It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything about the DF XL. I’ve been having a lot of fun riding it and tinkering with it. These are some of the changes that I’ve made lately…

• Lowered the front end by using a shorter, but stiffer spring combination in the front struts. Each strut came with a 25mm red (stiffer) spring and a 64mm blue (softer) for a total spring length of 89mm. The problem was that the front wheels didn’t seem to fit the openings to my liking. The body seemed to ride high above the wheels. After some trial and error I ended up with a 45mm red spring and a 38mm blue spring for a total spring length of 83mm with a higher percentage of the spring rate contributed by the stiffer red spring.
• Swapped out the outer tie rod ball joints for spherical rod ends to allow changing tie rod lengths by half a turn instead of the full turn required with the stock ball joints.
• Experimented with the DT Swiss rear shock that came on early DFs. Mine came with the new simple strut. Having seen Jonathan Gray’s tail end (equipped with the new simple strut) dance around and almost tip him over upon encountering a rumble strip, I decided to play with his original DT Swiss shock. After experimenting with the shock air pressure and rebound settings I’ve got it working well.
• Played around with vinyl wrap material to add a stripe to the rear deck and race cap. I’ve added some new pictures here: DF XL