Bike Check: Jesse Melamed's Rocky Mountain Instinct - EWS Petzen-Jamnica 2018
It was a bit of a rough start to the season for Rocky Mountain's Jesse Melamed, with a broken collarbone on the second stage of the French Enduro World Series event that saw the Whistler, BC, local sitting on the sidelines with teammate Andréane Lanthier-Nadeau whose been working her way back from a wrist injury.
Melamed has surely been eyeing up a repeat performance at the upcoming EWS in Whistler, and his Instinct has been set up for France with maximum traction and forgiveness in mind to ease the Canadian's return to race speed.
While he used to race aboard a small-sized bike, Melamed is now on a medium Instinct with a 35mm stem.
Jesse used to compete on a small-sized Instinct when he was on the previous iteration of the bike, but he's moved up to a medium for new Instinct, along with a short, 35mm stem. So, a longer reach and wheelbase, of course, but the short stem helps to keep his center of gravity far enough behind the front axle for it to make sense. Standard stuff these days, really.
Melamed describes his Instinct's set up as ''safety first,'' which includes a 170mm-travel fork, DH casing rubber, and a coil-sprung shock.
''My bike this weekend is set up to return from injury, so safety first,'' he told PB photographer Matt DeLorme. ''So I've got a 170mm fork on this week, a coil shock, which I don't normally have, and a Shorty up front. Everything for traction and comfort, basically.'' He has the new Grip2 damper in the fork, along with 76 PSI in the air chamber, and his Fox X2 shock has been fitted with a 400 in/lb spring.
Things are still a bit up in the air when it comes to tires, though: ''I swapped to a Shorty halfway down the last stage and was pretty happy with it... Depending on what the weather does.'' Both the front and rear tires are proper DH casing models, and he can run 19 PSI up front and 21 PSI in the rear tire.
The new XTR is rarer than Drake's secret child, but Jesse has one. An XTR group that is.
We've had some pretty bare bones bike checks as of late due to some racers not being all that informed when it comes to their own setup, but Melamed takes the opposite approach to his job, an attitude that likely aids his development work on Shimano's new XTR drivetrain. ''I was at a test session in December in California for Shimano, and it kinda blew my mind back then,'' he said of the group's performance. ''And getting back on it was super nice. It's crazy; I guess four years of development, and you really feel it.'' He's the only Rocky Mountain racer on the XTR 9100, too.
XTR 9100 for the brakes (with 203mm rotors) and cranks, along with some mud-proofing foam in spots to keep wet dirt from sticking around.
Jesse has used Shimano's Di2 group for much of his racing and riding, though, citing the electronic group's consistency over a race weekend, and especially when conditions are mucky and wet, but he hasn't had any issues moving back to a cable-operated drivetrain: ''I love Di2. The shifting on that is super smooth, super accurate, and the same over a whole day, especially in the wet. I really liked the shifter feel and thought it was really good, but this stuff [the new XTR] shifts very well, and I have no problem adjusting to it.''
But what about when things go south? ''I mean, if something happens, something happens. I don't think it matters if it's Di2 or mechanical,'' he replied when asked if one group has been more reliable than the other. ''The last couple of years on the team that I've been on Di2, and I've been the only one, we'd give each other shit when something happened to mechanical or to Di2, but the instances when something happened, which were rare, were kinda... Basically, none of us had a race-ending mechanical,'' he went on to explain.
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This is also my only (valid) complaint about the current XT. Scratch protection is just plain bad. its like they haven't even tried.
BTW the SLX cranks wear out just as fast
Off course they are not the only ones whose expensive cranks look like crap after a dozen of rides. Pretty much all Carbon cranks look like sht after not that long time. Scraped plastic looks and you pay sht loads. To top that it shits on the supposed super performance vibe surrounding the material.
With the instinct BC, you use 8.5x2.5 (I think..) in position1 to get 155mm travel paired with a 160mm fork and 35% sag to keep the BB height nice.
So a regular instinct can be 'BCed' if you swap the shock out, extend the fork and keep it in it's slackest provided you understand that you can't use the other positions.
** I don't work for rocky, just my understanding
What shock do you run on the instinct in 140 mode and do you keep your fork at 160?
Good luck this weekend!
PS. Tell Pete that pushbroom makes him look like a kidtoucher
B. If the slayer is a 'Slug' then i'd hate to see your @Golden-G reaction to the rest of the 27.5 170mm enduro bikes from other brands. The slayer gets up and goes quicker than a lot of shorter travel bikes. The slayer has different geometry and feel on the trail. I ride an Altitude, have ridden an instinct BC and a slayer. The altitude fits me better and i'm not much taller then Jesse. I'd assume the same. If I were just lapping the park it'd be slayer all day everyday. The Altitude is remarkably capable - more than i'd ever need. I've ridden every trail in whistler bikepark along with majority of sqaum and whistler valley on my previous 160mm bike (Intense tracer) and the altitude is so much more capable its not funny, but pedals much better and carries speed along the flats easier as well. The way the sizing runs the altitude puts me in a better position for long days - though I must say that I haven't spent 8hrs on a slayer before. If I were just racing, the instinct BC would get the nod. That thing is lightning quick.
Grip levels should not really vary between the sizes though. I'm a fan of 29ers. I am not a fan of the misconceptions surrounding wheelsizes...
The amount of tyre in contact with the floor relates to tyre pressure vs load carried. (And in a very small way, tyre carcass stiffness, but this has such a tiny effect it can be essentially ignored.
a simple example is:
If you weigh 100lbs, and have a unicycle with the tyre inflated to 100 psi (pounds per square inch), you will need 1 square inch of tyre in contact with the floor to support your 100lb weight.
Changing the shape of the wheel will affect the shape of the contact patch, but not the area of it. At 100 psi you will need 1 square inch in contact with the ground to support 100lbs. This can not vary.
Please!? i'll buy 3, promise.
My Orbea Rallon climbs better with the coil shock. Coil feels firmer but still offers more grip if I climb anything technical
Custom water bottle by Pop's again?
Good luck and good health this weekend to all the RM crew!
Here's a close up of that area on the Altitude, I assume they've carried this design aspect across.
p.vitalmtb.com/photos/users/45008/photos/116952/s1200_Untitled_1.jpg
What type of Race Face are those wheels? And what hubs and rim internal width? Thanks
I'm partial to gnus.
You have the Thunderbolt - Altitude - Slayer, 130/130mm, 140/140, 160/150, 170/165 for small wheels.
And Element - Pipeline - Instinct, 100/100, 120/100, 140/140 (27.5+ and 29), 140/140, 160/155 for the big wheelers.
And of course the outliers like the Maiden, Blizzard and Vertex.
That means customers can get exactly the kind of bike they want/need from RMB.
I prefer this over the xc - short 29 - long 27.5 model.