Last Coal V4 review

Last Coal V4 vital stats: full 29, 180mm fork, 165mm rear, 63° head angle, 77.1° effective seat angle, 438mm chain stays. How does it ride?

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By ben_haworth

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Last Coal V4 review

As is common with Last bikes, this 165mm travel Coal V4 shares some frame with another model. Namely the 150mm travel Last Glen, which uses the same front and rear triangles as the Last Coal. It’s the links in between the triangles that do the changing.

Seems the geo of both bikes might be compromised by this. e.g. slack seat angles, reach numbers that seem to be in between other bikes.

A quick word on the seat angle. Yes, we thought the actual seat angle looked worryingly slack. It turned out to be perfectly acceptable on the trail. Sure, we ran the saddle pretty far forward on its rails, but what’s wrong with doing that? The Coal V4 surprisingly proved itself to be a nicely efficient place to be when climbing all but the steepest of ups (which required a bit off hunkering down chest-to-stem to prevent wheel lift).

Would be nice to have better than that, given the price. Perhaps it’s difficult or constrained by the suspension design.

Lovely bikes, but some bits of the geo and sizing would make me want to try before buying.

I think showing stack measurement is very useful as the headtube itself doesn’t tell the full story. I think stack is something we will see increasing a bit in the next few years as it’s not high enough on large sizes and head/seat angle and reach seem to have found the sweet spot already.

I have the Last Glen/Coal V2 Bought it blind, I’d buy again. A few posts on here about it https://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/last-bikes-2/   Buying from them wasn’t the easiest covid time and the German way seems to differ from a UK way of buying.

 

Nice to see decent length headtube on larger sizes, separated top and downtube welded at the headtube makes a change from the usual conjoined twins hydroformed bulge, I expected to see some form of gusseting in the area though considering a big fork up front.