New Bike Day: Cotic FlareMax – Page 5 – Bike Forum

roverpig · 2018-04-27T23:47:03Z

Summary: Just built one. Not ridden it yet, but there are pictures below. Now for the full story. On paper a 29er with a reach of 479mm (large) and a 65.6 degree head angle looks crazy to me. I'm not remotely rad or #enduro. I'll avoid (or walk) the sort of techy descents that proper mountain bikers actively seek out. To be honest I mostly ride to get out in the country on my own. A bike lets me cover more ground and get further away from it all than walking. Really it's trail running, with the added advantage of getting to play with machines. But the machines have always been part of the hobby for me. Although I've only been riding off-road seriously for a few years, I've ridden bikes all my life and have always enjoyed playing at the edges of the envelope. I commuted on a fixie for a while, and spent a few years riding recumbents, including a spell riding a Windcheetah recumbent trike. Look them up, they're mad. I've ridden plus and for the past couple of years I've been riding a couple of 5" fabikes, which has been great fun. So it stands to reason that I'd have a go at LLS at some point. Also, I still believe in experts. I know it's unfashionable these days, but while we all have a right to our opinion I think some opinions do count more than others. When it comes to bike design I'll enjoy a good geek out online as much as anyone and love to debate the merits of this or that change in geometry, But the opinion of those who actually put their money where their mouth is and make their living from this counts more than mine. Although the geometry looks mad to me, the description of the bike from cotic is: "FlareMAX is a proper sweet-spot chassis; the perfect trail bike. It's the only bike you'll need for ripping through the woods and conquering mountains. Light and responsive, yet fiercely capable." OK, that's marketing speak, but if we ignore the geometry chart, that sounds like my sort of bike. Also, I will walk anything that scares me (since I don't bounce so well these days), but I'd rather not. So anything that expands my comfort zone sounds good. So, will it suit me? I have no idea. I'm sceptical if I'm honest. But what the heck, you're a long time dead and it should be fun finding out. The build has been pretty straightforward and cotic were very helpful. I'm sure they'd have built this spec for me if I wanted, but I enjoy the building part too. After reading Cy's thoughts and getting some good advice here I decided not to splash out on the CC shock upgrade. It sounds like a great shock for proper mountain bikers but I like a firm platform for climbing so wasn't convinced enough to pay the extra. I was able to thread the BB in by hand which always strikes me as a mark of a good quality frame. I've had plenty of expensive frames in the past that have needed chasing. The build is nothing out of the ordinary. Pikes, GX Eagle. Hope BB, headset, stem brakes (tech 3 X2, 180 both ends) and hubs. Arch Mk3 rims with Rock Razor (speedgrip) and Magic Mary (soft), both 2.35" and tubeless. All pretty standard stuff. I'm still waiting for the 170mm OneUp dropper to arrive, so am using the 150mm Reverb from my fatbike (with a shim) for now. Weight, according to my "trusty" bathroom scales seems to be 32lb, but I've no idea how accurate these are. By comparison my 26" aluminium Five was 31lb on the same scales. So, five years of developments means that I can now have a much longer steel 29er that's only a pound heavier, which sounds good to me. Right, that's enough preamble. Here are a few pictures and I'll report back when I've got it dirty. [img[img[img

roverpig

Posts: 6290

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Topic starter

Looks great. Time to get it dirty now 🙂

Posted : 23/04/2019 11:43 am

bootsy

Posts: 61

Free Member

Oh yes!

Posted : 23/04/2019 10:24 pm

woots787

Posts: 0

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So I put the fork up to 140mm in preparation for my first alps trip in 6 years. I then spotted the downtime podcast chap saying he had a longer stroke shock in his. A long google later and it turns out the difference between a 190x45 and 190x50 cane creek inline is a 5mm plastic spacer around the damper rod on the air spring side. So I bought a strap wrench and took the air cover off and undid the air can and slid it out of the way. I wrapped the damper shaft in tape to protect it. I then used a soldering iron to melt two lines in the plastic spacer and snapped it off. I didn't have the shaft clamp to take the eyelet bit off the damper rod hence the ghetto approach. So far I've only ridden it in the street but it seems fine, not losing air and couldn't see any marks on the damper shaft. Will probably get it a service once back off holiday as it feels a lot better for some new oil in the air can. Not factory approved I guess but doesn't hit anything on full travel and I can't see the extra 12mm hurting in the alps. Massive thanks to the big thread on mtbr.

Posted : 28/06/2019 1:10 pm

Dorset_Knob

Posts: 2407

Free Member

First we ride !

someone should put that on a t-shirt

Posted : 28/06/2019 2:25 pm

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