Review: 2021 Canyon Sender CFR - DH Bike Week

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Armed with the German precision like checklist of improved areas from the prior three years of development, it was time to go through that list piece by piece and see if the new Sender delivered on all the claims.

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Construction and Features

As with all the bikes on test, the Sender CFR painted a familiar silhouette to its predecessor, but with many smaller details all over the carbon fiber composite frame that add up to a big change.

The shock is now mounted on the down tube and frees up the top tube to drop some weight from reinforcement. The down tube needs overall less reinforcement due to its importance of already being a stiff and strong part of the backbone of the bike. It also allowed the whole bike to drop down and become even more low slung.

The changes to layout were accompanied by Canyon matching the overall stiffness of the new bike to the old bike while equalizing the individual stiffness of the mainframe and rear of the bike.


At the rear of the bike, there's now a carbon fiber composite chainstay and seatstay to drop weight, something that Canyon had high up on its priority list. Canyon claims a drop in frame weight of 650g compared to the old bike, with 300g of this coming from the mainframe, 200g coming from the rear triangle and 150g coming from the aluminum links that drive the shock.

All the pivot threads are in replaceable aluminum hardware parts that are held captive in the frame with some small bolts, a touch that Canyon attributed to the Sender not only being a bike that they designed for the racers, but also the race mechanics. All these little parts are available to purchase as spares in the Canyon web shop. In addition, all of those pivots are sealed away from the elements to keep them debris free and running smooth.

Cable routing is all internal on the Sender, with moulded in tubes to make routing easier. A short section is external, as the cables pass from mainframe to chainstay, and does sit right in the firing line of crud and scissor back and forth as the bike cycles through its travel.


Canyon use their own brake mount on the Sender that is for 200mm rotors and bolts into the back of the seatstay. Its detachable nature comes from the sheer amount of adjustability that is built into the Sender. Out back there are adjustable chainstays, and up front chamfered drop in aluminum inserts can adjust the bike's reach.

Frame protection is also well thought out with the lowest pivot in the down tube being hidden by a large bolt on plastic protector and the chainstay having moulded rubber protection top and bottom stuck on and extending to all the potential areas the chain could hit. There’s some on the underside of the seatstay too and some clear film around the dropout area to ward off heel rub, although it’s not the most secured and came flying off with some pressure from the hose.

No matter where I was, people went out of their way to tell me that the Sender was a nice looking bike, and I agree. Although that focus on design from Canyon is something that we'll touch on later.

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Geometry & Sizing

The Sender comes in four sizes from S to XL and with a pretty extensive geometry table that outlines everything from suggested rider size to the seat heights that they took to offset the seat tube for the various sizes.

It’s another bike that also matches a lot of current enduro and trail bikes for reach, and as a result the L size was a really comfortable fit for me at 188cm tall.

Canyon have also applied the mullet concept to the Sender, although they’ve applied it to rider height and frame size with the S and M sizes using the smaller rear wheel and even slightly adjusted kinematics to account for the difference in geometry and wheel size.

The S and M bikes then use a 10mm shorter chainstay length than the full 29" L and XL bikes, but both wheel size versions have the ability to add 10mm to the chainstay length with the adjustable chips. Reach can also be adjusted 8mm longer or shorter via the drop in aluminum headset cups.

Our test bike was pretty damn bang on to what Canyon state. With the fork at the 601mm axle to crown and a 110mm head tube length there was a 63° head angle, 487mm reach, 630mm stack and 446 chainstay length in the short setting. There was a 20mm BB drop which gave a 353mm BB height with the quoted 746mm diameter tires, to which the Maxxis Minion DHR II measured exactly.

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Suspension Design

Lots of links, but it’s the same four bar layout as the previous Sender, and Demo, with the two aluminum links driving the shock. On the new Sender these links have grown in size considerably over the previous version.

Canyon's focus in the suspension department was, firstly, to maintain the ability to go comfortably fast on the bike right out of the box. While that’s going to be attributable to a blend of many factors, they did massage the leverage ratio slightly. It starts and finishes at almost the exact same ratios, but there’s a touch more flatness to the end stroke with more of a straight line, or less wiggle, in the first half of travel.

Our test bike had 28% of progression in the leverage ratio, starting at 3.25 and finishing at 2.32. There's a slight bow to the curve starting more progressive and gradually getting more linear towards the end of travel.

They also were pretty keen to show a reduction in pedal kickback. While this is a topic that has been recently and hotly discussed, and with varying degrees of understanding it and its role in the overall feel of a bike, Canyon focussed on dropping it quite a bit and accepting the inevitable drop in anti-squat too.

Anti-squat sits at 75% and anti-rise at 45%, both at 25% shock stroke sag. The latter being fairly constant around the 40% mark throughout travel, while the anti-squat, in a 36 / 18 tooth gear drops to 3% from its starting point of 118%.

There are also adjusted kinematics depending on the wheel size setup you’re running, with two different mount points for the shock in the scissor links. One is labelled 27.5” and one 29”. Secretly they’re a progression adjuster and do naff all to the static geometry.

Putting our full 29" bike into the 27.5" setting on the link chopped the travel down to 193mm and shifted the whole leverage ratio curve downwards, starting at 2.99 and finishing at 2.3 with 23% progression.

Changing to the long chainstay setting does alter the suspension slightly. The travel ups to 203mm, the starting ratio goes up to 3.27 and the curve ends at 2.35.

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The Sender CFR, or Canyon Factory Racing, version we tested was another full SRAM/RockShox affair.

There’s a RockShox Boxxer Ultimate fork, SuperDeluxe shock, SRAM XO1 DH drivetrain and Code RSC brakes, with 200mm rotors front and rear. There’s an e*thirteen chain guide on there too.

DT Swiss provides the wheelset with the FR560, with both 27.5mm internal width rims being set up tubeless with Maxxis Minion DHR II tires with DH casing and 3C Maxx Grip compound.

Touchpoints are Canyon’s own grips and composite bar, aluminum stem and seat post with the saddle being an Ergon offering.

Our size L bike weighed in at 15.77kg or 34.77lbs, the lightest on test, and retails for 5,799 EUR or $5,799 USD.

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Performance

I often feel obliged, if you will, to take a bike down the World Cup track here in Champéry for its first ride. While some might prefer the gentle break in approach, I’ve found the best for me, both in testing and the mental challenges I set myself, is to be jumping right in at the deep end. I know the track well and the bike feelings that I associate with positive, so any glaring issues or areas for improvement become immediately apparent when you don your arm bands, climb up to the highest diving board and gracefully perform a running bomb into the pool below.

With that in mind, I told myself, loud and clear, that I had no business doing the speeds I was first run on the Sender, only to ignore my own concerns and keep pushing all the way down, leaning harder into turns and gapping in all the places you usually need some time to build up to do. It is a seriously impressive bike for its ability to go from squint-eyed car park setup to that pace in such a short space of time. And this is something that all the testers reported with their immediate comfort, and therefore confidence in the bike, being visible from the get go.

There’s a wonderful composure to the ride of the Sender. It manages to just deal with every impact, every scenario on the trail just once and efficiently moves onto the next. It never takes its baggage from the previous scenario into the next. I guess it’s a very German way of dealing with things, but it translates into a bike that can then be thrown down the hill with horrendous speed, its composure lifting your eye line and thoughts to further down the trail and simply just riding, almost devoid of any conscious thought process.

Just like the we'll see with the coming Commencal Supreme DH review, there’s no confusing what the Sender is for. Simply reading the marketing about the bike is enough to understand that it’s a race bike, and so it follows that same single-track mind as the Supreme DH. While the speed can be turned down a notch and you can go hunt out little slashes and jibs on the way down, you’ve the sense of a German somewhere, somewhat displeased in the lack of punctual efficiency that you’re not getting to the bottom with.

It’s not the absolute supplest of suspension feels of the four bikes we tested. There’s a touch more feeling of each impact coming through to you, but it’s not enough to really write home about, as what you may compromise in initial suppleness is more than made up for with composure. With a bike designed to do the speeds that the Sender can, you’re probably not having complete traction at every single second. And up at the ragged edge I would much rather have that chassis stability and composure that the Sender has in bucket loads. Bikes are about balancing compromises.


There’s a character change from the two mullet bikes on test too, with there being a balance of feel from the wheel sizes front and back. The flip side is you do notice a benefit in moving your turn in up a few inches and really leaning the bike. It does require ever so slightly more rider input to do this but you’re rewarded with an almost on rails feeling as you carry speed through the entire turn.

I’ll be honest, I didn’t really deviate much from that initial 185psi setup the entire time testing. The low-speed compression did eventually end up close to closed, but that was aligning with the increased familiarity and speed on the bike as time passed. I did try it with a coil shock too, an Öhlins TTX, and settled on a 502lbs spring giving a good balance of support, bottom out and ride height. The coil shock’s inherent suppleness also helped take a bit of the harshness out of the impacts too and add a bit of suppleness to the bike.

The Sender’s adjustability is also really easy to work with and makes a very noticeable difference in the ride. In its longest form, with the adjustable headset and chainstays in their longest position, it ups the stability of the bike and the speed it can do. It does require more input from the rider to manhandle it in this setting, otherwise it can get a little carried away with itself.

In the shortest setting it’s unsurprisingly the opposite feel. While we’ll be calling it the short setting, it certainly isn’t either in reach or chainstay. But the character change is noticeable and there’s a little more liveliness in its step as it responds more to the same amount of input. It’s really nice to have this in a bike, and on the Sender the adjustments aren’t confusing and deal with mainly one aspect of the bike, like reach or chainstay length.


That is apart from the secret progression adjuster in the middle. While I will remind that Canyon state to keep the shock in the corresponding hole to the rear wheel size you have, and there’s no real opportunity to change that wheel size, it does chop the travel down to 193mm and shift the leverage curve down enough to make quite a difference in feel, requiring considerably less spring but introducing a touch more harshness into the initial portion of travel when you land from the air into a rough section of trail. It does give a touch more support in the middle portion of the travel, although this is definitely something that the regular 29” setting has in abundance anyway. It’s still a little confusing as to why Canyon left this option on all the bikes, after going to the lengths of making all the other frame parts bespoke to the wheel and frame sizes.

I spent most of my time on the Sender in the short chainstay setting and middle reach setting. For the steep and tight turns around Champéry and Morgins it yielded the best balance of stability versus maneuverability to speedily get down the tracks while remaining an active part of the ride. But for more flat out, rougher and less steep tracks it's nice to have the option to go longer and would be something that I’d happily spend the 10 minutes changing to take advantage of.

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Maintenance

Canyon say that the Sender was a bike also built for their race mechanics, and while some features on the bike do reflect this, a lot of others don’t. Go find me a race mechanic who asks for internal cable routing! I’ve sat with team mechanics in bike development meetings for them to specifically ask me not to have it.

The internal routing on the Sender is guided by moulded tubes in the frame, but where it pops out of the mainframe, before entering the chainstays, is right in that loam shelf region on the bike and the cables scissor back and forth accompanied by the grinding paste like mix of dirt and water, eating into the cables and composite frame.

It suffers the same issue as the Demo too, with the chainstay and links opening up during use, leaving a gaping hole that is filled by debris, only to be crushed when it all closes. I pulled out some sizable rocks that had gotten munched, so it’s worth fashioning an extra fender or keeping an eye on that area.

Another area to keep an eye on is the lower link, buried deep in the mainframe. To give that area a good clean it needs a full strip down, and it will need a clean as the mud and debris from riding collect there and again get scissored around against the frame.

There’s also an alarming amount of flex in the frame along the upper aluminum link and where it connects to the mainframe. That mainframe connection is quite thin and without a through axle due to the shock in the way. You can easily feel and see the flex in the link and in the connection when you grab the seat tube and tire and flex the two back and forth.

The sealed pivots are a good touch, though, and keep the bearings fresher for longer. And the fender between the two upright links is well made and keys into the links when you assemble the bike. You don't need three pairs of hands and a degree to work on the bike, and it's a fairly quick process to strip it down without disconnecting the hoses.

The Sender is a race bike, no doubt. But that also extends to its need for care week in week out to keep it working at its best and not eating itself. In the way that a MotoGP bike is given a regular strip down by dedicated mechanics, you need to look after your Sender.

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Technical Report


e*thirteen Chain Guide: While I am a fan of having the bash guard protection on a DH bike, the full chain guide added a noticeable amount of drag and noise into the pedalling equation, far more so than the idler pulley on the Commencal Supreme. Some of the other bikes came with chain guides that didn't have the bottom roller and there was much less drag and noise while still having no dropped chains.

Maxxis DH Tires: It's nice to just pump up tires and go, and the DH casing 3C Maxx Grip Minion DHR IIs do a fantastic job. It's also a really good front tire, in the right conditions, and provides big paddle-like braking traction while having the same leant over cornering feel as the Minion DHF. The soft compound is much appreciated, but just be aware that it doesn't last long.


SRAM Code Brakes: Three of the four bikes we tested came with Codes, and there's really good power in both the 220mm and 200mm rotors along with nice lever ergonomics. But when dragged down some of the longest and steepest tracks they did change their feel and if you stopped for a mid track break they would be as loud as a wailing banshee when you dropped back in.

Setup Guide: I'll be sounding like I have a bee in my bonnet, but DH bikes arguably go the fastest of any bike, and so being set up correctly on them is a priority. While the Sender didn't actually need that much tinkering to find a good setup, it's still up to the customer to figure it out. The resulting bike feel, be that good or bad, reflects not only on the bike itself but the brand too.

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Pinkbike's Take

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Posted In:
Reviews and Tech Reviews DH Bikes Canyon Canyon Sender DH Bike Week