Scott Alleyn

Just a little early vid from Scott.
He's riding a Wildcard now and he was great in helping Keith put the numbers together for the Amp. Scott and Keith will be getting the first Amp prototypes and both of them will be hitting the jumps hours later. I'm hoping we can show you pictures in a few weeks.
Looks like we're going to be painting... well... not painting the Amp. Poll numbers show raw is in the lead and being a company that listens to its riders we have to honor what they ask for.

In the meantime heres a little vid of Scott before we picked him up.

black Mythic WILDCARD

quick post from Rob C....here's a lovely looking Wildcard in all black

looks really stealthy...black Lyric coil forks, all black wheels and black parts

its slightly heavier than my Team WC due to the choice of parts but it still rides really sweet and the owner (Jason) is very stoked...

spec:

DHX Air shock, Lyric Coil U-Turn fork, Cane Creek Double Xc headset, RF Diablous bar
Thomson 4X stem, Sun MTX 26" rims on Hope Pro2 hubs, Maxxis High Roller 2.5" tires
Avid Juicy 5 brakes, SRAM X-9 mech and shifter, E13 SRS chain device, Shimano Saint 38T cranks, DMR V-8 pedals, DMR Longhaul saddle, Shimano XT cassette and SRAM chain

black is tasty.....hmmm....

Wildcard in Czech Republic

I was ecited when my new Wildcard arrived. Now I have the Wildcard ready for more than fourteen days. At first I wanted to take some nice pictures and then post a short rewiev, but I take only short test on dirt jumps and than the weather in Czech Republic turns bad. It was still horribelly rainy and snowy. Now it is little bit beater, its still snowing, but whit no rain:)

So, now something about bike. I em worry that I would say nothing new about Wildcard, because Rob have written perfect review and I agree with his opinions .My first inpresions were lightness and smoothness. Only the frame is 1Kg lighter than my previous Chaparral. I chose coil Fox DHX 5 damper, because it better suits my more freeride oriented style. Progressivity of coil damper is fine on big drops, road gaps.. I tried to build the bike whit two different forks: marzocchi 66 (180mm of travel) and older marzocchi Z1(150mm). It works fine whit both of them, but I thing that the smaller and lighter Z1 fits the bike batter (I going to change it for new rock shox domain 160mm whit U-turn). I really love the geometry of Wildcard. Lower bb, short chain stay , longer top and nice head angel make wildcard very controllable in every riding situation. Low center of gravity and short chain stay is perfect for agresive turning, wheelie and jumping.

My first test ride was on dirt jumps and it was really fun!
It is like jumping on hard tail but with much more confidence.

Bike is fast, pedaling and accelerating very well. Jumping is its strongnes. Thanx to low center of gravity is very easy to do tabletops or handle it in the air in general. Longer top tube give you lot of space for x-ups and barspins and make bike confortabel on big airs. Good weith is big advantage too. At the 5" at front and rear setting it will be perfect choice for dirt jumping and I will prefer widcard for dirt in stead of my hardtail.


Than I ride the Wildcard on local DH/freeride trail (on snow). Wildcard is not a downhill bike, but suspendion works good and bike was perfect manageable even in steep technical sections. I have to say again how great is wilcard in corners.

I cant weight to ride Wildcard in better conditions on more trails and on some bigger stunts.


Chapparal was great bike but the Wildcard is perfect, I love it! Good job!

Cool Links

http://devonbaletphoto.com/

Every now and then we're going to throw up a site that we think is worth checking out.
I'm going to start with with Devon's
He'll be working with Deadbros. Racing next year as the team mechanic for their mountain states cup team.
Anyway his pics are pretty awesome, and I especially like his landscapes... they really are spectacular.

Legend refinement explained

Jay explains how the 50 testing/sponsorship thing will work.

emails to info@bansheebikes.com

08 Banshee's arrive in Italy

Nick made a little vid of the Francesco and Luigi getting their first shipment in. Looks like Christmas morning as they couldn't wait to get the stuff and then build them up... I'll bet it was a late night.

Check out the vid and pics at the Freebike site http://www.free-bike.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=234#p234

Wildcard Shock positioning.

Some of you out there are getting your wildcard frames now, so I thought I would post this up so you knew how to position the shock in the frame so as not to have issues of interference between the downtube and reservoir or similar.



Thanks to Rob for the images.

Wildcard session at Esher Shore

Rob Posing for a photo to send to the nice people at Da Kine

Sunday came and brought perfect weather for a Wildcard test session at Esher Shore..finally a chance to put the new Wildcard through a proper beat down....and no hills in sight to climb up which was a relief

We ran the WC in the 5" travel setting to get it to sit lower with a slacker head angle, and turned off the platform in fork and shock to make the bike nice and plush for riding the trails and stunts found at Esher Shore

Keith turned up just before lunch, and Esher trail crew member John "Jesus" Holme turned up on his Chaparral eager to check out the new Wildcard...he's had his eye on one for a while

I rode the Wildcard on all the trails across the park, and it took a little getting used to the light weight and increased chuckability compared to the old Chaparral, it was very easy to over rotate my hip airs as i found out several times...one kid said "thought you were going for a 360 there!"



Rob chucking the WC down the Stuntgod hip line

Keith then had a good session riding the Wildcard, the first proper ride he said he'd had in a long while, and came into the Freeborn shop next to the trails with a big grin on his face


John showing off his crazy trackstand skillz...

Keith and John spent the afternoon blasting round the trails, trying out all the different stunts, including some stunts that neither of them had tried before, not too many crashes thankfully!


Keith getting to grips with the brutal drops on the Stuntboy trail

I weighed the bike on some digital scales - 35.3lb spot on - so very light for a mid-travel slopestyle bike; Keith and I looked over the build and realised there was no where that any more weight could be shed without resorting to using carbon fibre, titanium or compromising the strength - and with the WC being a handful already, doubtful whether taking off more weight would be a good thing!


Rob dropping into "The Demo" trail pit of doom..watch out for the rabid badger!

As is usual on Sunday, it was a busy day at Esher Shore, and plenty of riders were curious about the new bike, and exactly what was going on with the cameras and Keith and John flinging themselves about the trails...

Apart from a crash at the bottom where some guy hurt his ankle, it was an awesome day and a long overdue reminder of how much fun riding at Esher Shore can be...check out http://www.eshershore.com/ for more information on the bike park

The Wildcard performed very well and was really fun to fling about, and coped very well with all the skinny technical stuff like "The Woodpile", "Rotor Wrecker" and "Skinny Jim", and seemed happy riding the faster trails like "Dirtboxing", "Stuntgod" and "Earthling" which are littered with all kinds of drops, berms, gaps and stunts

Next test will be going to Woburn Sands and flinging the Wildcard off some big drops and over some road gaps...I'll keep you updated

Rob C

Background of the Legend

Why did I chose this linkage design?

Over 2 years ago, I was starting my final year of a masters in mechanical engineering degree and had managed to arrange for my thesis to be designing a DH race Bike for Banshee (I knew the Banshee guys already for a summer working with them out in Vancouver).

I wanted to come up with something new, but was not prepared to design an overly complicated linkage that had to use marketing gimmics to sell it (like some bike companies seem to resort to).

Firstly, I took into account all the aspects of the design that I felt were very important for a DH race bike, such as having a high strength and light weight design with a very low centre of gravity, and race geometry with low standover etc..

Once I had sketched loads of different suspension linkage options, I finally settled on this system, as all aspects of the linkage (such as axle path, chain stretch, leverage ratio, force interface, angular rotation of rear triangle, instantanious centre, centre of curvature etc etc) are highly tunable, and with the shock just above the BB, the centre of gravity is very low in the frame.

The next stage was to work out a way of fitting the shock and pivots into the system, this is where I started to design the forged shock basement to not only fit all the parts together, but to do it in a very lightweight and strong way that removed welds for the areas of high stress.

Then it was a case of doing hundereds of linkage itterations to find the pivot and shock mount loactions that would give the best possible suspension characteristics for DH racing, and I also spent a lot of time comparing my linkage performance with many other top DH bike designs to ensure that on paper the legend suspension out preformed them all.

Once I was happy with the linkage (which took 6 months or so of hard work!) I started to do the 3D modeling of the frame with detailed stress anaylsis. again there were a number of design itterations with redesigns to reduce high stress regions and reduce material where there were low stresses to save weight. I also wanted to keep clean lines and simple but efficient aesthetics trhought the frame design.

This has been going on for about 18 months on and off to achieve this model, and once the prototypes are ready, then I am more than prepared to carry on the improvement process to refine the design further with yet more feedback from racers and test riders. By the time the first 50 frames are released to racers around the world the frames should be dialed, but I will still be asking for yet more feedback and ideas to improve the design even more!

We are treating the Legend as an engineering and design project, with the aim to give our riders the best possible tool for the job. We ae not going to be making money on the Legend as it is costing us a lot to manufacture and develop. People might find this weird, but personally I believe that the flagship model of any company represents the whole brand. And as we are a 'new' Banshee, we have to show people how our design ethic has changed, and preformance has improved to meet and exceed the customers expectations.

River Crossin' Bike Race

This past saturday a local bike team, Stomparillaz, put on a second annual bike race called the River Crossing Bike Race. Set up more as a cyclocross race, it was set in beautiful Carbondale Colorado. The field ranged from 14 year old kids on full blown cyclocross bikes, to Max (race organizer) ragin' the race on his xtracycle (xtracycle.com), to banshee's very own Linden Carlson on his four year old Morphine set up single speed. I was headed to the race to photograph and help promote Stomparillaz so Linden said, "I might as well join." The six dollar entry fee got you a race map and a personalized mix of music put together by Max Copper.


For those who don't know Max or the Stomparillaz, this race was sure to match the whole attitude and atmosphere they create. The race rules give an idea of how they roll....


The race winner came in over two minutes before the pack, and Linden came in somewhere in the group. No one really seemed to care their time or place. It was all about getting out with friends and riding your bike. And not to mention it was Nov. 10th so it was great to be able to ride. For more from that race check the Stomparillaz Brigade at http://stomparillaz.blogspot.com/