banshee bikes industry insider

I am sitting on the train platform in the South of Thailand. I had some time to kill so I was checking to see what was new around the internet. I found this on www.pinkbike.com about one of Banshee’s grassroots riders. Check it out …

http://www.pinkbike.com/news/sixty-seconds-aeron-learmonth-2010.html

Hey all! I got a chance to take out a friend on the Banshees and hit the bike park over the last couple days. It's been unseasonably warm for quite awhile here in Kamloops so I thought it might be a good chance to shoot a couple pics and spread some 22 pride. My friend Lance and I took out the Wildcard and the Rampant on the first day and got a little dirt jumping in. The trails are in awesome shape right now, and there is some building happening, so obviously we weren't the only ones peeking out noses out side to see what's up. When we got there, there was about 10 others already dirt jumping, and another few building. It looks like a new DH track is nearing completion and it's got some real nice features. I hope it will draw lots of people for the race the ranch event this year. On day 2 we decided to pull out the big bikes and shred some DH trails, so I got on the Scythe and Lance stuck with the Wildcard. All the trails were in great shape with no mud at all. We put in a bunch of laps and called it a day after a couple beers. All in all a great riding day for the beginning of February. We snapped a bunch of pics so I thought I'd share them with everyone on here. Hope every ones winter is going as well as ours.

If you want to get some background info on the Legend MkII and us here at Banshee, then have a read of the interview we had with the guys at mtbgeartech.com

Hey Guys,

I'm afraid that both Jay and myself have been having serious e-mail issues for some time. Neither of us were really aware of the extent of the problem until the end of last week, but we are pretty certain we have not been receiving all e-mails for possibly several weeks. It is hard to say for sure.

We are in the process of trying to address this issue and going through the nightmare of changing servers etc, so please bear with us.

If you sent an e-mail in the last few weeks, that was not answered, then the chances are that we never received it, so could you please send it again? make sure that anything technical is sent to me at keith@bansheebikes.com to save time.

Hopefully we will be back up and running as per normal ASAP. Thanks for your patience!

Keith

I've signed up to Twitter, so feel free to follow me

We got hit by a small storm this week, making for lots of digging.  The rain was pretty light during a few days, so Max and I went out for a trail ride!  The dirt was great, so we sessioned a fun set of s-berms.  We continued down the trail to a cool little line that I built last winter.  It’s a berm into a hip step-down followed by a straight step-up.  Max was hitting it dialed, but the time we filmed it he overcleared the step-down and nosed cased into the back of the step-up landing!  Luckily he was all good!  I threw a few tailwhips over it and we moved on down the trail.  We reached a fun flowy section with some turns that drop away at their exits.  They’re super fun because you can lean into them and go weightless as you fall towards the next corner.  One has a fun high speed jump after it, that we ended up hitting a few times!  The rain started to pick up, plus it was getting dark, so we got out of there!

My buddy has some property up in the mountains that we’ve been building on every now and then.  The rain loosened up the dirt quite a bit, so we spent a day digging out there.  Near sunset everyone was pretty tired, so we busted out the dirt bikes and Rhino to moto around a little track that’s up there!  Matt was doing some crazy drifts in the Rhino, one time almost flipping it!  Everyone else raced around on the dirt bikes, which was tons of fun because it was the first time riding them for most of us!  Definitely a great way to end the day!  Just good times hanging out, building, riding, and messing around with friends!

Enjoy!

Jack

I've had a bunch of people e-mail me to ask about Spitfire headsets recently now that the frames have started shipping out.

The spitfire has a head tube that is tapered between 1.125" ZS top (44.0mm diameter) to 1.5" traditional bottom (49.61mm diameter).

So depending on your fork there are 3 options depending on the setup you want.

If you are running a 130-150mm travel fork with 1 1/8" steerer I would personally recommend the following:


If you are running a 130-150mm tapered fork something like this would work:


If you are running a 150-160mm travel fork with 1 1/8" steerer then to keep the geometry in line I would recommend running a zero stack lower cup setup like this:

Same top cup, but a flush mount bottom cup like the bottom part of this (you can buy this separately from cane creek, don't worry!)
So with 150mm forks with 1 1/8" steerers gives you the option depending on what geometry you are after.

These are the geometries you will get with the different setups.


I picked this style tapered head tube, as I felt it gave you guys the most options with regards to headsets and geometry in the tapered package.

The plan was to ride from Luang Pra Bang to the Thai border crossing in Nong Khai. It would have been four hundred kilometres through one of the most mountainous regions in Laos. We were going to stretch it out over seven or eight days and try to enjoy it as much as we could. Due to an urge to get to the beach and limited time James was going to take the bus to the border. Morgan and I were then going to meet him in Bangkok before he flew back to Taiwan. While discussing our plan James suggested that we all take the bus to Vang Vien which is half way to Vientiane. Then he would spend a couple of days there with us and when we started riding for the border he would take the bus onward. When we got to the bus station the next morning the price for a ticket to Vang Vien was the same as the price to Vientiane. James did not want to have to pay for two bus tickets so he purchased a ticket to Vientiane. It did not take long before we talked ourselves out of riding to the border and into sitting on a beach in the south of Thailand.

We boarded the bus at 2pm and did not arrive in Vientiane until two or three the next morning. The border is 25 or 30 kilometres outside of Vientiane and does not open until 6am. We rode around Vientiane looking for something to eat and then decided that we would just start out for the border. Arriving an hour before the border opened we tried to fall asleep on the side of the road.

We crossed the border and booked a ticket on the night train to Bangkok. We biked into town and booked a hotel for the day to try to get some sleep. The train we booked did not have any sleeper cars so we were stuck trying to sleep in what turned out to be the most uncomfortable train seats. Not as bad the the third class wood benches, but pretty horrible. And in third class there is always the option of sleeping on the floor.

James and I had to apply for Taiwanese visas so when we arrived in Bangkok we got a hotel room, showered and headed for the Taiwanese Visa Office. What is usually a painful experience turned out to be pretty easy and we were back at the hotel asleep in no time.

After another night on a train (sleeping car) and a boat ride we arrived on Koh Phagan. For the time being we will be trading the lycra bike shorts and helmets in for swim trunks and snorkels. I forgot my speedo so there will be no speedo shots this trip. We all have to leave Thailand before the 14th of February. James is going home, Morgan and I are not sure what we will do.

We will be using the bikes on the island for transportation. But it looks like the bike adventure maybe over. If we find anything worth riding I will get some pictures and post something.

I would like to thank:

Jay for the Viento frames. Some may argue that they are not touring bikes, but I think they worked out pretty amazingly. The roads in Laos are not in the best shape and I could not imagine riding on them on anything other than a mountain bike. Sure if I could do it again there would be things I would change on my bike … but I would still want to be on a Viento.

Gavin and Mike from Spank Industries. The Vomax rims are probably the lightest weight rims I have ever used and they have stood up to the abuse of riding day after day for the past couple of weeks.

Fritz from Kail Protectives for keeping my head safe. I did not think a dirt jump helmet was going to be the best choice for a touring helmet but, I was surprised at how comfortable and cool it really was.

My brother Morgan for being on camera duty for most of the trip. Any of the good pictures were probably taken by him. Derek from Race Face, the guys from Xtracycle and Thai Customs for the memories.

It has been a great adventure,

Rob Dunnet