Glad to be here, I should of known.....

[MaicoDoug]

Hello hello -

Good times, bad lines, I know I've had my share.......

Been an off roader for ever. Raced B to V when it was fashionable HA! ADRA &, NDRA. All on a Maico~ Moved to Texas 25 years ago from California for family reasons. My background is engineering, fabricating & racing dirtbikes. Got into the MTB scene heavy with my own venture called Auriga Cycles. After meeting up with Mr. Steve Simons (the inventor of the upside down motorcycle fork) having my (2)ea Oilens rear shocks services and some newly 10 awg laced Bobby Keys wheels. Steve showed me a big machine shop that was all laid out inside the buildings he just bought in my hometown Mountain View, CA. He was perplexed seeing the 6 mills, 4 lathes and another building. The equipment wasn't included he thought. Anyway it was really cool meeting up with him when he compelled me to look into building my own mountain bike suspension fork comprised of 90% carbon-graphite. Based on the Bontrager 3 hole crown that Answer Products (Easton). After some meetings with Mr. Bob Fox, and meeting with Mr. Paul Turner & his brother before they disappeared "off shore", The "stealth forks" became a hit starting with the Manitou upgrade kits. Also designed & raced the earliest rear suspension MTB..... Ah yes, I got married & then I had kids and that was that. But these days I still aspire to have that taste in my mouth be it desert dust or 100:1 moly lube. Maybe desert dust.

I had a 83 Ranger that I bought off the lot once which I dearly loved, & a few years ago I found what I refer to as the Yellow Submarine. It's a Ford Ranger, 2007 FX4 Level II. Been fixing it up. I get folks asking about it all the time. Stole it for $7000 5 years ago & again turned down $13K the other day. Has some Fox/Eibach coilovers deleting the stock torsion bars. Was part of a front end rebuild. I was a big Manny Esquerra fan back in the day with his SCORE desert Ranger.

Out here in Texas (south east, N. of Houston in aggieland) ain't nowhere to do nothin. So in the next couple of years I'm moving to the Durango area where life is much better. Farmington has some pro fab stuff going on! So the desert will not be too far. The trails in Colorado are wicked. Had so much fun on Imogene Pass in July. 4/5 difficulty technical. Perfect for the Ranger.

Anyway I came over from The Ranger Station doing some surfing trying to find some info for someone that posted a question, and was very glad I did. Perhaps one day in the future I'll TIG up something with 4 wheels, that looks like a Ranger. Getting old, need to get er done. - Doug

 

[theycallmeWALLY]

Thanks for Joining dude.

Lets see some of the pictures of your past stuff!

 

[smokeysevin]

Yeahhh Texas is a desert, desert. The roads in Houston are bad enough to still want long travel though.

Sean

 

[MaicoDoug]

I ran over a pallet under an overpass doing 80 once on hwy 290 at night, the stock chevy astrovan rebound dampening was mucho bueno. 99% the off-roads are locked up as private property in Texas. Out west is where I should be living. They have oil patch cops that do their own thing on their own roads. It's hard to WFO off road in texas. Here a pic of my yellow sub...... (MTB pics coming)

 

[dwphoto]

right on dude! welcome..... We'll call you mellow yellow!

reminds me of @BajaKyle ranger...

old photo when Eddie owned it.

 

[MaicoDoug]

Quite Right!
Above is Mauro Moreno a magazine editor at Mountain Bike Action who at the 1993 Cactus Cup in Arizona blew through the toughest section where only John Tomac & Jake Watson did. Everyone wanted to know two things, who that guy was & how he did it.

 

[MaicoDoug]

This was the very first product I offered, an upgrade kit.

 

[MaicoDoug]

Now I'm in the big leagues. Just had started a family and a fulltime "real" job was something that I needed, and thus kay sera sera. I did meet with Bob Fox & he told me that "we have no intentions of getting into the MTB fork market". I own two sets of the FOX forks these days, but still ride the Auriga forks these myself. Lately have been talking with Oleins to employ their air damper, however I'd be requiring a totally new 34mm tooling for the station & slider design. The carbon surface wear also requires a harder surface, and the next step was use of some titanium foil casted onto the stanchion surface or evaporated (chemical vapour deposition of Ti02). The thing is that the surface must be mechanically exact not to have any deminisonal runout +/-.0005". Typical of and shock stanchion surface. These days when you see that "carbon fiber" look, it's only a decal, or even hand laid up. Not the 900,000lb/Sq In force on a mandrel that these were manufactured from. The raw tube dropped from 4 feet above a concrete floor, bounces back 90% back up in the air. 460,000 PSI shear strength where carbide steel is only 90,000, Titanium = 120,000 & 7075 T-6 Aluminum = 47,000. Only about 10% lighter typically than aluminum. But much stiffer.

In about 2 years I'll be relocating to Durango. I don't think I can keep myself away from the temptation. At least building up an old Ranger with a TIG'ed tubes. My Syncrowave 250 needs a workout. I miss setting up independent pro riders and have them finish so far up that everyone thinks they cut the course & cheated. Still makes me smile! Thx for looking.