[Closed] While we wait for the Cotic Rocket...

Brunse, linky no worky?
What am I missing!!!!???!!

It's obviously been taken down by the account owner. You'll just have to guess at what it was 😉

Waaah!!!
WANT WANT WANT!!!
😕

ah found it with my cr@p tinternet skills, wasnt that posted on the BTR Pinner vs rocket thread?

back in my box

any news on this deadline

1st Batch of UK Made Rocket Frames Available to Pre-Order - Delivery June 2014.

http://www.cotic.co.uk/product/rocket

I exchanged a couple of emails with Cy on Wednesday: they won't manage June, as most people will have guessed by now, but we should be optimistic about receiving them before August. Cy's away for a few days but there should be a detailed email update on Tuesday, with pictures. Sounds like issues are resolved and it's just a matter of putting the bits together.

Noooooo!!!!
*sobs*
*deep breath*
I'm patient. I can wait. That first ride. I can almost taste the sweat.
*sobs*

It caused me less stress and desperate anxiety giving up smoking

*breaths deeply again*

i emailed them yesterday about a demo, they are pretty confident your wait will soon be over chaps - well the first batch has all sold out so it's gonna be a couple more months if you havent put an order in yet #me #sad face

I have to congratulate you all on your patience. After a couple of weeks i'd have looked elsewhere.

I managed to hold off for 10 months, then gave up and bought something else. That was 7 months ago.

Does anyone know how many Rockets were actually made in the first batch? I've been loving mine for the last 18 months or so but I definitely feel pretty lucky to have got one in the first place. There can't be that many of them on the trails at the moment. I'm not sure I would have waited as long as some of you guys have for a new frame but those that have waited are going to get a really sweet ride.

but those that have waited are going to get a really sweet ride.

I hope so, but it could be a case of.... 😀

I believe there was 50 of the first batch of UK ones. Exclusive!

So, once the UK manufacturing is sorted has Cy mentioned anything about painting them with more than 2 colour choices? I say more but I can only ride black frames, with black on black [i]muyda colorway[/i].

So, once the UK manufacturing is sorted has Cy mentioned anything about painting them with more than 2 colour choices? I say more but I can only ride black frames, with black on black muyda colorway.

http://www.cotic.co.uk/product/rocket
,the colours are there looks like 4

What's the buzz on the 29er version, anyone?

The prototype 29er versions won masters cat and 16th in Elites at Afan UKGE but I'm guessing that's all they are for now - prototypes, until the next batch of 26ers are out

Last advice was that there are plans for a 29er but they're concentrating on getting the first 50 26ers out first.

On the 26ers... the black or white options for the rear 'triangle' are apparently for people to match with their fork colour. Also, there are design/manufacture changes to the shock linkage and mounting that will improve shock performance, save about 100 grams, and will enable use of a stealth dropper.

the black or white options for the rear 'triangle' are apparently for people to match with their fork colou

Are all forks black and white these days?

The prototype 29er versions won masters cat and 16th in Elites at Afan UKGE but I'm guessing that's all they are for now - prototypes, until the next batch of 26ers are out

Yeah that's what made me think of them, looks like it could be a real contender in the AM 29er category (I won't use the E word).

Nice to see a company doing things thoroughly and properly (if a bit slowly).

oooh that green and black!
Pretty sure those colours weren't up yesterday or maybe it was just the selection under 'check availability'

That new product page went up yesterday, to coincide with Cy telling people who have pre-ordered UK frames about their options.

The black rear option came about because the team were using “murdered out” Pikes on Taiwaan frames with white rears, and it seemed pretty obvious that they would look better with matching black rears. So that option is available for those patient people who've ordered and already know what forks they're planning on fitting.

Oh, black rears also come with black downtube panels, as the mockups suggest.

Just done some photoshop work and I think they look better with white panels and white forks, but white is harder to clean. hmmmm.

they look better with white panels and white forks,

But white Pikes look appalling with the black stanchions!

Other brands are available of course.

White Slants; wet wipes and small children for the cleaning - problem solved.

Strike that - the panels have gone. It looks like the whole rear triangle is now single-colour.
Not a fan. Don't like this years Transition Coverts for the same reason.

But white Pikes look appalling with the black stanchions

not with the black and white rocket frame they don't 8)

wet wipes and small children for the cleaning - problem solved.

oh I'm so happy to hear I'm not the only one 😳

black and white rocket frame

?????????

I was chatting with one of the guys riding the 29 Rocket at UKGE at the weekend. I'm not sure if its been mentioned before (havent read all the thread), but he told me that they were being built with steel swingarms now? He might be talking about the 29 only, but would be worth investigating if you were buying. Site still says 7005 swingarm...

Rockets came in black and white in the 2012 batch.

Steel swingarm hasn't been mentioned before.

but would be worth investigating if you were buying

what difference would it make, it says its steel in the whats new section

I'd missed that 'what's new' section:

The Rocket is now a made in the UK!

There are many detail improvements to the Rocket now we have full control of the manufacturing.

The most obvious change is the move to the horseshoe shock actuation. This gives better control over the spring rate deep in the travel and reduces the stress in the seatstay tubes at bottom out.

The latest Rocket also features our new Torque Box swingarm. A hollow shell steel head reduces weight over CNC aluminium parts and allows a far bigger cross brace, which improves torsional stiffness. Butted Reynolds 631 chainstays are stiffer laterally than the aluminium stays they replace for the same weight. Finally, the dropouts are now a steel/aluminium bonded hybrid construction which uses both materials to their best advantage.

Front triangles now feature routing for internal dropper seatposts just below the droplink mounting. To compliment this the external top tube routing for dropper seatposts is now bolt on P-clips for a cleaner look if you do have a Stealth post.

Now available in "that green" as well as the signature Cotic orange colour, and with a choice of black or white rear and panel, so that you can match the frame to your fork colour, or favourite jersey for that matter.

They need to update the frame spec section then:

Reynolds 853 Ovalform and DZB tubed front end brings precision, durability and strength
44mm standard head tube designed with external bottom cup for taper steerer compatiblity and zero stack top cup for minimal stack height
Oversized 35mm seat tube for super stiff support for the main suspension pivots
31.6mm seatpost size is dropper seatpost compatible and the frame has hose clips for the remote under the top tube
ISCG05 mounts on regular threaded bottom bracket bring drivetrain security and reliability
[b]Asymmetric 7005-T6 aluminium swingarm with Syntace X-12 142 x 12 rear axle[/b]
15mm pivots for BB and droplink keep the frame solid front to rear
Clearance for big tyres - 2.5" DH tyres run with plenty of clearance
Geometry for speed, fun and interaction using 140, 150 or 160mm forks. 66.5deg head angle and low 13.3" BB with 150mm fork
150mm of Cotic droplink suspension brings precision, fun and interaction via a strong progression rate on the linkage driven single pivot layout
Sizes - 16", 17.5", 19". The frames are designed to be compact and chuckable.
Weight - 7.6lbs for the 16" including Fox Float RL shock

As for difference, I dont know, but weight will almost certainly be affected.

The frame will be around 100g lighter.

As for difference, I dont know, but weight will almost certainly be affected.

Bonded dropouts sound scary though despite flying in bonded aeroplanes, etc, etc, etc.

Edit: beaten to it with an actual weight - 100g. Well done to them.

despite flying in bonded aeroplanes

bonded aeroplanes thus below

http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/65611-54-sqn-rotol-spitfire-i-march-1940-148/

not with the black and white rocket frame they don't

Is this a pic of it?

[img] ?1295151198[/img]

Is this a 2014 or 2015 bike, I'm drawjopped there's no 650b as tbh if I was looking that's where I would be going

drawjopped

I'm drawjopped too, quite frankly....

Seriously the textaphone predictive text auto-corrected , I like it though.

Do you ever get the feeling Cy designed the Rocket purely to troll internet forums? LOL steel are teh heavies!

So what's the feeling on the new alu shock actuator thingermejig? I really liked the sweeping steel bars. They seemed different. I'd like to see them on a built frame.

@ chakaping - I was going for this look

[img] [/img]

alu shock actuator thingermejig

?? It has kind of piqued my interest in uprating from my giant

Odd question.

The shocks on the rocket are they just standard tune shocks or is it specific to the rocket? I.e. if i bought the frame only option and got a tftuned version of it which includes

Price includes set-up and heavy-duty mount kits to suit you and your bike, as well as free shipping (mainland UK).

looked at the Cane creek but i think i'd prefer fit and forget! rather than knobs to twiddle

😕

There is a base tune for the CCDBA CS on the Cane Creek site that was worked out by Cy, I think. Last time I looked it matched the tune settings he sent me when I asked back in February. Interestingly, there is a different base tune for the Rocket for the new CCDBA Inline - I don't know where that's come from given that the shock isn't available yet and Cotic haven't mentioned the Inline as a possible option.

You could just set the base tune and forget it until you feel like experimenting a bit. The Cane Creek field guide looks useful for people not used to tuning their own shocks (like me).

There is an internal setting (i.e. not user-adjustable) that sets how much effect the Climb Switch has. Again, according to Cy, the shocks supplied by Cotic will have this set specifically for the Rocket - I think Cy found the setting on the shock he was sent to test to be too soft, so it should be set a bit firmer than default. The CS just adds a set amount of low speed compression and rebound to the tune the user sets him/herself.

Any news on the rockit?

Colours ? (Cy, needs to be black on black)

scruff - Member
Any news on the rockit?

EDIT. Image removed just in case.

Rare as hens teeth

Have now seen a photo of a UK built front triangle - not sure if it's been welded up or still dry-fitting to get the jigs set up, but seems things are on the move.

Be nice to get a ball park delivery weeks or months rather than it be completely open ended .....

Last news from Cy suggested 6 weeks-ish from the end of June.

Much as I'm hopeful, I'm not holding my breath.

Failure to launch,from what I seen so far no pat on the back or high fives

how is this farce not killing cotic?

I think, that once released, they should give heavily discounted frames to anyone that has posted on this thread! 😀

jam bo - Member

how is this farce not killing cotic?

I think just because their core business is really damn good hardtails and that's been unaffected. Also most folks probably realise they're having trouble because they're trying to do something that's hard enough that nobody else in the industry has even tried.

Obviously I can be laid back because I'm not waiting for a Rocket 🙂

hard enough that nobody else in the industry has even tried

Except Orange Brompton and Pashley to name 3 who have been making things for years.

Except Orange Brompton and Pashley to name 3 who have been making things for years.

It's relatively easy (but still far from easy in an absolute sense) to keep doing manufacturing here in the UK (unless you're dependent on a major supplier who quits the business). Buy you try starting up from scratch!

If I had held on and waited for my rocket, I would be sitting at just over 18 months now, waiting on another 'just a few weeks yet'. My patience ran out after 10 months however. Hindsight is as ever, a wonderful thing, but I can't help but think that they should have used a prototype, say the mini rocket, as the test piece for moving manufacture, and kept producing the rocket in the mean time.

Thing is, around the time I ordered, there was a huge buzz around the rocket, which has now gone, sadly. The whole 650b will just have added to this.

Ironically, I love what cotic are doing, very bold and fantastic to see. I hope they go from strength to strength.

have the people waiting 18 months for a rocket paid up front?

Agree with Nobeer, about the mini rocket and production. But now it's nearly 2 years in the making times have moved on and the rocket will be out of date. Like or hate 650b it has decimated the 26 inch wheel market.

So Cotic WILL have to get a 650b version and prob a 29er version to market as soon as humanly possible or force losing even more sales, even though they are still struggling to produce the 26 inch model. So I doubt the mini rocket will ever see the light of day.

If I had held on and waited for my rocket, I would be sitting at just over 18 months now, waiting on another 'just a few weeks yet'. My patience ran out after 10 months however

Its looking like you could buy a different frame, run it, get bored of it and when you are ready for a change the Rocket will finally be available/on sale.

If I had paid money I'd want it back asap. 18months etc is too long to give money away.

That's some glass-half-empty thinking there Rik.
They've only really got one problem and that's not being able to make them quick enough. The rest isn't a reality yet.

As far as I can see it, they've..
// got a unique product.
// almost sold out the first batch based on old reviews, good will and their manufacturing approach (and good price to be honest).
// apart from the (debatable) wheelsize, almost every other part of the geometry is bang up-to-date.

Once they get some frames out there and people start raving about them again, they'll probably sell some more. Meanwhile they can get the 29er into production and prototype the 650b and create even more interest and sales.

I'll admit that I see them through slightly rose-tinted specs as I've got a lot of time for what they're trying to do.

I haven't ordered yet, but it's high on my list of next bikes.

The real point of it isn't so much "make the rocket in the UK" as "make bikes in the UK"- so once that's delivered for the Rocket it's a smaller matter to do it for the 29er Rocket, and whatever else may be. Remember it's intended to be a contract factory too building bikes for other people.

Also, bear in mind they didn't cut off taiwanese production of the Rocket in flow, that was already a problem before they decided to move to UK production. Maybe they could have sorted that out faster, who knows with hindsight.

I think they'll have it in production just in time for The Industry to declare that 650b is dead and we all have to replace our bikes with 25.5 wheels 😉

I'd consider a Rocket partly due to the price which makes it affordable. post-production issues if they looked at demand and raised the prices. Well.

Hora, I never paid any money, and afaik no one else did either.

Needs to be 650b to position itself in the correct area of the marketplace. 26" is dead and 29ers are more suited to XC.

Dunno what it's taking so long mind, welding some steel tubes together ain't that hard.

Dunno what it's taking so long mind, welding some steel tubes together ain't that hard.

+1. A few months yes but so long?

+1. A few months yes but so long?

I't takes about an hour ,what takes so long is starting a factory from scratch and making sure everytime I put those tubes into a jig they position better than 0.25mm there are pictures showing this and everyone of them is repeatable ,it took 5 months to develop a jig system which framebuilders all over the world are desperate to get their hands on but its accurate to 40 microns no matter which way i throw tubes at it

BML was set up to be a frame factory .In that the factory started from a dusty empty shell ,it had to be painted wired for three phase wired for single phase ,alignment tables had to be sourced CNC machines bought and we just got a new machine to surpass the old one this means things get put back post processors need to be written programs proven cycle times reduced,and thats before I even start making tools for holding subassemblies for Rocket production, lathes and equipment needed to be calibrated purge systems design tested, and proved and thats all mingled in with working as many hours as you can justifiably get away with before your homelife starts to suffer

Further to this we have to source every material and you can spend days dealing with suppliers external suppliers can be unreliable we try 3 different anodisers and some are good some are poor do we release a sub standard product, ****ing no chance ,painting finishing if I were building custom frames it would all be under my control but we aren't though each one is hand made to a very high level of both precision and quality, we have to some extent had to rely on certain external resources and they invariably present more problems than they resolve

The actual time spent working on Cy's frames has been in the order of months no one ever tells you the amount of shit you have to deal with running a company, I'm an engineer so rely on Cy to deal with a lot of that shit for BML

Even then Im not a cotic employee so should not be commenting things on the Rocket have been refined redesigned analysed based on the fact that the features on the current bikes are how they like to make things in the ROC and we can actually do what Cy asked but was told in some case No buy the Overseas makers ,and 26" might not be dead but in doing this we also configured everything to take into account 650 and 29 production though as a non employee I cannot tell you if they exist or not

We piss and moan at one another me more than him BTW but i think this is more borne out of frustration than anything else because to be honest when we sit and look at what we have achieved in 18 months with our sensible heads on ....we aint done bad

have a go at bringing a product to market and actually competing with thte overseas crowd its awesome fun

Take that Haterz!

For those of you who don't know, Mick is the manufacturing brains behind BML who are making the new Cotic Rocket frames. And I'd agree with everything he said. It's been the hardest thing I've ever been involved with, massively stressful for both of us with plenty of sleepless nights all round. It's probably one of the most frustrating situations too, due to ending up not having Rockets to sell to people who want them for so long just when we'd really got some momentum going with the sales and buzz about the frame.

It's easy to say decisions could have been made differently with 20:20 hindsight, but I didn't want to source any more from Taiwan and we thought we'd be up and running sooner. But as Mick says, it's very much not just sticking frames together any old how and hoping for the best, there was a hell of an amount of set up work that needed doing before we really got into moving towards production. Call us naive and optimistic if you like, but if you weren't a bit naive and optimistic you'd never try and do anything because it would always seem impossible.

We've not delivered frames to people who have ordered them yet, and for that we're both sorry and truly gutted to have disappointed them, but it's not for want of trying to get them out the door. Writing each of the emails out to customers with orders each time we've missed a deadline, because we've come up against yet another unforeseen problem, is just the hardest thing I have to do at the moment and it kills me each time I have to. But it's not like we're purposefully going slowly just to annoy you, we're just trying desperately hard to achieve what we set out to achieve. On the flip side of that, the emails we receive back from patient customers who are committed to buying a frame because of what we're trying to do is just fantastic and we can't wait for the day we can repay your kindness and patience with delivering the very best frame BML can make.

Good luck guys.

Mick & Cy, best wishes for your project, respect.

I don't really see much in the way of whining on this thread tbh, certainly pretty low grade whining in stw terms!.

fair point, whiners comment redacted.

Writing each of the emails out to customers with orders each time we've missed a deadline, because we've come up against yet another unforeseen problem, is just the hardest thing I have to do at the moment and it kills me each time I have to.

I'll write them for you.

Fiver a pop? 😀

Take that Haterz!

Who said its 'hate'. Its a question on why so long.

The topic is a discussion and questions on delays are highly relevant.

The answer is:

what takes so long is starting a factory from scratch

As I mentioned earlier the frames piqued my interest too.

If Specialized posted on here I'd call it fair-game/open-season/time for fun.

Good luck to you both - when that short travel play mini-Rocket does eventually roll around I might actually have the cash for it.

Bit sorry I started the thread; not sure it's serving any purpose other than to give an opportunity for people without any interest to express angst on others' behalf. I'm sanguine.

No such thing as bad publicity, merynella.

Bit sorry I started the thread; not sure it's serving any purpose other than to give an opportunity for people without any interest to express angst on others' behalf. I'm sanguine.

From the sounds theres very few with any real angst value to add , more poking fun

Bumpity bump!

Any developments?