David - done

Another Pinhead fork, too.

Super aggro long front center/slack/low/short chainstay 27.5+?

Another customer bike I'd like for myself. Damn you, Dave!

Dave also has the distinction of being the first to get a boost (110x15) spaced rigid fork. In his case it'll swap out with one of the fancy new Lyrik 27.5+ units. Yes, another dummy axle joins the fleet...

I think for steeps and technical riding, the aggro geometry and big tires is hard to beat. For getting big air? Less great - but Dave could run some 29x2.5 Minions for that kind of thing, should he choose.

A few leaves starting to fall/change!

Geometry below. All supertherm, all stealth, 148x12 with some offset for a dishless rear wheel, etc.

This is the *short travel setting* "XC" mode!

29+ and full suspension - BRAAP

Yes, correct saddle height. I'm a freak.

A few days ago I posted a quick picture of the bike I'm calling "BRAAP". I'll let you decide if that's an acronym, and if so, what it stands for (Big Rowdy Alces Alces Proletarian?) But I can say that taken as a whole, it stands for super, super fun. And yes, full custom full suspension frames are now officially available (priced the same as the Ventana/WW configuration for now at $2500 w/shock), drop me a line for details.

First, the basics. Here's the bike:

BRAAP!

The executive summary here: modern XC geometry, 100mm travel, lots of standover, pretty darn short stays, pretty darn low BB. Designed to just *barely* allow the use of a Thomson dropper post with the saddle clamped at full ~28 degree downward tilt.

I wanted a long-day go-anywhere bike that would be fun for exploring rough/undeveloped trails, as well as snappy and responsive enough to be fun on a lunch ride. It's built super beefy (all Supertherm all the time!) because 1) I wanted to be able to loan it out to buddies/customers without worrying about how big they were, and 2) I crash. Sometimes hard. There's also the fact that honestly, being a weight weenie about a 3" tire bike when you're approaching 40 and have 2 small kids is ridiculous. If I wanted to be faster I'd drink less beer and ride more. The complete bike weighs about 28 pounds with fairly nice but not crazy parts.

And, I'll be blunt: I got what I was going for. And then some (with some inevitable tradeoffs, of course). This is my favorite full suspension bike ever, and I must have owned 30 or so by now.

Loads of Chupacabra clearance

I'll do another post next week for those folks who are interested about the nitty-gritty of the swingarm and seatstays. Suffice to say for now that they're a mixture of straight-gauge 4130 and 304 stainless (for bearing fittings) along with a LOT of probably unnecessary work to attach everything to the dropouts (I'll use rockers next time and for customer bikes - much simpler/lighter/cleaner).

So, how does it ride?

In a word, it's like having a short-travel DH bike on the downhill, and a really capable (albeit not all that light) XC bike on the climbs. It has insane gobs of traction in even the worst off camber gravel type situations. It wheelies and manuals and pops around really nicely (though not as nicely as Stupidmobile, since that bike has a wheelbase that's almost 3" shorter!) It's extremely capable on steep terrain going up or down - no wander on slow techy climbs, tons of confidence on steep roll-ins and rough fast descents.

There are tradeoffs, of course:
-3" tires are pretty slow going uphill unless the terrain is really rough. You won't be getting any Strava PRs on your local dirt road climb on this bike.
-I wanted a very low bb, because I love how low bb bikes ride. In technical stuff when pedaling, pedal strikes can be pretty frequent (and potentially dangerous if you're going fast!)
-They are intact so far, but the bike demands to be ridden really fast on rough gnar, and I'm guessing I'll eventually shred my probably too-light Chupacabra tires.
-Chupacabras (and 100mm travel) aren't great for going off big drops or hitting big jumps at the bike park. To be fair, though, this bike was never intended to be a full-on DH sled and doesn't have the travel or geometry to be ridden that way.

Curved bridge next time!

Some people will also find the combination of larger tires and suspension to be just too much damping out of trail feedback - the ride can feel "numb" on smoother sections of trail and while you might be going really fast - in some cases it actually doesn't feel very fun because the bike is doing so much of the work. That's a line that everyone has to find for themselves, though, and on the trails I tend to like best (rough XC) this bike is perfect.

I'm pretty excited about this bike, not just because it's a blast to ride, but also because I can now do really fun and weird stuff with full suspension bikes (FS fatbike? FS 29er with 400mm chainstays? Super low/high/long/short/fat/whatever? All doable) and let the geek flag fly. Not everyone is going to prefer 29+ (or even fit on it) but that's the nice thing here - I can do 27.5+, 26+, 24" fatbike, 20", mixed wheel sizes... anything.

I'm not about to stop riding Stupidmobile (currently set up as a rigid singlespeed with, natch, a Chupacabra on the front) since Park City has a metric ton of trails that are way too smooth for any form of suspension at all. But when I wander into the shop, this is the bike I usually grab.

I love my job...

Backyard dual slalom

Gal's FR 29er

Sorry, I meant "enduro"

MUNI!

Another ~400 or so reasons to come visit and build a frame...

Quick weekend race report and new DH bike stuff

Out at the NMBS race at Park City, Fuentes was 18th and Yuki was (I think) 54th in the pro men's field.

Sarah and I stayed closer to home and raced the second Winter Park Series race - I got sprinted at the line (if you're going to have to finish on 1/4 mile of flat fire road, a 34x20 gear doesn't cut it, folks) and ended up 2nd, and Sarah won her category in expert for a second straight week. Best of all, we won some pint glasses, which is good because I've broken quite a few of ours in the last year or so. The course was fantastic, the turnout was killer (530 racers, and that doesn't even count the folks who dropped out and DNF'd!) and we went to our friend Aurora's place for homemade sushi and beer afterwards - you can't ask for a better day than that!

I didn't get any pictures, unfortunately. No racing this coming weekend, so I'm guessing we'll hit up Keystone for some DH riding.


Speaking of downhill bikes - I just got done building version 3.5. I was (and remain) very happy with the True Temper Supertherm (thanks Ben!) front triangle, but there was more lateral flex than I would like in the original rear end. After some surgery on the Shimano 105 bottom bracket that I was using, I realized that the crank shaft on the external bearing Shimano cranks runs on a PLASTIC sleeve - which requires a massive amount of contact area from the crank arm to be stiff enough to work. The sleeves with pinch bolts that I was using weren't providing enough area, and were actually digging into the plastic, causing a bit of noodlieness (though in all fairness, it was hardly noticeable to me when actually riding). Still, since my goal with this bike is to build something that I would (if I weren't a framebuilder) actually pay retail price for, and the original rear end wasn't cutting it. The super ghetto dropouts that I made from angle iron weren't so great either, and the whole thing was too wide - I hit my calves on the stays when pedaling (annoying), so I sat down and did some thinking about what to change. The original rear end went into the scrap bin last week, just so I'd have to get my butt in gear and build a replacement.


Here's the end result. The new bearing setup uses an 22mm axle FSA BMX bottom bracket (bearings are inside the shell, but it still uses a through-axle). The non-external bearing setup allows the rear end to be almost 20mm narrower, which solves the heel/calf clearance issue, and it also *doesn't use any plastic load-bearing parts*. That's key! The bearing races are steel and the cranks (or in this case, the sleeve clamps) press directly against them. Killer.


As you can see, I haven't really cleaned up the fillet brazing yet, nor had time to powdercoat the rear end. Apparently, my camera also decided to focus on everything *except* the bearing/axle/pivot setup, which was what I was trying to illustrate here. Hopefully you get the idea.


Ultra-ghetto angle iron drops were replaced with Surly Instigator dropouts (which happen to match up quite nicely with the stays) that I machined out to 12mm to accept the 12x150 hub.


I also shortened the effective chainstay length to 435mm (or about 17") from 450mm. I have a hard time telling the difference, but all the hotshot downhillers tell me that short stays are good on a DH bike, so what the heck. The only problem is that I want to run a front derailleur, and the el-cheapo LX e-type one on there now (the weird seat tube won't allow a conventional clamp-on setup) only gives the tire about 5mm of room. Doh. Whenever something more DH-appropriate than the Nevegal comes out, I will probably have to scrap (or heavily modify) the front derailleur. I imagine going to 1x9 wouldn't be so bad, but I'd like to have the granny option for when I want to ride uphill. The frame itself will take up to about a 29x3.0 without any problems, of course.

Oh, and for the record, the new rear end is SUPER stiff laterally. As good or better than any full suspension bike I've had. Weight might be a tiny bit more, but I've swapped some parts around as well, so it's hard to compare - the complete bike is still around 37 pounds, frame is about 10. Plenty light enough for what I want to do, which is mostly ride the chairlift up and haul ass back down. I'll try to post when Sarah and I plan to ride at Keystone this summer so that folks interested in a test ride can meet up with us.