Cotic RocketMAX Gen 4 long term review

The Cotic RocketMAX Gen 4 is the brand’s flagship big travel bruiser. Made-in-UK steel front triangle with 160mm of Droplink rear travel.

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By ben_haworth

Get the full story here:

https://singletrackworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/cotic-rocketmax-gen-4-eview/

Very nice bikes. I didn’t like the bolt on the seat stay but when I went for a demo was pleased to find Cotic now have an alternative design for this

The sheer bigness of the bike is both a testament to – and a poke in the eye – accepted bike handling ‘theory’…. But this length does not make it a ‘handful’ in tight corners. It just doesn’t. Bigger bikes do corners – including tight hairpins – better. Once you stop riding them like small bikes.

With long bikes you can also bring the BB height up. You no longer need to be pulled down into the bike to make up for its geometry inadequacies. Long and high bikes ride so much better than short and low bikes in my experience. It may sound totally illogical and contrary to what you’ve always thought about MTB numbers but the proof is in the riding.

It would be (alright, it might be) interesting to read more about this somewhere. On the face of it you’re just saying it like it’s true, and I daresay it is (I don’t ride enough bikes to really have any insight but it would inform my next bike buy I’m sure), but perhaps there is an article in explaining it? How should one be riding it if you’re going down some horrid tight alpine switchback full of loose stones and with an awkward root. Or a twisty blown-out section of Bikepark Peaslake. And so on. Anyway, it looks cool, I like it in a similar way to how I like the look of Geometrons.

This review contradicts everything that the forum geometry wizards believe about bikes and handling. With a handlebar that high you should be understeering into every hedge.

What a godawful looking thing though! Not convinced by steel on a full sus bike either. Just adding weight for no real reason.

What is the height of the author? A C4 for me at 186cm looks pretty bang on…

@w043 185cm 👍

I have one, the exact same colour but with the Cane Creek coil and I can confirm the above is true to my experience.  I took it to the Alpes this year and it was incredible. It’s so competent in almost every scenario that suddenly the biking becomes all about you and your talents (I know thats all its ever really been about).  I’ve been waxing lyrical to everyone about it so I’ll do the same to you all.  Everything I have ridden since (my own and friends bikes) feels to be compromised in someway compared to it. On top of that, the Cotic customer service is peerless in the industry, so helpful and informative.

 

I love it, it makes riding more fun and makes me ride better which is about as much as you can possibly ask for.

This review contradicts everything that the forum geometry wizards believe about bikes and handling. With a handlebar that high you should be understeering into every hedge.

There seems to be a perception that geometry needs to force people to be leaning on the handlebars in order to provide adequate front end grip. This is only the case when the front centre is overly long compared to the rear centre. In all situations the vast majority of weight goes through the pedals.

The longer the FC v RC, the less of this will go through the front tyre. Well balanced geometry doesn’t require you to ‘weight’ the front to the same extent.

I’m not even sure a lower stack makes it easier to weight the front. It’s easier to apply force to something the closer it is to your body which a higher stack does.

Love the looks, love the simplicity and heard excellent things about Cotic’s customer service.

I very much want one of these as my next FS.

@benji, whats the nifty little doodad holding the CO2 canister on?

@explorerboy Bow Tie Strap Anchor from Problem Solvers with an old mini-pump O-ring thing.

Cheers love! Another question – have you tried this bike in Cotic’s “trail” config at all?

How should one be riding it if you’re going down some horrid tight alpine switchback full of loose stones and with an awkward root

Gen 2 Rocketmax owner here. I’ll admit I was nervous last year before taking it to the Alps that it would be hard work in the tight stuff (even though I knew it would be brilliant on the open/fast/rough/steep). It was ace. Utterly unflappable.

Partly its stability – there’s a calmness to it. You’re not having to concentrate so hard on staying on the bike, so you have more time to think about making it go where you want.

Partly you can really lean on the front without it biting you. Whether that’s teetering round a switchback at 0.25mph or pulling big fat stoppies, there’s just a bigger window between putting weight on the bars and “ooh I’m going out the front door”

Its not so much riding in a different/specific way as just trusting the bike more.

The downside is that anything that’s not daftly hard starts to feel a bit mundane and dull.

I’m not even sure a lower stack makes it easier to weight the front. It’s easier to apply force to something the closer it is to your body which a higher stack does.

I agree but have you seen the arguments about high bars vs low bars? People act like moving your hands 20mm further up is like building a fence on the front of the bike which you have to climb over to fight the front wheel because your weight is falling off the rear end.

Ben, sizing felt good for you?

I’m 6’0, relatively short legs and feel great on the C3 – but I’ve set it up an unusual way.

160mm fork, air shock with 2 tokens, mullet with no angleset. I could get away with 1 token and more damping,  but like the extra pop. By comparison, no tokens just wasn’t working.

Before mulleting, it felt fine, but pretty ponderous in corners and so (for me) not as confidence inspiring. Now it rips around corners AND feels more stable (best-of-both from mullet tip in and slacker head angle I guess). I have 175mm cranks and have not ripped them off with pedal strikes, and got my best (or least worst…) enduro placing on it like this.

@w043 Yep. Defo wouldn’t go smaller (if that’s what you’re weighing up).

Thanks for the lovely review Benji! And thanks for the nice comments and feedback.

Bar height – I’ve gone up a lot with my own bars in the last couple of years. Here’s my theory: On shorter bikes, you wanted lower bars to weight the front wheel, because the short reach meant when you stood up your backside ended up pushed rearwards because you didn’t have enough space on the bike for it not to. And that’s where your centre of mass is, just above your arse! So you used the lower bars to try and drag the weight forward.

On longer bikes you have room to stand up and stay more in the middle of the bike, and for me anyway, I found higher bars helped me stand taller in the middle of the bike rather than hunched over, which tended to make me hinge at my hips more and push my weight back. Despite having been riding long bikes for over 6 years, I have 20 years worth of bad habits still ingrained so I need all the help I can get, so taller bars help keep me more in the middle of the bike, with weight more evenly balanced between the wheels.

The major bonus of this is that higher bars allow me to get more lean angle on the bike when cornering, which is making my cornering better. When the bars are low, when you add lean angle to the bike to corner, the inner bar swings towards the floor and at some point you run out of extension on your inside arm. With higher bars, I can get more angle on the bike before I run out of reach, and can more comfortably weight the bars when cornering, so I actually generate more grip with higher bars, not less.

Yours Sincerely,

Someone Who Thinks Too Much About Bike Handling, B. Eng (hons)

@scottalej Hey, if you don’t like the looks, not a lot I can do about that, but literally the entire review explains the reason for using steel. The calmness, the grip, the feel. These are the performance reasons we use it. And sure, it’s not going to win any weight contests against carbon frames (although it’s closer than you’d think), it’s competitive with most aluminium enduro frames out there. My fancy build weight 14.5kg with no carbon parts.

The high bottom bracket thing – I remember riding a bike with a very high BB, and it felt like you were being tipped over into switchback corners. The lower BB felt like you had less weight higher up, so had a slower tipping into corners. I can’t see why a longer bike negates that – and I’d love for it to do it!

Can someone explain what’s going on that would make a higher BB better in corners? (I was going to write ‘more stable’, but maybe that’s the problem – I’m thinking about it all wrong, and it’s not about stablity at all?).

Got a gen 3 myself and absolutely love it. Constant wrist pain means I can’t quite ride as much as I’d want but it’s way way more capable than I’ll ever be.

First ride I had, 2 years ago, was my first trip to revolution bike park. By the end of the day I could barely use the brakes so it’s a good job it’s such a capable bike, it just took me through stuff at speed I couldn’t do on purpose!

People act like moving your hands 20mm further up is like building a fence on the front of the bike which you have to climb over to fight the front wheel because your weight is falling off the rear end.

i wonder if the higher than usual bb has an influence on this. or, to put it another way, i wonder how much of an influence the higher bb has on the handling overall. the r/c is pretty long, too

edit: and it is such a looker. that said, i never got on with the looks of aluminum, let alone carbon. and steel suspension bikes do give you something extra.

@explorerboy You know you want to!

<p style=”text-align: left;”>I think the BB thing is related to a lot of other received wisdom that goes out the window with longer bikes. When the bike is long it is intrinsically stable, so things you used to need like a low bb to pin a shorter, less stable bike with shorter front centre into a corner aren’t needed. And in fact, you get get a bit of ground clearance back and inject a bit of easier movement back into the long bike with a higher bb. It’s a little bit like rebound damping: We all used to run bikes with slow rebound because we needed to keep a short bike with little wheels from pitching around too much. You were stabilising the bike with the damping. Now the layout of the bike is intrinsically stable, you can run fat rebound for sensivity and grip without upsetting the bike. Double win.</p>
That said, our bb heights aren’t specifically the result of cornering ability. Mainly it’s because of where Cotic is based, we don’t have smooth fireroads to winch up, we have knobbly rocky climbs. If you are constantly clonking your cranks or pedals on our local loop, you are having a bad time! If a bike can’t pedal easily up the climb from the bench at Blacka Moor, the bb is too low!

 

Leo Kokkonen of Pole bikes has written a bit about high BBs and goes into it in a bit more detail on a podcast with him, think it was Pinkbike.

@cy thanks.

@cy, would you like to share you bike build to reach 14.5kg ? I’ve just finished mine which is 16kg and want to know where I can optimize. I’m looking for the next season to enjoy it  !

@pierreelie That looks great! I’m afraid the main differences are pretty spendy, as I have a full bike industry idiot drivetrain. Titanium eeWings cranks, XTR mech and shifter, Garbaruk cassette and hollow pin SRAM chain. There is over half a kilo there compared to SLX. That 14.5kg is quoted without pedals as that’s what most other brands people compare weights with are weighed like. I run MY22 Lyrik at 170mm which are about 300grams lighter than Zebs. Ti rail saddle, Galfer rotors, a few ti bolts here and there. Wheels are HUNT TrailWide which are a good weight for their toughness.

I also run mid-casing tyres too, not dual ply. The SG2 WTB Verdict front is about 300 grams lighter than the Tough casing version, and in the winter I usually run a Maxxis DHR2 rear in EXO Plus rather than DD.

What a godawful looking thing though! Not convinced by steel on a full sus bike either. Just adding weight for no real reason.

FWIW when I replaced a 29 Camber evo camber with a gen 2 Flaremax using the same components the bike weighed just a kilo more, and about 200mm longer.

+5 years later and it’s covered 5500 miles & a million and only needed the frame bearings changed once, as opposed to the Camber which went through a set every 6 months or so…

Go ride one.