DIY MTB

For many and varied reasons I now have a Merida 96. Not your blinged out carbon job,.just started with the basic aluminium frame although it does have carbon seatstays. I've had a lot of ideas I wanted to try and in building this bike a lot came together in the one place, hopefully more harmonious than the No 96 of aussie tv fame. So in this post(s) I hope to share some of my ideas and hopefully enlighten us all in some way. 2009 Merida 96 3000-D frame X-Fusion Velevet R Fork X-Fusion 02 RPV shock SRAM X-9 Shifters and front derailleur SRAM 2010 X-9 Rear derailluer medium cage Truvativ Stylo Team cranks Enduro BB Hygia Usagi brakes Maxxis Ardent 2.25 front Maxxis Aspen 2.0 rear TA Specialite chain rings 40 mid 28 granny The frame Apart from holding all the gear together the 96 frame has some interesting points. The main ones of interest to us are the rear end. The 96 is one of only a few bikes that use a 2:1 ratio for the rear shock.(most are like 2.6:1) it a

We finally have our shock bushing tool made as we want it. The previous tools worked fine but being the finicky type I am it wasn't 'exactly' as good as I thought it should be. Not saying this one is perfect but in many little ways it is a much better tool. A lot of the credit for the finished product goes to Mick Warren at Macquarie Precision Engineering who turning my thoughts into reality. Given my skills in design and drafting (none at all) Mick had the job of turning all ideas expressed into this tool. The final product looks great and is helped by the cool anodising but most of what I am happy out is the precision of the parts. As a backgrounder: The shock eye bushings (aka DU bush) used in mtb shocks is designed to be sacrificial, but unfortunately it is also one of the smallest and best hidden parts AND really hard to change without setting aside some shed time. I know this because I did a few of these the hard way before I found the CTS bushing tool which

Just in is the Vengeance HLR from X-Fusion. There plenty of photos around but I thought since these are really the first full production models available to us I would share some more. 36mm stanchions 20mm thru axle Rebound knob is the red one at top of the right leg, left side is the air cap. In this shot you can see the compression tuning knobs. The small blue knob is for low speed and the larger gold knob is high speed compression. Each makes a noticeable change right thru the range. Showing the back of the arch. Post type disc brake mounts. Also the compression knob cover is in place in this shot While these are 160mm travel they will work at any travel setting down to 100mm and have even been run at 80mm.