meet craig. whistler resident, diesel mechanic, member of of the TRP since 2005

Everybody knows Andre the giant has a posse, but so do we. The TRP was started in 2001 when testing on the first VPP bike, the V10 was going on. We have some DH runs around here, but let’s face it: there’s not much in Santa Cruz you can’t handle on a smaller bike. Meanwhile, we’ve got friends in BC who’s version of “XC” involves 20 foot gaps. With the first V10, we enlisted the help of our friends from Steed Cycles, located on the fabled north shore of vancouver. They destroyed the first prototype we sent to them in a couple of weeks. Keep in mind this was the same frame that the old Sun Race/Santa Cruz pro team had raced on all season with no ill effects…

would you trust them to test your frames?

And the Test Ride Posse was born.

Steed Cycles photo testing original V10 prototype in 2001

I met Craig a few years ago through some friends and loaned him a VP-Free, which he beat down so thoroughly over the next 18 months that we got him testing our new pivot system that uses our custom lip seals and collet axles. The system was retrofitted (requires welding) onto a Blur 4X, and sent to Craig to destroy. He rode it all winter in the slop, then for a full season at Whistler bike park. He occasionally mentioned that his wrists hurt from keeping up with his friends on DH rigs coming down Goat’s Gully, but he kept riding it. And went through a couple drivetrains, a few forks, wheelsets, shocks. We had told him to pressure wash it all the time too. And just beat it down. And he did.

It ended up, basically, that nothing happened. Which was a little disappointing, but by then we were pretty well convinced that our new bikes had some bomb-proof pivot hardware. No squeaks, no creaks, and bearing life was incredible. And that was just on the prototype stuff. By the time we went to production we had that shiznit dialed.
Last year our entire engineering group took a trip to Whistler for a week of, uh, working. We had Driver8 prototypes, fully tooled and tested in the lab. Keep in mind that the summer of 2007 was when we had dialed in the suspension and geometry on the frame, so this was about the details. Had a trailer full of 23 bikes from the engineering fleet that got us stopped and shaken down by the border patrol. Twice.

SC master fabricator Mike Woods showing some style on lower A-line

SCB production engineering Stevie J on Rainbow

We left Craig with one of our test bikes last September. And we left the OG testers at Steed Cycles with another. And the beat-down continued…

Craig and his D8

I’d get these emails every now and again like this from Craig:

Riding up here is so rad right now, done so many laps I can’t count em anymore. and only a month before its park time and hundreds of free laps…
So did a few laps today before work and I was just riding along when there was this great big bang and my rear wheel came to a stop. Haven’t had any huge crazy crash’s and don’t think I’ve had any super bad landings although Jason and I have been pushing 25-35 ft gaps N shit. So is breaking a rear shock in half common???

and this from Scott at Steed:
our winter bike the Driver 8 has been hated on over the winter and taken it with pride. We’ve recently been riding it again since the trails here are starting to clear up. I thought I would just let you know we wore out our first DU bushing, we replaced it with new hardware and I’ll try and keep track of how low this one lasts.

We sent another one to NSMB.com a few months ago to review, and they recently came out with this follow-up after a few months of putting it through the paces:

It seems like some people don’t really know what to make of the D8 based on some online forum discussions. I’m not sure why exactly, but I’ll blame Ferrentino. It’s not really that complicated. Its a DH bike that you can put the seat up on. It was designed to last a season at Whistler Bike Park without servicing pivots. Thats about it. I know some people wanted another VP-Free, but there are some pretty good reasons why we didn’t go down that route and the biggest one: shock rate. We can’t use the upper link to drive the shock and get the shock rate for downhill speed and control that we have on the V10. The V10 is our racing platform for DH. It works pretty well at going fast downhill. But its made to be light and strong and fast. So we got that covered already. You really want to pin it for the podium? Get a V10.

The Driver8, as furry knuckle put it, is “your daily Driver”. Sure, you can race it, but it’s meant to be a play bike. So it’s got “most” of the bump-soaking of the V10, but with more pop so you can clear bigger jumps and launch without just having to sprint at everything. That’s the play part of the equation. Its also designed to pedal better well with smaller chain-rings, and mashing up a climb. Its hard to climb without a little saddle height, so you can put the seat up 7 inches higher than the DH position. We offer a couple different kits with the frame, and a couple different forks, and even a couple different shocks. But its hard to please everyone on a bike like this that is used for a lot of different things, so you can just buy it as a frame and build it up yourself if you want.
Its not a very heavy frame to get all the durability either, I have one built at 38 lbs without getting too ghey. Do I bring it on XC rides? No, that’s stupid. Although I did watch crazy canuck Craig chase down a group of high-school XC racer kids on UCSC campus on a climb on his D8. With a Tecate in hand. When I read the whining about no front derailler I think about that and laugh. Internet discussion sometimes turn into a “monkeys versus donkeys” debate.

There’s also a lot of beefing about the “steep” head tube angle as well. Its the same HT angle as the V10. Comparisons on paper to other bikes are a little skewed though, because the angles are reported at top-out. Due to the unique shock rates, we run more negative travel for the same amount of shock stroke as many other bikes. What that means is that when you’re riding it slacks out further. We’ve solicited quite a bit of feedback during development, and tried the bike on many different types of terrain, and this works pretty well. Good for gappin’ tards too.

The TRP has grown over the years. We’ve got well over fifty posse members now testing all different types of bikes all over the globe. Some race, some don’t, some work, some don’t. But they all ride bikes a ton, and they let us know how things are going – good or bad. In that way we keep improving our bikes and learning new stuff. Plus we have a good excuse to visit our far-flung friends every once in awhile. Our product development isn’t only making new bikes, but we also keep tweaking and improving our existing ones. So here’s to the TRP!