Just thought I'd do a short write-up on my Alien after owning it for a few months.

THE GOOD: Alien brought to the market what people have been asking for for years. A lugged steel frame with true track geometry at a somewhat decent price. The bike is your basic no-frills classic-influenced track bike, with tight clearances, 74.5 HT/ST, short chainstays and low rake. The front end has just barely enough room to allow a clip-on fender with 700x23's.

One thing I like a lot about the bike is the way it handles - at a decent cruising speed, it responds well to hand-steering (as opposed to leaning) and feels 'natural' while riding through crowded spaces, whatever that means. Making a U-turn on this bike is a lot easier than my cross bike and can be done in a tighter space, if you ever feel the need to do such a thing.

The BB drop is enough that pedal strike has never been an issue, though I also run 165's. I much prefer this bike in the city to my slacker cross bike, though out on the road is another story.

If you look at the geometry of this bike as a whole, it's pretty similar to the early 90's Cdale track, atleast in size 55.

THE BAD: First off, the track ends aren't parallel to the ground which effectively means you're slightly changing the geometry of the whole bike depending on where you have your rear axle seated in the ends.

The lugs are a little "off" in alignment too, which leads me to believe that the overall alignment of the frame isn't finished up to par in comparison to say, a Japanese keirin frame. Can I feel it while riding? No. Just something to consider.

The bottom bracket shell has decorative holes in it, possibly for drainage, but in my experience, after road grime started building up inside there, the drivetrain proceeded to make a lot of random clicking noises while riding which bothered the hell out of me. Taking out the bottom bracket, cleaning/re-greasing the threads and taping up the holes in the shell helped alleviate this ailment though.

The frame/fork are on the fairly heavy side but it's steel so I'm sure most people don't have weight as their top priority. Of course, the 4130 CrMo does stand up to street riding and locking up well. My bike built up to be just a hair under 20lb with Open Pro CD's.

Finally, the BB area is a bit flexy and I can feel it while accelerating seated riding 53x19, but more apparently so in 53x17. My KHS was definitely stiffer. This isn't really much of an issue on the street but bothers me a little mentally. If you have stiffness as a priority, I would look elsewhere, but if you want a nice lugged steel track frame, the Alien should be on your list.

A LAST WORD: Customer service is top notch at Alien. If Joseph wasn't so great in answering my questions, I may have looked elsewhere, but he was on point and helpful in his responses. Also, the fact that he let us do a group buy is really cool and I'm thankful for it.