wicked wrenching customs

In 2005 I was on the hunt for a new lightweight XC race bike, and the shop I was currently in was a GT dealership, so I thought that I would give the new Zaskar a try. I knew that this was not the same Zaskar of old- it was no longer made in the states and had newer geometry, but I didn't mind. The frame sets were on special clearout prices at the time, and i struggled to find another frame in that category at a better price...

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Once it arrived it was time to put some thought into the components. For the forks- now normally I would have gone with Rock Shox SID's in blue or similar being a RS fan, but a relatively new fork manufacturer was making waves in the marketplace and pretty much all of my friends were telling me to try them, so I purchased the Fox Floats. Sorting out the drivetrain was simple, it's always XTR!!! The M960 group had just been released and even though the forks and frame accepted the new disc calipers, I was still holding onto my roots and went with the V brake option. The other thing (and I will probably get a lot of grief for saying this) that I liked with the 960 group were the Dual Control levers. Now hear me out- If they were run with the rapid rise low normal rear mech it actually made total sense for XC setups...I found that when you begun a climb and were in the higher gears, it was dead easy to still ride on the bar ends out of the saddle, all while using your little finger to flick the tip of the brake lever back through the low gears and letting the return spring do all the work. You could easily do it under load without damaging the drive and risking a broken chain. This could never be achieved using conventional trigger shifters with a top normal spring. To me it was one of Shimano's greatest setups for an XC race bike, but not many others shared my view and the overwhelming disgust for the tech forced Shimano to abandon the concept in later revisions. But there are still a few like minded souls that agree and still use their DCL's!!! Another mod that I liked was to cut pieces of foam tubing and slide them onto the levers on cold days or for some races when i was going gloveless and wanted better shift control, such a wild setup but it felt like a dream at the time.

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One other thing I was experimenting with at the time were tires, semi slicks were increasingly out of fashion and I struggled to find a decent new tire choice. Eventually I found the Geax Evolutions. They proved to be a indestructible tire, I would sometimes deliberately ride through broken glass just to see if I could get them to puncture. It never happened. They were extremely grippy as well, with a nice rounded profile instead of squared like most slicks. The only downside was their weight. I ran them on my bikes for commuting miles, and it struck me that they might just be what I was looking for in a fast rolling race tire for open fire road events. There was a yearly race held up on the famous Oaks Fire Trail in the lower Blue Mountains coming up, and it was mostly open and smooth dirt roads. a perfect opportunity to test my theory.

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I arrived on race day ready to test the new settings, and was very happy with the results. The tread on the Evolutions was just enough to keep me from washing out on sandy turns, but lightning fast on the open track. I started somewhere mid field behind the pro riders, and after overtaking more bikes than I could count, ended up in 11th place (in a field of over 350+riders) after just loosing in a sprint to get top ten. It was the best result I had ever done on the course, and I set a new personal best time riding that trail. The setup proved it was reliable and fast. It was perfect!

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A couple of months later there was a new endurance event being held in the Southern Highlands aptly called The Highland Fling. Another chance to test out my dialled race setup. It was a 160km event, and I was fit and ready. The race was on a Sunday, and as I was cleaning/prepping the shops entries on late Friday afternoon, one of our vendor reps enters carrying a bag of goodies for us to try.

We peek inside and there are all these fast looking folding tires and super light inner tubes, grips and other race hop up bits. The rep tells us that it just landed in the country that afternoon and he wants us to try the new super light products on raceday and let him know how they went. First thing that went through my head was "don't run new products on race day!" But the rep was very convincing and the tires did look incredibly fast and grippy, and most of all- they were a good 450 grams lighter per tire than my Geax's! I caved and put them on my bike - I went with the lightest tire and tube combo and instantly shaved just under a kilogram from my bike...

 

On Sunday I was lined up in the second row- singled right in with all the local pros. I had my team GT Zaskar with full XTR, and a matching team jersey and helmet to suit. It was pretty difficult to tell I was a privateer! As the race begun I was in the top chase pack, sitting in a comfortable 16th place. I was breathing well, we were roughly 40km into the 160 total and I had no signs of slowing down. 

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Then it happened...

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Bang! rear flatted on a technical descent. I quickly pulled over and ripped out the rear wheel, grabbed the tube and checked if it was a pinch or a foreign object. The tube seam had completely split for almost 30cm. Wild! I threw in a new tube and gassed it up and got back into another pack. I was now approximately sitting in 28th place. Bugger. I had a lot of work to do to regain my position.

Not less than 15 mins later another burst of air. This was starting to piss me off. Once again another split tube seam. It happened for another 2 goes before I ran out of tubes in my Camelbak. By this time my closest teammate from the shop had caught up, and I quickly grabbed all his tubes...and begun to go through them all as well. The last one occurred around 120km in to the race, and considering I had dropped from 16th to somewhere in the late 80's I was seeing absolute red. I did a mixture of running cross style (bike on shoulder) for the technical parts, and rode on the bare rim for the easy open trail sections. I eventually finished the race, not in last place but not far off. I threw the bike and kit into the truck and went home. 

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Now I'm not going to say which tire/tube manufacturer it was, but let me say that it's one of the most popular manufacturers out there. To this day I've steered clear away from any of their products for personal use. Period. My tubes have stopped splitting down the seams as a result of this. On the upside though - I rode for over 50km on the bare rims (they were DT Swiss RR4.2's that I had laced to the XTR hubs), and all they needed when I got back to the workshop was a light sanding to remove the pitting and chips etc...they were still perfectly true!!!

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