Peabody's two wheeled shenanigans

I was going to post a build thread. Then I was going to post up pics and comments about my newest acquisition. I'll just start this and post up any of my bike stuff as it occurs.

First things first:

Peabody said:

In reply to Ian F (Forum Supporter) :

I had no idea. I'm looking at replacing my current trials bike with something newer. That could possibly be ideal, and I found one cheap but nothing in my province.  This requires more research 

This was in regard to him posting a pic the new Oset TXP24. I did, in fact, do some research and spent a week trying to get a hold of the dealer. That was frustrating but, in hindsight has now worked in my favour. I did find a dealer in Toronto, made the trip, test rode one and bought it on the spot.

This thing is a riot. 

First with the seat on. I put those flag bark busters on, but took them off almost as quickly. Not a big fan of the look.

It comes with the seat and subframe, different plastics, separate subframe and everything you need to convert to a full on trials bike. This is how it's staying.

People say it's like a 3/4 sized trials bike but I took a bunch of measurements and it's almost exactly 90% the size of my Sherco ST300. The bonus is that it weighs only about 65% of the Sherco at 108lbs. That's my favourite part, and I think, a big reason why it so much fun and so easy to ride.

Our club used to hold a round of the Canadian trials championship, and a lot of the sections are still intact. Some of these are very difficult, and most of them I either can't do, or struggle to do with any authority - I'm not a great trials rider. 

I attempted my favourite one the first day on the bike. I've never been able to do it well, and have crashed on many of my attempts with the Sherco, even breaking levers and bending stuff. First shot on the TXP I cleaned it, meaning I made it through without any mistakes, and not having to put my feet down once.

The main reason I have a trials bike, aside from the fact that I enjoy the ability to just hop over anything, or go anywhere,  is to do trail work, setup, maintenance, and cutting new trail. There's nowhere you can't go on a trials bike so it's particularly good for the latter. Being only a hair over 100lbs means I can get myself into all kinds of stupid places not having to worry about not getting out. In a tight spot? pick it up and turn it around. I've done that about a dozen times already, and even added a grab strap to the rear that you can see in this pic

More to come
 

There's more to that story but it's going to have to wait. 
 

I just finished loading up for Saturdays race, an event I'm putting on. Last year I met a guy at our last race of the year and we became long distance friends.  Over the winter he asked if the club would be interested in running an event, he had been helping  Motopark revitalize their trail system.  Our schedule was already set but the club decided to take a chance since we were able to schedule it for this Saturday, the day before our first motocross of the season, and make it a double header. 
It's been a lot of work, but So far we already have enough entries that we're making money, and bike guys are notorious for registering at the last minute

The play on words here is that the Motopark property is notoriously rocky, and this is the very first event of the season in Ontario. 
 

Ooh! My kidlet had an Oset years ago (tucked in the middle in the pic below). I had more fun than I should have on it. I'd heard that they were making "big" ones but have been a little out of touch with trials for a while. I'm looking forward to hearing more about how you like it. I think one would be perfect to scratch the occasional trials itch. 
 

I also had a chuckle at your failed log crossing pic. I guess that's a pretty standard trials guy picture. 

We ran our cross country event Saturday as planned. The weather, not as planned. It was 3 degrees C, and rainy. It rained during the night, then started again in the morning and rained lightly all day. 

The soil here is a mix of nice loamy dirt, and very fine sand that generally takes the water well, but this was what parts of the course looked like before the rain

We needed a mere 35 riders to break even and we got 60  Not national level turnout, but for what was essentially a private event, this early in the season, and with a good chance of bad weather, we were happy, and made about $1500 for the club.

A few pics of the event

The riders meeting. Yours truly in the black pants and red jacket. I didn't realize how nicely colour coordinated I was. 

Not sure where my bike was at the time

This young guy looks like he's having a good time.

The #1 expert class rider riding a 125 on the pipe all day. Nothing slows this guy down

This was some of the nicer and easier parts of the course. Some of it got so rutted up, people would crash in front of you and because it was so bad there was nothing you could do. Trying to get out of the rut would just put you on your ass.

Did I mention that there were some rocks?

These were the two smartest guys in the race. They came around the corner, saw the scoring clock, about 40 seconds shy of 2 hours, and waited for it to turn. If they'd gone through they'd have to complete another 25-30 minute lap before they could finish.

This was my bike after. It sustained more damage in this one race than in the 4 years I've owned it. I even bent one of the bark busters after bouncing off a big rock.

Those are awesome.

I just sold my KTM, and rode a Surron for the first time yesterday. That was fun

In reply to nsxmr2elises2000 :

The guy I put the event on with rode it on a Surron

This is his vid, the section at 1:45 was just brutal

Peabody said:

 

Ooof.

Reminds me of my Hare Scrambles days in District 17.  Opening race of the year had a little creek crossing that got so bad that after a few laps it was nothing but axle deep ruts 100' wide and  200' long.   I spent over a half hour pulling my front wheel out a rut just to have it sink back in when I would lift the rear wheel out.   Finally teamed up with another guy in the same predicament to get each other out.   

I have sooo many great HS stories.  I miss it and my little IT175.

I've been going hard on the trails lately trying to get them ready to open. We got hammered pretty good with rain last week, that slowed me down a bit.

After doing a bit of trimming and setup last night we decided to do a few hot laps, not quite at race pace, but fast enough. I continued to ride after but woke up this morning wondering if I might have a broken collarbone. Going to see see how I feel and might go for x-rays.

I never crash, especially at those speeds. This year is not starting well for me.

I sucked it up, drank a bunch of coffee, downed a goodies and went back to the track. It's a family oriented club and we have kids on the track and trails. I didn't want to see little kid break his neck so I fixed it up. 
the last big rain washed a lot of soil away and this is what it looked like 

Seven buckets of dirt and it's a little more manageable. Every time I have to go back there I'll take another bucket with me

In reply to Peabody :

Ouch!

Yikes! Big time pogo stick action. Hope nothing is broken.

It doesn't appear that anything is broken.

I took my shirt off that morning and asked PW to look for anything out of the ordinary, she found a tick already latched on and pulled it off. I stayed on the pain killers all weekend, got the trail opened up, and even went back out and had a pretty good ride after dinner last night. I wanted to go again this morning and get some work done on one of the tractors, but woke up with nothing in the tank. So I've been hanging around the house doing little jobs hoping I'll feel better tomorrow. It was a hard hit, and as soon as the pain killers wear off I'm reminded just how hard. I wonder if the upper back pain is from the neck brace compressing when I hit the ground. There was a fair bit of dirt jammed into one side of it.

I'm also beginning to think I might be getting a little old for this

Let's get back to the Oset.

I was riding it about 3 weeks ago, laying out and marking trail, primarily what I bought it for, when I heard some noise from the back end of the bike. I thought maybe something got caught on the chain and sprocket so I stopped, had a look, nothing. I was on my way back to load up  anyway so I continued. When I got to the trailer I noticed the kickstand was missing a bolt, and the other was loose. It swung over and got caught in the rear spokes breaking the hub. During the same ride a bolt fell out of the front fender and it was also sitting askew.

Like I said in the original post, I couldn't get a response from any dealers so I emailed OSET HQ who promptly apologized and hooked me up with a dealer who was (suddenly) very accommodating. I stayed in touch with the North American sales rep, thanked him, and told him how much I really liked then bike. So when I had these, and a few other PDI related problems and the service manager wouldn't even return my calls or emails I copied the sales rep on the problems I'd had and the treatment I was getting from the dealer.  Suddenly the service manager was my new best friend.

It's being covered under warranty, but it's going on 3 weeks and the bike is still in the shop, so I might have to contact the rep again. I loved the bike, and unfortunately, it's been in the shop for the majority of what I bought it for. Updates as the occur.

Not exactly a ringing endorsement of the bike. I guess anyone in the market for one should nut and bolt everything before riding.

In reply to clutchsmoke :

The odd thing is that when I removed the seat and swapped subframes I was really impressed by the attention to detail and thread locker on all the fasteners. Did they miss a few? I don't know but the  attachment for the kickstand wasn't well thought out if it allows that to happen.  
 

I really like the bike, and I mean really, but the dealer experience has been terrible. I'll give Oset the benefit of the doubt, the bike seems really well thought out and I can't wait to get it back. We'll see how that goes.