winning combination.
I took delivery of the AM back in November having pre-ordered in February 2008….What a wait that was 🙂

Nicolai determined the AM was to be designed around an air shock, with 160mm of travel available….
I tried the Monarch, as Nicolai have close links to SRAM and I supposed they’d tested the AM with the Monarch (correctly)…..It was good, relatively capable but did suffer from the usual symptoms related to air shocks….And I’m a bit of a set-up anorak, and having ran the CCDB on my Turner, just knew I had to have one for my Nicolai……
Piggy bank raided, leverage charts made available from Nicolai and given to Cane Creek for them to study before building my shock, and the wait for the CCDB commenced…….
4 weeks later and all weekend riding and dialling in, all I can say is WOW……

With the TALAS and the AM being adjustable 130 / 140 / 150 / 167mm, this set up is immensely adaptable and simply great fun….especially when I love to tinker , adjust and thrash….

gotta say, i’m really happy with it 🙂 🙂

Golspie this Thursday / Friday / Saturday to really thrash the t1ts off it 🙂

gratuitous pic :

WOW some money there !V V nice.

Very nice, wouldn’t mind a Double Barrel for my bike.

One thing though, it would be more aesthetically pleasing to the eye if the shock was run the other way round, i.e, piggyback reservoir to the front (technically the right way too in terms of unsprung to sprung weight…).

you should put some proper tyres on it before you go to golspie and thrash it though

twohats – not overly convinced, TBH….have however considered it, but it’s not noticeable affected in this orientation, and is dialling in nice.
bedmaker – why swap tyres ? i have Big Betty’s , but the NN UST’s are equally as resilient and better for distance (GT on Monday)…

Isn’t Golspie fairly xc (ish)? GT certainly is – can you not find somewhere more radical to thrash it? Nice bike though!

aye – fairly XC hence the NN tyre choice 🙂

Nice. Does it have a Maxle rear axle?

Nice bike, but why different rims front & rear?

Fantastic looking AM – I’ve been following your many adjustments via MTBR 🙂 How much more does the CCDB weigh than the air shock?

swello – no idea, maybe 1lb more ?
performance wise, it’s ridiculous.
running almost no HSC and a wee bit of HSC, controlling the low spring rate (450#) with LSC and LSR is factory standard – wondrous.
steve – different rims as i’m swapping tyres and wheels with my HT’s dependant on where i’m riding….the 819 is tubeless on a NN 2.25″ and with the uber plush shock performance well suited to this weekends’ upcoming Golspie trip 🙂

ed-o : no maxle as Chris King haven’t released a hub adaptor kit for my ISO rear hub yet and I throw the bikes in the boot, ride nights and need the simplicity of a QR for now….stiffness wise, there’s little to split them..my mate runs an AM on maxle and the stays are like battleship girders, and the QR / maxle interface is limited in available stiffness due to the stays design.