- What is up y'all I am Christina Chappetta
and if you're like me,
you're probably super hopeful that your local bike park
is gonna open this summer.
I thought in the theme of keeping the dream alive,
I'm gonna build a dream downhill bike,
and hopefully I'll be able to get this thing
on dirt sooner than later,
(gentle music)
So before I even start putting parts on my bike.
I always ride wrap first.
It's a good idea to just protect
it as best you can from the get go
and if you, for some reason,
don't wanna use ride wrap in the past,
I have just used this clear 3M tape.
And if you're not gonna tape your entire bike
at the very least,
I do recommend protecting your chain stay so that you don't
have the noise of the chain slap.
And if you don't have a nice little feature,
like my session here,
you could use a little bit of old tube and then wrap
it around with electrical tape
that's a nice little trick as well.
(gentle music)
(electric drill buzzing)
(bicycle wheel clicking)
(inner tube valve squeaking)
Lots of bikes these days offer some
geometry adjustment options.
I've chosen to set the session here and the low setting,
and hey, if it doesn't work, we can always change it later.
Chances are your bike probably arrived from the factory
with plenty enough grease
and all the bearings and the bolts.
But honestly, I trust no one.
So I'm still gonna pull out some of the really important
moving parts of the bike,
give them a quick little grease up, and then, you know,
from here on out, you're ready to go.
Now, a lot of times internally routing cables can
be quite tricky and very frustrating.
However, if you don't install the fork
and the bottom bracket yet,
and you make sure to do the cables first,
makes it a lot easier
cause you've got openings in the frame
that you can work the cables around.
Now that we're assembling the bike,
It's very important to make sure to use a torque wrench
for everything, especially the carbon.
(gentle music)
(pliers snapping)
So here we are, we're going back on the 27
and a half inch wheels for the downhill setup.
I've been riding a 29 or trail bike
for a couple of years now.
So for that bike, I ride 750 mil bars for this one,
downhill mode, smaller wheels
I'm going back to 760 mil width bars.
It's gonna feel really, really nice.
To compliment that as well.
We've got proper downhill tires, nice and burly,
super strong, lots of protection.
We've got a really grippy compound from Shelby.
I like the magic Mary front and rear,
It's a really grippy tire, lots of traction.
So for the tire pressures.
We're gonna run 19 in the front and 20 in the rear,
just a tiny bit more than I run on my trail bike.
So if you're a bit of a smaller person, like I am,
I'm only five foot four, I'm on a medium frame here.
So to get the most out of my seat tube so that I've got a
nice low seat on the downhill bike.
But on the other side of that,
I don't wanna get a bunch of tire buzz.
So the way that I measure my seat is I'm actually gonna
take all the air out of my shock to see how low my seat
needs to go, In case of an emergency.
(shock air deflating)
I'm about four mil from the back tire.
So for me, that's pretty good.
Chances are I'm not gonna go buzz any more than that.
If you do have that issue,
you're gonna wanna bring
the seat tube up in the frame a bit.
But for me, that looks pretty solid.
So, gonna air the shock back up.
Everybody knows a quiet bike is a fast bike.
So little things like cables rattling around can be really
distracting out on track.
What I like to do super simple.
Just grab a little zip tie,
zip tie, these little babies together, not super tight,
cause you still want them to move side to side,
but just enough so that they're not smashing around.
If you're super pro you might even use a little bit
of shrink wrap there, It makes it look really, really nice.
The reason I don't do that is because it's nice to work on
your cables without having to worry about the shrink wrap.
And there's also some little bits called little widgets
that you can use as well.
They look really clean
and just a nice little touch on the bike.
We've got the brand new Marzocchi Bomber 58
on the bike today.
There's no reason not to look at the factory settings
and just do, as they say,
I'm gonna take a few little notes and then that way,
if I make some changes along the way,
I've got a good baseline to work with.
(gentle music)
It's finally time to add my final touches to the bike
and sticker it up.
(gentle music)
So there you have it folks.
That's my dream bike there I cannot wait to get riding
it so I say we stop talking, get to riding.
(gentle music)