I have 2300 km on this same frame. All terrains — mud, rocks… XCM races, training, jumps, you name it. Basically everything. One time, I hit a rock hard near the bottom bracket, but only the paint chipped off. I also broke one rim. Overall, I’m really happy with how the bike looks & handles.
The only real issue I’ve had was with the shock link. Since the link was already assembled when the frame arrived, we didn’t open it up. But after a few rides, it started to get noisy, and the bottom link screws were coming loose. We kept re-torquing them, but the noise kept returning, getting worse each time. We even tried using a generous amount of Loctite Blue, but nothing helped.
When we finally opened it up completely, we found one completely shattered bearing (PXL_20250409_182620503.TS_exported_2100.jpg). It was difficult to remove. We installed a new bearing, but the mechanic noticed that the tolerances for one of the screws and the thread weren’t great. He used the problematic screw on the opposite side, and of course, we replaced the bearing.
I bought Enduro Max 698 bearings as replacements, the same as the originals — or at least, that’s what they are marked as. After replacement, the noise was gone, though the screws still tended to loosen a bit — less than before, but still not perfect.
Jim was really nice and sent me an entirely new link. In the meantime, that problematic screw slightly damaged another bearing as well (PXL_20250529_200009767.jpg). We have now replaced the entire link, and the screws go in smoothly, but they are still loosening. The mechanic mentioned that one of these screws should perhaps be reverse-threaded (counterclockwise) to help prevent this. Is that true?
Has anyone else experienced this issue? We torqued the screws to 11 Nm just to be safe (the spec is 13 Nm according to the website info). Could this be contributing to the problem? Thanks!
