Can you XC-ify an All-Mountain Bike? A Ripmo AF Case Study

When I got a Ripley AF, my first full suspension bike, I was somewhat let down by it's rear suspension performance. Not that it was bad by any stretch, it was active when it needed to be, pedaled extremely well and, on mellow terrain, performed flawlessly. However, as speeds picked up, or you were required to get your wheels off the ground, I found that I would blow through the available rear travel far too aggressively. No big surprise, it’s only 120mm of rear travel.

Sure, with a .8 volume reducer and 18%-20% sag, it was perfectly content smashing along at high speeds, but when speeds drop back down, it’s far too stiff. It was my first experience with the compromise inherent in all the full suspension platforms, and it was the equivalent of opening Pandora’s Box for me. So I had to ask, how much of a penalty is just a little bit more travel and how do the geo changes that come with that travel effect handling?

Before I get into talking about the Ripmo AF, know that I probably ride XC track 75% of the time. Steep, punchy, undulating terrain. The remaining time is spent in the mountains, either pedaling big days or shuttling a couple laps, if I'm not going to a lift access park.

The Ripmo AF that I brought home was an SLX build which I immediately put a factory 38 on. My intention was always to keep my Ripley AF as the trail bike for my local XC rides while using the Ripmo on weekend trips to the mountains, but I kept reaching for the Ripmo. It just unlocked features and lines that I would have passed up on the Ripley. It was stiffer, more confident and more capable of handling whatever the trail network could throw at it. So after a few months of ignoring my Ripley AF, I sold it and spent the remainder of the 2023 season exclusively on the Ripmo AF.

The change to riding the Ripmo AF full time reprioritized my riding in a fairly dramatic way. Where I would typically hammer my XC loop like it was a 3 hour time trial, I found myself less motivated to pedal hard, and instead I spent more time looking for features or “gnarly” lines to send (my local trails don’t exactly afford many opportunities for genuine gnar, but there are a few lines here and there that can get the blood pumping). I spent more time jumping, I got sick of riding my local trails and wanted to spend more time in the mountains. But, I did still ride locally of course, I just found that my rides dropped from an average of 33km on the Ripley AF to an average of 20km on the Ripmo. After a few months of this I was somewhat regretting the sale of the Ripley, while I was happy to be growing in other facets of the sport, I also felt like I was losing a part of myself.

So I decided to create two distinct setups on the Ripmo; one for weekends in the mountains, and one to push the Ripmo AF as far towards the XC side of the spectrum as I sensibly could.

Bone stock, I had a lot of good things to say about the Ripmo AF as a descender. On black, moderately fast, technical descents, the bike excels. It corners about as well as a bike has a right too (at moderate speeds) and it damn near lets you get away with murder, I had zero fear about missing a line or even coming up short. However, every time the speed creeps up and the terrain gets bigger or jumps get involved, it has the same issue as the Ripley; it blows through rear travel much too easily, resulting in super harsh bottom-outs.
After testing a bunch a volume reducer configurations in the shock, I broke down and installed the cascade link and my problems were solved… well at least when descending.

The problem With the link installed, I set up the DVO Topaz T3 with 2 positive volume spacers, and zero negative spacers. While this is all well and good for descending, for XC riding, running zero negative volume reducers causes a noticeable penalty to pedaling efficiency.

Fortunately the T3 has a 3 position lever, so, for XC rides, I just throw the shock into it’s medium setting. Yes, this is more stress on the Damper, but for larger local features or chunkier runs you can always open it up. For the rest of the ride, it really helps the bike feel like it has less travel than it does, along with the efficiency you’d hope to gain from that. It’s allowed me to alternate between XC and park with zero faff, while providing sufficiently appropriate suspension feel. It’s not perfect, but it’s simple and it works.

That's not the only change though. One of my biggest complaints about the Ripmo AF is it’s weight, the best way to drop some of that is to swap the Assegai/DHF DD combo with a Forekaster/Rekon EXO set up. Running these on the Send 35’s is a bit silly, I’d much prefer a narrowed ID for XC application, but the wheels are reasonably light and I haven’t found them as bombproof as others have in DH applications, which has relegated their use to more trail focused riding.

Next, after extensively testing 35, 40, 45, 50, and 60mm stems, I settled on running a 40mm stem (instead of the stock 50 which I run when I’m out of town) with 7.5mm less stack. This combination helps to offset the longer and slacker front end by speeding up handling, while the lower stack helps to maintains weight over the front wheel. It’s still obviously a compromise, but with a more compact cockpit and faster handling front end I was better able to conserve my energy, not working so hard to put the bike where I wanted it or carve around switchbacks on my tight local single track.


That’s it, three simple changes. After these changes I still have to say, that if you mostly ride XC, the Ripmo AF ain’t it. No amount of changes can drop the weight enough, or change the geo, or tighten up the suspension enough, to make it worth while for me.

If you’re absolutely not into pushing for PRs or hammering XC single track, then it probably doesn’t matter to you, and this bike may indeed work a treat. But when it comes to my trails and my riding preferences, it’s too much bike and in spite of the changes, it still doesn’t inspire me to ride the way I want to.

As an all mountain bike on the other hand? Well, It’s perfect… well, as long as you’re running the cascade link that is (WAO convergence rims don’t hurt either). Who would have guessed that it would excel at the thing it was designed for?

So now I’m back to a 2 bike garage, and while I wasn’t able to make the Ripmo AF work as a one bike solution, I’m extremely happy that I spent the time messing around to see how far I can push a Ripmo towards XC bike territory.

I know some people have short stoked their Ripmo AF’s, dropping the travel to 130 something, but with the frame weight and geo, I’d rather just be on a different bike, plus I was able to make all the changes here for the cost of a set of tires, quite a bit less than investing in a second shock which I would then have to regularly swap out between mountain and in-town riding.

In the end, the changes I made did let me stay out a little longer and push a little harder. Even if it wasn’t perfect it was a big improvement for a minimal investment, so if you’re looking to make some changes, I do feel these are a good place to start. The experiments also gave me a lot of insight into what I’m actually looking for in a trail bike and ultimately helped direct me towards my new bike, a YT Izzo, which I’ll be putting out a short term review on in the coming weeks on my youtube channel.

I know I’m not doing anything ground breaking here, but take from it what you will, hopefully it can help some folks make a bit more of an informed decision on what bike, or bikes, to get if they similarly have access to mountain terrain and excellent XC trails in their backyard.

Cheers[PV=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1OYpP5p5VA]