Four hundred mile round trip down to Tim Flooks‘ workshop just south of Bath today. 5th element shocks will fit the old FSR frame, but 5th don’t make a spring strond enough for the 4:1 ratio that the FSR produces in 6″ travel mode. They don’t even do one that lets in run 5″ travel. Bit of a bummer as I’d managed to line up a buyer for the Vanilla R that was coming off, but Tim had always reckoned getting it to fit was a long shot.
Anyway he had a fettle and has revalved the shock again, this time to what is being referred to as North Shore standard, which basically means its shimmed to the max. Running it in 5″ mode now and the whole things seems a lot better, plus the new internals now have a rubber stop that eliminates the metallic top out noise. Result. More on how it performs when I get back from Switzerland.
The trip was relatively uneventful apart from the usual M5/M6 queues and then some cretin in a SUV who almost took out a BMW on the M56 on the way back into Manchester. Can’t have been concentrating and missed a slow down in the traffic ahead, then only just managed to hit the brakes before ramming up the back end of some of Stuttgart’s finest in the fast lane. I was one lane in from them and the sight of several tonnes of metal getting sideways, one way then the other under braking at about 70 mph had my heart in my mouth, especially as it swerved into and then out of the lane just in front of me. Probably a brown pants moment for the driver that’s for sure.
A few of us have setup fantasy Tour De France teams, and entered them in Cycling Weekly’s competition. Thanks to Chilly and Jed for sending in the link. I’ve setup a page to track team progress and will be launching it sometime after the start of the event and definitely by next Sunday when I get back.
The Germans have organised another mental singlespeed event, this time on their turf, details are on this forum thread. I should have linked to the Russ appeal ages ago. I didn’t but I wish I had. Here it is: Russ Appeal
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