Too Beaucoup!

Oddjob

Oddjob

Merry fucking Xmas to you assholes
Unlike that Trump aping narcissist @Zaf, I actually care about you all and have a dslr, so I'm going to share the love as I build up my Extra Large Black Pole. Let the endless puns begin!

Just a warning though, this may take a while. (I don't want to faint from the blood loss, and you don't want a tear.)

Frame - Pole Evolink 150 XL black
Rear shock - RS Vivid Air r2c 216x63
Front shock/fork - 160mm 29er RS Super Yari with Avalanche FvAT/HSB cartridge and MRP ramp control
Handlebars - Spank Spike 800 VibroCore
Stem - Thomson Elite X4 50mm
Headset - Cane Creek 40
Grips - Odi Rogue
Saddle - Selle SMP Hybrid
Seatpost - Thomson Elite Dropper
Front brake - Shimano m755 caliper, Goodridge lines, Shimano m775 lever (note: the m755 was originally a Grimeca design and the template for the Trickstuff Direttissima. The new Trickstuff Maxima is an uprated Direttissima with Goodridge lines)
Rear brake - Shimano m755 caliper, Goodridge lines, Shimano m775 lever
Cranks - Raceface Aeffect, CK bb
Chainguide - Fouriers
Chain - KMC X10
Pedals - Time ATAC Z
Front derailleur -
Rear derailleur - Shimano XT m786 with Oneup radcage
Front shifter -
Rear shifter - Shimano XTR m980
Cassette - Shimano XT m781 with Hope expander 11-42
Front hub - Project 321 G2
Rear hub - Project 321 G2 120 poe
Front rim - Syntace W30 29er
Rear rim - Syntace W30 29er
Spokes - DT 2mm Champion
Nipples - 14mm black brass
Tyres - Front: Michelin Wild Am Trail Shield GUM-X3D 29x2.35, rear: Michelin Wild Grip'R 29x2.25
Tubes - Huck Norris
Total weight - ??? Probably 15kg.



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Oddjob

Oddjob

Merry fucking Xmas to you assholes
The purchase

1. I admitted I was powerless over hoarding—that our lives had become unmanageable.

Ok lets get the easy stuff out of the way. I never actually intended to build this bike. I had some vague desire to get a 29er enduro monstertruck at some point but that was about it. I was thinking it would be nice to get a Evil Wreckoning or some such but it wasn't a priority. The Yari was doing hard time on my Lynskey Monstercross while I lost some weight and carted my son around on the Mac ride and the rest of the parts I had lying around.

2. I came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

And then @Nerf Herder lost the Pole distro and decided to sell the demo bikes including an Evolink 150 XL in black. I have a thing for whacky bikes (Avanti D8, RM Switch, Morewood Shova, Jamis Dakar Pro, Turner Flux etc etc.) and I'm half asian which means I love a good deal. A run out deal on an Evolink lit up the pleasure receptors in my head like I was tripping balls at a Daft Punk concert again. (RO-BO-OT HU-MA-AN, RO-BO-OT HU-MA-AN)

3. I made a decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of the XL Black Pole as I understood Him.

As quick as you could say 'I wonder if my wife will notice two and half grand missing from our credit card', I was at Linksports warehouse.

4. I made a searching and fearless inventory of my garage.

And found I had most of the parts I needed, because what hoarder doesn't have the build kits for a couple of bikes ready to go at all times? @moorey I'm looking at you.

5. I admitted to God, to myself, and to another human being the exact nature of the Yari's wrongs.

Let's not beat about the bush. I picked the Yari up for a bargain and for good reason. The motion control damper felt ordinary compared to the best dampers back when it was first introduced and it hasn't improved with age. Something needed to be done.

6. I was entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of the Yari's character.

Ok Craig at Avalanche isn't God but when it comes to aftermarket dampers he's as close as they come. He's also surprisingly cost competitive to a Charger 2 damper which made fulfilling a lifelong dream easy.

7. I humbly asked MTB Suspension Centre to remove the Yari's shortcomings.

With the Avy cartridge in hand I still had to get the Yari extended from 120mm to 160mm, so BOOM! I got the new Debonair spring. But I'm a flat slob who needs a lot of support so BOOM! I got a MRP ramp control. Suddenly the Yari wasn't the Hodor of the RS range, it now had more in common Sandor Clegane.

8. I made a list of all wheels I had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

I had a couple wheelsets in mind for the build:
  1. 23mm id TWE rims laced to Hope Pro2 Evos
  2. 30mm id Zelvy PDLs laced to I9 Torchs.
Given that the Pole was meant to be a monster truck, I realised that neaither of these wheels were going to be tough enough.

9. I made direct pleads to such people that could help wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

And then @Minlak sold me the abso-f!#cking-lutely perfect wheelset. Syntace offset W30s laced to a set of Project 321 G2s with, get this, 2mm straight gauge spokes and 14mm brass nipples.

10. I Continued to take personal inventory and when I was wrong promptly admitted it.

I then started putting together the rest of the build kit and the one glaring omission (f!#k off @Zaf, it's not a gearbox) was the Monarch Plus rear shock. I've got a Float X on my Focus SAM which doesn't really keep up with the Fox36, and the Float X is a better shock than the Monarch Plus. The Monarch wasn't going to have a hope of keeping up with the Super Yari.

11. I Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with the suspension gods as we understood them, praying only for knowledge of sweet deals for us and the power to get it delivered before 1 July.

And lo and behold the suspension gods delivered in the form of a runout sale on Vivid Air R2Cs at the Pros Closest, who also happened to have an ebay store. This meant that ebay would do all the freight forwarding for me.

I also got a BOS Void for a $100 off Facebook.

And if all else fails, Avalanche modifies Monarch Pluses oh and that busted DHX I've got lying around.

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, I tried to carry this message to mountain bikers and to practice the XL Black Pole principles in all our affairs.

Now that I've bored you with my ramblings time to take some half decent build photos.

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Oddjob

Oddjob

Merry fucking Xmas to you assholes
The fork

It's always hard trying to describe suspension performance but I'll have a crack at describing the Super Yari.

The cartridge only really dictates the performance of the fork for the first 75%. The final 25% is really controlled by the MRP.

I've got the cartridge setup for bike park work so it's got reasonably firm lsc but the lsc shim stack sits on a spring supported blow off valve. The hsc is set somewhat loose.

The combination gives the fork two distinct behaviours. When the blow off valve is closed the lsc stack is fully engaged and the fork strongly resists brake dive and g-outs and only really uses 50% of its travel.

When the fork hits a big enough bump the blow off valve opens and the lsc is completely bypassed. The fork essentially becomes a pogo and the main influences on the fork are the ramp control in the last 25% of travel and the rebound circuit. This is very different to the behaviour of my other forks, where you can always feel the influence of your lsc setting.

The rebound setting also has a huge impact on the fork. Too little rebound and the fork feels way too 'loose' when the blow off valve opens. Too much and you get pack down. What I aim for is for the rebound to be slow enough to allow the wheel to skip a little bit over high speed chunder without packing down.

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Oddjob

Oddjob

Merry fucking Xmas to you assholes
The build

With the wife's birthday Pivot built and gifted, it was time to start the building up my big Pole.

The wheel had already been tensioned and trued but needed a service. P321 hubs are really well built but are a bit finicky to service. They needed just about every hub tool I had to tear down. Of course the bearings seats were dry, so they got a lick of anti-seize and the freehub got a clean and lube with the fancy Dumondetech grease as well. If you own a set of P321 or I9 hubs do yourself a favour and buy a metal kebab skewer from the supermarket to service the freehub.

Next step was to 3m tape the frame. I do this to all my mtb frames and forks. It's there for protection and I'm not too fussed about the looks so I just get the 15cm wide rolls off ebay and apply it myself with a hairdryer. I also apply 3m mastic rubber tape to the exposed welds on the rear subframe. It takes an age to do but you only have to do it once.

Next step was to lube the headset bearings and fit the fork. I was lucky that the 190mm on the Yari was just enough. I only needed an extra 5mm spacer in the end. I currently have a 50mm Thomson on there but have a 40mm on order.

I've also given some thought to the colour sceme. The frame and fork is black and white, and the hubs are red so I've gone to more effort than I would normally to jazz up the parts to match those colours.
Eg - red Thomson stem kit
- red 200mm floating rotors
- red bb
- red chainguide
- red grips
- white Goodridge hoses
- white Time MX pedals
- black everything else

I've already bought most of the parts for the build but circumstance and vanity has forced me to do a bit of a last minute splurge. I was originally going to run a red CK bb but the non drive side bb shell is recessed so I can't actually do up the CK cup because the drive notches are inboard. So I've got a red Token bb on order. The frame has 7 bottle cage mounts so I've got red alloy bolts on order. Lastly, if I'm going to run white brake hoses I need white shifter and dropper cables right?

The Thomson dropper that I've got lined up is going to ruin my matchy matchy colour scheme and may be a tad short, but I'm going to suck it and see before getting a Oneup post.

Tyres, Huck Norris and rotors fitted. At this stage I'm going to hold off fitting the fancy french rubbers to my Pole. Not much point using them up when I'll just be shaking down the bike and comparing and contrasting to the SAM. So initially going to fit a set of Nobby Nics and Saguaros.

Next, fitting the M755 4 pot brakes of doom.

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So the red bling bling and the Oneup dropper arrived during the week. I have to admit the Oneup really shat me on the install. The actuation system doesn't capture the cable end all that well compared to say a Brand X ascend. Which made sliding the post in and out in the install a bit tricky. It also turns out that if you clamp it up near the top of the post it won't return to full length. Luckily I didn't go for the 170mm and I have about 20mm of the shaft sitting out of the seat tube. I'm going to hold judgement until I've got some more riding time on it.

Did the Pepsi challenge and ended up with the 50mm stem. The 40mm turned it into too much of a mini dh bike. The steering just hunted down every camber change and made the bike feel too slacked out.

Despite the length of the front triangle, it's very difficult to get a triangle bag in there as the angle between the top and down tube is quite tight. Bottle cage just clears piggy back, but plenty of room and mounts for a b-rad rail for storage.

Mounting the Garmin and Go pro is being taken care of by a combined bar mount which ruins the lines a bit

 
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Oddjob

Oddjob

Merry fucking Xmas to you assholes
The ride

With @Zaf's boat anchor showing the expected low level of reliability and becoming a balance bike for a while, the pressure was off. I decided to take my time with test rides and setup.

First up this bike is just crazy long. The picture below shows it on the back of my Discovery which is a full size 4wd. It overhangs both sides by about 20cms. I had to totally reconfigure my Grip carrier to fit the bike and it only barely fits on.



It's hard to nominate the most noticeable aspect of the bike so I'll start with the more prosaic stuff first.

The Nobby Nic front and Saguaro rear is working well for the moment. More than grippy enough on my regular Manly Dam circuit and very fast rolling. I've got a Michelin Wild AM/ Wild Grip'r for racing as well as a few Maxxis, Specialised and other combos to trial.

The brakes feel fantastic. Full disclosure: I hate Hope brakes. They feel spongy and imprecise to me. I like my brakes to have a rock hard feel and hard and early bite, I leave the modulation to my fingers. And guess what, I love my Frankenstein m755s. The pads are taking an absolute eternity to bed in but they are silent and starting to dump serious amounts of heat into the rotors. If this compound is as good as i'm told then they should be worth the wait.

Running it in 29er guise has it pluses and minuses. The Pole really is a monster truck. Obstacles are just laughed at and it has a stupid amount of traction. For such a long and slack bike it climbs like a billy goat. I cleared the rock steps overlooking the golf course at Manly Dam no sweat, whereas I have to ratchet and pedal kick the SAM. On the other hand the wagon wheels feel a lot less precise than the 27.5 SAM. The first few test rides were with the 40mm stem and this was too short. The front end just sniffed out every change in camber on the track and the bike felt like it was steering itself rather than responding to my input. The 50mm stem should improve things but ultimately I'm trading off obstacle eating ability for precision handling.

The drive train is surprising. The P321 hub is almost silent after its service. I've probably overfilled it a bit with grease. I've read that the Torch freehub will get some of the angry bees back, but because the P321 holds so much lube it will never be as loud as an oil filled I9 Torch.

The Wolftooth oval 30t chainring is a little too dished at 6mm. The chainline is good but the chain only just clears the chainguide. I prefer the Absolute Black oval chainring on the SAM which has less dish. The bb is certainly higher than the SAM and I'm getting less rockstrikes, which is a good thing. I don't think the white plastic Atac MX6 pedals are anywhere near as tough as the alloy Atac Z pedals.

The rear end is more active then I expected. Not wallowy like a horst link with the shock open. More like a more active DW-Link. The suspension doesn't lock out under power like VPP and there's no pedal feedback as far as I can tell. The Monarch Plus certainly isn't as firm as a Float X in the intermediate and firm lsc positions. I suspect the Vivid with its more adjustable lsc and seperate rebound and compression circuits will be more suited to the bike.

The fork is living up to expectation. It's essentially gone through a 180 degree personality swap. The Yari felt nice and plush in the carpark and terrible on the trail. The Super Yari feels terrible in the carpark and fucking amazing on the trail... but only when you are going fast.

It's setup for a bike park with lots of lsc, midvalve and a floating blowoff valve. This means that under hard brakes the fork will sink into about 35% of it’s travel and just hold there, if you hit a bump it will move but it tends to come back to that 35% point if you hit a set of brake bumps. This is a totally novel experience. On every other fork I've owned (Fox Fit RC2s & RLCs, RS Chargers & Motion Control, Marz RC3 & TST) the fork will just pack down or spike. The tradeoff is that the Super Yari just isn't interested at slow speed; it will literally bounce off stuff. At speed it is laughably good. It tends to ride high in it's travel and uses it's lsc and mid valve a lot, until you hit something big and you can hear the blowoff valve open and the fork just eats the obstacle and keeps on trucking with minimal fuss. This suspension setup together with the slack head angle work really well together to give the front wheel a rearward suspension action and maintain momentum. I haven't experimented with the ramp control much yet.

Overall the bike is meeting expectations. It's happiest pointing downhill and picks up speed stupidly quickly. It climbs well too due to the oodles of traction but it's never going to be a great bike for all day epics. The handling is less precise then the SAM but I guess that goes to the character of the bike. On the other hand the Pole is surprisingly good in the air.

I'll update further once I've done some more riding and maybe some racing.

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yuley95

yuley95

soft-arse Yuley is on the lifts again
Subscribed. Except for the shimano brakes, I'm all over this build. Sounds spots on.

Are the hubs the new magnetic pawls? Got them set to loud or quiet?
 
Z

Zaf

Guest
@Oddjob fell victim to one of the classic blunders, the most famous of which is never get involved a land war in Asia, but only slightly less well known is this:
"never ridicule someone for not using a DSLR camera and then post out of focus, flash photography in reply!".

Can't wait to see what all the fuss is about though.
 
pink poodle

pink poodle

気が狂っている男
The burn! This evolving melodrama is way more interesting than the bikes...I can't wait until you both hit my home turf for the ride off! If you need someone dressed like daisy dukes to wave a dirty hanky to start the race let me know.
 
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Oddjob

Oddjob

Merry fucking Xmas to you assholes
yuley95 said:
Subscribed. Except for the shimano brakes, I'm all over this build. Sounds spots on.

Are the hubs the new magnetic pawls? Got them set to loud or quiet?
Click to expand...
You are a good judge of character. I actually bought a second set of m755s so that I would have a set of calipers for 180mm and 203mm rotors because typically only a front IS caliper will do 180mm PM.

The hubs are the G2 with the I9 Torch freehub. The magnetic pawls are compatible with the G2 hubs (and the I9 torch hubs), so I might upgrade one day.

hifiandmtb said:
How tall are you, OJ?

Your Yari forks with choice upgrades looks brilliant!
Click to expand...
I'm 193cm (6'3"). But my Pole has a reach of 535mm or 21 inches in the old Johnny Holmes measure.

Ah yes the Super Yari................................................................. what was I saying again?

Oh yes that's right. I'm inordinately proud of them, given that I've had virtually nothing to do with their assembly or even know how they ride yet.

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Oddjob

Oddjob

Merry fucking Xmas to you assholes
Zaf said:
@Oddjob fell victim to one of the classic blunders, the most famous of which is never get involved a land war in Asia, but only slightly less well known is this:
"never ridicule someone for not using a DSLR camera and then post out of focus, flash photography in reply!".

Can't wait to see what all the fuss is about though.
Click to expand...
I thought the classic blunder was never challenge Isreal to total war. Pfft you wait until tonight when I actually get a moment away from screaming munchkins. I'll even pull out the macro lens.

I might even get the tripod.

Don't make me get the flash out.

pink poodle said:
The burn! This evolving melodrama is way more interesting than the bikes...I can't wait until you both hit my home turf for the ride off! If you need someone dressed like daisy dukes to wave a dirty hanky to start the race let me know.
Click to expand...
I'll settle for a Borat mankini. But you have to keep the mankini on, watching you take that off just to start the race would be too much!
 
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pink poodle

pink poodle

気が狂っている男
Oddjob said:
Don't make me get the flesh out.
Click to expand...
Don't be shy.

I used to have a mankini. It got all stretched out making a comedy porn film project for a friends uni assignment. I never found out how that went, nor saw a finished product. Now I'm thinking he may have made the whole thing up to see me in the mankini. Anyway it was stretched out enough to fit around a horse or a really big gum tree! The crazy things we do to help our friends.
 
Tubbsy

Tubbsy

Packin' a small bird
Staff member
Very interested to hear your take on this bike - I'm the same height as you and looking for something to tackle the steeper stuff.

Saw a guy rolling around one of these in the Stromlo car park this morning. Geez the front end has some rake on it!

The guy was wearing ski goggles, so I hope you're going to be doing the same?
 
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