A Nice Half-Day Ride

[Greg Field]

Yesterday, I got all my chores done early and decided to burn the rest of the day on a ride. None of my usual riding partners were available to go, so I went alone. That's good in some ways 'cause then I could go as fast or slow as I wanted to, stop when I want to, and even play with adjustments on Billy Bob's suspension and then turn around to ride the same bumps at the same speeds repeatedly to see if there was any improvement.

 

It was completely overcast and about 45 degrees when I left about noon—a typical day during Seattle's long "perma-gloom" season, which usually begins in November and lifts sometime in March or April. I'd decded to ride as little freeway as possible and spelunk my way on small twisty roads up to a famous lookout on a dead-end road that leads along the north flank of Mt. Baker. This mountain is the large sister mountain to Mt. Rainier, and Baker dominates the skyline to the northeast of Seattle the way Rainier dominates the skyline to the southeast of Seattle. By the direct route, it is said to be 134 miles from Seattle to the lookout. By my route, it turned out to be about 200 each way.

 

The first stretch was about 10 miles of freeway. Of course, it started raining just as I got off the freeway—nothing like the wall of water we met trying to go to Hyder this summer, just the typical Seattle drizzle. After another 10 miles of urban highways I turned onto some of the locally famous and lightly traveled suburban twisty roads that spelunk north and east, such as the High Bridge Road, Ben Howard Road, and Lake Roessinger Road to connect with the twisty parts of Hwy. 9.

 

These roads are really curvey in spots, and I had time, so I did bits of it twice, changing suspension settings each time. With each change I got them closer. Basically, with each round I was reducing compression damping and raising the rebound damping. The rear was still as harsh as a year-old unfiltered Camel over small stutter bumbs, so I turned its compression damping to zero, and that's where it stayed for the rest of the day. The Ohlins forks started to feel really good after about the third adjustment, but I wasn't really charging that hard yet because the roads were wet.

 

Hwy. 9 just keeps getting better and better the farther north you go. Past Sedro-Wooley, it's one of my favorites for high-speed backroad blitzing. It's very lightly traveled, the pavement's in great shape, and the sightlines allow easy passing of what little traffic there is. The rain stopped and the clouds parted when I got to the town of Acme, about 160 miles into the journey. As the sun started drying the road on the parts it could reach, I wicked it up a bit, just to get to know the Billy Bob's capabilities a bit better. From there, it was 40 miles of nonstop curves to the end of the Mt. Baker Road. As the pavement slowly dried,  the curves got tighter and tighter. No traffic, either.

 

This was my first time up the Mt. Baker Road, and it's now a top-three favorite on the west side of the state. The pavement is perfect and the curves never stop. It's as nice as the Beartooth or Mt. Palomar or Mt. St. Helens or the North Cascades Hwy. And the scenery is awesome. Unfortunately, I assumed the day would be all rain and clouds, so I left the camera at home. The end of the line is Artist's Lookout ot Point or something like that. The view is 360 degrees of mountain crags and glaciers. You're above the treeline, but there's a few runty little Douglas firs that are probably ageless, yet the size of bonsai trees 'cause the growing season is so short. I took a quick walk around the paths at the top to warm up, and looked down on the overlapping curves of the road I had just come up. I'd be lucky if I didn't cook a brake rotor on the way down.

 

On the way down the mountain, the road was nearly dry, except for some spots in the deep shade or where streams were overflowing onto the road, so I could explore the Billy Bob's limits and do some more suspension adjustments. After this, the Ohlins fork was now nearly perfect. The Ohlins rear is vastly improved but still underwhelming.

 

Then, I started scraping things on the ground. This is the first time I've ridden Billy Bob aggressively enough to do so. The first thing to touch down in a curve is my feet. I beveled off the sides of both of my Redwing boots. Then, the pavement began to gnaw at the front of the sidestand and even the pegs a little bit. The bike stayed composed through it all, which is comforting. I now feel I know the bike a bit better—and the tires. Those Pilot Powers really stick, even in the wet.

 

I ran the same route home. By the time I got back, the tripmeter showed a total of 400.7 miles for the day (about 150 in the rain), and the Zodiac chronograph watch showed 5 hours, and 48 minutes elapsed time, for a 69.6 mph average. That's not a bad average speed, considering the wet and how curvey the roads were. It was a damn good afternoon ride . . .

[Baldini]

Greg,

 

After respringing Scura I found similar. I run little or no added comp damping on rear but it does move around a lot. Up comp & it gets harsh but moves around a little less. I wonder tho, even if shock was spot on, given the short, spindly s/a, doubtful frame stiffness, & massive weight out back (& everywhere else) how good it 's ever going to be?

I came across this longtime back:

 

http://www.cycleworld.com/xp6/CycleWorld/t...uzzi.xml?body=2

 

Intended to do same but still haven't got around to it...

 

The new back end on the Breva seems to work v well.

 

Sounds like a great day out you had.

 

KB

 

EDIT: Above link doesn't work. It's a Cycle World test from 03 on Scura. Complains about back end. They take shock to Pettersson Pro Suspension, Anaheim, Calif where they "...dismantled shim stack, reducing compression damping by approx 5%. Doesn't sound like much but...it makes a big difference..." They still weren't happy tho.

[Greg Field]

Even at 0, there's still too much compression damping. While changing the spring, with hte spring off, I tried to cycle the shock through by hand. I had to lean on it with all 230 pounds to get it to start moving, and it fought me every centimeter of the way, even with all the damping dialed out. Some of that was fighting the nitrogen pressure, but much of it was very stiff compression damping. I'm probably going to just have to live with it.