Before I get to my notes, I just want to comment on why these kinds of events are worth attending, even if you’re not currently in the market for a new bike. The main thing is that you get to test your prejudices and assumptions about bikes against the reality of experience in harsh daylight on your own trails. Even if your leanings were once well-founded, both you and the state of the bike building art change with time, outmoding old conclusions. It doesn’t matter whether your experiences at the demo confirm or blow apart your preconceptions; either way you have gained valuable current knowledge. And if you don't have any preconceptions, then this is the perfect way to start forming some.
Here some of the things I learned about myself yesterday:
- I validated that smaller frames fit me better, no matter what the factory reps, the guys from the LBS, and the sizing charts may say.
- I validated that my body is too old and spoiled to enjoy riding a hardtail on my rocky, rooty local trails.
- I learned that it doesn’t matter how much state-of-the art long-travel suspension technology I have under me if the shocks aren’t set up exactly right for my weight and riding style.
- I learned that the 29er evangelists really have something to proselytize about. :-)
These are the bikes I tried:
- Fisher Roscoe all-mountain rig with 5.5” of travel
- Trek 69er single speed
- Fisher Hi-Fi Pro 4” full suspension 29er
I’ll get the morning's lone disappointment out of the way first. One of the Trek reps attempted to set the Roscoe's suspension up for me, but I think he hadn’t worked with this particular unit before and it seemed like he was having technical difficulties with the shock pump. Maybe there was something off about the shock itself. By the time I got out of the staging area, several people were already waiting for me to get started on a ride segment, so I did not take time to get out my own pump and re-adjust the sag and let some air out of the tires. That was my big mistake of the day. The first ten minutes or so were on smooth, fast singletrack, and I was all over the place trying to keep up with the guy in front of me. The first hurdle was that the bike was a size medium, which felt big to me, and I found I needed to make some fairly major adjustments in posture and cornering technique to keep the wheels on the dirt and my shoulders away from the tree trunks. Probably the somewhat more raked-out front end - compared to my own bike - did not help. None of this was really the bike’s fault, obviously; an all-mountain bike with a 17.5” frame is not going to ride like an XC bike with a 15” frame. On the other hand it’s possible to feel a certain connection with a new bike right off the bat, and I definitely was not feeling the love here.
Next we turned onto a tight, twisty loop with a much higher density of roots, small logs, etc. By this time I had adjusted enough to the geometry of the bike to be able to pick lines with more confidence, but here is where the suspension set up really made my life miserable. According to the o-rings on the shock shafts, I was getting 20 – 25% sag, which sounds not too far off the mark. But I was only using about half the travel on either end, and the travel I was getting was so harsh I might as well have been on a hardtail. (I played with the rebound, compression damping, and pro-pedal controls, but they are for fine-tuning, and there was nothing fine about this tune, so it made little difference.) This impression was driven home at every root by the racket of the chain against the stays. Yuck.
You’d think 2.4” tires would cover a multitude of sins, but no. The ride became a series of linked recoveries as the tires continued to lose traction on the rooty corners because of the lack of compliance in the suspension. And this on a bike whose claim to fame is a rear air shock engineered to provide a plush, linear, coil-like experience. So much for that!
I can hardly offer a valid opinion of the bike under the circumstances, but I think I can say with some confidence that it seemed a bit heavy and sluggish, even though the claimed weight is a respectable sub-30 lbs – only a pound or two more than my Turner Burner that has only a bit more than half the travel. I doubt that a perfect suspension setup would have fixed this. Probably the big tires were partly at fault.
Anything positive to say? Well, the Avid Elixir brakes worked well. And the bike was very nice to look at. From a distance.
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After the Roscoe, I took a short spin on a Trek 69er singlespeed. (A 69er has a 29” front wheel and a 26” back wheel.) I could tell right away that this bike would be really fun in the right hands on the right terrain. It was geared too high for my skinny-legged spinner blood, but it was light, handled nicely, and had a frame that felt compliant over minor trail chatter without being too flexy when standing up and mashing – which was pretty much all the time for me, given the gearing. (Full disclosure: a frame has to be pretty darn cheesy to seem unduly flexible to me, so if you're a clyde, find a writer that has a hundred pounds on me for a solid evaluation on this front.) If I lived in a place where the singletrack was mostly smooth, instead of littered with a network of thick roots and granite baby heads, I could definitely be sucked in by a bike like this. As it was, the going was just too rough for my taste in the chop. (I have riding acquaintances who ride all our local trails on bikes like this with enjoyment … but for the most part their backs and knees are 20 years younger than mine.)
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Now for the surprise of the day. Out of the start gate in the morning I snagged a 16” Fisher Hi-Fi Pro 29er full suspension bike. I had not spent more than a few experimental minutes on a 29er before - never on one that really fit me and never on a suspension frame. Note to factory demo teams: bring more small bikes! Chris, from local Trek dealer Cyclemania, set up the rear shock spot-on the first time. (Way to go, Chris.) After an encouraging but rough first foray on the bike I stopped and dropped the front-end pressure significantly to match what I run in my own 100mm Fox air fork. This transformed the bike from promising to delivering serious fun... immediately.
After an hour and a half on the bike I can tell you that it’s true what they say: big wheels really smooth out the terrain. This pleased me - insert HUGE grin here - but didn’t surprise me, since many others have said as much. What surprised me was that I had so little trouble adjusting to the handling in tight quarters… especially in light of the received wisdom that it’s difficult to achieve good geometry on a small frame with the big wheels. If that wisdom was true at one time, obviously Fisher has solved many of the issues with this bike. We were riding a demanding trail with some very tight technical rocky switchbacks, heavily constrained by trees. I was behind Chris and a couple of other strong young riders. I was on a new bike but still almost managed to keep up with them. I was not thinking - most of the time - about having to adjust my technique. (Panting too hard, for one thing.) I honestly think that I have never ridden that trail more cleanly than I did yesterday. The moment that really sold me on the big wheel format was when I successfully crested a challenging low-speed move but found myself off line at the top and therefore facing a small but steep roller with an abrupt transition to flat at the bottom. I had made the exact same mistake just the day before on my 26 inch bike. That time I put on the brakes and bailed, afraid of stuffing it in the transition. This time I let it rip, somehow knowing that I would be okay… and I was. Yee ha!
Too bad it's so ... well, red.
Suspension performance was excellent front and rear - surprisingly similar to my regular bike, despite the dissimilar designs. I can’t help but wonder, though, what a 29er with 5” of suspension would be like. Are the geometry challenges too great? I have been thinking of moving from my previous-generation XC bike with 3.5” of travel to the emerging standard of 5”. If I could get that extra plushness and have the big wheels into the bargain, would that be nirvana? Am I just greedy?
Complaints: I did clip an awful lot of boulders with the pedals. Not sure whether this was due to a low bottom bracket or longer cranks, or what. I suspect the bottom bracket, because I also had trouble on one of bigger logs that I usually roll easily. This was not a deal-breaker, though, as I think you just get used to whatever your pedal height is and learn to adjust unthinkingly; it’s only an issue when you’re new to the bike.
I did have a little more slippage on the roots than I’m used to. I’m going to chalk that up to tires that may not have been the greatest for local conditions and that may have had too much air. (The tread pattern had that dry-dirt, west-coast look to it. If you've been riding in the Northeast for a while you'll know exactly what I'm talking about.) I know 29er tires have more total air volume for a given tire width, so you run them with lower pressure. But I’m not sure how much lower. Maybe I had them too firm. If you know your preferred pressure for a 26” tire, what is the rule of thumb for how much you reduce pressure on a 29” wheel?
The Avid Elixir brakes shuddered horribly on the back wheel. I did not experience this symptom on the Roscoe with the same brakes, so not sure what was behind this. The Bontrager saddle was made for someone else’s rear – or maybe the rear of another species - and some plastic pieces on its undercarriage snagged my lycra shorts repeatedly. Come on, Bontrager, take it for a test ride before you put it into production!
One doubt left in my mind about whether I’d really want to live with a 29er has to do with acceleration and climbing. The bike clambered okay up all of the pitches we hit, but they were all extremely short, and it did not feel as snappy getting back up to speed over the top as my 26er. I would want to spend some time on steeper and more extended climbs before committing to the format.
Finally, I did perceive more lateral flex in the rear end than on my Turner, but nothing that really distracted me. Not sure whether this came from the wheel or the frame or both. Later, messing with a different Hi-Fi 29er from a prior year, belonging to an acquaintance, we held the saddle and pushed gently sideways on the top of the rear wheel and did see what looked like significant pliability in the rear triangle. This points up some of the things that demoing bikes (or anything else) does NOT tell you about: durability, maintainability, and customer service. When taking this into consideration, I’m thinking that if I were to buy a 29er, I’d really want to look at something from a maker that has a strong track record for building really solid suspension frames.
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Unfortunately I was unable to try one of the new Fuel EXs with the full-floater suspension design. Maybe next time.
