See, working with kids has been Sugar Bear’s MO all along. I’d dare anyone to shake this man’s solid, centered presence.Īs for the moniker, “It just stuck,” he said with a sense of pleasure. They figured he could swoop in and put things straight, like the Sugar Bear cereal hero, and I figure those kids were right. Sugar Bear got his nickname from the kids he worked with in a youth probation program. That’s the only difference between then and now,” he said. Later when we had to add them I made the downtubes 1-3/4” wider. (When magazines wanted to show Bear’s bikes but wouldn’t agree to put his picture in too, he just said no-and 25 years passed without recognition in print.) The Sugar Bear springer you buy today is the same unaltered unit Bear made then, with one difference: “Back then we didn’t have front brakes. And so it went, up to the forty over bike that finally got some industry notice in 1977 from Street Chopper. “Someone saw it and said, ‘I want a twelve over.’ Next guy wanted to beat that and wanted a twenty over,” he said. The first extended springer he made, over four decades ago, mind you, was eight over. “The devil is in the details,” is all he’d say. The engineering is substantially more complicated, but Bear’s not talking. “I just smile when I hear that,” he added, smiling of course. “Interesting enough, everyone thinks the rockers are the key, but more plays into it than just the rockers,” he explained.
You’re never fighting the weight of the bike so it’s easy to steer.” “The frame never moves as you turn the front end. Why? “It’s geometry, it’s math,” Bear explained. They’re so well balanced I park my bike, leave the front end angled, and it’s just like that when I come back to it.”Īnd running an extended front end doesn’t mean you need wide bars for turning leverage not if it’s a Sugar Bear front end anyway. “My front ends are the only ones that work,” said Bear. That’s remarkable, we say.Ĭlearly, there’s a solid foundation here. And here’s a record worth recognizing: “I’ve not had one fail or returned since I started making them,” he said. “It ain’t broke,” he smiled.Įvery component down to the bolts on each of Bear’s “babies” is hand fabricated from bar stock except for the springs, which are sourced locally near Bear’s central L.A. “I didn’t sell one till I got it just right,” he said, and since then there’s been no need to change a thing. What else? Just Bear’s two steady hands and the solid, unwavering engineering he’s built in from the time he began experimenting in 1969. Each front end is hand made, one at a time, by Sugar Bear himself using a mill, lathe and welder he’s had for decades. And they’re not production pieces, either. Sugar Bear Springers are made in the USA alright, and they have been since the first one left the shop in 1972. The geometry of biking: if it ain’t long, it’s wrong
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