Maxim Maya - First Ride

Outside of the UK, it’s unlikely that you’ll have heard of Maxim. They're a new company based in North Wales, and they’re a stones throw away from some great terrain for testing out their designs. Driving through the valleys to get to their HQ would make you think that they’re in the middle of nowhere, and in absolute terms they probably are, but the area is a hotbed for some great talent, and some of the best riding the country has to offer. Maxim chose to ignore the upper end of the retail spectrum and instead, to focus on producing an affordable range of frames and complete bikes. This is achieved partly by keeping the design simple, and partly by dealing direct with the customer, a business model that's growing in favor in many quarters. Their current range consists of a fully fledged downhiller, a 150-millimeter-travel Enduro/All mountain and a dirt jump/ 4x hardtail. We recently spent some time on their new downhill bike, the Maya, which we built up from a frame. The Maya chassis, which retails for £1099 for the frame (without a shock), represents great value. As well as frames, Maxim also supplies the Maya with a multitude of full build options which range from £2,899 for the Comp, up to £3,949 for the Pro. As tested, with the RockShox Vivid RC damper, the combined frame and shock will run £1299.99 in the UK.

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Ride Impressions

Once we'd sorted out the fork and the shock it was time to do some serious riding with the bike. Having only just finished reviewing another DH bike, it made sense to use the same trails, although they were drier and much, much looser for the Maya. Weighing in as-tested, at a shade under 40 pounds, it’s not a super lightweight setup, but there are definitely ways to reduce the weight down, dependent of course, on your budget. The top end Pro model with Fox Suspension and Shimano Saint should be capable of going sub-38 pounds, and with a few judicious component changes, even the cheaper Team and Comp should be able to get close to that.

Setup: As always with bike tests, we spent a little time dialing in the shock and altering the fork settings slightly to take account of the different geometry to the previous bike they’d been fitted to. Once that had been done, we felt we had the bike capable of doing what we wanted it to do. Our favorite blue spring up front was matched with a 400 pound on the back (165-pound rider) and this gave a controlled action to the bike, thanks to the progressive suspension curve (see separate chart for the leverage ratios). After a few runs we increased both the high and low-speed compression to take account of us hitting the trail harder once used to the feel of the bike.



Frame stiffness: Several aspects of the bike were immediately apparent on those first few rides; the stiffness, and secondly the sure footed yet nimble geometry. Let’s look at that first point, because flex is often prevalent in both cheaper bikes and multi-linkage bikes. Putting the two together, then would seem to be a sure fire way of guaranteeing a flexy bike, but there was no discernible flex from the frame while riding. Even landing the occasional jump very sideways seemed to have no real impact, and nor for that matter, did fast rutted corners. These are a great indicator as it’s quite often easy to feel a flexy bike here, as it allows the two wheels to start moving out of plane with each other, negatively affecting both stability and handling.

Suspension: The progressive suspension curve was also noticeable when it came to hitting the rockier sections, where it allowed us to keep traction when turning on the rough and greasy terrain. There was a slight tendency for the bike to hook up on the squarest of edges, and although a criticism, this is in relation to the best bikes out there, so neither surprising, nor something for Maxim to be ashamed of. The multi-link suspension was effective for so much of the time, that in real-world terms, it’s as much of a successful compromise as you could expect when viewing all the factors one must take into consideration. Despite the rising rate design, there was the feeling that perhaps the mid-stroke was disappearing a little too quickly, potentially contributing to that square-edged hook up. Certainly it was noticeable, that on repeated braking bumps, that contributed to a slight harshness, caused by the rebound not being able to get the shock back in position quick enough before the next hit arrived. We put this down to the slightly mismatched shock and fully expect a fresh, and properly matched, item from Maxim to minimize this trait.

Pedaling: The bottom bracket height was comfortable, with a negative, 8mm drop - not ridiculously low - and this allowed the pedals to be used in anger to get the bike up to speed out of corners, which it seemed able to do with verve. Contrasting to this, was a slight reluctance to pedal so efficiently on longer or flatter sections of the trail, or even when riding the inevitable road back to our truck. That height is certainly within the useable range for most riders and despite us trying the bike with offset bushes to see how the altered geometry would feel, we actually felt the original settings produced the best balance for most situations.



Issues

For all the praise, there were a few areas where we felt there could be room for improvement. First of all was the top tube which even on our medium seemed to be quite tall. Not a problem if you’re a large rider and like a small frame but potentially more problematic if you’re shorter. Although we didn’t notice it too much when riding there were a couple of bruises after each ride on the inside of our knees from knees-meet-top-tube incidents. Perhaps we’ve been spoiled by running bikes with very low top tubes recently but at 5-foot, 8-inches tall, I'm not so short that other riders aren’t likely to be in a similar position. Also, despite virtually all bolts being well sited for easy access, the lower shock bolt isn’t and instead goes in from the drive side. It’s a shame, because the recessed nut is neatly done and flipping it over would have definitely aided last-minute race-day maintenance (or panicked repairs). We would also normally elect to run the brake and gear lines along the chainstay rather than seat stays, as this reduces multi-angle flexing, as the suspension runs through its travel.


Pinkbike's Take: