Weeksy08 the ongoing racing trials and tribulations of a crazy teen

We’re not sweating the details fella, we’re just organised and prepared really. Sure we are more organised than most at times, but as you’ll see in his clips, not always as he came down with high goggles swinging round his neck (and went faster still)

Can’t say I’ve given silent hubs a second thought though in truth. We e got the bikes dialled now, with the new Galfer pads in, some dot 5.1 in there and a Kryptotal tyre on the front, we’re as good as can be.

There’s things I’ve thought about like O-chain devices but dismissed as not required. He can still find plenty of time in himself before we get into any more details that’ll empty my wallet.

The forks and shock are off for service this week, then it’s 3 days at Antur for nationals.

Just realised I used that phrase again, unintentionally! I don’t mean to suggest you’re obsessive, only that you’re good with maintenance and are experimenting with things like tyres and brake pads where you see it matters. And evidently considering other ideas and making informed decisions to put them aside or deprioritise them.

Yeah, no worries. I wasn’t offended or anything, just a bit confused.

We/(more me I guess) do like trying to get things better for him. If we can get more speed for little consequence of cost, then yeah we’re all in for it.

That said, I am a little/lot obsessive yes, but hopefully not to either mine or his detriment. But there’s so many things to juggle in terms of bikes, kit, sponsors, riding, coaching, parts etc. it’s not just a case of “have bike, will ride” there’s lots of other things going on in both the foreground and background.

I’ve sold 4 sets of Uberbike pads this week, but I think I’ve got 5-6 left. Which I’m using to fund some Galfers which he’s now decided are superb.

The main focus though is as always  coaching with Katy which I still believe is a massive reason he’s getting better as the months pass. So much so that we’re trying to persuade her to come to Champery for the Euro Champs. Her knowledge of things and the way she sees tracks, lines, markers, it’s bloody impressive I can tell you.

**** STUPID companies.

I wanted/needed to replace the lads SRAM DUB preload spacer on his cranks, the SRAM one is made of soft plastic and splits/breaks really easily. This is alu and a bit stronger. So i’m trying to fit it, looking at the pic on the back of the box

Preload Ring > Dub Spacer > 30mm spacer
That’s how their pic goes, with pretty little boxes and arrows to point to each.

But it doesn’t fit right… I’m then thinking are you SURE… So i google it and there’s a video with a guy who picks up the 30mm spacer (as per box) and says, fit the DUB spacer… Errrrrrrrm.

So i ring Muc-Off.
“yeah, you need to ignore the box, it’s completely wrong”

I laughed, he laughed, oh how we all laughed.

Jeeez…. really lol.

is that one of the cheap £10 ones? I thought they were Raceface Cinch fitment but the video on the website does show them fitting it quite successfully to a DUB crank.  Very odd.

Yeah reduced to £10.

Fits perfectly when you know you’re fitting the correct parts 😀

I was tempted by one as the plastic thing on my Cinches has a crack in CSK tab and this is so cheap it  seemed daft not to, limited colours though at that price.  What colour did you go for?

Orange to match his Hope

Went racing with the boy at FoD last night. It’s only the Fod Thursdays mates race thing, but a decent bit of fun with a friendly bunch and a bit of a laugh. The track was partly on what’s known at Seths Corners, but veering off half way down. It was sketchy and the rain then increased which meant it wasn’t really worth putting in more laps for me.

His was far more glorious than me, i’m not exactly sure where his skills come from, but it’s clear to see where they don’t !!!

IMG_20240613_192351 by Steve Weeks[/url], on Flickr

IMG-20240613-WA0004 by Steve Weeks[/url], on Flickr

He’s still deep in exams with Physics today, so i’ve been up early and stripping the forks out of the Session along with the shock and i’m heading off to TFTuned to get them to wave a magic wand over the bouncy bits this morning. So it’s a full stripdown and service for them and a coffee and WFC (work from cafe) while they do that…

We looked at those after you mentioned it last weekend.

Would be great but it’s a bit too far for us to do as Daughter doesn’t finish school until 4, and then it’d be a battle down theM6/M5.

He’s putting down some pretty rapid times!

yeah we were lucky yesterday as it was an exam free day, so he was cool to get over there. Next Thurs we’re at Antur, but we’ll be at the next next one as he’s finished for summer holidays then. So all good.

Thanks mate, obviously last night was just playing and he rode the Privateer for the evening so he could pedal back up, but was a decent couple of runs for him but was more just a mess about that fully serious.

As per earlier, I took the forks and shock to TFTUNED for service today.

His shock has been fine and was a straight forward job, however the forks were a bit trickier.

They had developed a top out clunky, at max extension every time they clunked. It was irritating the boy on his rides.

After Jake had taken them apart he found a tiny hole in the damper bladder, which isn’t uncommon but is pretty drastic as you can’t buy it as a spare part. Usually it’s a new damper at lots of money. But luckily he had a spare used one that’s perfect and was relatively buttons from them, phew.

Other than that it was all sweet and back in the bike now.

I was testing the DUB as he said “it feels really slow” when riding yesterday. I checked the preload tool and the threaded piece hadn’t bonded to the shaft. So I’ve taken it apart after a massive battle with the 8mm crank bolt. Then some stronger glue and we’ll see.

I’ve also bought a standard one as that’s a resistance fit, so if needed that’ll go on next week

love the clip from the  forset of dean race on the last page, especially the pump-manual-pump at 9s looked super smooth.

@speeder if you want the orange one it’s £0

I couldn’t get it to bond well on the shaft so I’ve bought a couple of standard ones. Let me know and I’ll post it.

Well that progressed. I tried the stronger Loktite and it was still shit and didn’t bond/hold. So went back to the standard plastic setup from SRAM. But as i’m doing it i think “i’m sure that’s still got play”
So for some reason i checked the BB bearings and the NDS was completley solid….. I then checked the drive-side and guess what, again the same !!! WTF… I’m honestly not sure what’s happened here as i’m sure they were OK 2 weeks ago.
So i fitted a new BB and not only do the cranks spin nicely now but they also have no play. I still ideally need to fit a non-broken preload ring when that arrives this week, but it’ll be fine anyway now.

The disappointing part is that we only fitted the BB in April. That’s really not very long at all for a BB.

I’m now looking into a couple of possible options for a DUB that’ll last a bit longer, maybe a Praxxis.

I’ve also lobbed DMR a message i noticed they make the Axe LE crankset which is a Raceface type wavey washer fittment and non-DUB.
https://www.dmrbikes.com/Catalogue/Components/Cranks/Axe-Crank-LE
I didn’t know they made an 83mm version but it seems they do and assuming i can get a BB that’s compatible for it then we may go with these for a solution instead. I’m sure the boy would be upset at not having carbon X01’s any more, but it’d be nice to get another component on for DMR.

Chatting with a mate who was up at Llangollen this weekend made me REALLY pleased that once again we skipped a Gravity Events round. For the 3rd event on the bounce they had ‘timing issues’ exactly the same as at Rheola earlier in the season and many riders didn’t get any timings at all. Weirdly the Youth cat DID… but as to how reliable that was, is very much open to debate again. I just can’t fathom how time and time again they’re not getting it right… but also once again, a massive lack of communication to riders/anyone was there in force.
Their numbers were WAY down in terms of riders and i think people are voting with their feet.

I was testing some video editing software, but all it really highlighted was how poor my phone camera is

Is it your phone camera – or YouTube winding down the resolution?

I find my GoPro footage looks ace at home – but when I play it back after uploading to YouTube it’s not great.

I think it was maybe my camera, or maybe the editing software. It doesn’t much matter as 99% of times we use his iPhone rather than my old android, it may even have been the editing software

That’s clear on me watching it back in phone, but not once uploaded

Re the bb I’d be again looking at your cleaning regime and the products but who am I to say anything

Re the bb I’d be again looking at your cleaning regime and the products but who am I to say anything

You’re probably right on the amount of cleaning and the force being the cause. But there is a logic in my cleaning in that where and how we’re riding it’s been getting very muddy and when it comes to race time i want it as clean as possible in the drivetrain area, i don’t want anything slowing the cranks/drivetrain, so it’s unceremoniously blasted. It’s then put in the van wet and we drive 4 hours to get home. So i can completely see how and why it happens. The other bikes are cleaned differently, end of the ride and then lubed straight away, they have less issues.

I can’t really change much in how the day/afternoons work in terms of cleaning etc

You can, but choose not to, then post on here. Don’t post on here, Spend that 2 mins with a brush and sponge plus a watering can

OK, thank you

Antur Stiniog nationals this weekend.

Live timing here

https://my.raceresult.com/296105/#0_E78090

Rider 222 in youth

Wish him good luck from use. 👍

P22 in seeding, had a minor off track but not huge.

Needs/wants to find a bit more tomorrow

2s is about 7-8 places

It’s looking somewhat less bright today

https://my.raceresult.com/296105/#0_D57243

Good luck! Looks like a typical bit of Antur summer weather 👌

16th 😁😁😁😁

Target for year was top 20 at national.

8s away from winner. Bloody awesome j

ob!

Awesome..well done

Top result 👏

Quality result

Well that’s the weekend over. Just arrived home after leaving the house at 5am on Friday morning.

Race results there

https://www.rootsandrain.com/event12570/2024-jun-23-british-cycling-dh-national-series-3-antur-stiniog/results/

I was super happy with the whole weekend. Firstly from me riding Black Powder and trying out a DH bike, but then with the boy and his riding.

Over the weekend he went from not massively liking the track to getting on ok with it, but his attitude was still tip top. No sulking etc, apart from a little wobble after Seeding and being disappointed.

Today though was wet as an otters pocket in the morning but he didn’t complain, just got up, went out and stuck runs in.

The race run went really well with him putting in both a solid time and very few mistakes. The best bit being that once again he’s closing the gap to the fast lads.

Josh Woods will likely be in world cups next year or year after for sure, but several of the others will be too, so closing right up on them is awesome by him.

The busy times continue now with FoD Thurs this week, Ponty at the weekend and the straight off racing the next 3 weeks back to back.

A little montage of pics from the weekend. Things are still not getting any less crazy with 3 race weekends in the next 4 weeks, only this weekend survives, but he’s still riding Ponty at the weekend for practice. (As well as other stuff throughout the week of course).

IMG-20240625-WA0020 by Steve Weeks[/url], on Flickr

IMG-20240625-WA0027 by Steve Weeks[/url], on Flickr

IMG-20240625-WA0033 by Steve Weeks[/url], on Flickr

IMG-20240625-WA0018 by Steve Weeks[/url], on Flickr

@weeksy

speeder if you want the orange one it’s £0

I couldn’t get it to bond well on the shaft so I’ve bought a couple of standard ones. Let me know and I’ll post it.

Thanks for the offer Steve but it would just be weird with my colour scheme. I’m sure someone will take it.

No worries fella… it’s just sitting here if you ever want it. I went with standard SRAM item and it’s all good.

I agree with the dub bearings, I have had one set last a whole year of multiple rides per week, but I have just replaced one and it has only been in four months.

It was the last FOD Thursday for the boy in Youth last night.

IMG_20240627_201619 by Steve Weeks[/url], on Flickr

He went well but didn’t quite get fastest time of the evening. The winner overall is a fast bloke for sure. As the boy turns 16 next week he now gets kicked into the Adults cat.

Had a long chat with Katy about various aspect of riding and what the plans are going forward, lots of exciting ideas to come i think 🙂

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C8vBcgfMadk/?igsh=YjhkemR4bWp0NjY1