mickeyD profile

Corner Violence is my passion.  

The outgoing Rifty(and the Polygons i’ve seen lately) are built a little too light in the rear end for the forces you can put into the frames with well tuned suspension and a rider dedicated to utmost lateral brutality.

Mine always break at the cross braces in the cs first(torsion fatigue) and at the same time the driveside chainstay detaches itself from the forged chainstay yoke.

I’m better at spotting the cracks in the shockstay before catastrophic failure, I just order replacements when the spiderweb paint cracks start.  

Fwiw, I haven’t had any catastrophic chainstay failures since i stuffed my DBIL aircan full of spacers!

The people who drive the Canecreek Demo truck recommend people try their HSR closed and tune back from there on progressive frames, especially.   One of the things the Kitsuma architecture was supposed to do was to eliminate the fact that lots of the staff rode their HSR fully closed, I do believe.

When I ordered through the backdoor, I received just a frame, OE headset and OE shock hardware. I initially installed the DBiL Coil with a 500 pound Valt Spring, then went to 550-610, and then ordered up a DBil air so I could mess with spring curve shape to my hearts content to get me the ride height I like/want/need on the slalom track for ultimate masters racing glory.

I had Cane Creek make me some custom stainless 3 piece hardware in lieu of the horrible aluminum hardware Marin ships with the bike after wallowing out the rocker 3 times in a month.

My back yard is a series of interconnected ruts that popped up during lockdown.

Lots of slap-chop pinball transfers into hook corners mean that since I got the frame in fall 2019 I've been through 3 chainstay assemblies, two shockstays, 7 rockers and innumerable sets of shock hardware and bearings. Daily use case is Lots of SEVERE flex and compression events, every two minutes, for five and a half hours at a time four days a week for about two years, give or take. All of that sessioning allowed me to fully bracket all my fork, shock, tire, wheel, bar settings, and made me deeply, deeply satisfied.

Between the yard ruts and some of the slalom tracks I ride, I found that I didn't have enough mechanical spring support through tight apexes on the coil. The coil shock (partially due to it's extra weight!) is my preference for grass slalom tracks, jank(as opposed to mechanically built) trail riding and having a good time, but if you need the bike to stay up in it's travel to get your rocks off, it's air IL for me. Sometimes I change between a coil shock and a front Shorty for qualifiers and air shock with a DHR front before rounds on a track that has some important corner exits. Go geeky, or stat home, that's my motto!

I run the 10speed sram GX short cage derailleur to keep my cage out the ruts. With my 34 tooth big ring(less pedal kickback!) the right gear for my gatestart is pretty much a straight line on an 11-36 HG cassette.

I just built up a new carbon Fuel EX Gen 6 frame (minolink on the m/l I ride turns it from 29" trail size to mullet slalom size!), so the ole Marin will probably live out the rest of it's days with the hubs re-laced to i25 rims so I can run 2.3 DHR's front and rear with a stumpy post and excavate the hell out of soft ground and ride the prefab 6' wood kickers the local trail club just installed in a park by my house/DORK OUT without having to turn over the excess volume of WT tire carcasses.

I already swapped from the 50mm stem/50mm rise bar to a 40mm stem/40mm and chopped 20mm off my normal bar width to make her a little bit happier on the rear wheel, and swapped to an i25 rear with a 2.3 Rock Razor to downsize the rear tire for a little bit better "dip in" through the berms. I kept the same volume reduction I would use for racing but decreased the HSR for some more pop and reduced the spring by about 10 psi so I can "stomp" the rear down a little bit better for manuals.

Such fun bikes- and with shocks that have a full tuning-range essentially at your fingertips, a potent platform for fun.

I run my medium Riftzone 27.5 with a 140mm Helm(with lots of volume reduction and heavy LSC) and DHR’s and or Shorty’s(mostly with EXO casings and pressures in the mid 30’s), Fat rotor 200mm TRP’s front and rear, saint cranks, 10-36 10 speed casette, 50mm rise bars

I also run 55mm stroke on both shocks for a lil extra travel out back.

At 5’10” it’s my compact little swiss army knife for slalom racing, push-up riding, rut tracks and it’s main use, test riding the green and blue flow trails I build at work. 

I can still go smash out laps on the local winch and plummet- the stiff AF suspension and big bars keep it going straight, and bouncing over the top of  holes, and that firm chassis and big bar make high-speed corners a joy, even on an unfashionably short bike!

I have the same shock on a Rift Zone.  At 165 pounds I like 4 full volume bands with similar compression and rebound settings to you, except I can back the LSC compression way off.

Fwiw i have a Coil IL that I run with a 550/610 progressive wound spring and similar damper settings to my air shock.

Those frames are progressive, but if you are bringing a 120mm knife to a gun fight, going hog wild on volume reduction results in more dh speed on tracks with big compressions.

signed up for an NSMB account just to thank Mr. F for typing out Binda Extra, one more time, for the adoring masses.