Apparently, Pole have the longest mountain bikes at Eurobike 2016, and looking at the one above we can believe it. Not only that, they fold! Founder Leo Kokkonen demonstrated their Evolink bikes, and took us briefly through some of the features. Spanning enduro bikes to full on DH monsters, all are long in the frame, with slack headtubes and steep seat tubes (Leo runs an angleset in his to make it even slacker).
Read on to see some of the clever features they’re building, and to see a video of one folding.
The Evolink 140 is a 29er trail bike.
One really nice touch is that while all the frames have ports for internal cable routing, they also have bosses on the stays and top tube for those who prefer external cables.
Internal through the chainstay, external on the seatstay!Here shown upside down, these two cable clamp bosses are on the underside of the top tube.Finishing kit is all Easton and Raceface…… including a Turbine Dropper post.Some clever shuffling of front triangle elements means all bikes in the range can run the same rear end, with travel varying from model to model between 110mm to 200mm.Steep seat angles make sure they can still be ridden uphill.All the bikes in this range have the same rear triangle and linkage. Tweaks to the front triangle change the bike geometry for different purposes.
DT Swiss hubs keep you rolling.A frame is so long only one end is in focus!200mm travel at the back.Drivetrain is a mix of Raceface SixC cranks and SRAM X01 seven speed.The Evolink 176 DH is the only bike in the range to have DVO suspension. The similar FR has Rockshox, both run 27.5 wheels.
All of them have the same linkage and swing arm, and get this: they’re foldable! Here’s a demonstration:
The whole process took a leisurely 40 seconds.Company founder for scale.If this were mine, I’d probably get paranoid and pad under the chain.All that’s needed are a couple of allen keys to remove some linkage bolts.A bit more work on the stem and it looks like it’d slip straight into a bike bag…
As well as that, the swing arm has hub spacers for boost and non-boost hubs.
The black spacers give it standard spacing, and without, it takes boost hubs.JCB Yellow seems to be very in this year.Take your boost spaced swing arm and push one of these spacers in each side…… and hey presto! Non-boost.A couple of washers space the brake from the stay depending on your choice of hub.
David started mountain biking in the 90’s, by which he means “Ineptly jumping a Saracen Kili Racer off anything available in a nearby industrial estate”. After growing up and living in some extremely flat places, David moved to Yorkshire specifically for the mountain biking. This felt like a horrible mistake at first, because the hills are so steep, but you get used to them pretty quickly.
Previously, David trifled with road and BMX, but mountain bikes always won. He’s most at peace battering down a rough trail, quietly fixing everything that does to a bike, or trying to figure out if that one click of compression damping has made things marginally better or worse. The inept jumping continues to this day.
The folding comes with the design so why not? It is not a feature we were originally after. It’s just a plus because the lower link is concentric with the cranks.
I’m still wondering why the fold? Stash it in yer bag with the full face for the climb on the inflatable hardtail?
The folding comes with the design so why not? It is not a feature we were originally after. It’s just a plus because the lower link is concentric with the cranks.