The Whole is Less than the Sum of the Parts

So, after a year of coveting it, and four months of dithering, about four weeks ago I have become a proud owner of Santa Cruz Heckler. I once heard a friend of a friend to say something along the lines that the Heckler is a piece of overpriced, decade-outdated technology; Californian tat. I am fairly certain that the chap never actually rode one, for the Heckler is a truly awesome piece of kit that hugely surpassed my (by no means low) expectations.

So what is so great about it ? It rides incredibly well! I suspect that the secret of the Heckler is that the Santa Cruz guys got the geometry of the bike spot on; if you build it up with a 140mm fork as they recommend (in my case a coil Pike 454), the center of gravity is bang on over the bottom bracket. This has a number of significant consequences:

• Incredible lateral stability: although the Heckler has a naturally bigger turning circle than my old bike, its lateral stability makes it possible to push it lot faster through bends, neither the front nor the back wheel has a tendency to just let go.

• Great forward stability: the Heckler does not have a propensity to hurl me over the bars (I am discovering that I can get away with sitting down on bits that I previously had to push well behind the saddle).

• The front wheel sticks to the ground even on fairly steep ground, making it very good at climbing.

• The front and back suspension work in sync and harmony with each other, the bike just floats over uneven ground.

• The bike tends to naturally hold position in mid air.

In addition to the geometry, there is the design of the suspension. I have to confess that what originally drew me to the single-pivot was its mechanical simplicity; the six bearings and two bushes on the classic quad link suspension of my previous bike were not getting on that well with the perpetual Scottish muck; replacing that with only two bearings made perfect pragmatic sense. However, having ridden around 100 or so miles on the Heckler, I have become a true believer in single pivot as an Idea.

When the relative position of the pivot, the bottom bracket and the wheel is got right, the tension of the chain works against the dreaded pedal bob. The Santa Cruz boys got this worked out to perfection, and the bike suffers from very minimal bob. On the quad link, I worked out that locking the rear shock on a climb allowed me to shift by two gears; on the Heckler, this makes no discernible difference. In fact the harder one pedals, the stiffer the bike becomes, i.e., when climbing the geometry is not changing into an aggressive downhill one when you need it least, and when the ground is soft and slippery, the rear positively digs in. The only advantage of the quad link over the single pivot I have to concede is that unlike the single pivot, quad link suspension is much less effected by braking, but then, braking on a mountain bike is a bad habit anyway :-).

Californian tat ? Aye, but what tat that is!

For about a year now, I have been meaning to replace my bike lights to get a more sensible performance for night off-roading. I had a fairly good idea of what I wanted: a decent light output, equivalent to at least 20W halogen, and a sensible run time, to be able to get something like 5 hours out of them at reasonable light output (at least equivalent to 10W halogen).

In practical terms, this translates into something as efficient as an HID light running of lithium battery, and this is where my search for new lights has, until now, run into a major obstacle: the price tag. Not being able to shell out £400+, I just kept dreaming, and occasionally looking. Read the rest »

Sunday before last I joined my friends Tim and Tia for a bike ride around Mount Keen in the Cairngorms. We set of from Glen Tanar (near Aboyne). Tim warned me from the start not to try to keep up with Tia; having been the fastest woman in the Loch Ness 360 MTB event only a week earlier, she was in a form beyond mere mortals like myself, and Tim had to rein her in after couple of miles. Read the rest »

One of the things that affect the perfomance of a bike is the state of the drive train — the difference between having a clean and dirty chain is immediately noticeable, and so keeping the whole drive train clean is important (it also reduces the wear of the components!). Here come some of thoughts on how to manage to do that with minimal fuss. Read the rest »