Cordall

@tom-mega: Mega-watt is imminent. The name is to obvious to not use.

Innes Thoma, Reverb and lockout ??? on same mount.

I first met Dave via Pager sometime around 2005, I got on with him straight away, he was 1 of those people you could instantly take the piss out of, I’d do a piss poor impression of his West Country accent, and he revelled in calling me a “garden shed mechanic”. I didn’t spend much time with him until 2007 when Pager started the CRC Intense team. I was incredibly lucky in that Pager offered me a chance to work on the team, I knew my way around a bike, and I’d done plenty wrenching on rally teams, but i was in no way what-so-ever a World Cup bike mechanic. I won’t lie in that as i left my real job making Aeroplanes to become a CRC mechanic i felt under huge pressure and was shitting myself, I knew Pager had a lot riding on this team. I needn’t have worried, Dave was amazing. Not only did he instantly take me under his wing, he found the time to teach me so many of the finer details of how to make a bike and its rider go faster, things he had taken years to figure out, a lifetimes work, not just bikes, but the whole racing set-up, and he was happy to bestow all this hard earned info onto me. I will be forever grateful for that. His work ethic was ridiculous, I remember being a few races into the season and thinking that the workload was just too much, race weekends were often 6AM to 11PM days, it was only when i stopped to think about it that i realised we had finished on the team bikes hours earlier, Dave just had an endless stream of other riders who’s bikes he worked on too, I just mucked in and helped out where I could. He wouldn’t say no to anyone, no matter what they needed, or when they needed it. I had some of the best times travelling the world with Dave and the whole CRC team, and i wouldn’t have met half the people i did, if it was’t for the fact Dave had such a huge heart and everyone in the pits always called in to chat to him. He really was a one of a kind, and will be sadly missed. My thoughts go to Niva and Mirka.

Access to all that metal forming equipment, and each chainstay is made from 4 pieces and nearly 2 metres of welding? That part would have massively benefitted from being formed, it would be relatively easy to halve the amount of weld needed.

You've not been to Bourg St. Maurice then, it's even better.

@RoadStain: "12 year old Special Needs girl" Really? I mean REALLY?????? Just cos you don't agree with someone doesn't mean you have to be tw*t. Way to go big man.

Maybe not now, but in the past BETD actually made Burgtec hubs, maybe other parts too? So no suprise they both make good stuff.

@WAKIdesigns: Where's this 3.5 to 2.5 info coming from? On the pole website blog thing it shows 3.61 to 2.01 A flat plate in compression at 2.01 thick, ha ha no wonder it failed. This is fairly basic engineering, I hope somebody different designed the rest of the bike, or he at least sobered up. I wouldn't make something that thin on a kids bike.

@sino428: It may or may not be a part for another bike. It was however, plain and simply a lighter version of the standard part. The CAD model or CNC program was modified to remove more material. On the Pole website it shows measurements where it was thinner. For me, they tried to make a lightweight version, and got bitten. Also the post on Pole's website doesn't make an awful lot of sense, they mention 3 different swingarms, prototype, pre-production and production. They knew the item was too weak as they have already broken 1, yet they left it lying round somewhere that it could easily be mixed up with the correct item?? Really??? As we say in England. Pull the other one, it has bells on it.

Is this article a veiled dig at MSA for being to tight to higher a helicopter for the weekend? ha ha ha