Turner Launches New 120mm Carbon Flux

It’s been the obvious hole in the Turner range for a couple of years. There’s the burly RFX model for the big trail riders and enduro racers, and there’s the carbon Czar for the head-down racers and map-crossing endurance riders. The new Flux is in that Goldilocks middle ground of what most of us ride, most of the time. With 27.5in wheels and 120mm travel out back, and a 130mm fork up front, it’s ideal for huge spread of riding.

Turner has spent the last couple of years perfecting this bike (and Chipps rode a prototype back in April – more on that later) and the development time has helped the designers take in the changes to geometry and to riding and to reflect that in the frame.

The new Flux features a 67.5° head angle and a 73.7° seat angle with a 130mm fork. The suspension is still DW link, tweaked for this frame to give a good, active ride that still stiffens for those out of the saddle efforts. The attention to detail on the frame is great, with a beautifully machined top rocker, clean lines and to show its all-rounder intentions, provision for a front mech. Talking of gears, there is full external routing for cables, unlike the trend for internal everything. It allows for easy maintenance and for versatile cabling. David Turner runs his brakes UK-style, left-rear, and so the bike is equally suitable to UK or US brake routing, which some modern frames just aren’t. The only exception is that there’s a Stealth dropper internal routing port. Hey, they’re not barbarians! Perhaps the only thing that UK riders will dislike is the inclusion of a press-fit bottom bracket shell.

 

Interestingly, Turner has not gone for a Boost rear end. The benefits of wider boost hubs are felt most on 29ers, and it also helps with clearance for plus tyres. As the Flux has neither, Turner felt that it wasn’t necessary. And given that many riders (especially in the UK) build Turners from frames, it means that your 142x12mm fancy wheels from a year ago are still relevant.

In keeping with the movement to longer top tubes, shorter stems and that ‘modern’ geometry, Turner has lengthened top tubes and shortened seat tubes to allow for better standover and compatibility with longer 150mm droppers. Or so that a rider can size-up a frame size to get a longer reach without being unable to run a decent length dropper post.

First Ride Impressions
Chipps got to ride a pre-production Flux for a few hard days back in April, while shooting the ‘LA is OK’ feature. Here’s what he reckoned:

“I was lucky enough to steal David’s own test bike from Turner’s booth at the end of the Sea Otter. David and I ride the same frame size and saddle height and he runs his brakes UK-style, so it was far too simple. I kept it for all the rides it did in the LA area for our feature and dropped it back to Turner HQ on my way home (Look for a full interview with David Turner in an issue’s time too).”

“I had an older Turner Flux as a long term test bike a half dozen years ago and really liked the versatility of the bike – doing stuff from XC racing to the Tour of Mont Blanc on the same bike. The new Flux has taken that versatility and really expanded what it’s capable of. With a pretty roomy and ‘modern’ feeling front end, it reminded me of recent rides on a couple of Turner’s trail bike contemporaries. The longer front end and slacker head angle meant that the bike could feel lazy on steeper switchback climbs and could ‘push’ a little in the corners if you weren’t weighting the front end.”

“This slight laziness and wagginess of the front end on slow climbs though, translated into a really solid feeling descender. Weight-forward over the bars, boss the bike around and it really carves. Sketchy lines, rocky problems and loose downhills were all gobbled up with gusto. But it’s not just a downhill-crazy machine – on rolling trails it was tremendous fun as you could power up short rises out of the saddle without the bike feeling bogged down, yet as soon as you were heading down again, it got back to feeling like a bigger bike. That DW-Link feel is great for enthusiastic pedalling – something the Turner Flux really encourages. I was really sorry to have to hand it back…”

We’ll be getting our own test bike soon and you can also read our interview with David Turner in the October issue of Singletrack. We’re still waiting for a UK price, but we’ll update this as soon as we know.

For more details, head over to Turner’s website, or hassle your local Silverfish rep to get one into your local shop. That’s what we’re doing.

As Turner says of the Flux, it’s “The Singletrack Ripper” and we’re inclined to agree.

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