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Enduro in 26”, 27,5” or 29” ? Allriders Pro tries out (Videos)

Dec 31, 2013 at 5:31
by Allriders Agency  
Pau RexS and Xavi Cabau bring some new ingredients to the wheel debate focusing in their concept of enduro according to their intense experience the last months with the 3 wheel size BH Lynx gamma. If you want to go faster and bigger take a chance to what they bring…

10m longer wallride with no exit between like a doble . This is going to be one of the best spots shceduled for the whole series. Support and follow us in https www.facebook.com pages Allriders-Pro-Riding-On-the-Edge 136399746423245
Catalan riders, Pau Reixachs (Rex-S) and Xavi Cabau have a long experienced trajectory together in Europe winning some enduro and mass start DH competitions and performing on the same bikes, victories and podiums in local XC and DHs as part of their season preparation. As fast, and fit riders, they also love to shred some freeride lines inside their non stop rides...

Pau Reixachs: -" We always have been looking for the pinnacle bikes to shred all with it. Now with the new wheel size wide range, the choices and possibilities are opened up again".
In one hand Allriders Pro are looking for the fastest bikes for their enduro competitions, and for the other hand they are looking for playfull bikes in order to perform too in their allmountain&freeride lines as shown in their Riding on the Edge web series teaser.

Xavi Cabau: - " If we can achieve all what we are looking for in one bike / wheel size, this means maximum adaptation for us. Once you´ve ridden many bikes and styles, riding as much as you can having fun with the same bike and specs, we think is the key if you really want to shave those extra seconds for being competitive and go big too… "
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Pau and Cabau had the chance to try deeply 3 different models of BH Lynx during the last months trying a wide range of Kenda tyres with. Here are the results and some answers may be useful to you according to your ridding priorities:
Some of the Allriders Pro riding statements:
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26” WHEEL >> King of Freeride
Ridden Bike: BH Lynx 6 (150mm travel) > 66º H.A (160mm travel) > 330 B.B > 340 Chainstays
Tyre Final Choice: Front: Kenda BBG 2,35 60A compound Rear: Kenda Karma 2,2 Dual Compound

26” Easy Rolling and Tyres: G O O D
26” forces you to ride a more squared balloon tyre at front for optimize lateral grip ( It may sounds obvious, but it isn´t as we discovered further…). Squared balloon adds more rolling resistance due to more ground contact and more weight due to more rubber quantity.

26” due to less tyre surface contact (6 cm) forces you to higher bigger knobs for better grip and braking power. We normally opted for a better roller friendly in the middle and tall knobs at the edge, like BBG and relaying the braking power more at the back with anticipation with a tighter and rounded tyre, like Karma 2.2, which help us to skip tailing the bike in the right place specially in tight turns
26” forces you to ride softer compounds if you want to find the right grip, so this means more rolling resistance.
26” has the best puncture resistance if you build dh casings to tubeless. Way too heavy combination for the other wheel sizes and also as we experienced too heavy for daily rides.

26” Grip & Ridding style: G O O D
In enduro competition you have to be more conservative in your style. In order to obtain a better rolling resistance at the back for gain those special seconds on the pedalling sections, in enduro normally top riders opt for a more rounded tyre with lower knobs. This forces you to brake most of times with anticipation before flat turns, formula 1 style, `cause trying to drift it may result too risky for a competition, loosing often too much your rear wheel and speed...

26” Irregularities & Inertias: G O O D
In rock gardens you will relay more on your suspensions and body absorption, in order to pump properly the irregularities and get the speed.
It might have the best acceleration when you have to sprint out from a low speed corner, but we also realized 26” don´t accelerate you as much over rough stuff compared to bigger diameters.

26” Jumping & Wallriding: E X C E L E N T
Allows you to go higher on the air in any bump/lip
In wallriding easier to get into the transitions.

>> 26” C O N C L U S I O N :
As BMX allows you to trick everything at small scale, 26” comes to be the same at MTB scale. If we wouldn´t compete in enduro and only going out for extend our freeride experience in natural lips and wallrides, we defenetly would stack to this size, but then we may do less myles and downhill time by our own and find ourselves changing tyres for dh casing and compounds to a better rolling resistance and light ones.

27,5” WHEEL >> Enduro/DH racing…
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Ridden Bike: BH Lynx 6 27,5 (150mm travel) > 67º H.A (150mm fork) > 335 B.B. > 430 Chainstays
Tyre Final Choice: Front: Kenda Nevegal 2.35 Dual compound Rear: Kenda Nevegal 2,10 Dual Compound

27,5” Easy Rolling and Tyres:: V E R Y G O O D
What we first realized is you can ride simple casing tyres feeling almost like DH ply casing for 26”. So you will save this extra weight in this crucial place and easy arriving to the top.
Tyre balloon choice works similar to 26” for us. Square at front and rounded at rea.

27,5” Grip & ridding style: V E R Y G O O D
Here is where we find the biggest advantage compared to 26. You are allowed to do more controlled drifting in flat / loose turns so giving you more fun in this aspect, and not having to be that conservative / calculated F1 style in competitions.

27,5” Irregularities & Inertias: V E R Y G O O D
Steps up a little bit the 26” size, but at the same time we were more exposed to punctures ´cause DH casings didn´t make sence.
We felt huge acceleration in rock gardens compared to previous 26” and carrying more speed in transitions.

27,5” Jumping & Wallriding: V E R Y G O O D
We noticed in one hand in the lips and doubles we build in the past for our 26” we weren´t getting that much air height, and for the other hand due to speed increase and lower air we missed some landings…
In wallriding a little bit more difficult to go over the transition. So start to forget about some small and steep tricky ones…

27,5” C O N C L U S I O N:
27,5 is more similar to 26” than 29”… Main difference would be the drifting style and improved grip with thinner tires, but you start to realize your buildings, specially the small scale ones may be re-thinked or modified.

29” WHEEL >> New dimension…

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Ridden Bike: BH Lynx 4.8 (120mm travel) > 68º H.A (120mm travel) > 322 B.B > 430 Chainstays.
*Note: We choosed this 120mm model for the comparative due to we really think it´s the equivalent to 160/150mm 26”&27” models. Top crown fork height was the highest, and rear bump absorption was undeniable…
Tyre Final Choice: Front: Kenda Honey Badger 2.2 SCT Dual Compound and Kenda Small Block Eight 2.2 SCT Dual Compound.

29” Easy Rolling and Tyres: E X C E L E N T
What we first realized with this light Lynx 29er from BH, is like to be riding a road bike when pedalling on wide tracks. The bike/wheels really excels in rolling resistance, even wearing allmountain tyres, you can arrive faster to the top and ride further, so that means at the end more freedom and fun time in dh/trail time. Until here nothing new maybe you´ve heard about 29ers… but:
We got surprised with the fact in 29” diameter you may don´t have the need for square balloon tyre at front. We further could say the bike is more maneuverable not having to angle that much the bike for turning, but this took quite long to us to realize until we changed the tyres for take part in a XC race… With square tyres we had to relay too much on the edge of the rubber, having to over rotate the bike too and loosing grip and bike agility. The key on 29ers we think is to use rounded or semi rounded balloon tyre at the front. We feel the game completely changes here, and some tyres we didn´t liked on 27,5”, cause they were too rounded, we loved on 29”. At the back where is really imporant the rolling resistance issue some XC/Allmountain tyre models like BBG perform to us for one hand like a square balloon 26” dh casing in drifting grip and in the other hand rolling like a XC champion.

29” Grip & ridding style: E X C E L E N T
With the right set of tyres accordingly what we explain above, we felt more surface of the tyre touching the ground when you turn, and at the same time you don´t blend as much the rubber as a square tyre, so the rubber can be harder. This issue definitely changes your riding style… Controlled drifting gets usual, prior to facing down the bike relaying too much in to the edge knobs and avoiding this critical situation in many turns. This works on hardpack surfaces, when the ground is softer or loose layer on top the bite of the tyre ´cause is not square balloon, it will be less, it won´t go as deep into the groun, so prepare in those turns for controlled drifting…
Improved grip on Uphills and less need of suspension travel, allowed us to have more fun when pedalling on technical uphills we didn’t attempt before, and at the same time gave us more options and “fun time” linking our best trails, uphills and downhill sections.
Living in a rocky dry area with trails and turns full of lose stones we didn’t feel the need to spend that much time cleaning these loose rocks and saving us lot of time and effords.

29” Irregularities & Inertias: E X C E L E N T
We felt flying over rock gardens, every obstacle, stone looks much smaller. Make sure your rims and wheels are stiff enough and ready to hit them hard, so as you might know is one of the most exposed places of 29ers. It looks like riding a more surface contact tyre distributes better the pressures so at the end it´s seems more difficult to puncture or cut the casings.
On this BH Lynx 4.8 we felt the biggest acceleration over the 3 sizes. We felt in our lovely super rought semi flat trails pumping the bike like a DJ bike on the best pumptrack...

29” Jumping & Wallriding: G O O D
Here is where we still not adapted completely. Wheel inertia make us go close the ground with the features in our trails and still not sending it in some small tricky ones… but we found them funny absorbing them by manualing… it seems us even easier to do.
In wallriding we still not adapted, and found more difficult to go over transitions, and the scary sensation of feeling more far away and unsticked from the wall.

29” C O N C L U S I O N:
29ers definitely opens you a new range of ridding concept. In our case make us rediscovering mountianbiking, having fun every day and may no need of training on road bike… Mixing any kind of route with huge range of possibilities, like the ones we like the most: short up and down technical trails with where you are having fun all the time, or just climb the easiest way 1 or 2 big mountains for full DH marathon runs…

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Allriders Pro we´ll try and demonstrate their statements in their Enduro World Series participation and in theri Riding on the Edge Web Series which was posposed, but hopping will see public light soon. Support them by following in their Facebook page and Twitter.

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