Got back from my weekend riding at afan and after 95km of Afan trails I can happily say I love the way it rides!
The weekend wasn't without problems as I discovered a crack in the linkage at the end of the first day, but it didn't seem to affect the way it rode so I decided to keep an eye on it but keep riding.
by the end of the second day the crack/gap was about 3mm wide and the bearing was completely loose! Ooops!
I have also broken the main pivot area, I'm not exactly sure how I did it, but I suspect it was when I pushed hard on the pedals to get over a rock as there was a cracking sound, but it wasn't until about 20 minutes later did I notice any play in the pivot, I was able to finish W2, but I had to push the bike up the steeper sections as pedaling hard caused the swingarm to flex into the chainring.
I was expecting it to have been the steel insert debonding from the carbon, but it turns out it was carbon debonding from carbon! - this will be much easier to fix and shouldn't be an issue long term (if it had been the steel debonding it would be an indication of bad design - but this just looks like a bad batch resin or not enough compression)
For the broken pivot I plan to just rebond the area but pay close attention to make sure a good bond is achieved, and for the linkage I intend to make a new one from scratch out of carbon!
