Atherton S170: First Ride Thoughts

The Atherton S170 is no alloy look-a-like; Atherton has applied excellent engineering and delivered a mighty fine aluminium mountain bike.

Brand: Atherton
Product: S170
From: Atherton Bikes
Price: Prices start from £4,799
Tested by: Rhys Wainwright for 1 day

Pros

Design is beautiful – unless you don’t like round tubes
Manufacturing quality is exceptional
Beauty and quality are reasonably priced!

Cons

The holes could be covered up better
Head tube cable routing
Offer some customisation of the chainstay length

What is it?

The S170 is a striking silver machine. The straight and round front triangle tubes stand out, brazenly proud of their manufacturing method. Take a step closer and the quality of the machining on the adjoining lugs becomes apparent. Nowhere can you find a machining dwell mark, the final run over these surfaces has been calculated to perfection and emphasis clearly placed on surface quality over production rate and cost. Which is ironic when you consider this is Atherton Bikes’ lower budget offering.

The S170 takes advantage of a DW4 derived suspension design (vs the more complex DW6 of their A-series carbon tubed/titanium lugged bikes). A key advantage of the DW4 design is essentially fewer pivots and consequently fewer frame components with a similar level of anti-squat. The result is a clean design with some rather beautiful, engineered features.

The rear triangle is machined in two halves with the seat stays adopting an L-section and the chain stays machined in an inverted U-section. From the side and back of the bike they look like square tubes; it’s only when you get close you can see the exquisite machining. It’s all logically designed for the inevitable Welsh mud to fall out of, not into these frame pockets.

The entire frame is manufactured from the superior 7075 aluminium alloy and is therefore 60-70% stronger in fatigue, tensile strength and hardness than the more common 6061. Atherton Bikes have clearly let the engineers make the decisions here as the 7075 material comes in roughly 30% more expensive.

How does it ride?

I spent a day riding the S170 at Dyfi Bike Park. Tricky as it might be to set up a bike and give it a fair test in just one day, luck was on my side and the weather was surprisingly deliciously dry.

Sizing almost isn’t worth discussing with Atherton bikes as they offer such a huge range of sizes in 10mm increments I’d be dumb struck if someone couldn’t find their ideal uplift partner in there somewhere.

I guess it’s lucky the 465mm reach test bike available is pretty much bang on my ideal size. The 63.6° head angle is pretty slack and suits the bike with its big travel bike park/enduro bike feel. Although I did relatively little climbing, the 77.6° seat angle is on trend – I say trend because I actually prefer a slacker seat angle for my dinky legs. This is somewhat reflected in the sizing with the smaller bikes coming in with a ~76° seat angle and the larger sizes coming with a ~78° seat angle.

The rear centre lengths are relatively tight at 435mm on the bike I rode. Again, smaller frames come with 430mm and larger frames come with 440mm chianstays. Personally, I like things a bit longer out back for stability and front end grip but I can also see the reasoning of the shorter back end for the inevitable park rats this bike may be aimed at.

Overall the sizing was spot on and this translates into a neutral handling bike with just the right balance of stability vs agility in the bike park environment.

Suspension wise the DW4 design is superbly matched with the S170’s intended use. The initially linear rate progressively ramping up to offer support in the mid to latter part of the stroke through fast berms and compressions. A few flat landings here and there were absorbed without question or bottom out.

I strongly suspect this bike could take downhill levels of abuse and come out unfazed.

One last point on the ride quality; It’s been a while since I rode an aluminium ‘big bike’ and there was a level of compliance and composure that is often missing from the stiff carbon machines I’ve found myself owning the past few years and one that I enjoyed a lot.

Devil in the Details

Although I’ve mostly been frothing about the design and manufacture of the S170 there are some chinks in the armour. The nature of the tube and lug design means that there are some open sections of the lugs that require covers. The pre-production versions fitted to this bike were less than ideal but credit to Atherton’s in house manufacturing I trust they will be engineered to perfection for the production run.

The cable routing at the head tube allowed for two cables/hoses to enter on the left hand side and only one on the right hand side. This results in some awkward twisting of the brake hose or dropper cable to route it down the left side of the head tube. Two ports either side in future please guys – this accommodates all configurations. Perhaps this will also be resolved for the production run.

Overall

Atherton’s ‘budget aluminium bike’ is somewhat of an oxymoron. An irony to itself being sold as the budget sibling to the A-series bikes. It’s a bit like comparing your aluminium private jet to that of a carbon fibre and titanium fifth generation fighter aircraft. You might not be getting the ultimate in stiffness and performance but it’s still exceptionally high quality and rapid to boot.

You’re probably starting to get the picture. The S170 is no budget aluminium look-a-like offering like some other brands. They’ve applied the same excellent engineering skill to a different material and delivered what might just be one of the finest aluminium mountain bike there has ever been.