The p.type frame now has some 100mm REBA’s fitted and after some initial messing about with + and – pressures, they seem to suit it pretty well. This frame is designed with a 100 – 120mm fork in mind, so as soon as they are ready, we will fit one of the very first 120mm, XFusion taper steerer 29er forks and post the results here.
We first rode the bike with the 470g rigid full carbon fork [it looked 'interesting' teamed with XFusion HiLo post and DMR flatties!]. It amazed me with how much fun it was to ride, really encouraging some playfulness and not what I was expecting from the 29er experience. A rigid bike with big wheels on some fast flowing ST really brings you fully in touch with the trails and demands some concentration as the tree’s blur closely by!
It was so much fun in rigid guise, that it was almost a disappointment when the suspension first went on. That ‘super-direct’ feeling had been tuned down a bit, but after fiddling with the pressures and getting the fork bedded in it soon became clear that we now had a completely different animal that could really be pushed hard on the tight, rooty rutted stuff.
Jim from Sussex MTB borrowed the newly suspension adorned bike and took it out on one of his weekly rides.
Following him through the twisty, steep stuff, it was great to hear his Whoops and see the wide grin when we emerged at the base of the trail.
So, this weekend, as I stripped the paint from my back door, Lea and Fraze spent 4 hours putting some more miles on the big wheels. You can see some pics and read their feedback here.
Things are looking good so far. I will make a few changes for production and we still need to test the horizontal dropouts on this p.type version, there are also 2 variants of this frame due to arrive pretty soon.
The aim is to take all the best bits from the 3 p.types and put them all together with experience learnt from the test rides, to make an aggressive fast and fun 29er with the Maxlight spirit at it’s heart.
I’ll keep you updated here.
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