Production Privée's Steel-Framed Shan N°5 - Review

If you want some steel in your life, a Shan N°5 frame and Fox Float DPS EVOL shock goes for € 1,499.17 to € 1,749.17 (exc. VAT), and complete bikes run between € 2,915.83 - € 4,165.83 (exc. VAT) depending on the build. The bike shown here sports a one-off build, however, and it weighs 31lb 15oz. At 8.37lb for a frame (sans shock), this is one machine that's probably not for those concerned with how much their bike weighs.


Design Details

Production Privée is best known for their steel hardtail, a bike that we were big fans of when we reviewed it back in 2012, so it's not a surprise to see their first full-suspension frame also using steel tubing. That being said, it wasn't a 'steel or nothing' sort of decision when Damien Nosella, one of the main minds behind the company's bikes, penned the new N°5.

They were open to using other materials, he said, but, in the end, steel was the go-to choice: ''We decided to go the 4130 CrMo route for the chassis. Since the advent of mechanical sports, CrMo chassis contraptions have been winning car and motorcycle races every weekend,'' Nosella said when the N°5 was first released. ''Steel is a magical material with impeccable strength and very high levels of elasticity and fatigue resistance. When used on a bike, incredibly high levels of tolerance and grip are obtained compared with an alloy or carbon chassis.''




The small diameter steel tubing gives the N°5 a classic, clean look, even with the external cable routing and bolt-on guides. And speaking of bolting things on, the location of the Fox shock means that the only place you'll be bolting a bottle cage on is the underside of the downtube, and most of you know how I feel about that...

The forward shock mount is also bolted onto the frame rather than welded, and two ISCG tabs sit under the BB92 bottom bracket shell that let you attach some sort of taco-style protection if you make a habit out of smashing into things.








Suspension Design

Production Privée talks a lot about simplicity and reliability, so it makes sense that they've gone with a relatively straightforward single-pivot layout rather than employ a bunch of links or something novel for the N°5's back end. The design delivers 140mm of rear wheel travel, and the custom tuned Fox Float DPS EVOL metric shock is said to provide a ''low ratio that guarantees the best possible performance: sensitivity at the beginning, perfect rebound performance, and great efficiency throughout its entire suspension travel.'' Hmm, heady claims for sure, but can an uncomplicated single-pivot system deliver on that marketing-speak?


And why the middle-of-the-road 140mm of travel? ''This travel size was not chosen so as to meet the criteria of a specific category, but purely as a way of extracting the maximum amount of pleasure and performance out of the Shan N°5,'' he said of the hard to pin down number.










2 Questions With Production Privée's Damien Nosella

Mike Levy: The Shan N°5's 140mm of travel isn't quite long enough to call it an enduro bike, and I'd argue that it's a bit too much for it to be a trail bike. How would you classify the N°5, and where has it been designed to excel?



Levy: The Shan N°5 is a lot of fun, but there are many carbon and aluminum bikes on the market that are also fun. Why should a rider choose your steel bike over one made using carbon or aluminum? What does steel offer?

Nosella: Engineering-wise, steel offers remarkable properties in strength, tunable stiffness, fatigue, and resilience. Playing on section sizes, butted lengths, thicknesses, and heat treatment let us work on what we call the “mechanical” grip, a dynamic concept which car and bike racing companies laid on for their GP, MXGP bikes to give that right amount of flex to maximize traction, grip in corners, off-cambers, etc... I can’t speak for the top athletes of our sport, but I believe they will probably need an incisive chassis to hit their lines to the millimeter; at the opposite end, the average rider or the enduro rider needs a forgiving and confidence-giving bike to let him enjoy the ride or racing for hours.

That’s what steel can offer; the right amount of flex and dynamism. And last but not least is the superiority in terms of fatigue resistance that steel offers: a frame made out of steel will keep its dynamic and strength characteristics longer than any aluminum frame without the cost of a carbon frame (a well engineered one, and that’s another big topic).






Climbing

You don't need a degree in bikeology to know that the boys at Production Privée didn't put ascending at the top of their priority list; this just isn't that kind of machine. But while the steel banana performed as expected in the handling department on tricky climbs - that is, not awesomely - it's surprisingly efficient when you're on the gas. Hefty rubber only adds to the N°5's weight, which is an entirely different battle, but the bike scoots along nicely under power once you're past walking speed, and it does so without the need to reach down for the Fox shock's swindle switch. You might expect that from a 140mm-travel bike, but I'd argue that this particularly rowdy example could be excused for feeling a bit squishy and slow when the rider is on the gas. Even so, there's no justification needed here.

When it comes to scrabbling up a technical pitch, it's decidedly less rosy. Or maybe I should say that the Shan performs about how you'd expect a chunky steel bike with big meat and angles designed to excel in the opposite direction. Does the bike get a free pass, then? I'm not sure, to be honest. With patience and precision, you can get the Shan up all sorts of nastiness, but it's also not exactly going to be doing you any favors and helping you along in those moments.







The Shan's heft and angles keep it from matching lighter weight, sharping handling competition, but I suspect that the guys at Production Privée are well aware of that and don't really give a damn. If your attitude towards climbing matches theirs, you'll get along just fine with the N°5. If you feel more invested in your ascents, however, this bike probably isn't suited to your needs.



Descending

Every mountain bike is a rolling compromise; it's really a matter of what you want to give up in order to gain in other areas. But when it comes to the N°5, thoughts of what you gave up on the climb will be forgotten soon after you drop into the descent. That's especially true if said descent is full of corners; tight and slow or fast and wide open, this is a bike that doesn't care, and it's the N°5's defining quality. The last rig we had in that cornered as well as the Shan was Devinci's much longer-travel Spartan, and the fact that the yellow bike equals that beast - but with less travel - is really something.

But unlike the Spartan, the N°5 can perform in more than just fast, rough terrain, with it slicing and dicing all shapes of corners and at all speeds. You can come in too fast, chop your way through, and the Shan will spring out of the corner as if it's late for a first date. But the traction, holy mother of grip, does it deliver traction, and that lets it carry immense speed through the kind of fast, low-purchase corners that might usually upset a bike of this travel.

Predictability is the key, really, as there are relatively few oh-shit moments on the N°5 that would call for a dropped foot or even big steering corrections. Production Privée might have something special here with these numbers and this frame material.




Steel has a rep as a forgiving material, much more so than aluminum or carbon, but I'd also argue that it really comes down to how that material is used. Production Privée says that it's the best choice for the N°5 because it has ''the right amount of flex and dynamism,'' and while I'm not convinced that's the primary reason for the bike's traction and otherworldly cornering abilities, I'm also not going to rule it out. It's simple, single-pivot suspension design also delivers loads of grip through an immensely sensitive setup that responds to the ground regardless of where the shock is in its stroke. Yes, the N°5 could use a bit more end-stroke ramp-up (a volume spacer would do the job), but the eager travel is surely one of the causes of the near-never-ending ability of the rear-end to hold onto the ground.

I would usually associate less travel with more playfulness, but that's not that case with the Shan. Yes, it can out-corner pretty much everything on the market, but I suspect that its weight keeps it from being the hooligan that I thought it would be. That said, its predictability inspires a load of confidence that can get you in trouble, but it's also just enough bike to get you out of said trouble... most of the time.




Okay, time for some comparisons because that's what we do at this point, even though the N°5 is a hard bike to pin down. Most recently, it was Rocky Mountain's Instinct Carbon 90 BC Edition, a bike with 155mm of travel, similar intentions, but more all-around capability than the Shan. That Rocky weighs less, has more travel, climbs better and, to be straightforward, would be my choice over the Shan if I needed a forgiving bike for long rides. But it in no way can rival the Shan in the corners, that much is for sure, and there's a certain unexplainable allure to the steel frame tubes that's hard to explain.

Okay, what about Devinci's Troy? Same travel numbers front and back, and same intentions, but the Troy is also lighter and more all-around capable. Again, I'd choose the Troy before the Shan, but I'll admit to caring just as much about the climb as the descent that it leads you to.





I'm conflicted. A full-blown enduro bike with another 20mm of cush is going to be faster for most riders when things get scary hairy, and a lighter and faster rolling machine will cover more ground when some horsepower is required, both being facts that leave me asking why and where the N°5 makes the most sense. But maybe it doesn't matter if the bike is fun as hell to ride, and the yellow Shan is exactly that and then some - it's forgiving, changes direction obscenely well, and it puts a smile on your face even though there are more pragmatic ways to spend this kind of money. Maybe mountain biking doesn't need to be a well-thought-out, practical exercise?



Technical Details

• Tire Clearance: The slim, steel seatstay and chainstays provide enough clearance to ride the N°5 through wet cement without it clogging up, and also enough room to run a 2.8'' wide rear tire if you want to add even more weight and go even slower up the climbs. Stick to regular size meat to get the most out of the Shan, though.




• BikeYoke Revive Dropper: RC had good things to say about the BikeYoke Revive dropper that he reviewed not too long ago, and that's mostly the case here as well. Rather than employ a closed design, the post mixes air and oil in a twin-tube setup, but if the bike is upside down, that air can go where it's not supposed to and the post will feel a bit squishy. This is inherent in the design, and it's why BikeYoke incorporated the 'Revive Valve' at the top of the post. The valve works as advertised, and the dropper was back to 100-percent in seconds.


• Stealth Shan: I want to bitch about the sole bottle location on the underside of the downtube, or the 175mm cranks that don't play nice with the bike's relatively low bottom bracket, but I suspect that many riders won't care too much about those points. One thing that I can't moan about, though, is the noise - this thing is quieter than a thirteen-year-old Mike Levy at a parent-teacher meeting.



Pinkbike's Take

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Reviews and Tech Reviews Enduro Bikes Trail Bikes Production Privee Production Privee Shan