You’ve probably wondered how Danny MacAskill sets his bike up for films like his amazing A Wee Day Out – here’s the answers.

The bike in question is a Santa Cruz 5010 CC (no it’s not a Santa Cruz Bronson as a lot of people assume) and its unsurprisingly decked in all sorts of finery form his sponsors…

Danny MacAskill’s bike

Frame: Santa Cruz 5010 CC
Wheels: Industry Nine hubs and carbon rims
Fork: Rockshox Pike
Shock: Fox Float DPS
Tyres: Continental Baron Apex 2.4 front and rear
Brakes: Magura MT7 Raceline 203mm rotors front and rear
Seatpost: Rockshox Reverb Stealth (looks like a 125mm version)
Handlebar: Santa Cruz Carbon 800mm
Stem: Easton Haven

So how does he set it all up exactly?

Suspension setup

In Danny’s words, his suspension setup is generally “very firm” and “very peculiar”. The firmness he opts for is for “trying to get as much feedback from the bike as possible”. Judging traction and split-second judgement being rather crucial.

For certain tricks, such as the big jump of the railway station bridge at the end of A Wee Day Out, Danny turned this firmness up a notch and ran the forks and rear shock incredibly firm and dialled in loads of rebound damping.

Generally though, Danny’s rebound damping is set surprisingly normal really. He has the fork rebounding quicker than the rear shock. The rear shock he sets so the saddle returns just a little bit slower than his elbow when he’s doing the old push-down-on-the-saddle set up session. The suspension fork he has returning pretty much as fast his hands return during setup.

Brakes setup

With his brakes, Danny uses one finger to brake all the time. He’s actually glued on some strips of rubber on the back of brake lever blades to protect his adjacent fingers from being crushed/pinched when he grabs loads of brake on certain landings.

Tyre setup

Tyre pressure then. This Santa Cruz 5010 CC is the first bike he’s run with tubeless tyres. He runs both front and rear tyres with about 40psi in them. So pretty hard but not ridiculously hard. He still needs a degree of off-road traction after all.

During the filming of A Wee Day Out he only suffered one puncture.

There you have it then. Get tyourself a Santa Cruz 5010 CC  and copy these settings and you’ll definitely be as good as him.

Sorted.