Voodoo Bizango Carbon Gets a Refresh

Have we passed “peak black paint”? I do hope so.

If the pro model with the SID rides as well as it looks, it’ll be bargain of the century!

The Pro looks great, spec’s OK, and the geo looks pretty good too. But it really does underline the cost points being made on the other thread that we are discussing a £1650 bike from Halfords as a bargain!

geo looks pretty good too

Geo looks a bit like the current Boardman MHT with a short reach and short stem?

It’s like they’ve copied the trend started with the BMC Twostroke and Cannondale Scalpel HT for slackening XC bikes but keeping the stems a sensible medium for climbing, but then slapped a short stem on it.

The Pro looks great, spec’s OK, and the geo looks pretty good too. But it really does underline the cost points being made on the other thread that we are discussing a £1650 bike from Halfords as a bargain!

No one objects to the existence of carbon bikes, it’s the media’s coverage of them that grates. Especially when you consider the spending power of UK riders as discussed on the other recent thread. £8k bikes are cool, but they’re aimed at a demographic that can afford them which thanks to exchange rates is a lot bigger in the USA where most of them are designed.

Things like this Voodoo at £1650 are, like it or not, the equivalent in terms of spending power to those $3000 Specialized/Trek/Santa Cruz that the media more often features.

I really liked that colour right up until you described it as “sugared gammon”.

I would like to see the whole geo chart, but I assume the medium will be an 18inch frame which is just too big for me. With dropper posts being longer now there is no reason to have such long seat tubes. Apart from that, it looks great.

Other sites are reporting the rear as being pretty tight and limited to about the 2.25 thats fitted on it. So are we going narrower on tyres now ?.

Bike-Radar say it’s gone up from 2.25 to 2.35?

Sugared gammon 😀 looks good. Wonder if it’s a catalogue frame, I’d love a plain coloured frame with those numbers.

Have a look at the dropped seatstay BXT frame, it’s pretty close.

Worryingly cheap though, especially seeing as it seems to be their own in-house mold and not used by anyone else. And the only review I could find the guy snapped the toptube/seatube junction as you’d sort of expect with that design.

I’m tempted, but the sensible voice in my head says wait for an alu BMC twostroke to pop up on ebay and flog the bits.

Goddamit, I am perfectly happy with my Trek Superfly, and yet that looks like it would be an improvement in almost every way, especially as the Superfly is basically now the Gravel fly, a lighter frame and fork would be just perfect 🙄

Apparently I must now avoid Halfords in case of temptations! 😁

The geometry is well out of date now.

Come back when you’ve got some new frame moulds cheers Halfords.

Depends where they’ve measured it from, looks like the seatube intersects ahead of the BB so it’s effectively a cm or two forward, which makes it a degree or two steeper.

The Carbon Pro looks right up my street – looking for a 120mmm xc bike to complement the enduro and 150mm steel hardtail.

Other than this, not much in the 120mm category wets my appetite- Pipedream Sirius aside – good to see…

Seat angle way too slack.
Head angle a bit too steep.
Reaches too short.
Seat tubes too long.

Well out of date.

Head angle a bit too steep.

Name an XC bike that’s slacker?

It’s pretty much* a silhouette of the most extreme XC bike currently out there? https://www.cannondale.com/en-gb/bikes/mountain/cross-country/scalpel-ht/scalpel-ht-hi-mod-1

*it has 10mm more travel, and the seat angle is degree slacker on paper but it doesn’t say if that’s actual or effective and 1deg is ~1cm on the saddle rails so within the adjustment range anyway unless you’re already slammed forwards.

Out of stalkerish curiosity I wondered what you rode to compare it to and the only reference that popped up was you asking how to shorten frame reach? https://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/tips-to-reduce-frame-reach/

Does make the stem length look even odder though. Like the person designing the frame wanted something along the lines of the Scalpel, then the marketing department chose the stem. It’s an easy fix but an odd choice?

I suspect they’ll be selling a lot of them via C2W just by virtue of it being the lightest mountain bike they sell.

They designed it as a trail bike, the Bizango was always a trail bike.

Lolz. So prior to this iteration, with a steeper HA and a slacker SA, it was a trail bike? With a 120mm fork? What it has always been is a bike for people who just want a mountain bike. It’s never been trendy, it’s never been racy, it’s never been gnarr. It’s been a decent all rounder at a good price, even though that price is at the top end of what ‘normal people’ think a bicycle should cost. It’s pretty much always been the lightest mountain bike in Halfords too, which again doesn’t really scream ‘trail bike’ at me.

Yeah, but

It’s never been trendy, it’s never been racy, it’s never been gnarr.

That’s what I’m saying. You were describing a trail bike, then saying it’s not one.

Sheesh.

It is an utterly pointless discussion, but in the spirit of the cartoon I posted earlier…

From this very organ:

A trail bike is almost defined by what it is not, as opposed to what it is. It’s not a weight-focused cross-country bike. It’s not a stopwatch-checking enduro bike. It could be argued that a trail bike is no longer ‘allowed’ to be a hardtail. A trail bike has got to consciously have no wilful restrictions about what sort of riding it gets up to. A trail bike has got to have suspension at the back and a healthy amount of travel up front. We’d say we’re now at the point in the evolution of mountain biking that the minimum amount of fork travel that can be truly classed as un-compromised is 140mm (maybe a very good 130mm fork).

Seems ok geometry for an all round hardtail. That seat angle is actually comfy for longer pedals where something steep for winch and plummet is less comfy.

66.5 degree head angle is fine for all round riding. Yes it’s not the slackest for steep tech or bike parks – but that’s not what this bike is mainly for.

The only thing I would have thought would be better is a slightly longer reach per size. I’m normally a medium and 432mm is quite short – but then my Vitus Sentier was similar from 2018. Could size up to large for better reach – but not sure then if the seat tube will be massively long.

Chainstays are short for a 29er (or indeed 27.5) but I guess that’ll keep it snappy and fun.

Either way that Pro carbon bizango sounds ideal as a do it all hardtail. Reckon you could race xc on it, bimble on bridleways on it, ride flow trail centres etc. steep tech would be harder but still do-able.