Spotted: Privateer Bikes Prototype Downhill Bike

Privateer Bikes has been slowly growing their lineup, intentionally adding models as they see fit. In addition to their 141 and 161 trail/enduro bikes, they appear to be working on a full-fledged downhill bike, as seen over the weekend at Fort William. The Fox 40 fork is a pretty easy tell-tale sign, but there's more at play than simply more fork travel.

This particular bike was being piloted by Joe Connell, the 2024 Scottish Downhill Champion in the Masters category and a Privateer-supported rider. He mentioned that the bike was built around the frame components of a 161, albeit with a modified rocker link.



We reached out to Andrew Sykes, Senior Marketing Manager at The Rider Firm (Privateer's parent company), to get more information on the project.

Hey Andi, would you like to tell us a little bit about this bike that Joe is riding right now?

Yeah, talk of a DH bike started as we were gearing up for the launch of the Gen 2 range. I had previously managed a downhill team, and Joe Connell was keen to get back on a DH bike and as the Gen 2 161 is dual crown ready and can be easily overstroked to 174mm of rear wheel travel, we decided to see how far we could take things with a custom link.

Nice, we see this a lot with other Enduro bikes now to make it a sort of park bike, right?

Exactly! The production Gen 2 161 can be fitted with a dual crown fork and by removing a spacer from the stock rear shock, riders can get 174mm out of the back making it a perfect park, UK downhill bike.

OK, nice. But how did you get from there to the bike Joe has?

Dan Hicks, the engineer behind Gen 2 and our A-L-P Suspension, and I started chatting about a custom link and we decided to kick off a bit of a skunkworks project. Initially, we kept it all under wraps to see if it would even be possible. It didn't take Dan too long to design a link that gives the Gen 2 161 200mm or rear wheel travel from the stock shock. It's very much a V1, and there is more work needed, but as we saw a few weeks ago with Joe taking the Masters Scottish Title and achieving a time that would have had him place 3rd in Elite, we're not far off already.

So this is a standard 161 frame still though, right?

This is actually a pre-production Gen 2 frame; you likely saw these last year being raced ahead of launch. Joe actually won Ard Rock on his. The only reason Joe is on a pre-production frame is that we don't have the correct size production frame for him just yet, he rides a P2 for his enduro bike but for the DH Joe prefers a P3. In terms of geometry and the rear end, adjustment, etc., this is the same as a production frame. However, the production front triangle is even better suited to the DH project as it offers more space for the rear shock, and the production frame is even stronger.

Does that mean you're going to do something more to the link?

This is certainly something you're going to see more of. Dan has already put together a proposal for a V2 linkage with Joe's help and feedback, and we're hoping to get this produced in the next few weeks and begin testing. The current plan is to really push the limits of Gen 2 and see what's possible. We know many Privateer Bikes customers build their bikes up with dual crown forks, which is why Gen 2 is rated for dual crown use, but we're just testing the waters around Downhill.

So right now, it's just a test mule, really?

At the moment yes, but you never know what might happen. I think it would be amazing if Privateer was to develop a specific DH bike, but at the moment there are no plans for this. This is just a fun project that we're all really stoked to work on, it also gives us a really good development platform for testing upcoming HUNT products too.

Nice, so we should watch this space then. Thanks for your time, Andi.

Yup, watch this space! There is more to come. No problem!