Nicolai Helius AC

Price: £1,700 – Frame only
From: www.nicolai-uk.com

Here she is. It’s taken an age to get it built for one administrative reason or another but today I indexed the gears and gave it a car park spin. Tomorrow the hills and all the tweakery that will be done.

I’ve gone for a reasonably mainstream build and I wanted a general trail bike with a slant towards some steeper, technical descents. So we have Fox Talas 32 forks so I can drop the front for the longer climbs. I’ve selected the longest travel setting for the shock mounting – I’ll rely on the platform ability of the shock to keep things calm on the ups rather than limit the bob by limiting the travel – just doesn’t feel right to me to have a bike with lots of travel and then set it up with less. There’s DT Swiss Tricon wheels with a Maxle rear and a 15mm bolt-thru front, so I’m expecting full on Germanic stiffness throughout… as it were.

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The Helius is a true Four Bar suspension bike, which is going to be interesting as it turns out that the majority of my long term full suspension experience has been on single pivot bikes. Nothing deliberate – just the way it’s gone really.

Groupset is pretty much XT all the way. There’s a variation in the chainset in that I’ve gone for a Gusset BB instead for no other reason than for a bit of variation and curiosity. It does have company with a Gusset 70mm stem though. The groupset is 10 speed. I tested the SLX 10 speed on a Genesis Altitude earlier this year and I loved it. Now I’ll get to see how better the XT system is and also to test out the claim that 10speed gets the most out of your rear suspension.

I have a rather wide set of carbon bars at 720mm and I suspect that may be where the first change comes, but we’ll see. I want a bike that will handle technical DH well. It’s quite short, with a 21.5inch top tube length, but I like short bikes.

So there it is. I have a month to get it tweaked and poked before I take it to Morzine for my annual week of uplifted laziness. I’ll report on the ride as soon as I’ve done some beyond the car park.

Some other numbers for you..

Top tube length is 21.5 inches
BB Height is 13.75 inches

Mark

Mark has been riding mountain bikes for over 30 years and co-owns Singletrack, where he's been publisher for 25 years. While his official title might be Managing Director, his actual job description is "whatever needs doing" – from wrangling finances and keeping the lights on to occasionally remembering to ride bikes for fun rather than just work. He's seen the sport evolve from rigid forks to whatever madness the industry dreams up next, and he's still not entirely sure what "gravel" is. When he's not buried in spreadsheets or chasing late invoices, he's probably thinking about his next ride.

Nicolai Helius AC – Long Term Test