Commencal announced that it has developed a new suspension platform for its 2015 Meta range of mid-travel trailbikes and AM/enduro racers, both based upon 27.5-inch wheels. The Contact System is a big step away from the Andorra-based bike maker’s V3 suspension configuration, with its top-tube-mounted shock, driven by a simple two-stage rocker linkage. The Contact System was developed to simplify the frame’s construction and, most importantly, to reduce its weight.
Commencal’s previous Meta V3 suspension system, with its floating shock, low center of mass, and square-edge-bump smoothing action, was well received by hard core riders. The sole complaints about the design centered on the weight of Commencal’s Meta all-mountain and trailbikes not being competitive with the new crop of mid-travel carbon machines, spawned by the popularity of enduro. Max Commencal is a self-professed believer in aluminum construction as both a people- and an earth-friendly material, so while replicating the V3 chassis in carbon may have been an easier path to weight reduction, it was not an option. Instead, Commencal opted to develop an entirely new suspension chassis.V4 Contact SystemThe V4 frame is constructed from heavily butted and manipulated aluminum tubing, with the key structural member being its three-piece top tube. The center of the top tube is a lightweight forging that is widened and hollow to allow the shock to nest into it. The novel shock mount adapts to the most wanted reservoir dampers and its configuration helps to keep the suspension forces lined up with the centerline of the top tube in order to minimize unnecessary stress to the frame. The single-pivot swingarm hinges quite high above the bottom bracket, reportedly to firm up the bike’s pedaling feel and also to provide a more optimal axle path. The location of the rear dropout pivot is set as close to the axle centerline as possible, presumably to enhance the sensitivity of the suspension while braking.
| Max Commencal is a self-professed believer in aluminum construction as both a people- and an earth-friendly material, so while replicating the V3 chassis in carbon may have been an easier path to weight reduction, it was not an option.
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Details: V4 frames are built in two versions: the lighter, 120-millimeter-travel Meta Trail, and the 150-millimeter-travel Meta AM. Both have internal cable routing for shifting and also for a dropper seatpost. Both use a post-type rear brake mount that is tucked inside the stays to protect it from harm and an optional front derailleur hanger for holdouts who don’t like the V4 Meta’s standard-issue one-by drivetrains. The longer travel V4 Meta AM features ISCG-05 bosses, which most enduro racers use in one form or another, and its frame geometry is slacker than the trail model. Four sizes will be available: small, medium, large and X-large, and weighs for a medium fram without shoock are stated at 3kg for the V4 AM and 2.9kg for the V4 Trail model.
Contact System: Their ‘new’ suspension design is a simple seatstay-driven rocker link. The shock is mounted to a clevis that Commencal says, allows the damper to pivot smoothly on ball bearings, and also contributes to the suspension’s leverage curve – one that reportedly provides small bump sensitivity at the beginning of the travel, while managing to provide more support and a firmer pedaling feel at the sag position. If this is true, then the new V-4 platform’s performance under power should easily best that of its V3 predecessor. We have good reason that it will, as the few competitors that use a similar suspension configuration are all top performers in the mid-travel trailbike arena.
META V4 AM
META V4 AM: Geometry | Small | Medium | Large | X-large | Seat tube length | 400mm" | 440mm | 490mm | 520mm | Seat angle | 72° | 72° | 72° | 72° | Head tube length | 110mm" | 115mm | 120mm | 125mm | Head angle | 66° | 66° | 66° | 66° | Wheelbase | 1144mm | 1167mm | 1193mm | 1225mm | Top tube length | 570mm | 591mm | 618mm | 650mm | Chain stay length | 437mm | 437mm | 437mm | 437mm | Bottom bracket height | -12mm | -12mm | -12mm | -12mm | Stand-over height | 705mm | 715mm | 743mm | 750mm | Reach | 403mm | 423mm | 448mm | 466mm | Stack | 596mm | 601mm | 605mm | 610mm |
| META V4 AM - R: Specs: • Frame: Aluminum, 150mm travel, META V4 AM • Wheel size: 27.5" • Bottom Bracket: BB92 Pressfit, ISCG 05 tabs • Front derailleur option: High, direct mount adapter • Fork: RockShox Pike RCT3 Solo Air, 160mm • Shock: RockShox Monarch RT3, 150mm • Drivetrain: SRAM X1 1x11 speed • Wheelset: Alpha 27.5: tubeless ready • Seatpost: KS Lev Integra 125mm dropper post • Weight (frame only - no shock) 3.0 kg • MSRP: 3299 € (USD TBD)
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Win a world cup then you can say you do heavy cases and things. You have no idea. Did you see stevie smith crash? Yeah. Massive case.
1. The suspension design is pretty much identical to a Specialized Stumpjumper except for the not Horst-Link linkage point, which here is above the rear axle.
2. The music of the video is stolen by Kilian Brons (Team MIA Santa Cruz) Video.
3. "Aluminum as both a people- and an earth-friendly material" - this is the most ridiculous marketing scam I've ever seen. Wake up people.
Aluminum comes from Bauxit, a commodity of which 90% happens to be found in regions of 50 Million year old tropical rainforests.
Obviously those rainforests get fire cleared, which means that original inhabitants and thousands of even undiscovered animal species are banished and killed.
Then, by further processing Bauxit, toxic waste (red mud) is produced, which contaminates water and again, kills and sickens everything that lives within a radius of hundreds of square miles. The process also needs massive amounts of water and energy, which means even more of the environment has to leave for good to make room for retaining dams. Natives that work in the refineries die with age of 35 and don't earn enough money to feed their families.
That's how f*cking earth-friendly aluminum is.
Now for the people-friendly part... aluminum in deodorant is known to cause (breast) cancer.
It's also contained in many pharmaceuticals as a transport matrix for medical ingredients despite it's provent to cause Alzheimer's desease if taken regularly. You can even find it in food. F#cking awesome this aluminum, right?
Of course we need aluminum for some purposes, but the "greener" argument is just bullsh*t.
And keep the stuff away from your bodies... or don't. Whatever. Your choice.
Oh and by the way, carbon can be recycled. Big companies like Siemens are already doing it.
In your face!
Most chinese worker do not have access to correct protection when working on prepeg and frame sanding, and that's 90% of carbon cycle production.
Add that most worker are very young and do not have children yet, so you can imagine long term consequences.
Btw, Meta suspension design has nothing to do with specialized, go learn suspension basic 101.
I heard that older Commencal frames had issues. Before buing my Commencal bike a made a research on their known issues etc. and people were complaining, but it is worth to emphasize that it was in the past and I wouldn't say that there were tons of the issues, I simply didn't find that many cases in the Internet and I was doing the research for a long time, because I'm that kind of guy, I like to be 100% sure Right now I have Commencal Supreme FR 1 2013 which is built on V3 frame, so it's the third version of the frame. What I want to say by that is that Commencal is attacking the problems and they make changes to make their frames better. I have trusted them and I'm very happy so far and I would recommend buying Commencal (especially based on V3 frames) because I think they made progress and there are no known issues concerning their V3 frame.
@ 2 the music was originally brought up in the bike genre by one of silvia’s edits years ago
@ 3 aluminum vs carbon: nobody said aluminum would be harmless, but compared to carbon its a more people- and an earth-friendly material.
Firstly, I agree with you about the lack of worker protection. But this is not any different to the toxic dust workers inhale in Bauxit refineries, so aluminum is not any better concerning this very matter.
In fact it would be much easier for an uprising industrial nation that China is, to realize appropriate regulation and health standards in production for its own people.
They just autonomously decided to NOT do it, because it would increase production costs significantly and Chinas first priority is still economic growth.
Lives are still 'cheap' there because population is extremely high and most of the people are poor and are willing to risk their own health to help their families (parents) financially.
The rainforest countries on the other hand are not exploiting their own people, but they are exploited by the big aluminum producing companies. Much difference there if you ask me.
As for the suspension design I particularly specified the difference between the Horst Link design and the "V4 contact design", which is namely the pivot points, but other than that it has Specialized written pretty much all over it, since it is using Specialized´s proprietary shock mount and exactly the same linkage. So I guess no further education is needed on my part, but thank you.
"Now for the people-friendly part... aluminum in deodorant is known to cause (breast) cancer.
It's also contained in many pharmaceuticals as a transport matrix for medical ingredients despite it's provent to cause Alzheimer's desease if taken regularly. "
ahahahahahahahaha, someone believes everything they get in email or facebooks posts. There is no credible evidence to suggest that the aluminium in deo sprays cause either breast cancer or alzheimers disease.
There is plenty of scientific evidence, if you are looking for it.
The question that is more likely to come up is, why governments can't find any proof, although it's hitting them in their face.
I'm not going to do the work for you, but there is a lot of scientific studies to that topic.
For the reallife consequences you can also have a look at the biggest poisoning incident in the history of the UK that killed thousands of fish and hundreds of farm animals and people.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camelford_water_pollution_incident
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16045991
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-502442/A-lethal-cover-Britains-worst-water-poisoning-scandal.html
Then there is the environmental disaster of hungary...
www.savingiceland.org/2010/10/hungary%E2%80%99s-worst-ever-environmental-disaster
www.abendblatt.de/vermischtes/article1671697/Bauxitabbau-ist-unwirtschaftlich-aber-Aluminium-gefragt.html
PS: I don't even have a Facebook account.
Are you still laughing? www.allmystery.de/i/t181665_137247092486.jpg
BTW Australia is currently the highest producer of bauxite by a large margin and with the exception of the Northern Territory which has only just started to catch up to the rest of the country, our large scale mining practices are extremely regulated. Mining will always have an impact, but unfortunately its needed because consumers want to consume and buy things which are made from aluminum. Lets not forget that most metals are recyclable too.
There is no connection between aluminium and autism.
Yeah, no resemblance at all, I know. Haha. This is ridiculous. But bring on the hate, I don't give a f#ck.
That is obviously what you get, for wanting to show people something they don't really want to see.
@ZeGermans
You are absolutely right about the fact, that Australia is #1 in Bauxit mining, but the mentioned problems in other parts of the world are uneffected by that.
And looking at those facts, I just don't see that aluminum bikes are more earth friendly. That's it.
I guess in the end you can't just weigh up one against the other, but the ultimate goal was to open people's eyes about the cliché of "clean aluminum" and "dirty carbon". It's just wrong.
www.pinkbike.com/photo/11213123
www.pinkbike.com/photo/11175676
www.pinkbike.com/photo/11178507
www.pinkbike.com/photo/11119775
www.pinkbike.com/photo/10822884
www.pinkbike.com/photo/11245011
while the Kona is quite a bit deferent, they are a very similar in the layout of the linkage system. the tracer the same, but instead of the linkages resting on top on the pivot, they are hanging below.
there is no scientific evidence to link aluminum in deo sprays to cancer or other disease.
www.pinkbike.com/photo/9769832
www.pinkbike.com/photo/9962094
just to finish up, cycling a bike, no matter how hard you go, no matter how many frames youve broken, does not make you an engineer, it does not qualify you to say whether something will break or not. a lot of you out there should learn a thing or 2 before putting people down about there comments. so many of you think that because you bought an expensive bike you know what is strong and what isn't.
the fact of the matter is, that this frame is probably reasonable strong, but only due to the heavy compensatory welding at the kink and the bb.
lets just see if this design makes it onto one of commencals dh frames shall we, i bet it doesnt...
For those who say it looks like a Specialized, the location of that pivot on the seatstay vs chainstay (Horst Link) makes them very different animals.
I'm sure various single-pivot bikes do behave differently from each other, but I caught a number of statements that sound like marketing BS. I don't think I've seen a bike company that doesn't do this tho...It seems to sell bikes, and then after a sale we can re-read this stuff and say to ourselves, "Yeah, man! That's exactly what I experienced!" We humans are so silly sometimes.
Overall looks like a good bike, good component spec, at a decent price.
Just brag about the cool shock/frame design, that's enough. Besides, noobs will never understand the "linkage driven single pivot" marketing mumbo jumbo. Sometimes I "get" the marketeers, sometimes they're just baffling...
It's: easy to manufacture, durable, easy to service, and performs well.
Each bike has their own version of the suspension curve, not to mention other geometry tweaks. That coupled with the various OEM specific valving set ups out there, and you can have 12 single pivot bikes that ride similarly, but different.
It's a good design, and it's not going away any time soon. Sometimes re-inventing the wheel is ok!
Lovely clean looking frame.
Not totally convinced about the extra cross welds on the top tube needed to execute the shock mount design though (surely a weak point?).
Can't help but thinking that this design would lend itself so much better to a carbon mould, but hey, I know very little about frame design and Max Commencal knows a lot!
Nice bike.
New aluminum is not eco. Recycled alu is. Carbon is not recyclable. Carbon itself is no problem, epoxy resin is a huge issue.
What's better than alu and carbon? Quality steel tube bikes.
This one looks really nice. Hope it works better than last iteration which had a bit of a crashy feel to it.
And some companies are recycling carbon, Siemens among them:
www.elgcf.com
www.siemens.com/innovation/en/news/2013/e_inno_1316_1.htm
Agreed that there is nothing wrong with single pivot designs. If it has the suspension performance you like, the rest of the frame is what you want (geo, stiffness and weight to name a few), and the price is right, buy it.
(troll)
they don't seem to mind altering their top tubes for suspension designs, and so far it hasn't been a bad thing.
i'll certainly be waiting until rev 3 before I consider buying one myself, but Im cautious that way
one: the seat angle is the actual seat angle at all points of seat extension, unlike most of the effective bullshit numbers most companies use. for a tall guy, this is good.
two: the price points are awesome, which I guess is the benefit of going to a direct sales model...
if north american prices are similar, I'd test ride this bike and strongly consider it.
and v3 vs v2 cs614720.vk.me/v614720910/1e0a7/KsOucjKQK4Y.jpg
Looks like v2 is more sensitivity than v4 ))))
I was all hung up on this thing thinking it was some new Santa Cruz (V4)……Ha- I had to google Commencal
Seriously Max, stop it. You always have a good justification for every bike you sell. All marketing shit said about the Doctor, Pasta power, First Meta, skin, Suprem and now this Meta, fight against each other. Even about colors of your bike!! Anodized is better! Metal classic paint is better! Flashy glossy paint is better!
Most of the other major brand do the same, yes. But please don't, and stick to your first years spirit of Supernormal bike.
And build a new Pasta.
So if they'd make carbon any time soon I wouldn't be that surprised. Actually they already did. Eco- people-argument is just yet another marketin bullshit to make you swallow the pill that the frame weighs 3kg without shock.
Bamboo!!Are you f@cking mental man?THINK OF THE PANDAS!!!
The only similarity is on the shock link that wrap around seatpost, which look like the one use on Specialized, but clever: you don't need special shock like on Spe.
But since it has a shock, a link and look like a bike with two wheels, it's a Specialized stumpjumper for sure!
It's really sad that a point can be covered completely accurately and someone will still come by to correct you. His point was it uses a similar seat stay to rocker set up, and it does. In that respect, it is similar. Don't be too fast to be snarky, might just come off as rude. Cheers.