Kudos to Cyclingnews.com

Bike industry mags and websites often do reviews of bikes and components, and 98% of the time they're worthless.  Wanna know how I know?  Because they rarely, if ever, say anything negative, and if they do, they couch it in some platitude that seemingly spins it as a positive or at least neutral.

I understand why this is.  It's not hard to see the score of the game.....these sites and magazines rely on sponsors -- the very companies whose bikes they're reviewing -- and they don't want to drive the money away.  That's why when I see a pretty honest review with actual negatives listed in it I get a warm glow-ey feeling inside.

Kudos to Cyclingnews.com for their review of the new Felt Edict 29er full suspension.  They go into detail on the bike's short-comings that start with it's poor front end geometry (which Felt is not alone on -- many/most 29er manufacturers screw this up) and end at some of the part choices.

It happens so infrequently that I thought it was worth mentioning....

Lenz Mammoth -- my "PT Barnum" bike

 So, I know the red silicone grips are a bit much, but I couldn't resist.  Hence the "PT Barnum" moniker -- it has a circus feel to it.

Usual suspects on the build:  White Brothers Loop 140 fork, Fox CTD rear shock, SRAM X.9 (with an X.0 bit here and there, Answer Pro Taper AM carbon handlebar.

This time around I just used some Sun Ringle Charger wheels for display -- not the lightest wheelset, but they licensed the Stan's rim profile so they tubeless great.  Couldn't resist the Schwalbe shoes on the bike -- I'm particularly impressed with the "Hans Dampf" on the front.  It's a good, stout tire but it rolls well and this one came in at 870 grams -- which feels downright XC-like when you've been riding an 1100 gram Descent.

Enjoy.

Lenz Sport Mammoth -- the new standard?

I had the opportunity to ride a new Lenz Mammoth this past weekend for an extended singletrack adventure and I was not left wanting.

The Mammoth is a new model from Lenz, and there are only a couple demos/prototypes out there yet.  It's purpose was to fill a niche between the more cross-country driven Leviathan (80 or 100 mm travel) and the more all-mountain Behemoth (140 mm travel).  You could say alternately the goal was a burlier Leviathan or a lighter, quicker Behemoth.

Devin Lenz succeeded in this quest, no matter which side of the fat wheel crowd you view from.  The bike is certainly lighter than the 'Moth -- the size large test rig I was on was about 28 pounds and some change -- and definitely more capable in the chunk than the Lev.  But I'm getting ahead of myself....first more about the bike.

The Mammoth is not in between in travel -- it's a full 140 mm like the Behemoth, but that travel is accessed so differently than either of it's predecessors.  It has a tapered head tube, what appears to be a Behemoth top tube, and seat stays, with a Leviathan down tube and chain stays, a brand new seat tube configuration (which is direct mount front derailleur compatible), and 135 mm rear spacing.  Essentially the top half of the bike is Behemoth and the lower half is Leviathan, but again, I think that is extremely simplistic view based on the amount of sweat that went into designing this bike.

My ride on Saturday was for the better part of 3 and a half hours, with lots of singletrack, some climbing on a road initially followed by consistent ups and downs all day, in varying degrees of smooth trail, and messy western Colorado chunk.  I was riding with MC and we switched back and forth between the Mammoth and a Behemoth.

Succinctly, the Mammoth was.......remarkable.  I certainly couldn't hammer down heavy technical trail at the speeds I was doing so on the Behemoth, but the difference in fork and tires (the Behemoth had bigger, heavier components on it) likely played a bigger role on that than in any short-coming of the Mammoth.

I actually think it climbs every bit as good as any Leviathan I've ridden (or any other cross country bike I have ever ridden for that matter), and feels as "flick-able" as well.

The rear linkage is, I think, clearly the best that Devin Lenz has designed, and if you've ever ridden one of his bikes, you know this is not any small compliment.  It feels deeper and smoother, from the first millimeter until you knock the O-ring off the rear shock. 

In fact, on this particular ride, we purposely hit a few small ledges and drops to test out the full range of the suspension.  On the final one of the day, I re-set the O-ring up onto  the rear shock and took the 2 foot drop with a little more, shall we say, prejudice (I kinda goosed the landing a little to try and get the bike to bottom out).  To my surprise, I never felt the bottom.  There was never any harshness on the landing, just a nice smooth, and what felt like a very linear compression.  I looked down at the rear shock, and the O-ring was completely off -- I had gone through every millimeter of it's travel, and it never ramped up, clanked, or harshened.  Needless to say, I was impressed.

In the words of MC, it also feels like you're sitting higher in the travel even when you're just pedaling along.  Does this translate into being able to access more of the travel?  I don't know, I can't say with scientific certainty, but it sure felt like that.

To round out, the Mammoth has the signature geometry of a Lenz -- slacker head angle, higher bottom bracket, short chainstay -- and, again the BB  height and chainstay length fall comfortably in between the Leviathan and Behemoth.  (Lenz bikes are unique and, I believe, vastly superior to just about every other full suspension 29er out there in this regard -- the major manufacturers have really screwed up here.  You can read more about it in my article about what makes a good full suspension 29er.)

I'm sure the Leviathans and Behemoths will continue to roll out the door at the Studio here, but the Mammoth provides another "can't miss" option for riders to enjoy.

Specs:
Lenz Mammoth frame
Chris King Headset
White Brothers Loop 140, QR15 fork
SRAM X.0 drivetrain (21/33 and 11-34)
Hayes Prime Pro brakes
Stan's 355 rims, DT Swiss 240s hubs
WTB Vigo carbon saddle
Maxxis Ardent (rear), Schwalbe Knobby Nic (front) tires

Full suspension 29er geometry...what's "good", A brief history from Gary Fisher to the BMC SpeedFox 29

29ers are nearly ubiquitous these days on the trail.  When I first began riding them in 2001, they were fringe, at best.  There were only a couple of tires around, and the best option for us out here in the desert of western Colorado, the WTB Nanoraptor did pretty well.  There were only one or two forks, and they were hard to come by.

Especially back then, critics said (often, I believe without ever having taken a 29er out on a technical trail) they were too slow to accelerate, were suited only to tall riders, and, my favorite, couldn't make any of the tight technical turns on trails, like the ones we have here out at our local haunt, the Lunch Loop.

In those early days, we were limited to hardtails for a while -- perhaps a lucky individual would get "the angry inch" on  Moots YBB -- but we were cross-country riding for the most part.


Now sidelined Gary Fisher, came out with the Sugar 292 and 293, since Gary was the first to really embrace the big wheeled bikes.  These early full suspension designs were plagued with problems though -- poor cable routing, and questionable geometry among others, but it was one of those necessary first steps into the foray to get things rolling in the full suspension 29er market.

Even a year or two later, at the Interbike Trade Show in Las Vegas, the 29ers were seen still as fringe elements.  I liked to joke that they seemed to be getting as much attention and support from the component manufacturers as the "burro bikes" with their funny 12 inch wheels.

So now we're up to about 2005 or so, and some of the bigger names in the industry are beginning to build hardtail 29ers -- Specialized, Trek, Scott, Cannondale, etc.  Around that same time, Devin Lenz of Lenz Sport mountain bikes began making a 3" travel full suspension 29er.  Devin had been building mostly big-hit and downhill 26 inch bikes, and he took what he learned from that to make his 29er (he skipped the hardtail step altogether).  the geometry he built with was unique -- he maintain high bottom brackets (13.625 inches), very short chainstays (~17.3inches), and the more slack head angles (~69.5 degrees) most associated with his all-mountain bikes.  The result of these changes is that you hit your pedals less or not at all on technical sections (higher bottom bracket), the bike climbs well and is easy to manual/unweight the front wheel to get up ledges (short chainstays), and it descends with exceptional stability and makes it much less likely that you will go over the handlebars when coming off rocks or ledges (slacker head angle).

Devin is a small, one-man operation, and probably not on the radar of the big manufacturers, and frankly, I'm sure they figured they knew better.

When the bigger companies finally began investing in full suspension 29ers, this turned out to be true.  They listened to the "problems" 29ers -- they're slow accelerating, their wheelbases are too long, poorer cornering stability since you're higher up -- and they concluded incorrectly, I believe, what they should alter.  They didn't want to take a 26-inch bike and just scale it up to the bigger wheels, so the changes they made were to shorten the chainstays (which is good, but not all of them accomplished this because their suspension design wouldn't allow that), lower the bottom bracket height to "improve cornering stability", and steepen the head angle to keep the overall wheelbase shorter.

There are some small differences between the big guys, but for the most part they all share this very common, and in my opinion, poor geometry.  If you don't ride on any technical terrain, these bikes can work fine, but they can make stepping up your technical riding game difficult and/or painful.

Here is a brief breakdown of a few of the more popular bikes out there.  The three dimensions listed are the head angle, then bottom bracket height, and then chainstay length:

LenzSport Leviathan
69.5degree;
13.625" ;
17.75"

BMC SpeedFox 29
70degree ;
13.3" :
16.9"

Specialized Epic series
70.5degrees ;
13.1" ;
17.6"

Cannondale Scalpel 29
71-71.5degrees; 
12.9" ;
17.5"

Santa Cruz Tallboy

71degrees ;

12.8" ;
17.5"

Ellsworth Evolve
72.5degrees ;
13.4" ;

18.2"

There are a lot of other out there, nearly all very similar to the Ellsworth, the Santa Cruz, and the Cannondale.

The Specialized's geometry is not bad, but my point was to point out the sleeper in there -- the newer-to-the-market BMC:

It is as close to the optimal geometry for riding moderate to severe technical terrain in it's first iteration.  Even better is that their hardtail 29er - the TeamElite 29 -- still has this optimal trail geometry, where the big manufacturers really drop the ball -- they revert back to 72.5 degree head angles, and even lower bottom brackets (the Orbea Alma drops theirs to 11.95"!).  What does this ride like?  Imagine just putting fat tires on your road bike, so I hope you don't plan on riding on any obstacles, like dirt or rocks, or maybe branches.

So if you don't like going over your handlebars, you don't like cracking your pedals on every rock you pass, and you just want the most enjoyment on the trail, then do your homework.  Find a friendly geometry, and hit the trails with confidence.