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My son had a medium Stiffee a couple of years ago which I built with spare parts. Now he's 18 he's asked for another bike. Since the medium Stiffee was great fun but too small for me I've scored a large Stiffee frame in the expectation that this time we'll both ride it.
However I'm around 70kg fully loaded, whereas he's about 115kg at the last weigh-in, and an inch or two taller. Fortunately he doesn't seem to have quite clocked this....
He doesn't ride hard, although I might, and the bike should get his weight down but when I got the calculator out I realised I'd need heavier kit than I'm used to.
An SLX groupset takes care of the drivetrain - probably switch chain for Sram and shifters for Sram X0 gripshift.
My XC FS bike has Mavic XM819 UST wheels - the heavier-duty bike has DT Swiss 5.1 tubeless wheels (they were a bit of a pain to seal with DT's kit but allow wider tyres). I prefer tubeless so I'll probably transfer the 819s and get myself some new lightweight wheels. Maybe Stans ZTR Crest for my XC bike.
I might take the coil Pikes from my Ventana X5 and fit a stiffer spring - or get an air shock for the Stiffee so we can switch easily.
Lastly disk brakes - The Stiffee's going to need bigger rotors than my usual 160s, but what size? CRC have a good offer on the Formula Oro K18s with 160mm rotors - but those rotors are surely too small? Actionsports.de have an offer on a pair of Formula Megas with 200mm rotors for Eur 189, or see what people are selling here - Maguras, Formulas or Shimano?
I'll get secondhand kit to cut the cost. So suggestions please - what air shocks, brakes and rotors will get the best out of the Stiffee?
He's quite a bit too heavy for even an X-firm pike spring IMO (@ 90kg I only just got away with an X-firm)
if you want to keep the weight down, retain good stiffness and have an adjustable spring for you to both use you probably can't beat a 20mm dual air Reba (I recently switched from a slammed coil Pike to a 20mm reba on my hardtail, it's 2lb lighter than the Pike was and I'm still confident it's upto riding DH and jumping).
you're going to need to run the tubeless a lot higher pressure for him too.