(upbeat music) - These are two absolutely
insane custom mountain bikes. This is a downhill bike, and this is a trail bike. That's not that uncommon. Plenty of people have
mountain bikes custom built to their specifications, but these bikes are not
owned by plenty of people. They're owned by Neko Mulally, who is a professional downhill racer competing at the highest level. He has been sponsored by the
likes of Trek, YT, Intense. Neko could ride for whoever he wants, but he instead gave up
the bikes, the paycheck, the security, and all the other things that come along with riding
for a big bike company to spend his own money building this. And today, we're gonna find out what would possess him to do that. (upbeat music) - I'm Neko Mulally, and I'm a
professional mountain biker, specifically a professional
downhill mountain bike racer. I've raced for various
race teams my whole career, and I learned a lot from
riding for all those pro teams. And I've become super passionate about mountain bikes and the design of it. - And now you don't have a sponsor. Now that burden is on you? - [Neko] Marketing, race
team, the engineering team, I'm wearing all those hats. - And so it's fun for you? - It's super fun. There's definitely a lot
of hard work involved, but it's super gratifying
when it all comes together. I guess the negative side is
there's a lot on my plate, but the positive is that I can do it exactly the way I want to. (upbeat country rock music) - [Seth] Is that scary? - I wouldn't say it's scary. I'd say it's exciting. Definitely, last year with
the first year of the project, I had been finding out a lot
of the failures with the bike. So I had cracked a lot of frames, and at one point, I'd
gotten to my last spare and had to race a world
cup with a cracked frame, and that was pretty scary. (upbeat country rock music) - So after you kind of thought it through and like actually built a frame, what was the first one like? - I actually have in the
van. Do you wanna see it? - Yeah. (funky twang music) - So this is the first one. - Holy crap. - You can see these bolts are like what you could buy at Ace. - [Seth] I know, it's literally hardware store stuff. - Yeah, and because it was the first one, I didn't wanna spend a ton of
money on those fine details before I knew that it worked. This was just like a proof of concept. And then once that I
knew that it worked well, then I went back to all the refinements. - [Seth] These are the other ones, huh? - Yeah, so this is the one that had developed a little stress crack, and it made it just to the
finish line on my final run. So, and this was the
first steel one I made. It's made of Reynolds Steel. - Wait, this is steel? - Yeah, this one's pretty heavy. - How many downhill racers at your level are racing steel bikes? - No, none of them. I was the only one at the
last race on a steel bike. - [Seth] So wouldn't you think maybe there's a reason they don't? - Yeah, but I wonder if that
reason isn't for performance. It's for the brand they're riding for. - [Seth] So because you have the freedom to do whatever you want, like why not? - Exactly, it's an experiment, and I'll learn something from it. It's very comfortable. It has some positive attributes. My teammate Asa said it best. My dad would really like this bike. But it also has some negative attributes. That comfort also comes with a
price of efficiency and flex. - So this one over here
looks like it's steel too. Is this like the next version? - Yeah, this is the most
refined steel bike I made. It has a nonadjustable straight
head tube to save weight. And then also the shock mount
is a 3D-printed steel mount that's in the position that I preferred with no adjustability. - Why are we only seeing half frames? Like where's the rest of it? - So these are just front
triangles or mainframes, and I have the rear ends up here. I can show you. - This is made of plastic. - Yeah, so this is a 3D-printed proof of what my rear end would look like. We started with a aluminum one like I showed you on the first bike. And when you have a lot
of pieces welded together, everything can kind of move a little bit when it gets heated up. So I have the idea to make
it outta carbon fiber, and there's a lot of
expensive upfront tooling to make carbon fiber parts. So before you open that mold, they send you a 3D-printed
proof of what it'll look like, and you can even bolt it up
and fit it onto your bike. - It's still like you can't just ride it. And so you have to look at it and say, "Yeah, here's 10 grand,"
or whatever, right? - 25. - Oh. - So this is then the finished version. It's a carbon fiber
chainstay and seat stay. Making all the moving parts lighter makes your suspension feel better 'cause you don't have
the inertia of the weight moving back and forth
with your suspension. And when you're racing, you're
going for marginal gains. So I don't know if it's
worth 25 grand better ride, but it definitely helps. (upbeat music) - [Seth] You do not see a bike that looks like this every day? - Yeah, this is the one I've
been racing this season. This is an aluminum frame. It's not changed a whole
lot from the very first one as far as ride quality. Because I took notes from
every bike I've ever raced. The construction's way better. The stiffness of the
chassis is what I want. And if it's easier to make, it's easier to make it
precise and repeatable. - Right, you need more than one. You don't wanna be in that situation where you had the cracked tube that you were forced to race, right? - Yeah, exactly. As a racer, we have lots of spares, and really handmade bikes
have that handmade factor where they could all
be a little different, but to try to make them
as precise and consistent from frame to frame as possible is more getting into the
manufacturing process than actually the frame anymore. - So you've pretty much made
like the production-ready bike. And I see over here it says Frameworks. What's Frameworks? - Frameworks is the name of the project. In the beginning, I
was kind of anti-brand. I didn't want a name or logo to overpower the substance of the project. - So nobody can buy these bikes, but it almost has like a
bike company surrounding it. But you're the only person
who's allowed to ride them. - Yeah, if you want to
have a racing machine, it needs to have all those things. It's a lot easier to go to the race with Frameworks racing next
to your name then unattached. - Has it given you the benefits
that you were hoping for? - Absolutely. This project has been a
dream for me to work on. I absolutely love to dive into all these details of the bike, and working with brands,
it's always a compromise. With this, it's all on me, and if it's good, I can be proud, and if it's bad, I'm
the only one to blame. And actually the downhill
bike isn't the only bike that Frameworks makes anymore. (upbeat music) This is the first iteration
of a trail bike for me, and I'm really happy with it. It's pretty heavy. It uses a lot of the same
tubing as the downhill bike. It's 39 pounds as it sits. So I think I can refine it,
make it a little lighter. But overall, the ride quality is awesome. Like it goes downhill. More like a downhill bike than any other trail
bike I've ever ridden. (upbeat music) As downhill riders, we spend way more time riding trail bikes than we do our downhill bikes. The majority of our training,
whether it be base miles or just getting intervals in,
we ride these trail bikes. And if I was spending so much
time per week riding one, I thought it'd be pretty cool to make my version of the trail bike. (chill music) - So you have a downhill
bike that you like. You've refined the rear triangle. You've got it so you can
make it consistently. And you've built an enduro bike that's pretty much ready to go. What does the future hold? Like are you trying to
build a bike company or? - I wouldn't say my priority with starting this was to sell bikes. I wanted to make bikes
that I was proud of, bikes that I love to ride. And if it was up to me,
I'd never sell anything. You could just keep doing experiments and tinkering with my bikes. But I think to be able to sustain, keep doing that in the future, we will offer some small runs of bikes, and it'd be awesome to
see other people out enjoying the bikes the same way I do. - So there you have it. Neko gave up having a bike sponsor and everything that comes along with it to start a bike company that
only makes bikes for Neko. I feel like that's what
everybody says they're gonna do when they're just talking. "If I was a pro downhill
racer, duh duh," and then they don't do it. Neko's doing it, and he has
also opened two bike parks. We're here at Kanuga, and
there's also Rock Creek. He's also got a YouTube channel documenting everything about Frameworks. I'm gonna link to it in the description. I hope you found this fascinating. If you didn't learn anything today, I hope you at least
found this entertaining. Thanks for riding with me today,
and I'll see you next time. (upbeat music)
