The journey from small guy to teenager...

[MingtheMerciless]

Keep us updated on the Mavens.

[weeksy]

Most happy with them, no issues. He wants a minor rebleed as he wants the levers closer and harder rather than how he had the RSC. But that's a setup/preference thing more than an issue.

[weeksy]

Today was Dyfi and i decided to take the boys Gen6 Fuel, why you may ask.... well, it's more suited to Dyfi than my Gen5 arguably. I couldn't be bothered fitting the spare wheels with Kryptotals on so i went with the Bontrager XR5s. They were happy and fine, but i do really find Dyfi a bit 'skittish' and loose at times, i never know if that's the tyres, my riding or just how it is... but it takes me an age to get used to being there again.
They've made a LOT of changes at the park and for me they're all for the better. What used to be the Luvi Dyfi everyone ignored just after the big table, that's now Cedar Rapids and an XC/Red, which is pretty much fine for all of it but does lead into the bottom of the big boys on 50 hits i'll admit.
There's Original DH which leads into Muddys Berms which again has now morphed into a red and is perfectly happy for anyone who's a 'red' kind of guy. Super Swopper is as it ever was, but they've smoothed a couple of bits to help.
All in all, i think it makes it a bit more friendly for the newbies and the older dad crew
The bike though worked great all day, no issues with it at all, it went, stopped, turned as it should. It's quite poppy/flighty at times there but that's a weight thing i assume.

The boy was trying out both the Vivid and the Mavens and he's happy with both, a minor adjustment needed on the bleed/bite point is required as he's running these closer to the bars than the RSCs and i'd set them up as close to the feel of the RSC, but he showed me where the front is now and my job tomorrow is to mimic that on the rear..
The Vivid he changed the LSC 1 click and reported happiness with that... we stuck with the rest of the settings from TFTuned.

As always the day wasn't without incident. He pranged a rim, it's a TINY dink, but it won't hold air now, so we swapped the wheel out which then gave brake rub. The rotors are HS2 SRAM rotors and 2mm thick, the one we fitted was 2mm as it was new, it seems the older one is less as we had some pad drag. So i swapped rotors over and he was again happy. I need to work out if the rim can be saved (i think it can) or if it needs replacing..

Me and his mates dad were 'working' on the bikes and somehow became the pit mechanics, we fixed 5 punctures including setting a kids bike up tubeless after removing the Bontrager 'strip' as he couldn't fit a tyre with it on there.
Another lad ripped his brake hose out of his Dominions and lost all his fluid, he was met with "yeah mate, bring it here" to "do you have any fluid and a barb/olive" which he never thought we'd have, but we sorted the hose and bled his brake and saved his day

The rest of the day went smoothly as i rode the new track revisions and didn't die

The paddock is an amazing place there, i could blow the Pinbike comments section apart today with some of the things i saw and chatting to Hatton and a few others, some of the bikes out there today would answer a LOT of comments for 2025 DH racing lol.
What i do love though is that the people are 'right' there, what i mean is, we were waiting in the queue with Dan Atherton, Hatton, Gee, and 4 other Pros, but none of them ever considered jumping the queues, even though they own the place, they still stood there and mingled with other riders, i REALLY hope the sport doesn't go the way of losing this sort of thing as it gets more professional now.

IMG_20250118_110432 by Steve Weeks, on Flickr

[weeksy]

Pictures can tell 1000 words so they say.

IMG_20250119_092757 by Steve Weeks, on Flickr

This one though only shows it's all bent, but when you're looking at it it's clear the hanger is wayyyyy out.
Considering I'd guess he's crashed 50+ times and it's still the original hanger, I'd say it's earned a graceful retirement. I've got 3 new ones in spares box anyway.

[weeksy]

With the Park Tools hanger alignment tool the mech is perfect and refitted. I've just swapped the rotor over to the thicker one to get some use on that and now waiting for the wheel and tape to warm up on the radiator so I can tubeless the new wheel we bought.
Once that's on its just the brake bleed/feel to sort. None of it is too complicated though, but would be massively better if it was 20deg and I had a

[weeksy]

Well that was somewhat disappointing. Spoke to my LBS who was looking at the rim, the Bontrager DH Line 30, the first one lasted 15 months before dying, but this one hasn't lasted nearly as long. He said basicallt the same as me "it looks pretty good, very little damage on there" but it still won't quite hold air. He thinks with a bit more time it MAY be OK.... but as we've established by now, maybe isn't good enough for a race wheel for us. I'm not having it where the boy comes down with a flat on that spot and thnking "i should have sorted that over winter", so against my budgetary preferences, it's being replaced with a new rim.

[weeksy]

Well that's interesting/disappointing. The boy commented about a knock last week, but I sorta dismissed it after checking all the pivots etc.

Then I did notice it! It manifests itself when you pull on the front brake and rock back/forwards quickly with the brake on. 

So I took the headset apart and checked it, looks good. Fitted a new front wheel, then rear wheel, then front pads out, then rear pads out. Still the same.

So I was picking up my newly rimmed rear wheel for him and took the bike with me to Rotec. After some frowns, faces and mmmmm noises he thinks it's the fork bushings. A quick Google on Fox36s suggests he may well be correct (including multiple threads on here), so I've left it with him so either send off or sort. 

I've had a fair few 36s over the years and don't recall having this issue before 

[weeksy]

Well again that was somewhat interesting. Rotec did a stripdown of the lowers and found the oils/greases had basically turned into jelly and congealed. This was meaning the fluids were not doing as they should. It didn't affect how the bike rode on the trail (although it may be better now?) but obviously caused additional issues with the clunky/knocky stuff. That's now gone anyway and he's happy with the forks. Which is good as it saves me heading to Fox/Silverfish with them for warranty. 

Still no idea what's happening this weekend as we don't get official confirmation on the racing until later today. My feeling is that it'll be cancelled, so we need to work out where we're riding tomorrow instead now.

[weeksy]

Fab day at FoD, we were on a bit of a time crunch so couldn't do as much as we usually would, but we compressed it into the day nicely. The boy was practicing for race tomorrow and hitting the root gap he'd seen. Apparently it's pretty uncommon to hit and if you'd seen it, you'd know why lol. It's a gnarly one for sure.
But hit it he did and it went OK
I felt pretty happy with "bike feels amazing at the moment" with the Mavens by me and the Vivid setup by TFTuned, he's pretty happy indeed with it.
I bumped into a random forum bloke over when i was out playing myself and had some fun too

[weeksy]

Well that was a DAY !!! Jeeez.

First race in Juniors for the boy and it was the 100% race at Forest of Dean. Practice yesterday went really well including hitting the 'goofy gap' which was a massive target for him for a long time.
Today was a 5.30am start to get into the paddock and setup before the wind and rain, which we managed (although keeping the gazebo in one place was challenging!!!)
I sent him up for practice and of course he came down dirty and covered in mud... He went for the goofy gap again (mostly to show off ) and lost his chain on the run in and couldn't brake, couldn't pull enough so hit it hard and ended up over the bars and dropping down the cliff into the fire road !!! EEEEEK. However he was mostly OK with some bruises and a swollen toe. The rain at this stage had held off, but was getting going a bit now. He'd dropped the chain between ring and frame and that meant i had to get the cranks off to release it. I was also questioning why he'd dropped it (more on that later). Got it all off and sorted but putting the cranks on was horribly hard, it was getting wetter and the wind was blowing the rain in, so a bit of tappy/smacky with the hammer (i know, on a set of Saints they should go on effortlessly) and the cranks were on. But we were running out of time for practice and they frown if you don't get 2 runs done. I'd also fitted a new chain as he'd bent the quicklink a bit and i wanted a new one on there. But weirdly the 11s links simply were not playing. So i threw a KMC link on which looked and felt horrid, but time was getting away from us.
He got up there and i went to watch by the line on the last corners, he came down shaking his head, he'd dropped it again. ARRRGGHHHH. Again i wasn't sure why.
THe only thing on this bike that stops it there is the idler pulley wheel, which we've only had once dropping chains and it was caused by a VERY worn idler. So i whipped the idler off and fitted a new one. I also decided i should move the spacer setup which i'd not done since getting the Shimano Saint cranks. The chainline between the Shimano and SRAM cranks is different and if you reverse the spacers it's about 3mm different chainline. We'd still been running the SRAM setup.
He'd also smashed the top guide to pieces which is a 3-d printed version which sits lower and stops chain drops.. but that was 100% dead. So into the spares box for the standard Trek item and 'sod it, it'll have to do' (need to get a new one of those now)

So i sent him up and went up to meet him at the top as it was raining and all races are 'race jersey' runs, so i was on coat bringing back down duty.
He got to the top and was 1st off in the class, which is great as it's clear track. But he had 15s from when he got there to get to the line and on run 1. (They'd have run him later on if we'd asked). The jumper and coat came off and he set off straight away after a "goggles!" shout from me

I got down a few mins later and he was sitting happily in P1. His lead was 2.6s and 4.5s to 3rd place. Happy days, the chain held and he got a fairly clean run, made a bit of a mess of the roots as he'd forgotten which line he was going to take. But P1 is P1 afterall.

We chilled, (literally, it was COLD and we were all WET !) and had a bit of lunch, some new kit for run 2 got him warmer, i was sodding drenched though and the wind and rainstorm were in full effect for run 2. A mate gave him a lift up to the top in return for me being 'coat boy' for everyone.
He came down on run 2 about 0.8 off his run 1 speed, but the guys behind hadn't gone faster so it was a straight forward win.

Lots and lots to be happy with this weekend and lots of little lessons to learn as always.

The cleanup is going to take a week !!!

IMG-20250126-WA0001 by steveweeks59, on Flickr

[Taff]

Brilliant stuff, well done.

Just saw Katie's post on FB


https://www.facebook.com/share/p/14mWbyfSBf/

[mboy]

Just seen the updates on fbook and insta @Weeksy08

Well done James! Awesome stuff!

[Nordboy]

Nice start to the year.

What did he win by the way? What's he holding, I can't make it out. Goggles?

[weeksy]

Nice start to the year.

What did he win by the way? What's he holding, I can't make it out. Goggles?

YEah Goggles... which is kinda amusing

[weeksy]

Thanks guys. We're now in the process of trying to get things sorted for next weekend. He's got coaching with the boss and more things to work on. However there's only so many kits, jackets, clothes you can clean and wash at once. I've not even started on the footwear but i know mine are drowned from the weekend and i suspect his will be too. The helmets have been cleaned and are drying, there's 14,000 things hanging up drying for him/me.

I've spent time on the bike, getting it 100% again. Had a few tweaks to make on the bottom chainguide setup which is now done and it's running lovely again. I'd ideally like the top cover for the idler but that's waiting on another guy who makes them. I've got a new idler pulley ordered this morning, so that's all good to roll.

Looking at the chainline stuff you have the 2 spacers on the idler which offset it one way or the other, even though we're running a Shimano Saint, i'm deffo leaving it on the SRAM setting, i don't know if their doc is incorrect or it's just different for the Saint compared to how they wrote it, but it's 100% a better chainline top to bottom on the SRAM setup.

The quick-link thing was simply a matter of using a set of link pliers, it's just REALLY tight and you can't pull the ends with these 11s ones, but a quick go with the pliers and it snicks into place nicely. 

Other than that, the Session is good to go and roll again now. I'm not sure at the moment i can say the same about the Orbea, but every time i go to do something it wallops down again.

One thing that yesterday highlighted was the fact that i simply cannot race and be the team-crew-manager-mechanic. Despite the fact i think i'd have enjoyed yesterday in some peverse way, it was the right call not to race. The reality is, i'd have either missed my practices or more likely is that he would have missed his and potentially his race.  I'm going to have to come up with a plan where i race a Souther Enduro or a Mini Enduro when he's not racing. But both of us on the same weekend just doesn't fly at all.

[MingtheMerciless]

This is not cheap, I bought one on a recommendation but it is worth EVERY penny. It dries shoe and gloves gently, without killing them like putting them on a radiator can do.

Amazon Link doesn't seem to work so try this:

https://www.shoeinsoles.co.uk/maxxdry-h ... gJLmPD_BwE

[weeksy]

Yeah we've got something like that i believe..... that's in the Laundry team remit, i'm in the mechanic/funding/driver team only.

[weeksy]

Day out for the boy at Llangollen with Katy and Hattie.

Thought you may appreciate some pics

[weeksy]

That drop was huuuuuuuge

[Nordboy]

Day out for the boy at Llangollen with Katy and Hattie.

Thought you may appreciate some pics

You should consider a move to Wales, the amount of time you spend here?

Have to make you an honorary Welshman