Breaking: 140mm travel Pole Bushmaster trail bike is the machined baby brother of the Pole Stamina

Pole Bicycles has kicked off the start of the month with the announcement of another of their radical machined full-suspension bikes. Meet the Pole Bushmaster.

Considering that Pole now machines their flagship full-suspension frames in-house at their factory in Finland, they’re pretty hot on at designing, prototyping, testing and then releasing new bikes. In fact, since Pole ditched the idea of carbon in favour of their own unique manufacturing process, we’ve seen 3 new bikes from the company in just a year.

It all kicked off with the Pole Machine, which was quickly followed up by the current Pole Stamina. Both are bikes with a machined alloy front triangle that is bonded and bolted together to make a very unique structure. Pole designed the Machine and Stamina to be the fastest, big travel, 29ers on the market, and is so confident that they’ve got it right that they even started their own Factory EWS team for the 2019 season.

Pole Bushmaster Trail Bike

While monster travel 29ers are the stuff of dreams, your average rider like you or I would probably find such a bike overkill for the majority of riding that we do. Pole realises this too so have been secretly working on the baby brother of the Stamina, the Pole Bushmaster.

The idea behind the Pole Bushmaster is to offer the benefits of Pole’s machined structure process and Pole’s radical geometry, but in a package that is a little more playful to ride.

With this in mind, the travel of the Bushmaster has been reduced to 140mm, that’s a full 40mm less than the Stamina. The chainstays are also slightly shorter than the Stamina at 450mm (that’s across all frame sizes) making it a little easier to manual and throw around.

Still, even with these changes to the Bushmasters geometry, the overall package is still very much at the progressive end of the bicycle spectrum and this 140mm trail bike still packs a slack 64º head angle and steep effective seat tube angle of 78.6º. On top of this, reach is still massive with a size small Pole Bushmaster measuring 440mm in the reach dept, that’s as much as some brand’s medium frames. The largest XL Bushmaster frame has a reach of 520mm, full geometry below.

Leo Kokkonen, the designer of the Bushmaster and the rest of the Pole range, has engineered this trail bike around a 42mm offset fork, this with the 450mm chainstays and slack front end make for pretty impressive wheelbase measuring between 1230mm – 1310mm.

Leo has this to say about the new bike:

“Stamina opened my eyes how much we can actually make difference by just changing the frame construction. Stamina took us to a new era of the frame design how to go faster and our goal on Bushmaster is to make a bike that is truly fun and fast. On Stamina, we started to remove the bolts from the frame as we became more confident on the new frame profile. We have applied for some patents on the new frame construction and now we can start the production on both frames. Bushmaster might be an eyeopener for the people who have been doubting Pole’s geometry and our innovative approach as it’s going to hit the fun argument more than speed argument. Bushmaster is not going to be a statement that we go back to conventional frames. Bushmaster has just 15mm shorter wheelbase than our bikes normally would, but we can make a difference with that 15mm shorter Pole.”

Along with the radical geo and shorter travel, the Pole Bushmaster also features room for 3 bottle cages, a threaded BB and a 34.9mm seat tube diameter. Although most riders will build this trail bike up with 29in wheels, there is clearance for up to 3in tyres if you wanted to go for a 27.5+ build. It also appears that the rear wheel travel can be reduced to 130mm by using a shorter shock too.

Speaking of the rear suspension, it appears to be similar to the layout of the Pole Evolink, but we’re unsure if the Bushmaster is foldable likes it traditionally tubed stablemate.

Pole Bushmaster Frame Specifications

• Seat tube: 34.9MM
• Seat tube clamp: 38.5MM (CHANGES MAY APPLY TO PRODUCTION)
• Axle to crown: 551-561
• Headset: LOWER – CANE CREEK 36 X 45 DEGREE – 52MM / UPPER – 44MM
• Brake mount: DIRECT MOUNT
• Front Travel: 140 / 150MM
• Rear Travel: 140 / 130MM
• Shock Size: 210 X 55MM / 210 X 50MM
• Shock hardware: POLE
• BB: 73MM THREADED / COMPATIBLE WITH 30MM AXLE STANDARD
• Chain device: LOW DIRECT MOUNT / POLE BASH GUARD (OPTIONAL)
• Bottle mounts: THREE (TWO ON TOP AND ONE DOWN OF DOWNTUBE)
• Dropouts: 148MM
• Axle: 180MM, THREAD LENGTH 20MM, THREAD PITCH M12X1.75
• Wheels: 27.5+ / 29″ 730-755 MM
• Max tyre size: 3″ (27.5″), 2.8″ (29″)
• Drivetrain: ONE-BY ONLY, 36T MAX
• Cable routing: EXTERNAL / STEALTH DROPPER POST
• Concentric BB bearing: 2 X 6808 LLU MAX (52*40*7 MM)
• Link pivot bearings: 2 X 6805 LLU MAX (25 * 37 * 7 MM), 4 X 6001 LLU MAX (28*12*8 MM)
• Recommended shock: RS SUPER DELUXE L1 / H
• Material: 7075 T6 ALUMINIUM
• Colour (SIGNATURE COLOR): MACHINED RAW

Pole will offer the Bushmaster as a frame only with rear shock and headset for €3,750 or as a complete bike. 3 complete bike options will be offered from Pole ranging from a TR with a mostly SRAM GX build kit and Pike Rc, an XC model with SRAM XX1 and Pike RC2 and a flagship Bushmaster LE with Trickstuff brakes, carbon Mavic wheels and a selection of Raceface carbon finishing kit.

As you would expect for a CNC machined bike made in Europe, prices are a little higher than some other models, but Pole is offering a special presale discount to customers who order their bikes now with a June delivery time. RRP on the entry TR complete bike is €5,550 but reduced to €4,995, the XC builds is currently on offer at €6,660 rather than the RRP of €7,400 the flagship LE build with all the bells and whistles can be had for €9,405 instead of the full price of €10,450.

Pole Bushmaster Special Launch Pricing

• Bushmaster Frameset: €3,750
• Bushmaster TR: €4,995
• Bushmaster XC: €6,660
• Bushmaster LE: €9,405

Anyone interested in pre-ordering a Bushmaster should head over to the Pole website here.

Here’s what Pole Bicycles have to say about the new Pole Bushmaster, along with how they came to the name:

TRAILBIKE / 140mm / 140mm / 29″

New orders delivery time will be approx June 2019.

Bushmaster is the long waited new short travel trail bike from Pole, and as the name says, this bike does well in the bushes. Bushmaster is designed for people who want to ride technical but flat trails like a snake and have fun in the bush. We started designing Bushmaster by designing the Stamina first. We wanted to test the new frame construction first from the top and then go back to shorter travel. Stamina is proven 3% faster than the conventional bikes, but on Bushmaster, we took that 2% off from the speed and made it more fun, so it’s still fast but yet more fun. Bushmaster still has a long wheelbase, steep seat tube, and slack head angle but it does manual easier, and it gives you more time on riding on the edge.

Bushmaster follows the new design style of Pole with dust sealed links with double axles. The frame is RAW machined 7075 T6 aircraft aluminum with black details on links and hardware to make the bike stand out.

“Lachesis, also known as bushmasters, is a genus of venomous pit vipers found in forested areas of Central and South America.”

Pole tells us that the Bushmaster will be on its website for preorder today with frame pricing from 3750 Euros for the frame only and complete bikes available at a special pre-sale price from 4995 Euros. Head over to the Pole Bicycles website for more information.

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