PDC Racing at Interbike - The 2004 DH-One

Tucked away in a corner of the Interbike show floor this year was PDC Racing. Their shiny new booth housed their pair of shiny new DH-One bikes (actually one was a carefully detailed new bike, it was seen days earlier playing in the dirt at the Outdoor Demo) that will make their debut for the 2004 model year.The DH-One represents a culmination of effort for PDC; for the last three years they have plucked their design from carefully calculated CAD images, manufactured, built up and tested a 9 inch travel downhill race bike that will be sure to share the limelight with the current big names on the circuit.


At the heart of the PDC design is a super low centre of gravity, so low in fact that it’s almost as if the bike will stand up on its own. It isn’t light; after all it is a downhill rig, though with the COG where it’s at, that weight serves to keep the bike stable and glued to the line you choose. With the DH-One’s unique top tube/bottom tube mated front “triangle” there is gobs of stand over height, and combined with the low COG the rider has plenty of leverage to throw the bike around, a trait that is especially noticeable when ripping through tight turns, bermed or not.


The 9 inch progressive travel swing arm linkage has been engineered to cancel out pedal forces yet still react to rapid terrain changes. To keep the joints moving and easy to maintain, it also utilizes sealed and greaseable needle bearing pivots, and features a neutral floating disc brake mount.

On the drive side reciprocating power is turned to rotary through an FSA 100mm bottom bracket and the chain is kept on the big ring with any guide that meets the ISCG mount system (the show machine had an e.thirteen dedicated to this task). The chain line is maintained through out the swing arm’s range of travel with an adjustable idler and at the business end the rear wheel is kept turning throughout the abuse through a 160mm Hadley hub.

2004 DH-ONE	Small-Medium	Medium-Large
Head Angle	66.5 deg.	66.5 deg.
Seat Angle	68 deg.	68 deg.
Top Tube Length	558mm/22"	584mm/23"
BB Height	371mm/14.6"	371mm/14.6"
Chain Stay Length	445mm/17.5"	445mm/17.5"

Production bikes will see a 3" stroke Romic shock suspending the back end, with a customer specific tuned Avalanche shock as an option. The only other modification to the production run is that the seat stays will be elevated slightly from their front pivot up and back to the rear pivot so that there is additional clearance for the chain to run.

The DH-One frame complete with Romic shock, 160 mm Hadley rear hub and floating brake kit will retail for about $3200 CAD. PDC is currently establishing a dealer network; if you can’t wait you can always pick one up from them direct at their website: www.PDCRacing.com

Soon to follow will be a full review of the DH-One here on Pinkbike, so stay tuned.