maybe not lots of money but lots available at the drop of a hat 🙂

maybe not lots of money but lots available at the drop of a hat

I’m sure it looks that way but it’s so not the case. The blue bike was bought with the funds from selling the other blue older GT, the wheel was bought with the money from selling the 27.5 wheel, the fork lowers came in from selling the XFusion shock… etc etc… It’s money out and money in. I can see how it may look at times, but i can promise you it’s far far far from the case. I really hope this thread doesn’t come over that way, like a bragging thing. Well, not in terms of our finances anyway. Of course i love talking about the boys riding and racing.

There’s times when we struggle to afford certain aspects and i sit there looking at the bank and thinking “oh… errrm”

https://m.pinkbike.com/news/introducing-the-katy-curd-youth-development-team.html

Well I’m not sure I have any words left to say ever again.

Well, not really lol.

So good!

Proud dad moment and well deserved 👏

Classic Weeksy!

I was thinking the very same thing 😂 would you like to be my dad too??? 🤔😂

would you like to be my dad too??

Sure, you beat him down a hill and you get his room too 🤣

Awesome!

you get his room too 🤣

Teenager’s room?? I’m out. 😉

Wow, the last 24 hours have been a bit nuts from Privateer Bikes. With media frenzy and announcements on offroad.cc Pinkbike, wideopen and their own Instagram feed… I’m not sure the boy quite knows what to do or say right now.

I’ve been prepping the race bikes in the evenings, with the lunch-break today just completing the blue one for the weekend now and fitting some new grips, saddle and pedals.

Up and out the door at a reasonable time tomorrow for testing/play/coaching and practice. 🙂

Excellent news and well done to all the Weeksy family and friends.

Do Privateer offer bikes similar to the GT, which I presume is DH only?

Might be worth a few questions and conversations because when the team grows and James gets known in his own right, any sponsors to the main team (at the time) will likely want their riders to use their kit all the time, in case they are spotted out and about etc.

Not from a ‘free bike’ perspective, more to keep it commercial and also ensure your lad can at least feel comfortable on another bike if asked to ride it.

@twonks

Excellent news and well done to all the Weeksy family and friends.

Do Privateer offer bikes similar to the GT, which I presume is DH only?

Might be worth a few questions and conversations because when the team grows and James gets known in his own right, any sponsors to the main team (at the time) will likely want their riders to use their kit all the time, in case they are spotted out and about etc.

Not from a ‘free bike’ perspective, more to keep it commercial and also ensure your lad can at least feel comfortable on another bike if asked to ride it.

That’s the interesting bit…. No is the answer, they dont. However they are very much aware the kids are currently racing DH as their primary interest.
https://www.privateerbikes.com/blogs/journal/katy-curd-youth-development-team

They will all be on the Privateer 141 for training and enduro racing. The people behind the company have an amazing ethos to the company and are so keen to continually improve products and bikes. Its amazing to be a part of the family and the bikes ride so good! They all have their own downhill bikes and will be racing the downhill races on these.

There are some people, mostly in the US who’ve ridden and raced 161s on Dual Crown forks and loved it… Whilst obviously that’s not quite a DH bike… it’s a decent compromise. I do 100% get your point though and it’s something we’ve thought about a fair bit.. We’re obviously hoping to stay with Katy and the team this year, next year, as long as she wants, but obviously this is a youth squad and there’ll come a time when all 3 of these move on and are replaced by other youngsters.
All 3 of them are going to be riding their Privateers in Enduro this season, maybe not as much as the DH stuff, but we’ll be ensuring that Privateer do get as much of a share of their time as we can. But i’d absolutely LOVE Privateer to make and develop a DH bike, that would be so much the ideal scenario. But that said, you never know, he may fall in love with Enduro and ride less DH in coming years… Really, i just don’t know.

This is all such a bonkers time at the moment it’s honestly quite time consuming in terms of bikes, kit, hardware, media etc… I never quite grasped how it would all go. I’ve made some new friends and i’ve made a few mistakes and said the wrong thing at the wrong time once or twice. Hence you’ll arguably see me going back to more “this is my boy” type posts rather than “this is the team/stuff” type posts…
there’s so many little pit-falls, traps, and holes to fall into… we want to keep people who are helping happy.. but sometimes you think “oh, can I post….” and you end up finding you can’t/shouldn’t…. Then end up looking a bit foolish.

Another hard part is “pictures and videos” and the question of what gets created as content, why and for who.. My lad has VERY different thoughts on what’s right and wrong here with me, i think of it from “does sponsor A want more or less content” and he’s more about “how cool do i look in this video/photo”.. He’s also quite a shy lad so getting pics, images, videos with him in are also quite tricky.

This may sound a bit daft but i’m so so so much looking forward to this weekend, just to get back to riding, racing and having fun out there… it’s what we both now class as ‘normal’ and a return to normality is what we both need i think. The world has become a little surreal at the moment for both/all of us..We’re enjoying every minute.. but it’s sure a bit strange.

So today was practice day at FoD, but also a riding day for me and Crust. We dropped the boy off and headed to Parkend to play on trails, leaving the boy being coached and then playing.

It all went wrong when I was bleeding a CodeR set of brakes for one of his mates as the boy came back and gave me the “oh I’ve broken my bike” story

Arses.
I grabbed the spare rear mech from the box and went to fit it. Hold on, it’s a SRAM rear mech and he’s on Shimano. So we discussed the 2nd bike, which was also on Shimano. Why the flook do I have a spare SRAM 10 speed short cage mech!!!

So the next 2 hours the boy spend mechless and chainless. But still getting plenty of track time.

‘why wasn’t he on the spare bike’ you ask, well as we’d taken my mate in the van too, we left the spare bike at home, after all, what’s the odds of needing it lol.

I then had to fix another bike, as well as a pair of shoes/cleats and buy a kid some lunch as he couldn’t find his dad lol.

So after practice we head home and I start stripping the Zwift bike, it has 10sp mech and shifter, but it’s a long cage mech, which isn’t ideal, especially on Mr Rooty, which is what claimed mech1 today, big root, right line, clunk. But he’ll run the purple bike as race bike for tomorrow and the blue bike with ling cage mech will be the backup.

But he’s ready to play and see where he ends up.

I had a superb ride on the Slayer in full Slack setting on the flip chip, bike felt ace! Happily, after sorting the mech hanger bolt, it was also silent.

Ppppp 🤪

You need to hire a mechanic, give yourself a rest. Lol

IT’s OK, this is what we do. Early start today to get there for practice, well it’s more the car-park we need to get there for actually lol.
The boy has 3 mins more in bed and it’s time to fly 🙂

Good luck lad and competitive dad 👍😃😊

it’s a SRAM rear mech and he’s on Shimano

disappointing lack of bodging there, would’ve thought you could’ve just got him a gear or 2 using the Sram mech to get through the day/race (as you usually only need a couple of gears per track)

disappointing lack of bodging there, would’ve thought you could’ve just got him a gear or 2 using the Sram mech to get through the day/race (as you usually only need a couple of gears per track)

Yesterday was only practice. He rode it chainless and enjoyed it.

+1 on getting him a mechanic!

Today was a slightly tricky one for me, maybe more so than it was for him.

I’m quite hard on myself at times and this weekend was no exception. With a lack of sleep from being irritated by not having the correct mech we headed to fod early doors.

The boy came in ok after practice runs 1&2 but by run 3 it was getting slippery and 1/3 of riders we’re crashing every run. Rider after rider. Mr Rooty was living up to its name for sure.
I wasn’t even convinced he’d do race 1 at one stage. He just wasn’t there in the head. But he went down, took it steady for 20/57
However he was feeling pretty rubbish about it as he’d missed lines, gone wrong etc.but it’s far from a disaster, there were a lot of the big names racing so was always going to be tough.
By the time race 2 came about the track looked less slippy but seemed to be running slower, but still crash after crash, all ages, all classes, slippy off camber root sections.
Sadly for the boy he also crashed but despite losing 10s, came in really happy. He’d targeted 5 lines he wanted to hit perfectly and hit 4 of them, so was actually pleased with how it went.
Strange lol.

We’re home now and chilling out, planning next weekends riding. Me, I’m a bit “maybe I could have changed/done something to make it better. But I really am my harshest critic at times.

All in all, not the best one.

Your jobs over once you have got him to the start gate. Apart from mechanicals there not alot you can do more apart from encouragement and praise.
Schoolboy error on the wrong mech. I bet it won’t happen again. 😉

Your jobs over once you have got him to the start gate.

Very much this. There may be some minor setup things (margin gains) that could help but he has to learn to communicate that, you can’t just guess what’s happening as you’re not on the bike. Luckily he’s on a development team to help develop things like racing rooty tracks in slippery conditions

Just remember it’s meant to be fun, not about where you finish

. . . especially when it’s a FOD Mini-DH

It’s all good… everyone and everything in the world is happy 🙂

Order 2 Shimano Zee 10 speed short cage mechs.

I did noticed last night the Bomber CR shock wasn’t particularly nice in action at times, top of the stroke it seems harsh/stiff, so the back end has been stripped, shock removed and an XFusion standard rear shock fitted. With a bit of luck as i’ve sprung it right and used the same settings from previous setups on the same shock, it shouldn’t be far off. The Bomber CR will likely go off for a service

Mech hanger aligned nicely, but in truth wasn’t far out.. The mech though as we’ve gathered is completely dead lol. But i’ll whip the jockey wheels out of it as spares.

You may have to accept that you have to sacrifice you’re riding etc so that you can pack that spare bike etc after all you’ve no idea when you’re going to need it, it certainly won’t be when you think you do. Also try not to stress about every race, have some goals for the season and try to see the bigger picture. There will be some bumps in the road but he needs to make some mistakes so he can learn lessons.

Yeah it’s fair mate… in truth we didn’t need to leave bike 4 at home, it would have fitted.. But we thought “nah, it’ll be fine…” lesson learned.

You’re very much correct about the goals, stress, etc… It’s a tricky one as racers are inherently competitive, therefore want to do well in every race, even racing a mate from lampost-lampost.. it’s how their/my brain works.

But he’s gone off to school happy and any disappointment from the weekend is only in MY brain not his 😀 but that’s something i have to work on and deal with myself. I probably get more disappointed when things don’t go right in terms of results for him, than i do for me 🙂 maybe that’s down to levels of expectation though. But i try and ensure i don’t trouble him with any of this.
He met up with half a dozen lads he’s not seen for a few months, talked some rubbish, played on jumps and ate some cake…

I’ve ordered 2 new rear mechs for the bike, 1 as now, 1 as spare. He’s got a Hopton uplift open day this weekend with Pearce cycles on Sunday, so that’ll give me a day of local riding with mate on Sat to keep me happy, then him over there for the Sunday.
After that, it’s quiet until coaching on the 16th and BikeParkWales on the 18th for some fun again…

If he isn’t using the top few cogs on the cassette, then some cassettes allow the removal of them and then use a spacer (box make one amongst others). Less chain and therfore the mech is tucked up out the way.

Yeah it’s certainly a thought. Obviously he’s running a short cage mech, so i think it was mostly just unfortunate circumstances more than an actual issue. Looking on the results of how many had runs 1/2 with more than 10s differences or a DNF was quite eyeopening…. Really was quite a few people who hit the floor. But it was a weekend out on bikes with 2 days riding for him and 1 excellent day for me.

I’d second ditching the bigger cogs on the cassette. They’re not needed and you can just set the mech up to use the 7 smaller cogs. As said you get a shorter chain and he’s got his 141 for pedalling days now.

when you say ‘bigger’ he’s running a 28t big 🙂 lol. 11/28 is his cassette. (Standard on the Fury).

Even his previous Fury that was running 7 speed was running 11/26 and a spacer… So not really a massive difference. So i think it’s just putting it down to ‘one of those things’ to a great extent. He does set off in about his 23T so it’d be a minor issue going to much smaller.

Finished work for the day here, so in the garage stripping the bike down, checking, swapping and greasing all the bearings.
One of the pair is a 6003 which is a big big beast of a thing, that’s not 100% but isn’t terrible yet, so i’ve re-filled with nice grease for now, but will replace next week or so, don’t think i have a 6003 in spares.

Everything else is checked and happy… I’m not massively inspired with how the Bomber feels, i was checking it and the LSC dial was siezed, i think some muppet had set to max and then tried to go even further… but with persuasion i got it better and freed up. But there’s still a bit of a clunkiness that’s not present on the XFusion shock, so for now the XFusion is set to the right settings and it’ll be run. The Bomber, it’ll have to wait a while.

But there’s still a bit of a clunkiness that’s not present on the XFusion shock

Sounds like it needs serviced as you suspected earlier. The Bomber, and Vanilla R when it was still badged as a Fox, are simple but good shocks. They are also easily tuned by any suspension place

Can’t say the colours really work lol… But with the blue bike being the primary bike it made sense to get the Hope Pro4s on it.
[url=https://flic.kr/p/2oenfw2]2023-01-31_09-48-22[/url] by Steve Weeks, on Flickr

Will then check and sort the bearings on the Halo wheels for the purple bike as a mate reported they may be a bit yukky at the weekend. Just waiting for the rear mech to arrive and the blue bike will be back up and running again.

got some new DMR bars to fit to it as well… Look really nice, went for stealthy black on this one, rather than the camo that will be on the Privateer.

I know it can’t be be helped, but that colour clash 🤢

but that colour clash 🤢

One step at a time… At the least the racing top now somewhat matches the lid 😂

Most important update, however, was ‘mates & cake’!! Well, as long as you got cake too @weeksy 🍰 😉

The colours just don’t matter, the Hope wheels are better, he likes the Hope brakes and I don’t have enough cash for V4s in black. So he runs a crazy colour setup I’m afraid.

I got the cake mate yes thanks.

Today we also entered the National champs on the Enduro series too. Which will be quite interesting as I’m hoping/thinking he can actually do better in Enduro than DH. Well he’s entered, I didn’t as I worried I’d be kind of in the way as he’s racing with team and Katy, I’d either distract him, or I’d end up being all alone. Neither sounds fun.

We’ll both get to race together soon though. We’ve got Southern Enduro at Newnham.

There’s been tonnes of background planning going on lately, races, coaching, riding. There’s lots of other bits coming too. But it’s a long season lol.

Chatting today the boy was telling me he hit a tree on Run1, lost his footing 3 times too lol. Which makes me happy as it showed grit to get out and go again.

More riding this weekend at Hopton for him. Race track practice and fun.

I may end up with some black tech 3s for sale if I convince myself I ‘need’ tech 4s 😀

Mate I can’t put into words what we’ve spent this month.

Between the bike, forks, Pearce, Nationals, Southerns, bpw, Dyfi, hotels
Honestly it’s quite insane.