This bike in my opinion looks great. Looks burly enough to rip all mountain, but at the same time nimble enough to race some xc races here and there. Spec on that bike is truly sweet. Great looking bike all around.
The TT looks a little too much like the new Transitions bike. The down tube looks like it's from an older IH 6 Point, and the rear triangle looks like it doesn't belong to the front. It looks like the angles aren't harmonious together. Maybe if the seat stay had a slight bend in it or something to hook up with the bend on the TT it would add some sexy but right now I'm not feeling it.
It is a bad pic. I'll take some better ones. The tubes don't look like either of the bikes you just mentioned in person. Both tubes are hydroformed and the DT is custom butted for us and has a full length external rib and gusset to it along the bottom. We are going to be adding bends to the uprights in the rear triangle behind the seat tube (actually needed for more front derailleur clearance). On the medium and small frames the rear triangle flows real smoothly with the top tube. this is the large frame here (and the pics of the Genken). I want to paint one of the frames too and see if it adds anything to it.
For me is a 9 out of 10 just because I am not so keen on gusseted headsets. As for the rear piece, this leverage ratio seems to be more friendly with manualing or even if you want to stand on the rear wheel for more momentum when bunny-hopping. I think I can break this bike though.
It just seems off. One big thing is that it's not very flowy (I'm sure thats greatly assisted by the mud flap and bottle cage). Another thing is that rocker just looks bizarre and doesn't really match the rest of the bike. I am by know means an engineer, so I can only give you a customers perceptive based on looks and general designs I see else where. BTW is the rear shock floating on the linkage, if so very cool.
Thanks! It is feedback like that we need! and yes, the shock is full floating. it is our own panted pending suspension system. That is the large frame also, the smaller frames fit together a bit more "flowy" looking. The bottle cage is higher in the frame mostly to make it easier to grab the bottle or make sure the cables are short (for a bottle mounted battery light) and I personally think the DHX looks tiny in the frame compared to the Elka in my personal bike (though there at least 3/4 a lb difference)
the bottle cage is really for a bottle cage battery or mount for such a thing for endurance events where you'll need a light kit or for your bottle of energy drink so you don't need to but the drink mix in your bladder pack and thrash it. The lower bottle cage mounts that are holding the crud guard on it are dual fold, crud guard mount or bottle cage mount. We are still playing with where and what to put on the bike but we will have at least one cage mount inside the frame, we'll most likely move the lower bolts up on the tube in turn moving the crud catcher closer to the front. This set up here works great though, it has been tested in the awesome Oregon mud we have and we got no splatter back up in our faces.
I could not agree more with crazy-canuck. If I come to think of it, he is damm right. For my money, best bit in it is the rear piece, but I am just missing some sort of hydroformed tubing in the TT and there is something wrong with that hump too. I like cobra headsets (they do the job in the trails and look ever so cool on a bike), but that one reminds me a little bit to the V-10 (Peaty's rig) and I am not all too sure whether I do like it. That's a really nice bike in there.