Getting Inside The Digit Datum

Okay, THESE photos were taken in front of my barn this afternoon. Everything else was shot down in Tim's garage in Irvine, California back in late November. Aaanyway, if you want to remove the Digit Integer strut, you start here, by removing the two 2-mm hex screws that hold the head badge in place. You'll also have to drop the fork, so there are at least two, probably three more hex bolts that need to come out, and you may want a Voile strap or something to hold the forks and wheel rather than unbolting all that jive. The strut comes out here. I should also mention that I'm going to interchange "strut" and "shock" randomly throughout this. For the purposes of this, semantics of whether something is structural or not aside, they mean the same thing - air pressurized, oil damped, telescoping shock absorption unit - but sometimes one or the other sounds better in context.

Then you're gonna need to remove the compression damping adjustment lever (3mm), and the valve core then the valve stem itself (2.5mm). Don't forget to depressurize the strut before turning a valve core into a needle dart.

Then you must resist the urge to unbolt the shock from the rear triangle. Instead, you'll grab the handy dandy little hardware store rubber strap wrench that you knew you needed for this (that basically looks like a cross between a really beefy Voile strap and an oil filter wrench), and unscrew the stanchion from the head of the shock, leaving it happily bolted to the frame. Finally, grab that old Shimano external cup bottom bracket wrench that you've had for the past 20 years, unthread the cup holding the strut into the frame, and push the thing out through the head tube.

Here's the tool breakdown per the Digit website. It's shy of a couple hex keys, and yes, the process is more complex than taking two bolts out of a single pivot something or other, but it sure isn't rocket surgery.

Behold, the Digit Integer! If you've just removed this from the frame, the silver hammerhead at the top would still be attached to the rear triangle. As would the actual frame parts that are gripping it in this photo; they'd be welded into the rear triangle, then that black bolt would be the axle at the head of the shock. Wait, what? That's a mock-up in that photo. I know, there goes my career as a step-by-step photo tutorial guy.

There's 75mm of bushing overlap inside here, supporting a 30mm diameter stanchion. Note the bevel on the strut body at the left end of the calipers, the strut gets sucked up against a counter-bevel in the frame when the bottom bracket cup gets cranked down against its corresponding beveled surface, and this is what integrates the Integer into the Datum, so to speak. Also note, I'm piss poor at staging these photos judging by the reading on the calipers. But then again, I never noticed that Tim had his name printed on a little decal on his calipers before. Awww.

This is why nobody pays me to take photos. I'm not very good at it. Here we see one of the bushings mostly in focus, and a neighborhood parking lot in suburban Irvine that is not in focus at all. I must have been trying to make some illustrative point here, but I am damned if I know what it was.

Now let's take a look at the bottom half of this thing. Here's a shot of a bottom bracket assembly complete with 30mm spindle, lower link, and the machined aluminum swingarm mount attempting to make a break for it before the TIG welder seals their fates.

And here are their eviscerated remains. Jesus wept, my camera has a brain the size of a planet and I still managed to get the focus wrong just about everywhere here. Anyway, double row Enduro bearings for the bottom bracket itself, with the BB spindle being the shared axle between bottom bracket and linkage, and double row bearings for the linkage. So, technically, this isn't a reduction in the number of bearings, but there is one less pivot axle in play, and doubling up bearings in this area is just good policy. Also, the use of an absolutely massive bottom bracket spindle as the main pivot axle connecting the rear triangle to the frame is about as bomber-rigid a connection as it gets.

Shown here is the sleeved BB axle option that allows use of 24mm bottom brackets such as Shimano, SRAM GXP and FSA 24. The 30mm spindle is compatible with RaceFace, FSA 30, Cannondale, Ignite, 5Dev and Garbaruk, but NOT with Hope, E13, Cane Creek or White Industries (they use proprietary tapers).