Reviews

Rio Nitrus

Mongoose Massif review

The Collective
mountain bike free ride movie

Earthed
mountain bike free ride movie

The Vish Files
mountain bike free ride

Schwinn Rocket 88 Mountain bike

Ricoh XR7 35mm SLR Camera

Happy Days with the Naked  Chef

Morning Rise:
 The Vibes

Dole Mango Lime Fiesta

Dangerous Lives of Altar boys 

Velvet Goldmine

Titus

Swimming

Northfork

Owning Mahonwy

AxisPad (cheap Wal-Mart Joystick)

Schwinn Rocket 88

The Rocket 88 is one of the last bikes Scwhinn came out with before going bankrupt and being bought out by Pacific cycles. Now the Schwinn name has been sold out to crappy department stores all over the country. My Rocket is a 2000 and in 2001 the frame was changed slightly. The Rocket is really the first Full suspension bike that I have ever really rode. One of the big advantages to full suspension is supposed to be better down hilling, as well as better traction and ride on most trails. The Big downfall of course is riding up hill with all that fuss suspension crap bobbing up and down. Oddly enough I could climb better on my Rocket then any bike I had ever ridden. Including a super light steel Ritchey.

The rear design of a Rocket is like a lot of 4 bars but the 2000 frame pivots around the Bottom Bracket. This oddly placed pivot causes the rear wheel to move back away from the bike at the beginning of the down stroke and then go up and eventually forward. I believe that this rearward action keeps peddle bob to a minimum. But here is the crazy part. The 2000 frame’s Bottom Bracket Pivot uses a big bushing, a very thin bushing made out of some kind of metal fiber stuff. It held up for me for probably 20 rides before it started shredding out. With the Bushing all wallowed out the bike becomes a sloppy, noisy and mostly useless, this has got to be up there with one of the worst part specs ever. As I mentioned above the frame design was changed in 2001 and the Bottom bracket pivot was removed and replaced with a much more standard pivot bearing.

Check out the new replacement bushing, it's the white part

So I headed over to my not so local Schwinn shop and asked if I could get a replacement Bushing. He said he thought so but I would have to bring the bike over and he would have to order the part and install it. I didn’t like the sound of that since I had only paid 40 bucks from the frame I didn’t want to spend 80 getting it fixed. So I just parked the bike in my basement and started riding my road bike. Here not so long ago (Oct 2004) A local bike shop opened up. I asked the owner if he could get me the part. Within a few days he had it. Low and behold the new part uses a thick Teflon washer which will probably way outlast the crappy metal one, I hope. So for 35 bucks I got the bike fixed and can start riding it again.

Check out the useless worn away stuff that used to be the stock bushing

Ok back to ride characteristics. As I mentioned before I could really climb on this bike, despite with my heavy front fork, heavy coil rear shock, and heavy suspension seat post, it weighs about 35 pounds. It seems like when you are climbing and the drive train is under heavy tension the suspension doesn’t bob to bad, most of your power goes into taking you up. Also the rear suspension seems to smooth out the bumps and dips and keeps the bike going relatively forward. As far as elsewhere I didn’t really notice a big difference between this and other bikes I had rode. It feels pretty fast, and on rough trail it feels like the shock is helping. I mostly ride fast smooth fireroads or rocky logy single-track which I ride slowly. As far as going downhill I don’t necessarily think the rear travel is helping me out all that much, maybe it is and I don’t notice?

A couple other things about the bike, the oddball rear triangle has some pretty tight clearances especially for a big tire. On more then once occasion it has become clogged up with mud, but that was when riding through stuff I shouldn’t have been riding through in the first place. Another oddball effect of this bike is that you really can’t stand and pedal, you can but the suspension has a very strange way of collapsing when standing to pedal, its as if all the anti bob aspects of the frame disappear and it feels like riding a pogo stick. In some other reviews I read online people have complained about horrible chainslap, I haven’t noticed this. I guess my final thoughts are that if the frame will hold up with the new pivots then it will probably be the best mountain bike I have ever ridden. It’d definitely the best looking mountain bike I have ever owned. The suspension smoothes out the rough stuff but is much more cross country then freeride which is OK by me.