The journey from small guy to teenager...

[Dodgy69]

Nice little thread this ( the journey ) .Keeping us informed of his progress, racing, etc, a few vids thrown in. Good work. I don't bother with any of the other cycling ones mind.

[weeksy]

Nice little thread this ( the journey ) .Keeping us informed of his progress, racing, etc, a few vids thrown in. Good work. I don't bother with any of the other cycling ones mind.

Thank you. It's a journey that's for sure.

[weeksy]

For the non insta people

[weeksy]

[weeksy]

[Crosshair]

Ha that's cool

[weeksy]

2023-01-16_07-56-26 by Steve Weeks, on Flickr

[weeksy]

Just been stripping down and sorting the older model Fury, the boy was riding it at Dyfi for 2 runs last week and felt it every now and again wasn't quite 'right'
For all the time we've owned it, i've never quite tracked down the cause/noise on the back end... it felt like a loose bushing but i was pretty sure it wasn't that. So i took the rear end apart, checking everything and fitted a new eyelet bushing, but still wasn't 100%.
I then noticed that the spacer that goes between the mount points on the shock has about 0.3mm of play, so you can move it very slightly when you put in just the spacer into the frame on the back mount point. A quick check of the spares box of suspension mounts and i had one that ended up being 0.5mm bigger.... so a quick 5 mins with a file and it now fits snugly.... Tried it all out with the shock in there and there's absolutely nothing...perfect.

I don't see this one lasting the year though in honesty as it's getting a litle small for the lad now i'd say. We did have a bite on it at the weekend at less money than i wanted, but i thought back to how @tracey helped us out, along with the kit/bike/hardware he's been given lately and I said yes to the deal as it was so his kid could go racing. But it looks like that may have gone sideways after all as a deal, so we're now sitting and waiting to see. It's no biggy though either way. Plus it forced me into making it a bit nicer lol.

2023-01-16_10-53-22 by Steve Weeks, on Flickr

[weeksy]

Well that was slightly interesting this morning. I was chatting with Rich Simpson at RSR Bikeworks. As i've mentioned before, he's the factory WC team suspension mechanic, supporting Jess Blewit, Ethan Craik and Wyn Masters. (bit of name dropping in there). Anyway, we were discussing the forks i bought and he said "well the Boxxer Selects are not that brilliant, they really need HSC etc"... I thought to myself "But they do have HSC." and sent him the pic.

It turns out they have a Charger damper installed. ROCKSHOX BOXXER CHARGER 2.1 RC2 DAMPER UPGRADE KIT (2019+)
https://www.tftuned.com/rockshox-boxxer ... 2019/p3593

Which it seems from the link above, is bloody expensive !!!! I don't feel as bad about the marks on the lowers now.

but going against the thoughts of @theotherjonv (sorry buddy) we're going to get them setup up with telemetry before race 1 on the 29th.
It get fancy tech installed both ends
2022-03-30_04-06-16 by Steve Weeks, on Flickr
2022-03-30_04-06-28 by Steve Weeks, on Flickr

Which produces fancy graphs, charts etc that is then read and interpreted by Rich to set up the suspension. He does me a cracking deal as we've got to know him well, so it's worth giving it a go.

[weeksy]

I got some settings pre-setup from RSR Bikeworks.

For info, here's where we were.
Air was 94psi
LSC was 3 clicks out
HSC was -2 (3 click max)
REbound was -13

Here's what he said to try to start with, one part we can't get sorted in time which was 3 volume spacers, i don't know how many if any we have in there as i don't have the right socket to disasemble these.
For info,
Air 106psi
LSC 11 clicks out
HSC -3 (3 click max)
REbound 11 from fully in

So the bike has been set to that for the weekend. But just in case, this will tell me where to set back to if i need until we get it fully configured.

[weeksy]

To add a somewhat air of complexity it seems we've now got a different suspension crew onboard.... As always i think we need to wait until we get the bike and get the work done before we can put on media, but it'll mean free servicing/repairs on his suspension. We've not confirmed yet if it'll cover the DH bike, but the rear shock being an XFusion wouldn't be covered by them anyway as not many places service XFusion shocks. But it'll be another chunk of 'stuff' that's being covered.. it's still all a little bonkers.

It does however show the downside of all of this at times, more for 'bigger' riders i expect, but even for the little guys. Can do this, don't do that, can post this, can't post that. It makes it all a bit weird at times for both me and him. Post XYZ on Instagram, work out the target audience and who we're allowed/not allowed to @ or # etc... Hopefully it's not all going to get a bit much for the boy, i think he's got his head around it all.

[weeksy]

Well barring any issues, it looks like the blue Fury is sold at the weekend.

It's a bit sad in some ways as it was his first DH bike and his first race win as well as first podium. So it's actually got a bit of an attachment to both me and the lad. But arguably it's a fraction small for him and he's only going to get bigger so selling it makes a lot of sense.

The replacement plan... well, lets see how much sense that makes hahahaa.

[weeksy]

The blue Fury is now sold and we can move onto plan B.

In the list are 3 bikes.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/125718055199
Above one is £1600

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/385263345687
above is £2000

https://www.pinkbike.com/buysell/3489979/
above is roughly £2100 (i'm trying to talk him into £2000)

So they're all as you see, GT Furys, later model than the blue one that's sold. They're all in a size Large as i think that'll potentially suit him by say the end of the year as he's growing.
The logic/plan is that we end up with a completely swappable bike for his blue one should anything break/happen on a given race weekend.
The Pinkbike Fury comes with air forks and shock, which is fairly interesting, but adds in some complexity of setting up, although we could always use the forks/shock that are currently on his purple bike.
Both of the other 2 run the Xfusion front and rear, which isn't an issue at all and he quite likes... but again, if we need to use the bike we'd have the option of swapping bouncy bits from the purple bike which is set up for him.

The discussion of 'do you really need a 2nd DH bike' doesn't really come into play, it's within the budget and there's no real reason to not have a 2nd bike to take. So it's more a question of "do we go for a Large" and "which one of the 3"

[weeksy]

So the blue GT went and the new bike is collected


2023-01-21_06-50-07 by Steve Weeks, on Flickr

29er front end
Hope brakes
Boxxer Forks
Bomber CR shock
Halo wheels

We'll see how it rides tomorrow

[G.P]

^^^^ Does he like it?

[weeksy]

^^^^ Does he like it?

Well it's been a bit of a morning. We drove from Aberdare to forest of Dean and got bikes out to ride. Went to get our riding stuff out and we'd left it in the hotel car park. So 80 mins back to hotel and it was now 12 instead of 10. So we came home.
Currently in woods testing it now

[G.P]

^^^^ Does he like it?

Well it's been a bit of a morning. We drove from Aberdare to forest of Dean and got bikes out to ride. Went to get our riding stuff out and we'd left it in the hotel car park. So 80 mins back to hotel and it was now 12 instead of 10. So we came home.
Currently in woods testing it now

LOLZ

At least your stuff was recovered?

[weeksy]

2023-01-22_01-52-36 by Steve Weeks, on Flickr

[weeksy]

^^^^ Does he like it?

Well it's been a bit of a morning. We drove from Aberdare to forest of Dean and got bikes out to ride. Went to get our riding stuff out and we'd left it in the hotel car park. So 80 mins back to hotel and it was now 12 instead of 10. So we came home.
Currently in woods testing it now

LOLZ

At least your stuff was recovered?

Yes. But not our pride

[weeksy]

Lots of discussions with the boy after his riding, it seems he really really likes the mullet feel. Which is interesting because currently it's 'wrong'

Why is it wrong you ask.. well, you don't but maybe you think it slightly.

The answer is that the previous owner didn't have quite the correct logic. He stuck in the 29er headset cup (we had loads of spare headset cups, including 3.5deg offset. That would have been fine if he'd put in a 29er back end and wheel too. But because he's running as a mullet with a standard headset, the back end is lowered and the head angle too slack.

2023-01-22_05-58-22 by Steve Weeks, on Flickr

2023-01-22_05-58-07 by Steve Weeks, on Flickr

The answer is that you get a 2deg offset headset
https://www.workscomponents.co.uk/20-de ... e-59-p.asp

Just like that. The boy actually seemed happy with the head angle as it was today.... but it still should be 'right' so i've got one of these ordered up.

Happily i checked the current headset bearing and they were knackered anyway
2023-01-22_05-58-13 by Steve Weeks, on Flickr

Apart from that, the Hopes are 'better' and stronger than the GuideR's.... Which won't be a massive shock to many but he does love the Guides... I think he may now love the Hopes more lol.. Oh dear.. we know where that's going.

So i think the long and short is that we're going to be running a mullet and getting the mulet bike setup next weekend not the 27.5 as we'd planned. It's also going to mean that the 27.5 Boxxer forks are going to be up for sale as will the 27.5 Xfusions potentially (although i may keep those for selling the bike longer term putting back to standard). But for sure the Boxxers will be on their way out and replaced by some 29er forks. I'll then need a 29x20 boost front wheel to match, but all of this is just something 'for the future', however as we know, in my world, things escalate and happen quickly at times... but it'll be a couple of weeks so he can test, try and practice on both bikes for now.