While we wait for the Cotic Rocket…

@ chakaping – I was going for this look

alu shock actuator thingermejig

?? It has kind of piqued my interest in uprating from my giant

Odd question.

The shocks on the rocket are they just standard tune shocks or is it specific to the rocket? I.e. if i bought the frame only option and got a tftuned version of it which includes

Price includes set-up and heavy-duty mount kits to suit you and your bike, as well as free shipping (mainland UK).

is that worth doing?

looked at the Cane creek but i think i’d prefer fit and forget! rather than knobs to twiddle

😕

There is a base tune for the CCDBA CS on the Cane Creek site that was worked out by Cy, I think. Last time I looked it matched the tune settings he sent me when I asked back in February. Interestingly, there is a different base tune for the Rocket for the new CCDBA Inline – I don’t know where that’s come from given that the shock isn’t available yet and Cotic haven’t mentioned the Inline as a possible option.

You could just set the base tune and forget it until you feel like experimenting a bit. The Cane Creek field guide looks useful for people not used to tuning their own shocks (like me).

There is an internal setting (i.e. not user-adjustable) that sets how much effect the Climb Switch has. Again, according to Cy, the shocks supplied by Cotic will have this set specifically for the Rocket – I think Cy found the setting on the shock he was sent to test to be too soft, so it should be set a bit firmer than default. The CS just adds a set amount of low speed compression and rebound to the tune the user sets him/herself.

Any news on the rockit?

Colours ? (Cy, needs to be black on black)

scruff – Member
Any news on the rockit?

A Rocket, earlier (not my photo, but it’s in the public domain so I guess it’s OK).

EDIT. Image removed just in case.

Rare as hens teeth

Have now seen a photo of a UK built front triangle – not sure if it’s been welded up or still dry-fitting to get the jigs set up, but seems things are on the move.

Be nice to get a ball park delivery weeks or months rather than it be completely open ended …..

Last news from Cy suggested 6 weeks-ish from the end of June.

Much as I’m hopeful, I’m not holding my breath.

Failure to launch,from what I seen so far no pat on the back or high fives

how is this farce not killing cotic?

I think, that once released, they should give heavily discounted frames to anyone that has posted on this thread! 😀

jam bo – Member

how is this farce not killing cotic?

I think just because their core business is really damn good hardtails and that’s been unaffected. Also most folks probably realise they’re having trouble because they’re trying to do something that’s hard enough that nobody else in the industry has even tried.

Obviously I can be laid back because I’m not waiting for a Rocket 🙂

hard enough that nobody else in the industry has even tried

Except Orange Brompton and Pashley to name 3 who have been making things for years.

Except Orange Brompton and Pashley to name 3 who have been making things for years.

It’s relatively easy (but still far from easy in an absolute sense) to keep doing manufacturing here in the UK (unless you’re dependent on a major supplier who quits the business). Buy you try starting up from scratch!

If I had held on and waited for my rocket, I would be sitting at just over 18 months now, waiting on another ‘just a few weeks yet’. My patience ran out after 10 months however. Hindsight is as ever, a wonderful thing, but I can’t help but think that they should have used a prototype, say the mini rocket, as the test piece for moving manufacture, and kept producing the rocket in the mean time.

Thing is, around the time I ordered, there was a huge buzz around the rocket, which has now gone, sadly. The whole 650b will just have added to this.

Ironically, I love what cotic are doing, very bold and fantastic to see. I hope they go from strength to strength.

have the people waiting 18 months for a rocket paid up front?

Agree with Nobeer, about the mini rocket and production. But now it’s nearly 2 years in the making times have moved on and the rocket will be out of date. Like or hate 650b it has decimated the 26 inch wheel market.

So Cotic WILL have to get a 650b version and prob a 29er version to market as soon as humanly possible or force losing even more sales, even though they are still struggling to produce the 26 inch model. So I doubt the mini rocket will ever see the light of day.

If I had held on and waited for my rocket, I would be sitting at just over 18 months now, waiting on another ‘just a few weeks yet’. My patience ran out after 10 months however

Its looking like you could buy a different frame, run it, get bored of it and when you are ready for a change the Rocket will finally be available/on sale.

If I had paid money I’d want it back asap. 18months etc is too long to give money away.

That’s some glass-half-empty thinking there Rik.
They’ve only really got one problem and that’s not being able to make them quick enough. The rest isn’t a reality yet.

As far as I can see it, they’ve..
// got a unique product.
// almost sold out the first batch based on old reviews, good will and their manufacturing approach (and good price to be honest).
// apart from the (debatable) wheelsize, almost every other part of the geometry is bang up-to-date.

Once they get some frames out there and people start raving about them again, they’ll probably sell some more. Meanwhile they can get the 29er into production and prototype the 650b and create even more interest and sales.

I’ll admit that I see them through slightly rose-tinted specs as I’ve got a lot of time for what they’re trying to do.

I haven’t ordered yet, but it’s high on my list of next bikes.

The real point of it isn’t so much “make the rocket in the UK” as “make bikes in the UK”- so once that’s delivered for the Rocket it’s a smaller matter to do it for the 29er Rocket, and whatever else may be. Remember it’s intended to be a contract factory too building bikes for other people.

Also, bear in mind they didn’t cut off taiwanese production of the Rocket in flow, that was already a problem before they decided to move to UK production. Maybe they could have sorted that out faster, who knows with hindsight.

I think they’ll have it in production just in time for The Industry to declare that 650b is dead and we all have to replace our bikes with 25.5 wheels 😉

I’d consider a Rocket partly due to the price which makes it affordable. post-production issues if they looked at demand and raised the prices. Well.

Hora, I never paid any money, and afaik no one else did either.

Needs to be 650b to position itself in the correct area of the marketplace. 26″ is dead and 29ers are more suited to XC.

Dunno what it’s taking so long mind, welding some steel tubes together ain’t that hard.

Dunno what it’s taking so long mind, welding some steel tubes together ain’t that hard.

+1. A few months yes but so long?

+1. A few months yes but so long?

I’t takes about an hour ,what takes so long is starting a factory from scratch and making sure everytime I put those tubes into a jig they position better than 0.25mm there are pictures showing this and everyone of them is repeatable ,it took 5 months to develop a jig system which framebuilders all over the world are desperate to get their hands on but its accurate to 40 microns no matter which way i throw tubes at it

BML was set up to be a frame factory .In that the factory started from a dusty empty shell ,it had to be painted wired for three phase wired for single phase ,alignment tables had to be sourced CNC machines bought and we just got a new machine to surpass the old one this means things get put back post processors need to be written programs proven cycle times reduced,and thats before I even start making tools for holding subassemblies for Rocket production, lathes and equipment needed to be calibrated purge systems design tested, and proved and thats all mingled in with working as many hours as you can justifiably get away with before your homelife starts to suffer

Further to this we have to source every material and you can spend days dealing with suppliers external suppliers can be unreliable we try 3 different anodisers and some are good some are poor do we release a sub standard product, **** no chance ,painting finishing if I were building custom frames it would all be under my control but we aren’t though each one is hand made to a very high level of both precision and quality, we have to some extent had to rely on certain external resources and they invariably present more problems than they resolve

The actual time spent working on Cy’s frames has been in the order of months no one ever tells you the amount of shit you have to deal with running a company, I’m an engineer so rely on Cy to deal with a lot of that shit for BML

Even then Im not a cotic employee so should not be commenting things on the Rocket have been refined redesigned analysed based on the fact that the features on the current bikes are how they like to make things in the ROC and we can actually do what Cy asked but was told in some case No buy the Overseas makers ,and 26″ might not be dead but in doing this we also configured everything to take into account 650 and 29 production though as a non employee I cannot tell you if they exist or not

We piss and moan at one another me more than him BTW but i think this is more borne out of frustration than anything else because to be honest when we sit and look at what we have achieved in 18 months with our sensible heads on ….we aint done bad

have a go at bringing a product to market and actually competing with thte overseas crowd its awesome fun

Take that Haterz!

For those of you who don’t know, Mick is the manufacturing brains behind BML who are making the new Cotic Rocket frames. And I’d agree with everything he said. It’s been the hardest thing I’ve ever been involved with, massively stressful for both of us with plenty of sleepless nights all round. It’s probably one of the most frustrating situations too, due to ending up not having Rockets to sell to people who want them for so long just when we’d really got some momentum going with the sales and buzz about the frame.

It’s easy to say decisions could have been made differently with 20:20 hindsight, but I didn’t want to source any more from Taiwan and we thought we’d be up and running sooner. But as Mick says, it’s very much not just sticking frames together any old how and hoping for the best, there was a hell of an amount of set up work that needed doing before we really got into moving towards production. Call us naive and optimistic if you like, but if you weren’t a bit naive and optimistic you’d never try and do anything because it would always seem impossible.

We’ve not delivered frames to people who have ordered them yet, and for that we’re both sorry and truly gutted to have disappointed them, but it’s not for want of trying to get them out the door. Writing each of the emails out to customers with orders each time we’ve missed a deadline, because we’ve come up against yet another unforeseen problem, is just the hardest thing I have to do at the moment and it kills me each time I have to. But it’s not like we’re purposefully going slowly just to annoy you, we’re just trying desperately hard to achieve what we set out to achieve. On the flip side of that, the emails we receive back from patient customers who are committed to buying a frame because of what we’re trying to do is just fantastic and we can’t wait for the day we can repay your kindness and patience with delivering the very best frame BML can make.

Good luck guys.

Mick & Cy, best wishes for your project, respect.

I don’t really see much in the way of whining on this thread tbh, certainly pretty low grade whining in stw terms!.

fair point, whiners comment redacted.

Writing each of the emails out to customers with orders each time we’ve missed a deadline, because we’ve come up against yet another unforeseen problem, is just the hardest thing I have to do at the moment and it kills me each time I have to.

I’ll write them for you.

Fiver a pop? 😀

Take that Haterz!

Who said its ‘hate’. Its a question on why so long.

The topic is a discussion and questions on delays are highly relevant.

The answer is:

what takes so long is starting a factory from scratch

As I mentioned earlier the frames piqued my interest too.

If Specialized posted on here I’d call it fair-game/open-season/time for fun.

Good luck to you both – when that short travel play mini-Rocket does eventually roll around I might actually have the cash for it.

Bit sorry I started the thread; not sure it’s serving any purpose other than to give an opportunity for people without any interest to express angst on others’ behalf. I’m sanguine.

No such thing as bad publicity, merynella.

Bit sorry I started the thread; not sure it’s serving any purpose other than to give an opportunity for people without any interest to express angst on others’ behalf. I’m sanguine.

From the sounds theres very few with any real angst value to add , more poking fun

Bumpity bump!

Any developments?