Bike Check: Danny Hart's Union Jack Prototype Cube - Fort WIlliam DH World Champs 2023
Danny Hart is a two-time World Champion and, along with Reece Wilson and Greg Minnaar, is one of the three riders to claim a world title other than Loic Bruni since 2015. Hart has been enviably consistent in recent years and his fans will be hoping he's finally going to make good at Fort William.
Danny Hart
Age: 31
Hometown: Redcar, England
Height: 5'10" (178 cm)
Team: Cube Factory Racing
Instagram: @dannyhart1
Age: 31
Hometown: Redcar, England
Height: 5'10" (178 cm)
Team: Cube Factory Racing
Instagram: @dannyhart1
Danny has been aboard the Cube Two15 for quite a while. That said, this bike is a prototype, and differs from the version we reviewed in 2021. The prototype has been raced since the start of 2022.
The bike has an adjustable headset, which Danny runs in the slacker setting.
4mm of the tube above the top crown.
The fork is sprung with 84 psi with 7 volume spacers. The damper settings are 9 LSC 6 HSC 7 LSR 5 HSR.
The shock has 202 psi with 3 volume spacers. The damper settings are 9 LSC 6 HSC 14 LSR 5 HSR.
Danny tends to stay within a few clicks of this setting and the main adjustment he makes goes between 7 and 9 clicks of low speed compression. The 7 from closed being the harder race setting, with an option for a softer option. Danny spent a lot of time on a coil shock before settling on the air after faster times at a training camp.
The bike uses a floating brake design. We saw this appear on the Saracen Myst Danny no doubt had input into several years ago. So maybe he's the common factor, as it may well be a personal preference.
As you increase the height of the main pivot it can increase the influence of the rear brake on the suspension. A floating rod, such as this, is a way to nullify its influence by separating the rear brake away from the rear triangle and fixing it to the main frame. This design might be difficult to offer in production because it mates with the rear hub end cap.
Without the floating arm, the anti-rise values are just above 100%. When it's fitted it brings the value below 10% to give something that is nearly totally independent from the suspension action. This will offer better tracking when on the brakes but at the cost of increased mass transfer under braking. It's a personal preference though, and it's good to see Cube giving Danny options.
This bike also uses two different shock mounts that can offer either 25 or 32% of progression.
34T chainring. There is one size option for the pulley currently. Danny runs Crankbrothers Mallet DH pedals, with the pins wound in.
Tried and true SRAM X0 DH. The silver decals and chain are a nice touch.
The bars are 780 mm wide with grips on. Danny uses a 32 mm rise bar.
Danny like his bar's roll to be in line with the fork angle.
203 mm rotors front and back.
Danny likes fairly flat levers with lever reach as close to the bar as possible, around 10 or 15mm away. He also wants both levers to pull even.
Danny has had the grip cut to allow for more comfort due to an ongoing thumb injury.
The SDG I-FLY 2.0 saddle that the internet still doesn't know how Danny sits on.
They run Silca Flex adhesive as an insurance policy to stop the tire from rolling off the rim in the case of a puncture.
Danny runs 23 psi in the front and 28 psi in the rear.
Ultra (ultra ultra) soft Tacky Chans for the Fort William track.
Blue lab tires are even softer than the Ultra Soft ones you and I can buy. Danny doesn't run inserts but instead has a "protected sidewall" within the tire, which explains the hot patch.
According to his mechanic, Danny isn't too picky apart from him liking a clean bike, and new tires for both race and qualifying runs.
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Member since Jun 3, 2014
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Whats up with component colours these days?
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And does he have any I can scrounge?
In short, Fox makes one air spring with a lot of tuning range. Spacers "do nothing but fill a void" but that's their entire purpose which has a significant impact on the feel of an air spring. Most people are not riding half as aggressively as Danny Hart and do not want or need that much progression in their fork, but the option is there for everyone to find what works for them. It would be prohibitively expensive to create unique air springs for different riders when cheap plastic spacers will do the trick.
I'll try to answer that too. The air spring piston will always move ~200mm when cycling through the travel. For simplicity sake, let's say there is 250ml of air spring volume pressurized to 100psi and no spacers. The air piston is going to force that 250ml of 100psi air into a 50ml space at full compression, making the pressure far greater.
Now let's add 25ml of volume spacers.
You still have 100psi to start with at 0mm compression. The piston will still travel 200mm, but now that same 250ml of air has only 25ml of space to fit in at full compression so the pressure will be far greater. The different between 250ml and 225ml isn't great, but the different between 50 and 25 is a lot, so that is what makes the compression ratio higher and the fork feel more progressive with spacers.