Review: 2020 Mondraker SuperFoxy RR

It’s been a long few years since the Forward Geometry concept was introduced, and many a brand has now seen the light and the geometry of modern trail and enduro bikes is all the better for it.

So where does that now leave Mondraker? Are they still at the forefront of the geometry movement with many more rivals now coming toe to toe? We took their Superfoxy RR enduro bike, with 160mm rear travel and a 170mm fork, for a long-term test to see how it rides in its own right and if the Spanish brand that was at the beginning of the revolution is still up there today.

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Construction and Features
The Superfoxy Carbon RR is the top tier bike in the Superfoxy line. It is almost indistinguishable from the Foxy in terms of looks and layout, but adds 10mm of travel to either end to have 160mm rear travel and 170mm fork travel, putting it in a Super Enduro class. That might not mean much to anyone outside of Europe, and might be seen as yet another category. But the Italian Super Enduro series is well known on this side of the pond and gives a good indication of the bike’s intentions.

As the name suggests, the majority of the Superfoxy is made from carbon fiber composite. The front and rear triangles and upper link are all composite while the lower link is aluminum.

The Superfoxy uses a 157mm rear hub and Super Boost spacing to bring some more space around the critical tire/chainstay/chain ring overlap area in development. It does mean that the back of the bike is a touch wider than a traditional Boost spaced bike, though, with more potential for heel or tight terrain contact.


There’s internal cable routing through the front and rear triangles, with the cables bridging the gap underneath the bottom bracket. Bolt on plastic guides up at the head tube and under the down tube clamp the cables, but there’s no protective foam over the cables inside the main frame.

The Superfoxy has adjustable chain stays and achieves this with a separate derailleur hanger piece to switch between the 440mm short and 450mm long settings. The non-drive side and brake mount can simply be re-mounted to change the chain stay length, but it is Mondraker’s own brake mount that comes in 200mm rotor size out of the box. For a bike of these intentions though, it’s nice to see that size come stock.

Chain stay and rear triangle upright are nicely covered with moulded rubber protection with the chain stay sporting the commonly used raised ridges to provide some good damping to the chain slap. But the seat stay has nothing, and our test bike had some pretty substantial battle scars in this region and many signs of contact with the chain.


The frame design is very low slung and uses a very strong design line from head tube to dropout, flowing along the top tube and seat stay. Showing the bike to friends, their first reaction was always that of appreciation for the looks of the bike. It’s easy to see why many bike designers chase this design line, as it does make a good-looking bike.

Mondraker also use their signature design trait of a hole at the head tube, and the whole top tube is incredibly thin. Whether this was done for purely design or for actually generating some longitudinal flex is unknown. It does mean that a region prone to banging your legs and knees into the frame is on the sharper side of things and could get damaged more easily on this fine edge.

The Superfoxy comes with a -1° angled headset installed, with nice marks on the frame and cups making it a doddle to line the two up. Zero-degree cups are included if you fancy making the head angle a little steeper, or you can turn the angled cups around for even more head angle change. Tinkering may not be for everyone, but it’s nice to have these options on a bike for the people who like to adjust a bike to their riding and surroundings, and a bike with these options offers little deficit to those who prefer to set and forget.

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Geometry & Sizing
The Superfoxy comes in four sizes from S to XL ranging from a 450mm reach to a 510mm reach, still following the Forward geometry idea with the reach numbers being between 10mm to 30mm longer than some other brands depending on size. People on the S size should be conscious of this, as it’s quite a big bike for the smaller riders.

All sizes do come specced with a 30mm stem, also following the principle of the Forward Geometry, combining an extended reach with a shorter stem. There are no growing chain stays with size, but the ability to adjust them means that the balance of the bike and wheel grip can be adjusted somewhat as the bikes change size.

Head angle is 65° out of the box with the angled headset installed, and can go as steep as 67°, but I doubt there are many people who would want to go that steep on such a bike. Compared to a few other bikes in the same category, the Superfoxy isn’t quite the slackest bike, with others going as low as 63°, and many a trail bike now having 65°.

It's worth noting that the bottom bracket height is very high - compared to some other bikes in the same category and with the same travel, it’s up to 22mm higher. 357mm from the ground is a long way.

Another point to mention, and one where I pick up Mike Kazimer’s megaphone, is the seat angle. Virtual seat angle is 75.5° for all sizes and the actual seat angle is much slacker at 70.5°. The same effective angle on all sizes and the generally slack angles hints that as rider size and seat height increase you would actually have a much slacker real-world angle.

Seat tube length is also a bit longer than some other bikes at the moment, with our L sizes 470mm length being around 25mm to 35mm longer than some competitors.

The head tube is also very short for a bike with such aggressive intentions. For riders living in steep terrain, or aggressive riders preferring a high bar, the on-paper reach is reduced with all the stem spacers you need. Although our test bike could only allow 10mm of stem spacers to be fitted on the short fork steerer.

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Suspension Design


The Superfoxy uses a four-bar suspension system with two short co-rotating links connecting the rear triangle to the main frame and dictating the instant center position.

Unlike many other brands, Mondraker connects their shock to both of the links and in doing so it gets compressed, or extended, from above and below. This can reduce the amount of load bearing you need on the main frame, as the shock isn't connected to it. But the shock force does need to go somewhere, and the links and their connections to the main frame need to be able to withstand the loads.

The shock is a 205mm x 65mm size with the trunnion mount up at the top link and running on bearings C-clipped into the link to make sure they aren’t going anywhere.

With the Superfoxy's adjustable chain stays, it's not only the geometry that would change. A longer chain stay would mean a longer lever and so raise the leverage ratios and make the bike feel a bit softer for the same spring rate. Alternatively, if you'd set the bike up in the long chain stay setting and switched to the shorter, it would feel a bit firmer for the same spring rate.

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Suspension setup out of the box seemed straightforward with the Superfoxy, with there being an online guide going through both the fork and shock, although some of the recommended settings are a little different to what Fox suggest and what I measured in the real world. Mondraker also measures damper clicks from fully open, as opposed to the normal from fully closed position, so it’s good to be aware of this.

L size normally ships with a 450lb spring, although for my weight I looked to be tickling the border of a softer 400lb spring, so I had both to switch between.

For my all kitted up weight of 78kg the 450lbs spring gave 21.5% sag, which was a lot less than the suggested 30 – 35% range. The 400lb spring gave slightly more sag, at 22.3%, and left me wondering how low I was supposed to go to reach their recommended sag range.

The Fox 36 was easy to set up, not just because I already knew my settings, but also for the first-time user using the recommended settings printed on the lowers as a starting point. I started at 80psi, 2 volume spacers, 5 clicks of low-speed and high-speed rebound, 7 clicks of low-speed and 12 clicks of high-speed compression, all measured from fully closed.

I also started with the stock 12.5mm rise bar, but this was also one of the first things to be swapped out. A higher rise bar helped shorten the saddle to bars measurement while also bringing my hands higher up for a nicer descending position. The short head tube and low-rise bars really reminded me of a very racy XC setup. I had to use a much higher, 38mm rise bar as the steerer tube is cut quite short, giving a small range to play around with stem spacers.

Climbing
Jumping on the Superfoxy to go ride, it straight away felt long when I was sitting on the saddle. Even with the short 30mm stem the bike feels very stretched out during seated climbing, a feeling that comes from the slack seat angle. Shunting the saddle all the way forwards in the rails helped reduce the 'kid on their Dad’s bike' feeling, but it’s still there and means you find your way onto the nose of the saddle as soon as the terrain starts to really point upwards.

After that initial bit of fiddling, the seated position was better, but going back-to-back with bikes having a much steeper seat angle really highlighted that even at the limits of adjustment the Superfoxy still doesn't have the comfiest seated position.


Pedalling on smooth sections of road or trail only results in only the smallest amount of suspension bob. Reducing that smoothness, in the pedalling or on the trail, does up the amount of suspension movement going on, with the bike being incredibly sensitive in its initial stages of travel. Using the lockout lever on the shock does firm things up to assist with climbing, but the amount of firmness added isn’t a whole heck of a lot, and with some out of the saddle climbing up slower, steeper and techier trails it loses a bit of its efficiency.

Out of the saddle, the bike’s stretched out feeling is gone, but the 30mm stem does up the amount of twitch at the front end when compared to something like a 50mm stem, especially when your weight is really forwards on a steep climb, and it does make it feel like you’re fighting the bars a bit more.

The Superfoxy made it to the top of all the climbs, but it's stretched out seated position and really short stem made it more conscious work to manage the bike and I was often having to really concentrate on keeping a good position or choosing a line that would upset the bike less.


Most of the bikes I ride at the moment are around the 470 – 490mm reach measurement, and go round tighter corners just fine. The Superfoxy can go around them too, it just needs a bit of planning beforehand and some shifts in your body position and line choice.

The Superfoxy’s low weight is noticeable, especially with the stock tires, but it’s not enough in combination with the pedalling position and sensitive suspension to really make it feel like it darts up the climbs faster than other bikes in the same travel range and intention. It’s not like pedalling through glue either, but compared to what I’ve heard about other bikes in the Mondraker range it didn’t feel like the rat up a drainpipe that I was expecting.

Descending
That initial ride on the Superfoxy initiated quite a few changes on the bike. As mentioned, the tires and bar were swapped out to give more grip and a better rider fit. With one of the popular spring riding spots being a steep, funicular accessed hill side littered with steep soft gullies a set of double Dirty Dans in Ultra Soft compound and DH casing were on the bike for the first portion of testing, changing to Magic Marys once conditions were dryer and more of the lift accessed trails opened.

Descending on the stock setup, especially with the low bar did make for some interesting moments. The L and XL sizes come with a 150mm dropper post, which with the feet up hands down position constantly gave a not-so-reassuring pat on the undercarriage when the going got rough. For my seat height, and lower, it wouldn't be possible to fit a 175mm drop post on the Superfoxy, which in today’s norm of big drop posts is a limiting factor.


The main defining characteristic of the bike is the bottom bracket height. Up at 357mm, it dominated the riding experience for me and made the bike harder to corner, both at lower speeds with more bar turn or at higher speeds with more leaning. It really gives the bike an on-its-toes nervousness, and despite me adjusting my cockpit to raise my hands it left me searching how to lower it to bring more stability and confidence to really open the speed up.

I swapped out to the softer 400lb spring and maxed out the high-speed compression in an attempt to dynamically lower the bike when riding, hoping that the hydraulic support would help me out with the softer spring. To some degree it worked out on the trail, with the bike sitting more into its travel and bringing some added composure to match the long front end that wanted you to let off the brakes.

Unfortunately, the 400lb spring made it possible to bottom out the bike in the car park with just a good heel kick, and this was also present on the trails with bigger hits and compressions finding the end of travel all too often. I'm really not sure how Mondraker suggests 30 - 35% sag when the 400lbs spring was so easy to bottom out with relatively low sag.

The softer setup also allowed the bike to be more prone to larger chassis movement shifts when braking hard or pulling on the bars. In high speed, hard braking situations, with sharp pulls and releases on the brakes the bike wanted to rise and compress more than I wanted underneath me. Good pulls on the bars were met with more suspension compression that wheel lift, making the bike feel longer than it actually is. Needing to get the wheel up in a hurry or just pulling a manual on the roll home required a more concerted effort.


It’s a shame that one really off measurement could stand so front and centre in the riding experience, especially with a brand with such heritage in getting modern geometry to where it is today. By comparison, their own Summum DH bike has a lower static BB height, and with more travel would be even lower at sag.

Each time I grabbed the Superfoxy from the shed I got excited looking at it, and come the first descent, I wanted to throw caution to the wind and really open it up. The length of the bike invites you to do that, and the Fox 36 was always up for it too. But soon after you always had a tap on your shoulder to wind it back a bit when the rest of the bike started to be out of its comfort zone. It’s an involved ride experience at speed, and I’m not trying to say that the bike is unrideable, just that you’d better have your skills ready if you want to put it into the speeds and terrain that a long travel 29er bike flourishes in.

Less man-made trails, the kind of root filled brown stripe that meanders through the forest, lend themselves better to the Superfoxy, where its soft feeling suspension can work a lot better over the potentially less g-force inducing terrain. Being more delicate with the bike and your inputs yields faster speeds and more control, but does mean your margin for error is a little tighter. The Superfoxy is more of a finesser than a brute.

Out in the bike parks, for which the Superfoxy is also aimed at, the larger G-forces from the sculpted rises, dips and berms turn the riding experience volume back up. That sensitive approach is once again better, rather than throwing your head at the ground and kicking your heels. But the generally more roller coaster ride begins to upset the bike.

The adjustment possibilities on the Superfoxy are a nice touch, but the head angle comes already slackened out and I’m not sure many people would want to be steepening it by 1° or 2°. Many bikes are already pushing even slacker. While the longer chainstays could bring a touch of added stability, they’re not going to fix the inherent issues I found with the bike. In fact, a longer chain stay would up the leverage on the shock, making it even feel even softer and easier to bottom out.

Maintenance
With the layout of the Superfoxy the shock sits right in the firing line of debris, and the frame shapes around the shock and lower link collect dirt and mud constantly. So, it's best to keep an eye on it to not have the important working of the bike cycling through mud and grit. There is enough space on the uprights to fashion a mud guard though, and protect your investment.

Working on the bike is fairly easy, with most of the pivot bolts using a 5mm hex tool, although the lower link pivots need to be tightened with a larger 8mm for the axle as they use a wedge system to lock the pivots in place. But it’s fairly easy to whip through most of the important bolts on the bike to check they’re all tight. The rear triangle to upper pivot bolts, however, need to be tightened from both sides. But with the main frame blocking access to the inside bolt head, you have to remove the shock to tighten that pivot.


There's a brilliant user manual that provides you with exploded views and full part numbers for all the pieces should you need replacements, with lots of the pivots having a kit for all the bearings and hardware associated with them. It also states all the bearing sizes you need for the bike. The upper link bearings for the trunnion mount and seat tube pivot use C-clips to keep the bearings from wandering on their seats, so do make service a little fiddlier. The rear triangle to upper link connection also uses a double row of bearings separated by a washer too.

The link itself is pretty wide, and while I experienced only a few issues when riding from the width, it is in your calf and knee real estate and might cause more problems if you’ve got bigger legs than my bean poles. The shock runs on 22.2 x 10mm hardware and the lower shock bolt is a little soft and started to slowly round out the hex head over the course of the test, needing some careful torquing so as not to completely destroy it while still having it tight enough.

A full strip down without undoing the brake or gear hoses is possible and the user manual is also colour coded to show you where to apply grease and thread locking compound along with torque settings. But the overlapping nature of the frame and links, especially down by the BB does make it a bit fiddly sometimes and a pain for those of us with larger digits and less patience.


Our test bikes stick-on down tube protector covered the BB drain hole, and so the frame easily filled up with water and held it in the frame, with a comical sloshing noise when you moved it around. It's an easy fix but something to watch out for on your own bike. Ideally the main frame internal cables need foam over them to stop the rattling. You can push excess cable inside and then clamp the cable routing parts, but over time the cable tension releases and the bike becomes noisy again.

How Does It Compare?

Compared to the recently reviewed Nukeproof Mega 290 Factory, the Mondraker has the same travel, is a bit longer up front and a bit shorter out back. Although this can be changed with the adjustable chain stays. The Nukeproof’s geometry puts the rider a lot lower in the bike with the 17mm lower BB height and it has a much more comfortable seated position with the steeper virtual and actual seat angles.

All climbs are possible on both bikes, but the Nukeproof’s much more upright seated position helps out a lot for comfort and balance on really steep climbs, where the Mondraker needs much more body language to keep load over the front of the bike. With the softer 400lb spring fitted, the Superfoxy has more of a spongy feeling when climbing compared to the Nukeproog, especially when out of the saddle.

On the way down, the Nukeproof flies past the Superfoxy with more ease to ride at speeds and move around more instinctively. Despite the shorter reach, your hand position on the Nukeproof is not far off the longer reach but shorter stem of the Superfoxy, and the longer stem is more to my taste with it bringing a bit more calmness when climbing and descending.

With long travel, big wheels and long geometry, both bikes have that initial feeling of wanting speed. But once up to speed the Mondraker becomes a handful while the Nukeproof quietly goes about getting faster and faster with little fuss.

Having both bikes in the garage for the same period, I often grabbed the Mega over the Superfoxy. I always kept giving the Mondraker another chance but, despite a lot of tinkering, just couldn’t get it to feel like the bike it should have been.

Technical Report

OnOff Krypton Stem and Bar: With having to change bars early on in the test I discovered that the OnOff stem on the Mondraker is a really bad example of stem design. Usually the front bolts, holding the face plates to the main body of the stem, are perpendicular to the bar axis. On the Krypton, however, they’re at an angle to the axis, and mean as you tighten them the face plates need to slide across the surface of the bar. This marks the bars and also puts so much deforming force into the stem that it clamps the steerer tube of the fork incredibly tight, even when the steerer clamp bolts are undone. Employing a bit by bit tightening process on all the bolts was better, but this is fundamentally just a really bad design. With the Krypton bars, many people perhaps prefer a lower bar height, and for them the low-rise bar and short head tube achieve this. But if you like to run a higher hand setup then you'll need to rely on some high-rise bars to get your hands where you want them.

OnOff Titan Headset: The Superfoxy comes with a -1° angled headset installed, and on arrival the top cup was out of alignment with the marks on the frame. It was an easy affair to push the cup out and re-align it, but within five rides the top cup had spun around almost 90° and with further riding was almost doing a full 180°. As a result, the headset bearings were not a fan and developed a notchy feeling and creaked like an old barn door during riding.

Fox Transfer Dropper: The post worked flawlessly, and the spec choice of the Race Face lever is a good one from Mondraker, with it being a much more robust and positive feeling lever. But 150mm drop on the L and XL size frames is simply not enough. And even 125mm on the M size and only 100mm on the S size highlight the dated geometry and spec of the bike.

Fox DHX2 Shock: Firstly, I have never been singing the praises of the previous generation X2 shocks, as many of you might have commented. And there isn’t much praise for the MY20 unit on the Superfoxy. The bike has an overall very linear feeling to the suspension with the shock's support often lacking in many situations, but I'm not going to attribute all of this linearity to solely the shock. Again, the MY21 X2 shocks are a big step up in performance and would really help the bike out, but unfortunately can't fit on the Superfoxy, with the piggy back hitting the frame at bottom out. Neither too can an Öhlins TTX22M, which I tried to fit as a remedy to the bike's issues.

Maxxis Tires: Tire choice can be about as personal as underwear, but for really riding bikes hard out in Champéry and the Alps it requires something with more meat than an EXO or EXO+ casing. Light tires feel fantastic, from their reduced mass at the furthest point of the wheel. And if you prefer thinner casing, slightly harder compound tires for your trails and riding then they will be right up your street. But if you know you need something more robust and stickier, then it's something to keep in mind for swapping out.

Shimano XTR Drivetrain: Shifting is flawless and stays crisp and consistent with use and in all conditions. The 32T chainring and 175mm cranks gave a great feel for pedalling, and the high BB did allow the use of slightly longer cranks. S and M size come specced with 170mm cranks to reflect the shorter rider height. Maybe a blind test would really show the difference between the top tier XTR and XT, but the feel of shifting and the individual components is brilliant, and looks set to remain like that for a very long working life.

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Pinkbike's Take

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Reviews and Tech Reviews Enduro Bikes Mondraker Mondraker Superfoxy