April 18th, 2011 - Jerry's Sea Otter Update
The Sea Otter was the unveiling of the Thumper Downhill frame. And Jerry was proud to race it and display it at the Otter for everyone to come by and check out our first foray into the Downhill scene.
Lot's of buzz on the Net as they say, and a ton of people saying it looks too much like a Banshee, and the Banshee was one of the frames we were looking at when we designed it, figured we might as well start with what is best, so we have never hidden that we looked at the Transition, the Yeti, the Canfield and the Banshee, and Jerry had Keith from Banshee come by take a look and said he saw a resemblence, but not a copy and he was stoked we were looking at a similar linkage program, and even took a quick cruise on it and gave it his nod of approval.
First impression is that he loved it, said it jumps like no other, kinda like a BMX bike, wonder why that is, said that it corners like crazy and that we have the suspension locked out under heavy pedaling, unfortunately too locked out, great for a sprint with no bobbing going on, but too rigid through the mild stuff where you have to pedal. 90% cooked is what we were told.
So now that we have a great baseline to play with we get to start work on dialing in some new linkage and pivot points to get the suspension to work under pedaling on the smaller hits, and still have it locked out for sprinting. And I think we have a great team working on it, Jerry, Chris Sasso of No Hype Bikes, Courtney Tomei, and we just sent a Thumper to Pro BMXer, Travis Ohrazda to let him try his hand at it all. A lot more long nights in front of the cad and then long days on the CNC, but we are making sure it is 100% dialed before we start shipping out a single one. Keep checking back for updates as this project progresses.
