Mountain Cycle Shockwave 9.5 revamp. 14.7kg final weight.

[synchronicity]

No it's not the BB sleeve that's wrong.
It's the crank axle/spindle.

 

[synchronicity]

Well, a new crankset is on the way.
And that's not all.

Got this fairly cheapish saddle, DMR OiOi (which I'll review on my channel before next week, because it looks nice enough... for the price).
Although the colours aren't as saturated as in the photos (I was afraid of that, never mind).

I am gonna weight weenie that a bit too.

I'm going to keep the existing saddle for pure dh runs.

 

[synchronicity]

Also picked up this cassette, a rather unusual FSA 11-28T.
My build has changed direction a bit (after riding it around again).

Mainly because I'm trying to make it lighter and therefore more useful to ride not just on downhill tracks.
Otherwise as a "downhill only" bike like it was before I'll only use it a couple of times a year. Which is silly.

So I have changed the cassette again. This time I have gone with a wider spread.
I'll keep the other cassettes as spares (for my road bikes).

 

[synchronicity]

Hmm

 

[synchronicity]

Well pretty much the last few upgrades.
I got a nicer carbon seatpost and upgraded some bits with z-race yokes so now this post works at an extreme angle.
The current seatpost/saddle combination now weighs in at a respectable 460 grams, so dropped about 140 grams right there.



Then, what I've been waiting on,
I had some money burning a hole in my pocket, so I got a custom built titanium spring/coil from J&L on ebay to fit the 1.5" ID of the rockshox vivid shock. And it is an extra light one, which has less windings.



It came in at 370 grams. Which certainly beats the 670grams for the original steel rockshox vivid spring.
300 gram weight saving on that part alone!!

The thing is though, and I'm still a bit miffed about this, is that it came in very short, shorter than I asked for I believe.

Well, they included a nicely-enough machined spacer made out of some sort of engineering polymer, but that is not really what I ordered/wanted/expected. And this is more or less what I was moaning about in this other thread. Things don't always go according to plan. And I've been disappointed before.

Not only that but I paid extra to have it black PVD coated... to match the rest of the bike and blend in a bit and not scream "I paid too much for a lightweight spring!". Except they didn't really finish the spring that well, it still has some pretty rough grinding marks on it at the ends. Which of course show through the finish. And being OCD about material finishes, I know I could have finished that better myself. Now of course, there's nothing I can do without wrecking the black. So it'll just have to do.

I guess it'll be alright and no one will see it and the bike is meant to be ridden.
And the bike will no doubt get scratched up with more use (the frame is already scratched from a few uplifts)
But I paid US$285 for this spring. But I know it's there.

I won't bother complaining about it though...

Next, even with the spacer, it was probably about 0.5mm too short, the spring was just the tiniest bit loose/slack which I know is going to make clicking noises. The shock retaining collar is/was at the end of the threads on the shock body. I ended up just cutting out a thin spacer out of 1.5mm cork gasket sheet that I have lying about, just as a stop-gap measure as I couldn't find any other materials lying around the house and I thought it would fare better than a piece of soggy cardboard.

 

[synchronicity]

In other news,
The spokes came loose on the rear so I have do retension/retrue the rear wheel.
So that was a total bummer, but better to find out now than at the start (or in the middle) of a downhill run holiday I suppose.
I would have taken spare wheels in any case though...
That's why it's good to go for test rides innit'.

I'm not sure what happened there. It's possible they weren't tight enough.
Or perhaps there was a lot of braking load with such big discs, and such small wheels, two-cross lacing.
That's never happened to my wheels before. I made sure not to wind up the spokes when I was building & truing the wheel.
But I bought a spoke holder tool now so I am going to redo those.
Not really looking forward to doing that.

I just don't have a good feeling about these sapim laser spokes.
The black finish completely came off a few spokes, they look completely silver now.
Wouldn't buy those again.

EDIT: it seems it might have been the stans rims, according to other forum searches, the spokes tend to loosen after the [tubeless] tires are inflated.
Let's hope it is that.

 

[synchronicity]

–ANYWAY–

I weighed the bike and the total bike weight comes in at a respectable 14.7kg.
Which, I think, is pretty light for what it is.

 

[youngsspeed]

Shit!
That is lighter than my San Andreas.
We won’t even mention my SW MK1 or my Tremor

 

[stevet1]

wheres the pic of the full build?
And totally with you on things that never seem to go right, and could have been done better by yourself. Annoys the hell out of me and complaining only gets you more frustrated about it.