More pics and details to come. Spot on 35lbs.
Heres the write up:
So I started this project with the stock 08 norco team dh coming in at around 42lbs. My 07 model hit the scales at 38.18lbs at one stage and this one had to get lighter. I didn't setup a target, the plan was just to put everything as light as possible without affecting strength too much.
I ripped the bike down and weighed all the parts, I got an idea of what was heavy and what I could change in each area. The frame wasn't as heavy as expected coming in around 10.9lbs with the Roco wc Ti spring. Pretty reasonable really. With the frame apart I could see what needed to swap out, the rear shock change was never planned and was just one of those things that popped up; so I gave it a shot. I ordered a bunch of ti bolts for the shock and did a few small custom things to save weight. Theres a pinch bolt that nips the rear axle up, it threads into a steel barrel, I was lucky enough to find an alloy barrel from a seatpost. This combined with an alloy nut saved 10 grams, not much- but you have to think little to get to the big picture on these things. The ti hardware rocked up along with some sweet ano read alloy locknuts, switching out these four bolts (two shock bolts and two o the geo block) saved 80grams, the shock cut nearly 300g. I didn't really keep track, I just knew I was dropping weight.
Next to go were the wheels, nothing wrong with whats on there, but at 2200 grams, I knew I could go lighter without killing performance. The wheels closely resemble the wheels I ran last year which are still going strong. They consist of Stans flow rims, Hope proII hubs, Wheelsmith ae14 bladed 15g spokes and DT ano red nipples. The weight of these babies was sub 1700 grams. Thats some serious savings. The rims also work great with the no tubes setup, they have light tubes in for now. The setup can be done using the stans yellow tape or the rubber strip, I will probably run the yellow tape on the front and a strip on the rear. Should work well, I ran two yellow tapes last year and blew the tyre off once in a race run, something I hope the strip will avoid as it should create a tighter fit. Tyres are just standard 2.5 and 2.35 high roller sr. One place I don't want to skimp.
Drivetrain was a serious weight saver, getting rid of the crazy sram DH cassette saved 180g and the DA it replaced won't cut into the alloy freehub body of the hope hub. I switched to the gammut for the added bashie without adding the weight of the Taco, great product. Love the simplicity of these guides. I also switched out to the new Formula the one brakes. Dh brake power and XC weight apparently. Saved a bit there and went 7" rotors, should be enough power. Of course I added things like alloy chainring bolts, e13 gring and the hone cranks. They saved plenty too, the OCT are 950g with bb, the hones are considerably less and offer nothing less. The pedals are the sexy twenty6 pedals with ti axles and seriously machined bodies. Same weight as welgo mg1s with a little more bling.
Cockpit was setup with the new gravity carbon bar, only 710mm- but nice and light at around 210g. Hopefully they will hold up. The required Thomson is of course in place, but I do have an sdg carbon post ordered and ifly seat. Didn't risk non-lockon grips this year. The fork was originally a team, but has had the full wc setup installed. Will be interesting as I was quite happy with the 888 and it was working well.
So where to from here? Theres more ti bolts on order, these will fit the sunline stem and brake mount bolts. The tubeless will go in next week and everything will undergo a far bit of testing and tweaking to get it right, it really is like a brand new bike again and will take a little while to get it to its peak performance. I will keep the roco coil sitting here just in case and might even do some back to back runs to get a real world comparison, but I did do some runs before the diet and it felt perfectly fine. The small bump compliance is a little sacrificed, but once it gets past that initial threshold, its as lively and as happy in the job as any shock I've felt.
At the end of the day the idea was to make this bike light and nimble, on its first ride today that was defiantly the case, the lower front end and increased acceleration was a huge benefit on a heavy overgrown track- I found out quickly that the brakes still have plenty of bedding in to do...
Attachments
-
90.9 KB Views: 3,950