My Racing Reports for 2006

Yea, it rained like hell on Friday, but the weekend weather was the best a person could ask for. The week leading up was warm and then Friday a front came in and droped it to the 70s. I saw three bergs each day. On Saturday I was working the start of special test 1. Sunday I was at the finish of special test 4.

Stiff_Bubba said:

On Saturday I was working the start of special test 1. Sunday I was at the finish of special test 4.

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that musta been you i said hi to as i was driving into town sunday morning. i was in the white tundra.

hi again.

velosapiens said:

Stiff_Bubba said:

On Saturday I was working the start of special test 1. Sunday I was at the finish of special test 4.

Click to expand...

that musta been you i said hi to as i was driving into town sunday morning. i was in the white tundra.

hi again.

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That was me. Did you enjoy the course? How did you fair?

After our check we rode up and down our special test. and then down the track to where it cam out by my truck. Then we went and rode the grass track. Holly crap, that was a chewed up bitch! Then we rode from there to start backwards on the track and up the blue arrows back to the grass track and up and over to where it crossed 304 and back down to the truck. 109 miles a day would have killed me - too fat!

Stiff_Bubba said:

That was me. Did you enjoy the course? How did you fair?

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i had a great time. got a little beat by the chop on saturday, but softened the suspension slightly for sunday and fared much better. preliminary results showed me 36th overall out of 190-ish a/b riders for saturday, and i'd guess about the same sunday. i left before results by class came about, but it was good enough for silver saturday. i don't think my test times were all that great, but i didn't have any disasters either.

i didn't see the 1st husey rider (#149 i think), but i assume he finished fine. if so, then husaberg had a stellar and enviable 100% medal ratio!! talk about reliability. my bike even started on the button both days, which it doesn't often do at home since it's usually colder here.

mark

we gotta talk suspension again sometime. i'm really in the end game with this now and my results are really improving vastly.

take a look at the fork thread and if you want to start swopping shims and springs etc then it'll be great to bounce an idea off each other.

regards

Taffy

Taffy said:

we gotta talk suspension again sometime. i'm really in the end game with this now and my results are really improving vastly.

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well, i'm lazy, and would rather ride and drink beer than wrench, and i happened to be spending last week riding with a professional suspension technician, who drove his professional suspension technician van to my house and then to idaho city, so my solution to the shock was to hand him some money and take my shock back 35 minutes later (this was done in the hour or so before impound for the qualifier closed). the fork on the 05's is actually quite good once you put stiffer springs in it, and javier said it's fairly close to what he likes to use, but he uses some fancy shim bits that are x% better. i dunno. i rode close to 400 miles in 5 days and drank more than a case of beer and didn't spend that much money on the instant revalve, so it seems like a wise choice in retrospect.

your weight and the weight of those springs? i think you're 160-170 and bought 46s at a guess?

regards

Taffy

velosapiens said:

well, i'm lazy, and would rather ride and drink beer than wrench, and i happened to be spending last week riding with a professional suspension technician, who drove his professional suspension technician van to my house and then to idaho city, so my solution to the shock was to hand him some money and take my shock back 35 minutes later (this was done in the hour or so before impound for the qualifier closed). the fork on the 05's is actually quite good once you put stiffer springs in it, and javier said it's fairly close to what he likes to use, but he uses some fancy shim bits that are x% better. i dunno. i rode close to 400 miles in 5 days and drank more than a case of beer and didn't spend that much money on the instant revalve, so it seems like a wise choice in retrospect.

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So how was Javier's work? Was there much difference?

Brendan said:

So how was Javier's work? Was there much difference?

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compared to the stock 05 shock, javier's valving is a little plusher initially, with a little better bottoming resistance. it's not a huge difference for normal riding that i do, but it saved my on the choppy parts of the course (which got very very choppy in spots). the result was a smoother ride over rocks and chop and a removal of the tendency to kick back or sideways on big hits.

taff, after javi's revalve, i went for a quick dusty hot trailride, and decided that the 45-46 spring mix was overpowering the shock a bit, so i came back and worked on my bike frantically for 15 minutes and put in some .44's that he had taken out of someone else's bike earlier in the trip. those worked better for me in idaho trail conditions. i backed off the compression 2-3 clicks and liked that alot.

haven't ridden the bike in dezert conditions since i got back. i'll be interested to see how it works down here.

one thing i noticed during the race is that sometimes speeding up is the best way to make the rough stuff go away. 2 guys on the minute behind me kept catching me 8-10 miles into each section, and the last time i just decided to speed up and see how long i could hang. well it turned out i could hang at that speed a long time, 10 miles or so, all the way into the next check. i noticed that the guy in front of me was charging harder through some of the rough stuff and floating above it a little better. plus we spent less actual time riding. bonus.

mark

i'll always keep testing as you know.

if you read the 'tuning forks for enduro' thread you'll notice that i talked in mid march about more preload taking the nose of the bike out of the bottom of the ruts and whoops and pointing me over the top of them. that was the sole reason i kept going on and on about 'do i need 48s?'. i had put 25mm preload on the 46s and the thing was initially harsher (with that preload you HAD to expect it) but the bike was quicker!

it's my opinion that everyone will be going to heavier springs (relevant to today) but the valving does have to be backed off! you can't have a stiff spring and stiff compression. it's too much for the rider.

i've got these 48s in three rides so that there is no way i'm going back. i sold the 46s and they arrived in the states today!

good luck

regards

Taffy