Back in Danzig mode with a vengeance. Or a small grudge. Or just some constipation and a headache. Either way, all free time diverts to some design work I have to be doing right now. As in “at this moment, instead of doing this.”

But this round of design revisions has me remembering the original reasoning behind the placement of the lower pivots, and there’s a brief, half-assed kind of story around that.

I’d dissected the work Steve Domahidy and company had done on Niner’s CVA suspension. See, a 29er has an axle that sits above the center of the bottom bracket, unlike a 26-inch wheel bike–those have axles that are almost in line with the bottom bracket center. From a full-suspension standpoint, a 29er is basically a 26-inch wheel bike that’s already halfway through its travel. Makes it tough to get any real travel out of them, as all early 29ers FS designs realized.

By dropping the lower link below the bottom bracket shell, Niner was able to drastically reposition the center of curvature of their rear axle path. The whole arc has to be mellower with a 29er, in order to leave you room for any actual travel. Incidentally, this is one of the reasons single-pivot 29ers have their pivots further forward–often in front of the bottom bracket.

It was trying to figure out how to accommodate the bottom bracket drop (higher axles) that got me thinking about a lower link that sat in line but tracked along the chain’s path, moving with it. That position, a little radical compared to everything else that’s been done, allows for a lot of axle path options for bikes with bigger wheels while still keeping the whole system very tight and compact.

It’ll be interesting to see what tracking along the chainline even as the suspension moves will do for the ride of the bike, though. Smart people have suggested this is a very good thing, and it certainly looks that way to me, too. Tape a laser pointer to the lower rocker on Danzig and it’ll stay pointing to the place your chain makes contact with our cassette all the way through the first two-thirds of travel. Sure, it’s affected by which exact gear combination you’re in, but much less so than a lot of other systems out there.

Back to work.

A tentative meeting to discuss creating Danzig prototypes has been scheduled for this Friday.

What’s that mean? Tough to say. This whole process is largely new to me, and happening at a particularly busy time. All kinds of projects have pulled me away from Danzig over the last six months, but I keep hanging on. The bottom line is that I’ve wanted to see this thing get made since early 2007, and I’m as close as I’ve ever been.

Might end up with some radio silence on Canootervalve while this deal goes down, as it’s only even remotely possible if done while still putting in big hours at two other projects. The ones with paychecks.

A big part of starting this blog was chronicling the development of the suspension system, so I’ll be back with an update as soon as I have more news. Assuming even I can figure out what’s going on.

Going to be one hell of a week.

Today began with a 4:30am phone call from an East Coast telemarketer, and pretty much followed along in that same general fashion.

Highlights included taking a phone order for Cyclocross.com, despite never having seen the console for that before, let alone having been trained to use it. Luckily, resident programming guru and wind-beneath-our-ecomm-wings, Jay, tends to build some eerily effective user interfaces.

Upsides included selling our first frameset and complete bike today. Downsides included a glitch–entirely my fault, but multi-faceted nevertheless–that caused us to sell something well below cost. Not too much, in the grand scheme of things, though, and quite the teaching moment.

Meanwhile, responses continue to come in for the ‘cross frame design. Some BB30 people out there, but I’m wondering if you’re die-hard BB30 or just haven’t bothered distinguishing between BB30 and PF30. I was learning towards PF30 for a bunch of reasons–not least of which being the ability to drop in an eccentric for single-speed use–but is there some reason to avoid PF30?

One 386EVO bottom-bracket request on a steel frame. Now that’s something you might not even see at the Handbuilt show, right there. Sort of curious what it would look like.

Pretty amped about creating some stuff, though. After four months with like a quarter inch of rainfall here in Portland, a part of me is ready for this dreaded, dark and wet winter, so I can put the mad scientist hat back on and get to work.

Though I guess I’d still be commuting to work in that weather, so nevermind. Carry on, sunshine.

Danzig’s on the mind again tonight. Specifically, thinking about elevated chainstays. Too flexy? Too weird-looking? Too 1987? I’ve always had a thing for the original Santa Cruz Hecklers (later to be known as Superlights) and their elevated stays. Some aspects of Danzig’s design would really lend themselves to an elevated drive-side stay, I think.

But that might just be too bizarre. I might have to draw that up to try to get a visual before heading to Interbike, which is (holy crap) next week.

Rode the Highrocks Invitational near Estacada yesterday, which meant seventy-two miles and 5672 feet of elevation gain. Hurt. One of the payoffs, the view from the highest elevation point on the ride, had to be missed thanks to some skeet shooters. The guy with the semi-auto and really bad aim was enough to keep me at the distance you see above.

Also did some drawing over the weekend.

I miss customers.

There, I admit it.

Cyclocross.com hasn’t launched yet, but I’ve already exchanged emails with three customers looking for bikes. And I’m not in sales. Whatever it is that’s wrong with me, I really like helping people buy bikes.

Which isn’t to say it’s easy. I’m sitting near our company’s customer service guys these days, and I promise they’re fielding some strange stuff. And yes, the expressions on their faces as they speak to people trying to return year-old tires exactly resembles the positively elated CS agent at the top of this point.

We’re really in the home stretch for the new site launch at this point. Can’t wait.

And lest anyone think I’ve backburnered Danzig, I’ve carved out a good bit of room for the shock placement at this point. I’ve made my bearings enormous here, too. The idea was to create a worst-case scenario in terms of clearances and placement, but now it’s time to look at some actual numbers and see where some material can be shaved. I also think the final upper link design is going to be pretty cool. Uber minimal.