Bike Check: Sam Blenkinsop's Zerode G3 - Red Bull Hardline Tasmania
One of the bigger surprises in the off-season was the announcement of the new Zerode racing team, and this week we were able to catch up with Sam Blenkinsop for the details on his new G3 gearbox belt drive high pivot race bike.
Sam says that it has been a big change swapping to a gearbox bike but it has been great so far at taking on rough tracks, although he says he has yet to find anywhere rough enough to really test it out. Check out more details on Sam's Zerode G3 below.
Bike Details:
Frame: Zerode G3 size large
Fork: SR Suntour Rux / 88 psi / 5 volume spacers / RC+ cartridge with a custom tune / rebound fully open / LSC +6 / HSC fully open
Shock: SR Suntour / 500lb spring / set fully open
Wheels: DT Swiss FR1500 front and DT Swiss FR541 rear
Tires: Maxxis Assegai 29" x 2.5" front and DHR II 27.5"x2.4" rear / DH casing / 24psi front and 27psi rear
Inserts: Cushcore front and rear
Brakes: Hayes Dominion A4 / 203mm rotors
Drivetrain: Pinion E Shift / 165mm crank length / Gates Carbon Drive Belt
Bars: Deity Blacklabel Handlebar / 790mm wide / 25mm rise
Stem: Deity Intake Stem / 5mm of spacers underneath
Frame: Zerode G3 size large
Fork: SR Suntour Rux / 88 psi / 5 volume spacers / RC+ cartridge with a custom tune / rebound fully open / LSC +6 / HSC fully open
Shock: SR Suntour / 500lb spring / set fully open
Wheels: DT Swiss FR1500 front and DT Swiss FR541 rear
Tires: Maxxis Assegai 29" x 2.5" front and DHR II 27.5"x2.4" rear / DH casing / 24psi front and 27psi rear
Inserts: Cushcore front and rear
Brakes: Hayes Dominion A4 / 203mm rotors
Drivetrain: Pinion E Shift / 165mm crank length / Gates Carbon Drive Belt
Bars: Deity Blacklabel Handlebar / 790mm wide / 25mm rise
Stem: Deity Intake Stem / 5mm of spacers underneath
To accommodate the bigger hits on the Hardline course Sam has upped his spring from 450lb to 500lb. He has still kept all settings fully open on the shock.
The Zeroda G3 is pretty unique compared to most DH race bikes with a Pinion gearbox and belt drive. Sam is running 165mm cranks on the electronically shifted gearbox.
Sam is still running a set of custom Hayes Dominion brakes given to him last year.
While Sam is running DT Swiss wheels front and rear he currently has a mismatched set as he could only get a front wheel in the FR1500 model. For now, Sam has a FR541 wheel on the rear but he will look to swap this out for another FR1500 wheel later in the season.
This week Sam is running 25mm rise bars with a 5mm spacer under the stem but he may go with a higher rise bar for World Cups later this year.
The Pinion gearbox has six possible gears, but Sam is staying in third gear for most of a lap - the course doesn't require much pedaling.
Sam's bike is running a similar gearbox to the Pinion 6-speed gearbox with electronic Smart Shift used by the Gamux team in 2023.
The Pinion gearbox makes for a very clean rear end of the bike.
While the Zerode frame and drivetrain are quite a departure from Sam's past bikes he has managed to keep most of his component choices similar to past bikes to keep some level of familiarity at the start of the season.
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Be careful no one on here hears you breathing. I reckon they’d chose to get properly offended.
@Ben-256: correcting people on the internet makes you an even bigger shit.
Unfortunately you’ve got the wrong flag to be labelled with the standard moniker in this case.
Also, it's 'choose', not 'chose'.
PS You're the only one acting offended here.
If you don’t understand it don’t feel bad.
There was nothing funny about his comment, its only intention was to piss on Biden. I don't mind that, btw, I'm just saying it's not funny.
@cuban-b: that makes no sense.
Whether you like it or not, that is fact and it's not something you can do anything about.
Kona failed with last operator with its limited sizing . Now it’s not made anymore
So if you take a bike type which only accounts for 5% of full suspension MTB sales (just guessing here), it may not make much sense to compete for only ~10% demographic of that 5% market. Meanwhile, there is nothing to suggest that taller people are more likely to be interested in DH mountain biking (probably to the contrary!), and plenty of DH-bike people actually like to downsize a bit to have a "park bike" which can be thrown around more easily.
Sounds like something weird is going on with matching that shock tune to the suspension.
Also, him having to wait for a wheel to arrive mid season speaks to the dedication he must have to racing, if he’s living his life unable to buy a matching rear wheel. Saw that before with fast but not quite world dominating dhllers.
That or he doesn’t care.
A nice thick single speed chain is the way to go.
How hard could it have been to take one single proper photo of the cockpit, showing the full bar width?