Downhill bike part 4... closer

Here's a shot of her, getting moderately close to being actually rideable. As you can see, there's no drivetrain on there yet, the rear shock is missing, and there's a tire issue on the front, but I anticipate that I'll be ready to roll once I have my new shock (a bottom of the barrel Marzochhi air unit) from BTI tomorrow.


I built a new brake arch for this Y2K Marzocchi Junior T, so that it'll clear a 29" wheel (the lower crown has been moved up as well, enough that this fork will work with a 2.5"+ 29er tire). Not pretty, not light, but workable for now. The fork itself is actually quite nice - 5" of relatively plush open-bath travel, a 20mm axle for some extra stiffness, and a nice bolt-on disc mount (picture below of the hilarious 2-adapter brake setup). I actually had one of these forks (albeit the QR version, not the 20mm) on my *first* ever downhill bike - a 5" travel Mrazek that was pretty much the biggest piece of crap ever. The fork was great, though, until I turned it into a pretzel doing a largish jump/drop on the old Stickline trail at Beaver Creek. Let's hope this one does better...