For this episode of All About Bikes, CEO and President of Pivot Cycles, Chris Cocalis, and Professional Pivot rider Taylor Lideen, walk you through the all-new Mach 4 SL. They touch on all the updates, tech specs, and features of this gravity-defying cross country rocket ship.
For this episode of All About Bikes, CEO and President of Pivot Cycles, Chris Cocalis, and Professional Pivot rider Taylor Lideen, walk you through the all-new Mach 4 SL. They touch on all the updates, tech specs, and features of this gravity-defying cross country rocket ship.
Welcome back to all about bikes presented by Pivot Cycles. In this episode, Chris Cocalis and the professional Pivot rider Taylor Lideen walk you through the all new Mach 4 SL. They touch on all the updates, tech specs and features of this gravity defying cross country rocketship. This is a previously recorded episode from when we launched this bike in May 2019. We wanted to upload this episode for all our new listeners on this podcast. The Mach 4 SL is designed to let the World Cup level athletes capitalize on every inch of the increasingly technical courses and generate speed where others hesitate. So let's jump in and learn about the newest version of the Mach 4 SL.
Chris Cocalis:I'm Chris Cocalis with Pivot Cycles and this is Taylor Lideen. Taylor has been racing for us for at least five years.
Taylor Lideen:Since 2013. Yeah.
Chris Cocalis:Yeah. And Taylor's been an enduro racer for us and now, ultra marathoner I guess if you put it.
Taylor Lideen:Yeah.
Chris Cocalis:Taylor holds the 24 hour record of 24 hours Old Pueblo. Most laps in 24 hours. How many laps did you do?
Taylor Lideen:20 laps.
Chris Cocalis:20 laps.
Taylor Lideen:Yeah. Yeah.
Chris Cocalis:What a 17 mile race course?
Taylor Lideen:Yeah.
Chris Cocalis:So that's pretty good.
Taylor Lideen:It was good. Yeah, it was fun.
Chris Cocalis:Got to ride with him on his last final lap.
Taylor Lideen:Saw the struggle.
Chris Cocalis:Yeah, I was still feeling it too, though. I think you still got me on the last climb. And then 24 hour worlds last year, that was your first ever 24 hour worlds? How did you do in that?
Taylor Lideen:Yeah, first year in elite. I was fortunate enough to get second there.
Chris Cocalis:Awesome. Training for this year's worlds?
Taylor Lideen:Yeah.
Chris Cocalis:So Taylor has probably put more miles on the existing 429 SL than just about anybody on the planet. And he's been able to almost from the very beginning, we've had you on the aluminum prototypes of the Mach 4 SL and then onto the carbon. And you've tested everything from a manual shock, where you flipped the lever on your own, a handlebar mounted lockout, and then some development on the LIVE system as well.
Taylor Lideen:Right on to the live, yeah. Blown away with how good the LIVE is. The thing I noticed right away was, I think we're talking today, is like waterbar decents, instead of really kind of, like, focusing on locking it out when you're climbing and then opening it back up. Just does the work for you.
Chris Cocalis:So yeah, the Mach 4 SL was really designed from the get go to have LIVE integration. And we've got basically three levels of builds on, we have a race build our pro build, and our team builds. Then we actually have a World Cup build as well. The race build comes with a shock where the levers up and you can reach down and manually change from the settings. The standard pro and some of the team and World Cup builds all have handlebar mounted lockout, which works really well. We did a lot of development on the testing of that.
Taylor Lideen:Did a lot of testing on that. And I enjoyed that. But I think there's something for everybody at that point. When you go on the LIVE, it just kind of eliminates that guesswork of making adjustments on the fly.
Chris Cocalis:So it's nice to be able to have that firm lockout at times. But knowing when to switch it back and forth, there's a lot of missed opportunities because you might,"oh, it's not, it's just not worth it on that short climb to pop it in the firm."
Taylor Lideen:Exactly.
Chris Cocalis:Or to open it up. And the cool thing about the LIVE is, if you're just you're riding a World Cup XC bike.
Taylor Lideen:When it needs to be World Cup XC bike, but when it needs to go downhill quick, it opens up and it feels just like that.
Chris Cocalis:Yeah. Or even if you just hit something when you're going uphill quick that you need it to open up for as well.
Taylor Lideen:It is truly amazing. It really is.
Chris Cocalis:Yeah, so obviously there's different price levels to all this but when you get to the LIVE stuff. This is one area where the price is definitely worth the performance, especially for an endurance racer an XC World Cup racer, even a recreational cyclists that just wants the widest range of use because it does depending on there's five settings and most of us are running it right in the middle at number three. And that gives you this ultra like firm setting like you've got the shock locked out and then.
Taylor Lideen:Just the tunability on the fly. The five settings depending on the course you're either riding, free riding, or racing, you can just make those adjustments prior to the race or if you're just going there to ride set it and forget it. Super reliable. I just have loved it so far.
Chris Cocalis:So by the time this video is seen and we launched this bike, you'll have raced this in the Grand Junction off road where we're launching the bike.
Taylor Lideen:Yep.
Chris Cocalis:And putting some real miles on it and then you'll be taking the LIVE version to 24 hour worlds.
Taylor Lideen:To Brazil, yeah. And I think to launch this thing at an event like Grand Junction with a course like that, that has everything, kind of mimic South Mountain a little bit, you're really going to put the Fox LIVE to the test and people that are already on Fox LIVE are really going to realize the capabilities of it.
Chris Cocalis:Yeah, so but we have everything some we have something for everybody. So the manual lockout works great, it's about half pound lighter. This gives you everything you would ever want in descending and pedaling performance. And then if you're a little bit more on budget, then the manually operated race kit gets you into World Cup level platform at a slightly more budget friendly price.
Taylor Lideen:Absolutely.
Chris Cocalis:So what else do you like about the bike?
Taylor Lideen:Oh, the thing that I noticed right away was the steeper seat tube angle. Just jumping on the pedaling efficiency obviously with dw link, that paired with Fox LIVE. Climbing it is just unreal. It doesn't take away the the descending capabilities, climbing it's like a rocket ship just going uphill.
Chris Cocalis:So we touched on a couple of things there the seat angle. Seat angle is 74 degrees on this bike is quite a bit steeper than what some of our other cross country bikes. Of course, once you set into sag it's in a just a perfect position for XC racing. Just the geometry in general on the bike, reaches are longer. They're actually reach numbers are identical to the Trail 429. And then compared to the 429 SL, chainstays are quite a bit shorter on the bike.
Taylor Lideen:So that snappy feel.
Chris Cocalis:The snappy feel it tucks it all in, but at the same time, because we've lengthened the front end more with the longer reach. This helps keep the wheelbase in check. So you've got a bike that definitely still has that cross country quickness, but it really pays dividends on the descents. The 429 SL was great descende. But it achieved it through with a steeper head angle, a slacker seat angle and a much longer chainstay. So this is really a lot of ways a very, very different different bike and then also 68.5 degree head angle.
Taylor Lideen:That's something I think people are gonna notice right away too. As if the old one didn't go downhill quick enough, this one just goes faster. That paired with the seat tube angle. This you notice a 68.5 degree head angle right away.
Chris Cocalis:Yeah. And we played around with different head angles. And I know that it's considered kind of new school cross country. But really, it's a number where even if it's tight Racecourse and stuff, that's nothing that's going to hold you back, there's not a corner that you're not going to be able to get into because the head angle is too slack. It handles everything very well.
Taylor Lideen:Absolutely.
Chris Cocalis:Yeah, the weight of the bike to.
Taylor Lideen:Incredibly light, you notice that right when you pick it up. And with all the builds that are available, you can get this thing down to just featherweights. What do you say you can get it down to?
Chris Cocalis:The World Cup build is just under 21 pounds. That's the XTR World Cup build. So that comes without the dropper and a couple lighter parts on it. But that's basically the same as the rest of the builds. It's just all the extras have been slimmed out of it, the manual lockout on the shock, we also have it in the World Cup build in a live version, if somebody wants it. But if they want the lightest bike possible, they can build something at or below 21 pounds. And there's even things on that bike where we just didn't go crazy. And if somebody's super weight weenie they can go to town.
Taylor Lideen:Yeah you can get wild with it.
Chris Cocalis:Yeah, hollow water bottle bolts or whatever you want to run on the bike, but there's definitely additional weight that can be shaved out of that.
Taylor Lideen:So Chris, speaking of weight on the Mach 4 SL, how did you get it so featherlight?
Chris Cocalis:Well, it's a big project from the very beginning. You know, you've been on pretty much every generation of the 429 SL. And with that bike, it's got pretty monstrous tubes right on par with some of our bigger trail bikes. So as we move through generation of generation of that bike, a lot of the weight savings came from higher modulus materials, basically more expensive materials. And certainly we brought all that forward into the Mach 4 SL. But the other thing we did was really optimized study on the cross sections of the tubes. Bigger tubes mean more carbon. So at some point, doesn't really matter what kind of carbon you put in it, there's only so much weight you can take out of the bike. And also high modulus materials tend to be stiffer. So we put too much of that in there. And you start to lose feel from the frame. But with this we wanted to get that balance. We have stiffness numbers for the front end of the bike. For the back of the bike for the bottom bracket that we want to achieve with the Mach 4 SL, and with the high mod materials, the different diameter tubes on this. And just the whole structure with the frame design the double uprights, a little bit higher chainstays on the bike, because we're no longer having to clear front derailleur. There's a lot of things going on on the design that allowed us to really optimize the way, even the bearing pockets here which are usually in a molded aluminum part are now full carbon. So there's, other than little thread inserts for waterbottle. bolts, there's almost no aluminum on this frame, it's actually pretty amazing. And we were able to get the frame weight down below five pounds of small frames, 4.9 pounds with a shock. It's three quarters of a pound lighter than the 429 SL, that's over 300 grams. Pretty big weight savings.
Taylor Lideen:Big difference just in the frame. Yeah. The one thing I think people are gonna be curious about is the orientation of the shock.
Chris Cocalis:Yes, it's quite a departure. In some ways it's a departure. In some ways, it's not. For those more familiar with our longer travel gravity bikes, when we launched the original Phoenix it had the shock and that orientation, and then also the original Firebird.
Taylor Lideen:Yep.
Chris Cocalis:Which I know your dad is still running and a big fan of. With his hammerschmidt. Had to throw that in there. So yeah, this, this was really also driven by both weight and packaging of the bikes. So we're looking at a bike now where we want to optimize everything. And when we have shock tabs on the top tube, it's somewhat determined stand over height and how compact we can make the frame because obviously on a cross country bike, water bottle clearance is a huge deal. And, you know, with this bike too, there's been a trend towards smaller and smaller riders wanting to be on a 29er. And so if we were going to build a small 29er, we wanted to check all the boxes and make sure it could fit the same LIVE system, the box, full size waterbottle, you can see that frame over there, it was really, Chloe Woodruff, you know helped us develop that and you were with her for the last couple of days, shooting the video for the launch of this bike.
Taylor Lideen:Even looking at her bike with the the LIVE battery, but she can run a full size water bottle on there, not have to even think about it or worry about it.
Chris Cocalis:And then the extra large bike behind you there can run two water bottles. So not only does it take pieces, molded parts off the top tube, and really shrink everything down. It's literally the same linkage oriented in a different way. So the rates, nothing changes. It's not so different from the previous Mach 429 SL and the general suspension action and the way the DW link works, but everything's just been packaged tighter, down lower on the frame. Everything just handles better and makes things more compact and lighter. So that allows us to fit all of that stuff.
Taylor Lideen:So riders are still going to get the benefit and pedal efficiency of the DW link right away?
Chris Cocalis:Absolutely. So whether you're running LIVE or the race level with the rocker mounted lockout, or the handlebar lockout, actually having to reach down and or hit the lockout because it's a dw link, it's still pedals super efficiently and you don't need it. But when you get to stuff like the LIVE and or you're on a World Cup course, or a long, long ascent, where you're on a smooth road or something, having that versatility at the top levels of racing is a big deal. Still first and foremost, whether the system is turned on whether your shocks or open it's got a pedal like a Pivot and have the performance of the DW link.
Taylor Lideen:Absolutely.
Chris Cocalis:So this continues also to have that same, Pivot's kind of iteration is, we like to have a fully active braking feel out of the bike that so that you can charge harder into braking bumps and corners and still have the back end of bike hooked up. Basically in that those areas you shouldn't notice a big difference or really any difference between the good things about the previous generation and the 429 SL. And then things like the bottom bracket stiffness and the rear triangle stiffness even though the tubes are smaller. This bike is stiffer. Yeah. I noticed that, especially not just stiffness but acceleration with the shorter chain stays out of corners. Too much stiffness, it's not a good thing and things can shatter and stuff but yeah, the right amount of stiffness and driving it in the key areas where your power gets down but you still have a good feel out of the bike and the proper amount and chassis flex. Those are things that we spent a lot of time on on this bike.
Taylor Lideen:Yeah, you can tell right when you ride it.
Chris Cocalis:It's uh, yeah, it's it's meant to be really the Next Generation of Pivot.
Taylor Lideen:That's exciting. It's super exciting. Alright Chris so with the spectrum of sizes we have here obviously the tubes look a little bit different on every size that we have here, tell us a little bit more about that.
Chris Cocalis:So when you look at the large or medium frames, you'll see the shapes and sizes we have here and then the extra large over there has bigger diameter tubes and of course the extra small frame is really like thin top tube, everything's just shrunken down a little bit more and when we were talking about tuning the bike for the rider, that goes further to the size of the rider and the length of the reach on the bike so there is such thing as too stiff a bike so when we have to build a bike that's balanced and when if we use the same size tubes and the same lay-up on the extra small bike as we did on do on the extra large you'd have one bike in the middle that probably rode well and then the opposite ends of the spectrum the tall big guys just wouldn't get the power down the way they need to and extra small rider would be getting beat up. So not only size specific layups but also size specific tubing as well. And we're really covering a wide spectrum of riders so that you can get down four foot ten on extra small and that in most of the places on the top tube, that bike has a lower stand over clearance than our 27.5 Mach 4. And then on the other end of the spectrum, six foot seven or taller because of the longer reaches, there's really a wide range of riders that it can fit. Seat tubes are all a little bit shorter as well and they're very straight so dropper posts are not a problem in fact if it's a little odd an XC but you're seeing more and more of it if people running even longer and longer droppers on XC so if you're a tall guy, and you want to put a 170 millimeter dropper in there or longer, yeah, go for it, it's going to fit in.
Taylor Lideen:When I was riding with Chloe over the weekend, I noticed she had a 32mm fork on her bike and I was running a 34mm. Tell us how you can run different forks on this bike.
Chris Cocalis:Yeah, so the bike is designed for a 100 to 120 millimeter travel fork and the World Cup builds in our stock builds come with the 100 millimeter travel fork. That's one of the areas where we're, we're taking weight out of the out of the bike. The new 32 millimeter fork, 2020 fork has a beefier crown, so it's closer in stiffness, but it's still only at 100 millimeters. So if you again pure cross country racer want to take every gram out of that bike, that forks the ticket. But for everybody else, yourself included that likes that's pushing a little bit harder and doing longer events or using your bike for everything from cross country to light trail bike use. The 34 definitely kind of ups the performance level a little bit bigger stanchions, minor weight gain, but as as you know you've run both forks.
Taylor Lideen:Yeah, the fun factors there on the 34, the fast factors there in the 32. There's really a spectrum for everything there.
Chris Cocalis:Yeah, you seem to go pretty fast on 34 as well it doesn't seem to be a problem for you.
Taylor Lideen:It's a good setup with the 34, I personally like it that way.
Chris Cocalis:Yeah. And that's why we spec'd it across a wider range of bikes because it really does work best for a wider range of riders. But then we have the 32 as well for those who want that.
Taylor Lideen:So Chris, when I was building this bike and spec'ing out cranks and wheelsets for it, I was sure it was gonna be super boost. It's obviously not, tell us more.
Chris Cocalis:Yeah it's obviously not. So a lot of people ask you why, why don't we have super boost? Or why are we using super boost on certain things. And we really reserve super boost where we're trying to get maximum tire clearance and a short chainstay package and the combination of longer travel. We're talking about cross country bikes. Although superboost can get to the lowest q factors, 168 is what most companies run, some of the new Shimano XTR cranks they actually offer a slightly lower q factor crank and there's racers that like the lower q factor, and obviously a little bit wider spindle or a little bit wider q factor a little bit wider axle. All of those things add a little bit of extra weight. And so there's a balance again, where if we're trying to build the best enduro bike or park bike, whatever the case may be on those longer travel products, or fit plus tires, which this is not designed to fit plus tires, it's really optimized for 29er Cross Country tires up to about 2.35 to 2.4 at the max. We don't, we don't need to go wider and bigger everywhere. We've got lots of tire clearance, we fit everything in that tight package and we're able to achieve the stiffness goals that we want. So for those who love it, sorry no super boost on those this bike, but it does make it a little easier for the cross country racer to tune in their parts spec and get everything that they need for this bike.
Taylor Lideen:Yeah, good.
Chris Cocalis:Awesome. Well, Taylor, thanks.
Taylor Lideen:Thank you for having me. Super excited to get on the trails with this thing.
Chris Cocalis:Yeah, it was fun to ride with you this morning as well. And yeah, I look forward to seeing you kick ass all year long on this bike.
Taylor Lideen:Thanks, Chris.