Bike Check: Benji’s Cotic RocketMAX Mullet

4th generation RocketMAX from Cotic is here to serve as our testbed for the harder hitting equipment we need to thrash.

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By ben_haworth

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Bike Check: Benji’s Cotic RocketMAX Mullet

With a stem so short, do your hands not end up behind the steerer? And wouldn’t that make for some funky handling characteristics?

Having said that, I’m going to see about fitting in a 180mm OneUp dropper shortly. Just because 10mm more will clearly change my life.

This made me smile, thank you Benji.

I’d be really interested to hear of your impressions of the bike run slack and then with the angleset for comparison. I like you love a really slack head / steep seat tube (currently running 62/77).

@tmays No undesirable effects detected so far. It helps that the bike reach is long and (especially) that the head angle is slack.

Effective stem length would probably be about 7mm. Rule of thumb (from Pinkbike) I think was no shorter than 20mm, but hey, it works for some.

No bashguard on a bike that is long, low and long travel?

Also, that is surprisingly light for a steel framed bike with the cassete being the only weight saving part.

(I I have been a big fan of the Garbaruk cassettes for their low weight (for a reasonable price), good durability and flexible geinig options. I ran 10-46 on two bikes in our house that came with 11 speed SRAM (10-42) drivetrains and loved it.

Nice build that, mine’s admittedly not Gen4 but there’s more than one way to skin a mullet RocketMAX…

Monster truck on a small frame – 29+ front (DHF 29 x 3.0), 27.5+ rear (WTB Ranger 27.5 x 2.8) on a DT Swiss wheelset with no angleset so quite slack with a low BB. Microshift Advent 1 x 9 wide range drivetrain just because I could. 35mm stem. 160mm Lyrics. Also a Planet X dropper. Magura MT5 brakes since the previous Zees were leaking. The more I ride it the better I like it – WAY overbiked for local stuff but get it into the hills and show it some rocks and it comes alive.

Never weighed it but might have to now just to see… Claimed weights for parts on my build spreadsheet suggested around 14kg / 32lb but it feels heavier.

Oof!

But that was weighed with tube and tools strapped to it, and fitted with bigger wheels and tyres than I originally planned for so probably was close to that 14kg when I first built it.

How did I miss this?! Really like the look of the Rockets, how tall are you? I’m right between c2/c3 at 178. Might have to get a demo booked over Cotic hq…