“not claws” ahhhh yeah bike park hands.
Looking forward to hearing more thoughts on the build.
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I meant to respond to this part specifically earlier, but wanted to wait until I had something better to say than “golly, me too”. The bmx influence was deliberate, so I’m really glad that comes across. Plain fun is definitely the goal, I’m not super serious about racing or anything like that, I just wanna play, and I’m kinda terrible at big features, so maximizing the entertainment value of small-medium stuff is my bread and butter.
Ok. Several thoughts. Sorry. Buckle up, this might get long.
It’s absolutely bananas! I absolutely love the upright stance, I can grab quick back stretches without getting into unsafe positions, so my lower back doesn’t get as fatigued. Thats a huge improvement.
It doesn’t pedal bob or brake jack at all that I can notice. Last year’s frame had something like 210% anti rise, or something dumb, and basically turned into a hardtail when I grabbed a handful of rear brake. This one has about 140% static and it drops off quick as it goes into the travel, so it dips into the travel a little but doesn’t feel like it’s stiffening up the rear.
I love how short it is, berms and junk are so much easier when i don’t have to pick which end of the bike to weight. Despite being so short and having such a high bb (+50mm) it feels incredibly planted, I’m blown away how fast i can push it into berms and how hard i can lay it over without feeling like I’m gonna lose it. The multiple pounds of solid steel hardware clustered around the bottom bracket probably help wirh that, the center of gravity feels like it’s about 3" underground.
I don’t know if its just illusion of speed, but it feels faster everywhere. I assumed it would feel quicker through twisty stuff, and it does, but it also feels faster when I can get it out in the open and just let off the brakes. It accelerates quickly and seems to just keep putting speed on. It’s fun. It also doesn’t feel twitchy or unstable at irresponsible speeds, I’m pleasantly surprised.
The eye-crometer says its the straightest thing I’ve ever built, and the thrust washers keep the rear laterally stiff but super easy to break free. Its awesome, it throws little schralps with just a hip flick, stupid fun. Since its all metal on metal, there’s a little slop in a couple places. That all compounds when I lift the rear end and it does clack a little. I’ve decided it’s racecar and that makes it not annoying. The only time I noticed it was off certain jump lips I can hear and feel it unload and click, then clack a little when it hits the landing. I made a video so you can see what I mean.
It’s harder than a coffin nail and i love it.
It does not reward riding the fork like I’m used to on a longer bike, the rear is so short (390mm) that it gets really…active if I don’t ride it like I mean it. However, if i drop my heels hard, hang out the back a little and let the suspension eat, it smashes tech much better than I anticipated. It’s so short that I don’t feel like the fork is gonna wash out if I’m actively weighting the rear, the 29er rolls over everything and the rear 26 just kinda skips along the top, it’s a riot to point and shoot super choppy sections that I’d actively avoid on the brake-jack mobile. If I lose momentum, I can feel the 26 hole hunting and getting a little hung up but that’s not a deal breaker at all.
I have this thing where I think a sign of cool stuff is if you can get your moving parts really close to each other without hitting, use every bit of space you have, and no more.
I was so close.
Whats a little downtube/coil spring contact between friends? Damn it, just a little too close. At bottom out, that spring and that tube just touch. It’s not dented, just chipped the paint. I’m considering fixes. Pobody’s nerfect, amiright?
Ok. That’s enough for today, thanks for letting me ramble…
tldr; it’s awesome.
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hell yeah
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Mr Spring to Mr Downtube “rubbin’s racing, get over it”.
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Days of Thunder quotes are always welcome! I’m waffling between making a new rocker and picking the rear of the shock up 2-3 mm, and pretending I never saw it 
I can spare a few mm of rear travel and a percent or so of leverage ratio if it means it’s not gonna destroy itself, we’ll see.
I ended up with both of these in the living room today (your bikes go in the living room, right?) and couldn’t resist setting this up.
Thats my Cult Biggie, it used to have a 21.8 top tube, but I chopped 3/4" out of it so it’s 21ish right there. I can look through the axle on the cult bike and see the axle bolt on the park bike perfectly, so they’re as close to corrected for wheel size as I can make them and that’s just silly 
What a ridiculous bike. Who would make this? 
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I’d say make new rockers. New rockers can address the rubbin and the race car click. Could go laser cut flat plate then press in bearings.
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I kinda like the metal on metal racecar noise. It sounds like durability, and to be a total dork, real hardcore racecars use solod metal rod ends and stuff and i think that’s cool. These rockers have 4130 bushings pressed in everywhere and the little rattle is a fair trade for never breaking.
I’ll probably just make a new set. This was only $18 worth of aluminum and a few hours of coffee drinking, in hand and ready to test same day. It’s probably $57 worth of aluminum now, but whatever.
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If this isn’t enlightenment… 
.
Thanks for sharing the ramble.
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Something like that
It’s funny, I hate a rattle or squeak or creak but this doesn’t annoy me. Maybe because it doesn’t sound like something loose or wrong, it just sounds serious. I dunno. Thanks for reading that whole mess.
In other news, digging through some shit I found the 15mm end caps for the 27.5" front wheel that was on the black bike and…
29 front
27.5 front
The plot sickens. I’ll run it with the 170mm 29er fork to keep that big axle to crown I like so much. I can’t decide if this would be better or worse this way, I’m betting worse but its worth a shot. It will be fun to be able to swap back and forth, depending on how each one handles.
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Clearance
I opened linkage to move that shock mount just a little and realized my first link was made for a shorter shock, because I’m very smart. I had moved it a few times trying to buy space at the downtube and guess I forgot to correct the shock length. Dumb shit.
It clears everything now (just barely) and actually looks like it’s a good bit more progressive just based on the starting position of the shock. It was supposed to be around 13% but it felt stiffer, I bet im actually in that neighborhood now. It’s as close to 150mm of travel as I can measure. Fingers crossed it works.
I’m trying for a park trip next weekend, gonna try to get some video
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I made friends with some wildlife
Burned some stuff
I kept up with a youth, outran someone in my age bracket and saw a golden eagle. Other than the hour in the parking lot of an Autozone changing a broken thermostat housing, it was a damn good couple days.
I’ve got a good deal of footage, I’ll put something longer together soonish. Probably.
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Couple things. For some reason, this frame is much lighter on the fork than the previous one. I know the steeper head tube angle adds some spring rate and I’m wondering if the high bb distributes weight differently, maybe because its short and I ride the rear more than the previous frame…whatever it is, I’ve been leaving about 40mm of fork travel on the table, so my 170 coil fork is acting like a 130mm. I went down a spring rate to a medium, I’m right between springs, weight wise, and in the past have preferred going down in rate at that point, so i did. Huge difference in the living room bounce test, I’m excited to see how it behaves on the mountain.
Ive got some 1/2 thrust washers so I can tighten and lock tite the pivot hardware. It was loosening itself a little just in use, thrust washers will help.
In other news, I finally got my permit stuff for my shop sorted out so I got a ramp put in and got started on sone walls, not really bike related but, goddamn I’m stoked to have a spot to work.
I’ve also got 35 minutes of bike park pov “action” that im almost done with. Basically just 2 laps down angel fire, I usually hate my videos but I kinda like this one. That should be done pretty soon. Anyhoo…
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Less load on the fork makes sense if the rear on this one is significantly shorter than the last bike.
Sorry for poor quality, it’s a quick doodle on my phone but the closer your weight is to the rear wheel, the more load it’ll take and the less goes to the front wheel. The ball with the cross is center of gravity and the arrows on the wheels are the resulting forces that your wheel have to put into the bike to hold it up.
That’s why upright Dutch city bikes have a long ass rear end, otherwise there’s too little weight on the front wheel because on those bikes you don’t lean forward.
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It is quite a bit shorter, that makes a bunch of sense, thanks. And I love the drawing.
And I made this whole thing for, like, 2 of you here that might watch it, so…go check it out. It’s basically 2 laps down Angel Fire, I think it’s worth checking out just for the view. There’s more wind noise than I’d like in the first half, it gets way better in the second half, so be patient. Anyway, here’s wonderwall.
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hell yeah
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So, speaking to your youtube comment, I’m going at least once a month for the next 4 months and twice in September. My season pass comes with 2 buddy passes for 50% off lift tickets and I’ve got no buddies. If you ever found yourself up there, you’re welcome to one. It’s worth going once, especially if youre planning on escaping our fine state at some point in the future.
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that’s very generous of you! my only mountain bike is a fully rigid kona unit, i’m hoping to pick up a fork for it at some point but riding glorieta rigid has shown me that underbiking is cool and all but not really that much fun on legit mountain bike trails.
but man, i wanna get out there. if/when i get a fork i’ll hit you up for sure!
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