Mountain Biking Reviews

1. 

   badbadleroybrown
   February 6th, 2010 - 19:55

   What do you mean exactly? Who makes the best downhill bikes? Who has the best downhill race team? Who is the best company that produces downhill mountain bikes?…. Can you elaborate a bit there?

   Edit 1- Since you’ve never updated your post, I’ll just throw out some general answers. The top DH bike is unquestionably the Santa Cruz V10, more podiums and #1 finishes than any other bike ever made. Likewise, the Santa Cruz Syndicate race team is the most successful team ever. Intense is another great company and their bikes are pretty similar to the SC rides. The M1 is a DH legend dating back to Shawn Palmer riding it in the old days, the more recent M6 is a dream to ride and the new 951 is incredibly fun and responsive while not quite the plow bike the M6 is. Morewood is a South African company run by former WC downhiller Patrick Morewood and the new Makulu is a crazy nice bike, handles incredibly well. Commencal took home the World Championship for both men and women last year. The new DW-Link Turner DHR is also insanely nice but they dont fund a DH team. Evil’s new Revolt put in a strong showing and they’ve got a solid team as well… Lapierre’s are smoking bikes but they’ve never had a DH team until next year, they’ve just signed on Sam Blenkinsop to lead the team. He’s a bit young so it’ll take some time to get it up and rolling but they should be good in a few years.

   Edit 2- Uhm… No, it doesnt depend upon the “level” of downhill whatever that’s supposed to mean. The Trek is garbage, the Session 88 is light and hadnles pretty well but that thing will dent if you look at it wrong. As for Specialized, you’ve clearly never ridden a Demo 8 huh? It’s a nice freeride bike but not a downhill bike in any sense. Slack the angles out a few degrees and drop the bottom bracket and then… maybe. Just cause Sam Hill rides one doesnt make it a great bike. Foes… really?? Do you even ride a bike? Foes are nothing but a basic single pivot ride. The only benefit they offer is the option to run a low leverage ratio 2:1 Curnutt shock for better small bump compliance, though it sacrifices control over severe terrain… like what you find on a WC race course. What did you do, just search downhill bike on google and post the first three companies that came up?? But thanks for the thumbs down though, that was nice…

   Edit 3- If you’ve ever ridden Sea Otter, you’d know it wasnt a real DH course. Hell, Sam Hill rode an SX Trail instead of a Demo there and Fabien Barrel rode a 6″ fork…
2. 

   Ashley
   February 6th, 2010 - 20:36

   It depends on the level of downhill, specialezed and trek have some good top level bikes, and foes do all round excellent bikes
3. 

   hummerhead2002
   February 6th, 2010 - 20:56

   Foes was mentioned and Trek has won some podiums from Sea Otter races recently (mbaction.com for details). It would be a tie between Intense and Yeti —with their ‘complex’ but functional designs.
4. 

   mtbsam
   February 6th, 2010 - 21:13

   badbadleroybrown pretty much nailed it, but I’ll phrase it another way. Santa Cruz and Intense are both VPP suspension (Intense buys the license), Giant has maestro, OLD Iron Horse Sundays have the DW Link which has sense gone on to Turner. Suspension designs like these are arguably the best for downhill because of the way way they are designed and tuned. It doesn’t hurt either that they all have 8+ inches of travel for soaking up the big hits. When you look anything single pivot, 4-bar, faux bar, etc, there is no comparison in my opinion. The techy details get pretty in depth but in a nutshell, the multi-link designs are more reactive/responsive, more progressive, and more efficient.

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