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New BFe
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Posted 6 years ago
OK, here we go. Got about 8 or 9 hours riding done over the weekend. For reference I’m 43, a skinny 5’10”, currently riding a 26” Cotic Soda and a 26” Rocket.
TL:DR? I had fun. Does what it says on the tin.
The bike is the medium CMYK one from the photoshoot. Pimpy Helm forks, decent Hope Tech Enduro wheels/WTB tyres (more on these later) and then the rest is functional – SLX drivetrain, deore brakes, in house finishing kit.
First impressions are that its looooong. With 780mm bars on it’s a complete PITA to manoeuvre round my cellar. Sitting on it says there’s a lot of top tube and the front wheel seems to be a long way off.
Second impressions once I started riding was that I wouldn’t be winning any XC races on it. It’s actually a very solid competent climber, but in a stately winching kind of way (again – see end for more). To be honest, one of the surprises of the weekend was quite how well mannered it was uphill – I didn’t try anything madly tech on it, but typical peaks climbs it just churned up in a very nicely balanced fashion.
Having understeered through the first couple of corners descending, it becomes obvious that you really do need to stick some weight on the front to make it corner. Quel surprise. However once I’d got the hang on that, you can just lob it in and it’ll carve round. Trail centrey stuff (Lady Canning) it was very fun on and easily the fastest I’ve ridden it. The ability to smash berms in the way that would leave me upside down in the bushes on my Soda but still with the pumpiness of a hardtail makes for a rapid bike. All those bits that you look at and go “if I pop off that, then I could land there”, but haven’t quite joined up, just happen. Given how planted it is climbing, it’s still very back wheel happy. My manualing/wheelie skills are pretty piss poor, but this bike flattered them no end.
Take that onto steeper ground – cheeky, steep, loamy, Golfy-esque trails in the woods and the bike comes into its own. Utterly composed. This is where this bike is SOO at home. Awesome fun.
It’s a handful on purely rocky trails, no 2 ways about it. Solid frame (it definitely lives up to the BFe moniker) and a WTB “tough” casing rear tyre (far from compliant in my previous experience, even on a full sus) and its basically a question of managing the battering in your legs. Sure, running bigger/softer rear tyre would help, but you pay that back uphill. Your call.
I never really bonded with the Helm fork. It was alright, but at £950 it should have blown me away. Given a Pike is £600, you could get one and get it custom tuned and still have plenty of change, or X-Fusion for rather less again. Many of the details on the fork were just annoying. The axle is a fiddly 2 hander to remove. The air volume adjuster is beautifully made, but you still need a 30mm socket and ratchet to use it, and so it doesn’t actually offer anything that the simpler, cheaper RS token setup doesn’t. You need to be very careful when balancing the –ve air chamber when tinkering with pressure – any weight on the forks and they suck down and you lose travel. All just a faff.
A note on the wheel setup. I had the wheels off the bike for cleaning. And immediately went “f… me this is heavy” when I picked up the rear. A quick comparison to my 26” Rocket wheels (25mm internal rims, Spesh grid carcass tyres, so perfectly raggable), shows then to be nearly a kilo heavier, of which ¾ of that is in the rear (200g in the tyre, 200g in the cassette for starters). That might explain why it didn’t feel very sprightly up hill. A quick check of specs suggests that an identical build to my 26” wheels would weigh around 225-250g more in 27.5 format, which would improve the zip no end. (note – this is not really a criticism of the Cotic spec choice – there’s plenty of riders out there who are heavier, clumisier, more aggressive, or all 3 than me and the current setup will play to their strengths better than to my lack of it!).
I’m very, very, tempted. I don’t think it’s a particularly tight secret that there’s a new Soul out sometime soon, so I want to see what that looks like before committing, but it works so well as an all-round trail bike, I can’t see the small weight penalty of the BFe making all that much difference, when it’s quite so raggable down the steep stuff. Just a shame they’ve sold out of medium blues!
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