Product

ECLAT AK GUARD SPROCKET – REVIEW

The boys at Éclat often come up with products that are a little bit different from the norm. The Eclat AK Guard Sprocket is one of said products – an 8mm thick alloy sprocket with a removable, replaceable 10mm thick plastic guard? Yes.

Éclat, started in 2008, is a parts company run by the same guys as Wethepeople. They say that simplicity is at the heart of their approach to product design, and that they’re constantly moving forward and pushing the boundaries to create innovative and exciting BMX parts that last longer than ever.

“With its plastic guard, can the Eclat AK Guard Sprocket open up the possibility of a whole new world of grind combinations…?”

Put simply, they know what they’re doing. Their design work is always on point, their videos are awesome and their team absolutely shreds. With the likes of Ty Morrow, Devon Smillie, Alex Kennedy, Dan Coller and Sean Burns (to name but a few) running Éclat parts, you know you can count on them.

Debuted at the annual Interbike event in 2015, the Eclat AK Guard Sprocket was a pretty talked about product. If you’ve seen the Éclat AK pedals, you’ll be able to see where they got the idea from. Those pedals feature replaceable bodies that run on bushings, with a nice big, strong spindle. Éclat took these design elements and applied them to a full guard sprocket, and the result is what we have here.

The nylon-fibreglass guard mounts onto the 6061-T6 alloy sprocket with four bolts, but these bolts don’t take the strain when you choose to put that bashguard to the test. Cleverly, it’s sunken into the structure of the sprocket so it’s supported from all angles. Genius.

The material Éclat have chosen to use for the guard part is obviously meant for grinding. They claim this can open up the possibility of a whole new world of grind combinations… Let’s see!