Bike Check: Ted James’ Adjustable Moto Proto

On the Ted James stand at Bespoked Manchester, this bike was practically just cooling down, having still been being built the night (or early morning) before. Ted, with his kids even helping him fill in a few gaps where tiredness got the better of him, talked us through the build of this Moto Proto.

This is a Pinion gearbox, belt drive, full suspension, mountain bike. It’s an idea I’ve wanted to build for quite a few years. This one in particular, I’ve made it quite adjustable so that I can learn more about suspension by changing it up and set it up in different ways for different uses and just learn from it.

So this is something of a test mule then?

Yes, it’s going to be 160mm travel with a 230mm shock and be able to run it at 140 travel with a 210mm shock, which it is at the moment because I didn’t have any 230mm shocks left. The shock turned up yesterday and I realised it wasn’t going to fit so I had to hack these linkage plates.

You were still building this last night, which bit were you doing last night?

I was doing a lot of this last night! I was machining the bits for the seat stays in the afternoon, welding the seat stays up still at 3am. I machined the idler carrier only just before throwing it together at 4am.

You should have put it in the apocalypse competition then because if you can whip this up in the night before it’s pretty good going!

It’s been the last week I’ve been working on it, late nights throughout the week trying to get it together. I was still designing some of the bits as I was going along. There are so many different ways you can do the pivots, which bit you put the bearing in… I thought through a lot of it for a long time but I haven’t drawn it all out. I haven’t designed it on a computer or anything. I’ve drawn the geometry out and I’ve used the free Linkage program to look at the kinematics.

You’re doing a lot of learning there.

I haven’t studied suspension much before so it’s really interesting for me learning about it and looking at what’s achievable, what I want out of the bike and how it can be adaptable.

So what do you want out of the bike? When you get to ride it what are you hoping it will feel like?

This bike, I want to be able to ride it some distances, up and down hills. I want to be able to hit big jumps and shred it. I want to be able to make it more playful and adaptable.

At the moment I’ve got a 27.5 inch wheel in the back and 29 on the front. I’ve got the Selva fork which has got the negative air spring. You can pump that up to suck the fork down and change the travel. I had that on my hardtail and I was changing it from 140 to 160mm travel and changing the wheel size.

I’ve got an adjustable bottom bracket height as well so I can really play with wheel sizes and bottom bracket height. I’ve got rear end length adjustment as well. I’ve got a horizontal dropout like a BMX.

When I first wanted to build a bike with this sort of design I had in mind doing it with two chains like the downhill bike I had last year. If I want to run that set up I would have to have bottom bracket height adjustment or a way of tensioning the first chain and then a way of tensioning the rear chain. So I can set this up with two chains if I want to with this adjustment. I wanted to move the idler and have it concentric like it is now, but also be able to have it offset and see how that changes things.

With the belt obviously I can have it offset. I have to have the tensioner there so I can have it offset without any problems. But obviously with the two chain set up I have to run it concentric.

So this was really built so that I can play around with those things and change it up and learn from it.

Is that just for your own curiosity or is it with some view to designing a full suspension bike that you think has certain characteristics?

It’s a lot for my own curiosity but also to be able to offer bikes for different uses. I think the two chain set up is really good. It’s super solid. It’s way cheaper than running a belt and it’s just like a big BMX. So not much to worry about. The belt obviously is not much to worry about either wearing wise, it’s going to last ages. But it’s a lot more expensive. More expensive cogs. A chain tensioner on there is something else to service, possibly. I’m all about having minimal things to service and being able to smash the bike about.

I want to jump it. I want to throw it. Not worry about chucking it and it hits a tree or something. If you’ve got expensive bits like that to bend. Derailleurs! That’s why I don’t want derailleurs – just have it like a big BMX.

So this will be a source of joy for you then hopefully. You’ll get to play on it. You’ll get a bit of learning in the process of it. And then you’ll be able to advise customers on how you would design bikes for them according to what characteristics they want.

Yeah that’s right. And with this set up here you can have custom geometry, different front ends, different weights of tubing for more or less compliance. Because we’ve not got any shock mount on the main tubes. It’s all on a strong oversized seat tube and into the gearbox mount ,which has got to be strong anyway. So all the suspension is built off of there. You can really play around with the customisability of the front end geometry wise, and tuning the feel of the bike.

I think that’s a big bonus. And being able to fit a bottle cage on it. That’s something I really wanted.

So if you were building this in the last week, it suggests you’ve been very busy doing other things. So what kind of bikes have people been ordering from you in the last year since I saw you last?

I’ve got all kinds of bikes. I’ve got this Mini Velo Delta V inspired stainless touring bike here [Ed’s note: Ted would go on to win the Best City/Utility Bike Award for this one]. That’s one I built in the last year. The guy that wanted it, he’s got a touring bike, but he just wanted something nippy for going through cities a bit more. Being able to put it on and off trains. Take it into a hotel room. Nippy, small, compact and a bit different. And the roll off and belt drive, it’s minimal servicing as well.

Unique content like this takes time to create, and would normally be paywalled. But we’d like to support the independent builders and makers behind these bikes, and Bespoked. So you’re getting to read this for free. If you enjoy it, please consider buying an issue of our magazine, and supporting what we do.

So are you finding that everything you build is very different? Do people come to you for the off the wall things or is there any kind of theme emerging?

Yeah, there’s a lot of different kinds of bikes. They’re all a bit different. Steel and titanium as well.

I’ve got two on order for customers. I thought I’d build this as a tester first and then I could dial in some of the things that are thrown up in the design process and the building.

And will theirs be as adjustable as this?

It wasn’t the plan for theirs to be as adjustable as this. This was more for myself but if people want the adjustability they can have that as well.

Well, thank you very much and I hope you get to sleep tonight!