I love the way even I (with my very limited skills) can pop the front wheel over stuff on my 26″ Trance. I’m not sure if that is quite what is meant by pop, but it will do for now.

I also love the way the 29er wheels on my FF29 plough through stuff. But they seem to want to stay stuck to the ground. That’s fair enough; it’s the way the bike was designed and it makes climbing steep stuff a breeze. It’s also amazing what you can roll over if you get your body in the right place.

But I wonder, can you have both? Can I keep my nice big wheels and still have a bike (preferably one with rear suspension) that pops off stuff easily.

Based on chainstay length, the Whyte T129 looks a good candidate, but I’m sure there is more to it than chainstay length.

NOTE: this is not meant to be a “can you manual a 29er” thread. Of course you can. With enough skill and practice you can manual a road bike. But some bikes are more playful than others and I’m just wondering what are the current leading candidates for a playful full sus 29er?

Hi
I have a 2012 Transition Bandit 29er which is very playful.
It fits the bill as you describe as far as I am concerned.
140 front 130 rear works well as a trail bike and a play bike.
Cheers
Steve

Five 29er is worth a look. I wasn’t totally convinced by it, certainly didn’t feel like a £3000 bike but it does what you’re after, I was really surprised by that side of it.

Thanks. The 2012 versions of the Bandit did look pretty good, but haven’t they changed them now?

Five29 ? Really ? Surely that has to be a bike for ploughing through stuff not popping off it. Chainstays are 1cm longer than my FF29 and the wheelbase is 8cm longer. How can it be more playful? I guess I need to ride one and find out really.

The Commencal Meta AM 29er is very playful like that. It´s a super fast bike and feels really stable but it´s also fun to play with and loft the front wheel or flick it through corners. I really didn´t want to give that bike back, it was only let down by it´s wheels.

Hi
The 2013 bandit is 120mm rear. Not sure what that does in terms of the bikes character.
The 2013 Covert 29 er is supposed to be very good too and might be 130 rear
Cheers
Steve

That’s interesting. The numbers on the Commencal Meta AM look pretty similar to the Five29. In fact the chainstays are even longer. I guess there is more to this “playful” feel than I thought.

I wonder whether BB drop and suspension performance are playing a large part. My FF29 has a 6cm BB drop and with it being a HT that’s fixed. The Five29/Meta-AM have a 3cm drop. Also, when you preload the suspension then try and manual/wheelie the bike I guess you’ve got the reaction of the suspension trying to lift the bike as well.

I know, I know, quit trying to analyze it and just ride 🙂

Trance 29er is really nice IMO. Dunno about pop factor though.

So much pop from my Covert 29 (140mm front and rear) I struggle to keep it on the ground! Seriously though, it is a very playful bike.

I´m not much of an analyser but I think that overall length has a lot to do with what you´re talking about. Basically you´re moving over a back wheel pivot point to lift the front wheel so everything adds towards that. I´ve got an Orbea Occam 29er which has shorter chainstays but longer top tube and it´s hard to manual, I can do it but I need to work at it.

I do like the look of the Whyte 129, but at it’s heart the frame seems a hefty little beast. I had hoped the M-109 would be better but reports suggest it’s not far off the 129.

Can I add the Intense spider Comp into the mix, short chainstay, nice headangle and a more reasonable weight, though comes with a daft/huge (std) price tag.

I think you need a shorter travel FS for it to ‘pop’, I’ve never found anything long travel that ‘playful’ until your charging downhill, though as alway as doug suggest there a lot more to these things that one or two measurements.
That said I think the 2015 Banshee Phantom looks great fun.

roverpig – Member

Five29 ? Really ? Surely that has to be a bike for ploughing through stuff not popping off it

I was really surprised too! Just goes to show you can’t tell how a bike’ll ride til you ride it. (unless you’re MBR of course where you can review an entire bike by reading the geo sheet 😉 )

I found a shorter stem makes it easier to get the front wheel up, but that then could affect how it climbs as weight distribution will change

My Nicolai AC29er is set up like that. It’s dead easy to hop and ‘pop’ when you’re in a playful mood, yet it will also steam roller a rocky descent when you just want to make progress. Having a well set up shock also helps. My Float R was a bit wallowy and dead feeling in standard tune, but after a trip to Loco the difference was like night and day.

not “my bike was nicked, broken, wrong size etc..”
but…
“i want a bike that will plough as well as pop…”
i mean…seriously? is that like a bike that will go up and down?

cue the helpful replies from people whose “n plus 1” bike-owning philosophy is either cozily justified by such threads or an opportunity to live vicariously through the fatter wallets of others…

(off to check if someone did indeed wee on my cornflakes…)

Had a quick go on a T129 and was impressed by how playful it was. Pop-tacular!

@phatstanley: Hope your cornflakes aren’t too soggy 🙂

I guess I didn’t explain myself well enough at the top. I’m not looking for a bike that will “plough and pop”. All bikes are a trade-off and if you gain in one area you are bound to lose in another. However, it’s also true that a larger wheel will roll over things better than a smaller one and not get hung up as easily. Put simply I don’t get thrown over the bars as often on the 29er and I quite like that. How playful it is, on the other hand, has more to do with geometry than wheel size. So, I’m sure there are 29ers out there that are more playful than my FF29. Of course, they’ll be “worse” in other areas, but I’ll need to test them to find out whether that matters to me or not. First, I need to decide what to test though.

The short vs long travel question is an interesting one. I would also have thought that short travel bikes would have more pop, but that isn’t being borne out by the suggestions so far, which tend to me more AM 29ers.

I think 130-150mm AM 29er designs are starting to err towards the playful. Slacker head angles, short stems, wide bars and shortish stays are becoming more common, especially at the upper end of the market. Short travel 29ers are generally set up for XC ‘wheels on the ground’ type of riding, so have steeper head angles, with longer stems and stays so you end up with a very stable, but less playful feeling bike. There will be exceptions of course. This is just my opinion based on riding a couple of Nicolai 120mm XC orientated AC 29ers, and a couple of AM 140mm AC 29ers, including my own which I’ve owned for 7 months now. The former were really quick in a straight line, but hopping, popping and general hooning around was almost impossible (which is why I held off buying my first 29er), whereas the revised AM 29ers were much more playful and fun to ride despite having more travel.

Based on chainstay length, the Whyte T129 looks a good candidate, but I’m sure there is more to it than chainstay length.

It’s a very good place to start, the closer your weight is to the rear axle there more effect leaning back will have. And what I’m learning in my feeble attempts to manual and wheelie is it’s more about the lean back than the lift at the front.

I have a T129, I wouldn’t call it poppy, but perhaps it is compared to other FS 29ers. (My Yelli Screamy, that is poppy).

My hunch is if you really value ‘pop’, get smaller wheels which allows for a tighter frame.

Pop as you describe it probably requires a short ish reach and a relatively high stack height. Have a look for those attributes and test one, maybe start off with a Transition Covert/Norco Shinobi/ Kona Satori/Specialized Stumpjumper Evo/Tallboy LT etc. Having said that i would have thought the Five29 also has those attributes if the design is similar in intention to my old Five 26er but i haven’t ridden one so have no real idea.

The longer the front centre the harder you will find it to ‘pop’. Chainstays will also come into it. If you’re at the bottom end of a size range then try sizing down for a test and see how you get on.

Ultimately though your skills are the weak point based on a lot of your previous threads(no offence intended) and a day spent with a decent coach will probably give you all the pop you need. Have a dig around for a video of Kye Forte on a charge 29er hardtail riding trails. He’s short, light but clearly has no ‘pop’ issues.

Horsethief is worth a try (reccommending my own bike shocker), I was very surprised how nimble and “poppy” it felt, despite it being very long (it’s almost as long as I am tall = probably 6’1″ long…)

Skills are certainly a weak point (and no offence taken there), but following a two-day skills course I can now loop out the Trance at will. Still can’t control a manual that well, but at least I can get it up (fnar, fnar). I can lift the front on the FF29, but it is a lot harder.

This isn’t a criticism of the FF29. It is brilliant at what it was designed to do. Maybe a 29er HT and a 26″ full suss is the ideal combination. But something that combined my favourite features of both could be interesting.

Of course, the problem with asking on a forum is that I don’t know how good the people responding are. Most of the suggestions so far don’t, on paper, look any easier to manual than the FF29. So, either there is more to making a bike playful than the few numbers I’m using or these people are just a lot better at moving a bike around than me (or some combination of the two). Still, it’s been an interesting conversation so far.

poppy, FS, 29er – choose any 2 unless as Gotama says you haz awsumz skillz

but mr pig as we’ve already discussed, the links you’re needing are:

http://canfieldbrothers.com/frames/yelli-screamy

or

http://www.singularcycles.com/shop/index.php/singular-buzzard.html

No problems popping, wheeling, manualing my Ghost AMR 29er

Yes, the 29er AM hardtail might be fun and maybe that is the only way to get a really playful 29er, but I’m not ready to give up on full suss bikes just yet.

in the category I own this bike but
Rocky Mountain element 29er
98mm rear travel with 100 mm front will take 120mm

really really impressive for my limited skills and my other bike is a 26er Yeti asr7 with 160mm forks

the RM feels smoother and more stable and quicker and I love the yeti

have a look at the reviews especially owners couple on here

they do the instinct as well bigger travel 29er 130mm rear with 67 to 69 head angle

nice video

[video]http://vimeo.com/40560345[/video]

How tall are you?

6′ Why do you ask?

Personal opinion is that big wheels don’t work as well for small folk as they do for bigger folk. Added rotational mass and the longer stays being prime culprit, both of which are overcome more easily by added leverage through height and increased body weight. As such i wondered if you were shorter and that was possibly part of the issue but it doesn’t seem to be the case.

Out of interest and since its easy to do it may be worth jacking the forks up to 140mm on your FF29 just to give it a try. It will poss screw up a whole load of other stuff but will give you an idea of what a hardtail with a higher front end would be like. if it works you can then measure reach and stack and browse the geo charts on the web until you’re thoroughly bored 😀

Thanks. That’s probably worth a try. Next time I’m doing a service on the fork I’ll pop it back to 140mm and see what it feels like.

The Rockys look good, likewise the new Instinct. No idea about poppiness tho, but you think they’d make an agile bike for the North Shore.

Have ridden a few FS 29ers now and can say of those I’ve ridden, the Whyte T129 is by far the closest to what you describe you want. Is it the chainstay length? Is it the angles? Don’t know, but I had a good ride on one and most of the time forgot I was on a 29er, that is until I went too fast into a corner cos I was carrying too much speed!

Rode the 2014 Fuel EX 29er the other day, nice bike, very well balanced, but definitely less playful. Brilliant bike for covering distances in comfort though.

Thanks. Just for comparison, what other FS 29ers have you ridden that weren’t as playful as the T129?

http://m.pinkbike.com/news/First-Look-Specialized-S—Works-Enduro-29-S-E.html

chainstays so short there has to be a little nubbin sticking out of the BB area for the front mech

I’ve ridden a trance x 29er and own a Whyte t129 ….the whyte is more poppy I suppose …..the Trance is more planted ..prob to do with longer wheel base ……both were ridden on the Fod downhills for comparison …..I bought the whyte ….but as said above if you want poppy …Yelli Screamy/Buzzard is the thing to look for

All ‘poppy’ means is a progressive leverage rate. You just need to car park test every bike you’re interested in at the correct spring rate and see which one feels the most progressive. Then go down a size in air can and run a volume spacer. Eventually you’ll have to run 60% sag to get full travel….

Or you could just buy a well reviewed bike that fits you and learn how to get it off the ground?

There’s definitely more to it than that.
I’ve never ever ridden a specialized that pops for example (in the way that I mean pop – that might be different for different people).

Everyone who describes the Rocket, suggests that it pops like legs&co (showing my age), so I’d like to try one of those.

Edit: oh – that’s not a 29er – try an Intense/Turner or Pivot.

There’s definitely more to it than that.
I’ve never ever ridden a specialized that pops for example (in the way that I mean pop – that might be different for different people).

No there isn’t. BB drop is about the only other thing that you could take into account but for arguments sake I’m negating that as it’s just 29″ with similar BB drop we’re talking about. Specialized commonly have linear leverage rates so yes they’re not going to feel as lively as others with progressive rates. But if you know how to set up suspension that is what you want with air suspension anyway as it’s naturally progressive in nature.