Bike Check: The Purple Pivot

There are beautiful bikes, and then there are jaw-droppers. Customised contraptions built with an added degree of love that most other bikes miss out on. Bikes that have been painstakingly built from the ground-up with a component selection and colour sequence designed for maximum wow-factor. This Pivot Mach 6 Carbon is one such bike.

Brought to us by Singletrack Premier Dealer Prestige Cycles, the ‘Purple Pivot’ started its life as a Mach 6 Carbon frame from Pivot Cycles. As you’ll see however, there’s a whole lot more to it than that…

“We’ve always been fans of the Pivot Mach 6“, explains Stephen from Prestige Cycles. “It’s very light for its 6 inches of travel, with a stiff carbon chassis, excellent pedalling characteristics from the DW-Link back end and a playful, poppy nature when ripping singletrack and charging the descents.”

Pivot Mach 6 Carbon Features

• Long-travel trail/enduro bike
• Full carbon fibre frame
• 155mm rear wheel travel
• dw-link® suspension design
• Cold-forged links with Enduro Max Cartridge bearings
• Custom-tuned Fox Factory Kashima Float X shock with EVOL air sleeve
• Designed to work with forks from 150-160mm in travel
• 66° head angle
• PF92 press-fit bottom bracket shell
• 430mm chainstay length
• 27.5in wheels
• Max tyre clearance: 2.4in
• 148x12mm Boost rear spacing
• All new internal cable routing, featuring Pivot’s Cable Port System and full Di2 integration.
• Internal stealth dropper post compatible
• 1x and 2x compatible
• Rubberized leather chainstay, inner seat stay, and down tube protectors for a quiet ride and higher impact resistance
• Sizes: X-Small, Small, Medium, Large, X-Large

Here’s the full backstory of the custom build straight from Prestige Cycles:

We grabbed a set of 160mm Pikes and took a trip to Chichester to see our old friend Ali at FatCreations custom paint shop. As the man who painted the eye-catching bikes Steve Peat rode to sign off his stellar career in 2016, as well as countless other fantastic paint jobs, we knew he wouldn’t let us down. We kept the brief simple (make it purple!), but otherwise gave him free reign on the design.

He came up with the metallic two-tone fade from midnight blue to purple, which looks different from every angle, and changes as you move around the bike, with lilac and silver highlights for the logos and inside the rear triangle. It looks pretty good in the photos, but in the flesh it is truly jaw-dropping.

So then the fun really began – how to complement this beautiful frame while at the same time making a bike that would ride hard and bring the grin-factor. Sticking with the purple theme we went to Hope for headset, cranks, BB, seatclamp and hubs. The latter were laced up to a set of Stan’s Flow Mk3 rims with Sapim CX Ray spokes for a strong, dependable wheelset that’s surprisingly light.

Stop and go came from SRAM Guide Ultimate brakes and XX1 respectively – if you look very closely at the pictures, you’ll see the small red details on the shifter and mech logos have been retouched in purple!

We were all set for a matching stem/bar combo from Renthal, and even went so far as to re-anodise the bar clamps on the stem in purple. However when we offered it up to the bike the bars didn’t look right, so we kept the stem and swapped in a Thomson bar we had whose slick black finish looks perfect. Troy Lee grips with purple clamps complete the cockpit.

The weight? 26lbs on the nose, though we can go lighter.

This bike is a one-off, an antidote to the sea of black-and-red out there, and everyone who has seen it in our shop has had the same reaction – a sharp intake of breath, followed by a smile and a “oooh”!

This bike is also for sale, with a price of £6500. Get in touch with Prestige Cycles if you want to know more about the custom Purple Pivot, or any of the other custom bike builds they can perform.

Purple Pivot Mach 6 Carbon Specifications

• Frame // Pivot Mach 6 Carbon, 155mm travel, custom painted by Fat Creations
• Headset // Hope Tapered
• Fork // Rockshox Pike RCT3 Solo Air 160mm, custom painted by Fat Creations
• Shock // Fox Factory Float X with Kashima coat and EVOL air sleeve
• Hubs // Hope Pro 4, 148x12mm Rear & 100x15mm Front
• Rims // Stans Flow Mk3 27.5”, 32h
• Spokes // Sapim CX Ray
• Tyres // Continental Trail King 27.5×2.4in
• Chainset // Hope Crankset w/Hope 34t direct-mount chainring
• Front Mech // n/a
• Rear Mech // SRAM XX1, 11-Speed
• Shifters // SRAM XX1, 11-Speed
• Cassette // SRAM XX1, 10-42t, 11-Speed
• Brakes // SRAM Guide Ultimate w/SRAM Centreline X rotors 180mm Front & 160mm Rear
• Stem // Renthal Apex 60mm
• Bars // Thomson Trail Carbon, 750mm wide, 12mm rise
• Grips // ODI Troy Lee
• Seatpost // Thomson Elite 30.9mm
• Saddle // SDG Circuit Mtn w/carbon rails
• Size // Medium
• Weight // 11.9kg / 26.3lbs

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