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The Bikes
James is riding a 1996 Raleigh M trax, full titanium frame with 1996 Shimano XT front derailleur and XT rear derailleur, and Gripshift X-rays, for those who are confused at the moment, lets just say this gear was state of the art for its time. This bike has been going strong for over 12 years; if it makes this trip I’m going to frame it! Our sponsor Magura are providing a set of 2009 Odur forks this versatile coil spring fork features the unique Double Arch Design (DAD) offering maximum stiffness 100 mm standard hubs and Int. Standard 6" disc mounts. Cool “red sock” design.
For the last 12 years I have been running Magura hydraulic rim brakes, these will be upgraded to Magura 2009 HS 33, hydraulic rim brakes these in my opinion are absolutely bombproof, light and more than capable of stopping the fully laden bike and engine load.
Daniel is riding a 1998 Specialized Rock Hopper and running shimano STX all round, he also will have 2009 Odur forks and HS 33's from Magura
The Engines
The bikes will be fitted with 80cc 2 stroke engines similar to those found on mini moto's but these are set to run at a lower rpm enabling endurance performance as opposed to high rev high torque outputs, this also gives you more of a low sounding exhaust noise as opposed to a high pitch scream. The real test for these engines is the mileage i.e. the hours put on these engines, a maintainance schedule will be in play for the entire trip, the wonderful thing about these is there simplicity, and if anything was to go wrong with them, we can strip them down and fix them or worst case we can arrange to pick up a replacement sent by post at the next town or urban area (fingers crossed) chain driven, these bikes depending on the gear ratio can reach speeds of upto 40mph and can pull 175kgs on the flat.
the only forseeable problem is obviously wear and tear, but the lack of 2 stroke oil in the regions, in these cases we will resort to cycling.
Setup
Our local bike shop Mountain Mania in tring fully serviced and setup the Magura gear, Tiger tooth bikes gave us mechanical support for the engines supplied direct from Brookes bikes.
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