Track testing the Octane One Zircus 2022
I didn’t go to the office this morning as I finished work about 23:30 so didn’t want to get up early! I am on a half day today as I was on call last night so I finished work at 1pm and then got ready and headed to the track with the Octane One Zircus 2022. The seat post definitely needs cutting of as this is as low as it goes at the moment:
I also didn’t get a chance to swap the cranks over last night as I was working so I will do this later today. I went to the track at lunch time today and found out pretty quickly that the seat was definitely too high as on my first full speed first straight run the seat hit me up the bum and almost pushed me over the bars! Luckily the suspension saved me so all was good apart from a slight left shoulder strain to go with the dodgy left wrist! I decided not to push my luck and spent about 30 minutes doing pump laps and then called it a day! I have decided to cut this seat post down so that we can use the bike tomorrow at gates and then I will have to figure something out for riding to work or use the Dialled MX20R until I can track down a longer seat post for the Octane One Zircus. I may try my cool BMX cool down post on the Zircus on Monday and see how that feels as I bought a shim that should work when I bought the current seat post!
I have tested the shim and it works perfectly with my Box One Race seat so I will swap that over from the S&M to use tomorrow so the seat will be well out of the way tomorrow 🙂
Other than the seat being too high the Zircus felt really good. The gearing is pretty spot on but I will try it on the gate tomorrow to make sure. I still think that I will swap the cranks out as then feel a bit weird still and will definitely have too much flex out of the gate so tonight I will swap the cranks over and shorten the chain a bit as I only have a 32t or 34t chain ring as I don’t think that they make a 33t Narrow wide chain ring that I could find. I am thinking that I may try 34×16 tomorrow and see how it is and if its too hard drop down to 32×16 if needed as that will mean that I don’t need to cut the chain at the moment.
I have put my 34t chain ring and the Forward cranks on the Octane One Zircus and for some reason the chain is sticking on some of the teeth which makes the pedal action really jerky and horrible:
The chainring also scratched the frame when I put the bottom bracket in even though it is made for 34T max! I resolved this issue by adding a couple of bb spacers and now it fits but the pedal action is really bad. I have bought a new wide/narrow 34t chainring which will be here tomorrow which will hopefully resolve the issue!
So I messaged a couple of friends and they noticed that I have the chain miss-matched so the wide teeth were aligned with the narrow part of the chain! I rectified this and the bike is now smooth as!
I’m also super happy as getting it fixed means that I can ride the Octane One Zircus 2022 tomorrow at gates as planned instead of having to ride a race BMX which I think will hurt my wrist! I have to sat that I am much happier with the race cranks on the bike too as I have never liked the Redline cranks as they always seemed to have a wobbly non-drive side cranks arm for some reason! They also came loose all the time which should not happen with the Forward cranks!
I also actually prefer the black cranks compared to the Chrome ones that were on the bike:
I am looking forward to riding the Jump bike tomorrow especially once I have a race seat on it that is slammed so that it is out of the way!