Well, the first race of the season for the Series A and the Function team is officially under the belt!  A killer time was had by all and the bike ran every practice session plus the races in the Expert and Semi-Pro categories with not a single mechanical problem.  We met some great people and saw the pros showing us how it's done.  Not necessarily a typical downhill course, the Sea Otter event still gave plenty of terrain (and jumps) to get a feel for how the suspension and bike was handling...

Function Bikes President, Aaron Bland, had this to say: "The Sea Otter Classic was a great season opener for us to test the new frame design and warm up for the season. The course was a lot of fun, fast and flowing, with great jumps. Reed Doerr raced in the Semi Pro class and really loves the prototype. We plan to build him and our other riders full time test bikes asap."

As the season progresses and we (hopefully) end up with a few more people keeping track of the development progress with the bike, we thought it would be cool to include our testing notes from the event.  Maybe it will inspire some other riders to try out some of the changes we make or provide us with similar feedback from his or her experiences on the course.  Nevertheless, we think it'll at least make for interesting reading, so check out our first installation below...

Sea Otter Testing Notes (4/20/08):

There were some 13th hour modifications to the bike to get it race ready for Sea Otter, but luckily it functioned perfectly with the exception of a derailleur cable slip after a few practice runs. I had to come up with a custom idler pulley chainguide and managed to use 2 of our integrated handlebar clamps, a standoff, and an old chainguide pulley. No testing and the chain never came off! Wow, that was lucky! I was worried about that being a problem.

Also, we had been swapping 3 shocks before the race. A Manitou Swinger 4 Way, a 6 Way, and a Risse Jupiter 5. We could not get the Swingers to respond fast enough for the high speed bumps on the course and ran the shorter stroke Risse, resulting in 7.5" of wheel travel as opposed to the intended 8.25". The shorter travel was actually well suited for the course, but we had to mount the shorter shock on the closer mounting hole on our swingarm, and it still lowered the frame a bit more than we would have liked. Patrick at Elka suspension was kind enough to help us tune the front and rear suspension to balance it out and get the damping dialed for the course. It worked out great, and we plan to test an Elka shock as soon as they become available. Their shocks look like they will be really easy to tune with all of the right adjustments and great quality. We have previous motorsports experience with Elka and the customer service and quality is outstanding.

The bike pedaled amazing, which was great for a course like Sea Otter, but we will be working on refinements to make the bike as efficient and versatile as possible over the course of the summer. The pivot will actually migrate a bit higher for the next prototypes to further reduce any sprinting pedal bob. Keep checking in to follow our progress. We are also working on a way to make the swingarm narrower. Reed had no problems with the width, but I rubbed my ankles quite a bit so it could pose a problem for some riders. The wide pivot provides amazing torisonal stiffness, but we may need to nudge it in a bit to eliminate ankle clearance problems.

We also ran a longer dh stem which was the result of some experimentation before the race; the horizontal distance between the bottom bracket and center point of the top of the head tube is a very significant measument on a dh frame (even more than the top tube length) especially because the rider is rarely sitting. We felt that this distance was too short and compensated with the longer stem. We like that handlebar position and will stretch the top tube so that a normal 40mm-60mm dh offset stem will result in a very similar balanced feel.

Next up - The Spring Thaw in Ashland?  Stay Tuned...

-AB