Thanks guys. Yeah Kep this one was a fairly pricey build, mainly because of the frame and suspension base. The owner had already put down a deposit on a full HPC bike then he came to me. I told him he was mad (for a 5kw bike it was going to cost he about $15,000 AUD landed!) so he ended up just getting the value of the deposit sent out (4k from memory, not sure if that wwas AUD or USD but it was just the frame and suspension)
OK here goes.
Disclaimer: I am heavily involved with FLX so that could be seen as a bias or conflict of interest. But at the same time I've owned and built or at least ridden nearly all of the current commercial and DIY platforms out there so I'm in a good position to make objective comparisons.
First impression - the frame is light! Of course I expected that being Aluminium. With the suspension fitted it was a similar weight to comparable bare steel frames at the lighter end of the spectrum. The CNC work on the swing arm is very nice. Fancy, and must contribute a chunk towards their 'well-above-the-competitors' asking price. By the time you add in powerful heavy motors and batteries though the initial lightness goes out the window. Overall you end up with a bike that’s maybe 40kg instead of 43…
I like the size of the frame - in the clone wars battle it has slimmer side profile than the raptor and vector/eeb/wingchingchung style. As I've said numerous times over the years I'm a big fan of a subtle side profile which is what I like so much about the beta. I tried to get qulbix to make a smaller raptor a year or 2 back and they weren't too interested, then recently came out with a "smaller" one (Q76) that looked exactly the same, just skinnier :lol: I think they missed the point, but oh well. I think the NYX fits into the same mid-sized category, along with the along with the FLX Alpha. If NYX made a smaller beta sized frame I'd be very interested. Would I buy the current one for weight savings ? No. Would I buy the HPC for the same reason ? No.
OK, so things I didn’t like.
The first thing that struck me was the dirty great weld right down the middle of the top-tube section of the bike.
It was like a bikini model with a giant botched C section scar. Or perhaps more relevant one from
open heart surgery! There's also weld marks up on the flat parts of the neck section where the heat from the internal welds has come through and caused a bit of rippling. When I was building it my wife walked into the workshop and it was the first thing she commented on. IMO the big seam down the middle really detracts from what is an otherwise nice looking frame. It runs right to the headtube and due to it being quite risen it stops the small panel on the top of the neck section from sitting flat. What stops it sitting even more flat is the fact that only 2 of the 4 holes are tapped. Only 2 diagonal holes were threaded (nut welded underneath ? I didnt check too closely) The other 2 holes were just larger hollow holes. I guess I could have used nuts on the underside of those but then I would have had 2 different size and types of bolts holding it down, which would have annoyed me aesthetically. It was also the last thing I went to finish on the bike and I didn't want to have to pull out the wiring etc try find a solution. The result is only 2 bolts are holding down this panel - so it bulges up in the middle over the fat weld and is lifted up at each corner. It's not waterproof with the big wiring hole in the top anyway, but this makes it even less so.
The top and side panels are also not what I was expecting. Initially they showed a 3D risen carbon cross type side cover which looked pretty cool. What shipped was plain flat black panels that I'm pretty sure were just fibreglass sheet. They looked awful and thankfully after raising this issue they sent out these high gloss carbon ones which look much nicer. The top panel is still the flat black FG sheet but it's not so noticeable. I suspect the high gloss covers will scratch easily with wear. They already had a few slight scratches in certain light right out of the box so that'll be a bummer if it's the case. The covers are a little bigger than they need to be (following the shape of the frame) and if I was designing it I would have made the carbon bit smaller. I'm nitpicking though now and I guess they were trying to make it a little different looking than the stealth bomber that it's obviously based on. I think having a bit more of margin around the covers like below looks better, but that's peronal opinion. When the customer came to pick it up he said "can these be painted orange too ?" Peasant. :lol:
Other nitpicky things is the side covers could do with an extra bolt or 2. They have a thin foam gasket on the underside and there's bolts most of the way around to pull it in tight against the frame but there's a big stretch between the one in the front corner and the base of the seat support where there's no bolt. So it bulges out slightly here and you can see the foam between the frame and cover where you can't elsewhere. Again it's not a biggy but these are the little things that stood out. Green dots below is where it needs more screws. Again you can see the internal welds coming through
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The steering is quite sharp, on the road test it was very quick to change directions. I dunno what the geometry is supposed to be but it feels more XC than DH. The turning circle is absolutely diabolical though. I nearly fell off it just crawling out of my garage out because it has so little movement in the steering. The new owner did the same when the threw a leg over it and then did that hopping side step shuffle one does in such circumstances. It's a combination of the fat head tube and neck and the boxxer forks. You've only got a few degrees of rotation and the bumpers are hitting the frame. Triple clamp forks in general DO cost you some steering maneuverability but the USD-8s on my alpha quite literally allow double the amount of movement. I told him he'd get used to it but after his 30km ride home on the road (where you think it'd be least noticeable) he said it was terrible and wanted to swap them out.
The other aspect of the bike I really didn't like was the back end. The ends of the swing arm are open and hollow, presumably for routing cables. The tail end is big and gaping (could do with a cap) but the other end is quite a small exit. OK for brake lines and gear shift cables but too small for fat motor cables. I guess HPC made them to run crystalytes with smaller phase wires. Still, you'd have to cut off all the connectors to come close to jamming it throuh and that's a PITA. There's also quite a lack of cable guides so I had to zip tie the swing arm to within an inch of it's life to keep the cables in place. I want to say there's only one wiring entrance to the frame because I didnt notice another, but since handing the bike over and looking at other pics they seem to show the wiring disappearing somewhere under pivot. I think with the longer shock in place this wiring entrance may have been completely obscured and I somehow missed it
I was going to poo poo them for not having somewhere to easily run the wiring without drilling a hole in the frame (something I especially didn't want to do after a frame recently snapped just from rough hanging during shipping) but yeah, it sounds like I'm at fault for this one. So the only frame entrance (that I saw) is tucked up in the back of the controller cavity on the underside so I had to do an almost 360 degree loop the loop under bottom bracket and then back around and round. Early model qulbix frames were the same. This wouldn't be so bad if there were a few tie points but there's were very few (I think 1 or 2 on the bottom left side only) resulting in a bit of unsightly with ziptie city. And the one cable guide they DID have for the wiring exit from the motor pulled off the frame as soon as I put a tie through it! Looks like it was only epoxied on. It certainly doesn't leave much option for the motor wires not getting minced up by the rotor bolt heads.
Anyway that's mainly aesthetics. The biggest pain in the arse from a practicality point of view is that that the whole dropout section of the bike is removable. I didn't take a before pic but where the 10mm dropout should be is an oversized slot that's way bigger than any motor flats would be. The actual dropout part that physically captures the axle is a piece that slides (hammers) into place from the rear and is then held in place by 3 screws. This whole dropout section incorporates the derailleur hanger on one side and the brake mount on the other. God help you if you get a flat tyre on a trail, you have to remove the whole back end of the bike including derailleur and brake caliper! These dropout inserts are only aluminium too so I'm a bit worried about how they'll hold up at high power levels. I set the adaptto with a smooth power ramp as a precaution.
Other than that it's good :lol:
I think with single crown forks, a smaller motor (maybe one of HPCs famous 4kw geared numbers :lol: ) and small battery it'd make for a much more light and nimble bike.
