. I saw what he did, and it was sort of can you do all of your same tricks on something else? I wonder whether I can do everything on a 24?"

"When we did the bike, when we did the frame, the only way it would work would be if we had good wheels and good tires with it. Especially the wheels – where would you get a good 24-inch rim? A good one. I’m sure there’s good ones out there, but not for what we’re trying to do. And the [Odyssey] rims came at the same time the frames came. Tires came a little later, but the rims were the most important. Otherwise it’s all regular BMX parts, it’s all 20-inch parts except for the frame, fork, bars — but now that we’re going up to 8-inch bars you can run normal bars on it — and just rims, tires and tubes, that’s the only things. I still use the same size cranks I use on my 20. That’s another thing, it’s pretty cool that — it feels like a 20 because the bars are the exact same dimensions, my feet feel the same on the pedals, nothing weird like that. People get on it and say it feels like a 20, and it is, just a little larger."

"It’s just a scaled-up 20, so the geometry was pretty much right from the start. The original ones had longer back ends, but we raised the bottom bracket so it made up for the longer back ends? The back end was nowhere near as long as a race one, but it was still long compared to a 20-inch. With the Wave C we’ve shortened it about as far as it can go. And, I personally love it, because I can throw it around. All the spinning tricks — I 3-whipped it, flaired it, 720ed it. You look at mountain bike guys, they can do all that stuff too, so it’s not that big of a leap, but for some reason BMX cruisers never made that leap because they had that race geometry."

Sunday Model-C with Jim Cielencki on pinkbike.com

"We do a Model C Ex, which is an introductory level — it’s a pretty good, solid bike. It’s a first level, guys get into it and experience the Model C. Then there’s the Model C Pro, which is a higher-end, for a guy who doesn’t want to build a bike from scratch, but he wants a good parts kit. He can get this bike, the parts kit is amazing, It’s a really good solid, strong rider to continue riding the 24. It’s the same frameset — the same dimensions — but a different quality frame. We offer an aftermarket frame with even more bells and whistles — more heat treating, hollow dropouts, Wave tubing, chain tensioners built in — there’s just a lot more effort that goes into that one. The guy with the Model C Pro who says ‘I want to upgrade my frame kit,’ and he can go to the Wave C and just put the parts package from the Model C Pro on the Wave C frame, and it’s just like a super high-end 20-inch bike at that point."