Being an amateur
racer I don't get to upgrade my bikes as often as I'd like. I usually replace
the drivetrain and brakes before forking out for a new bike and my last XC race
bike fell into this scenario. It usually works out that I get 2 years out of my
bike before moving it on and setting up a new one.
The decision to
upgrade this year was made easy as Scott Sports have made some huge
developments on the Scale. The entire range has been reworked but I will talk
about the Scale 900 here today. I'll do a review on the Foil in coming months. The shipment arrived at HQ and OnyaBIKE Canberra provided a seamless process to get me rolling on the new machine
Its safe to say that
Scott Sports HQ in Switzerland have spent many hours at the drawing board and
on the trail during the development of the Scale. Scott have stayed up to date
with recent 29er trends in a slightly slacker head angle and shorter chain-stays.
However Scott have taken this further by limiting the top tier frames to be 1x
specific. There are plenty of reviews online that go into geometry numbers, I'm
just going to talk about the ride.
On first ride and cruising down fast and rocky fire trails the bike glides effortlessly. Hitting technical rocky descents, provides plenty of, input on your contact points. Meaning you get plenty of feedback and feel most of the bumps, but thats what you expect from a hard tail.
I'm still finding the right setup for the Rockshox SID Solo Air forks. So far they are ok but I'm going to add a bottomless token and adjust from there. I'll give a follow up review once I've found the right setup.
If you're into
training hard, and delivering a solid performance on race day, the Scale 900 is
the tool for the job. This bike accelerates and is the epitome of efficiency in
an XC race bike! It honestly feels like you can enter a corner in a taller gear,
knowing that it will hop back up to speed with 2 or 3 stomps on the pedals. Out
of the saddle the Ritchey carbon bars are stiff, and the power delivery through
the Eagle carbon cranks is supreme.
The Scale
accelerates to high speed, then what…Well it has a slightly slacker head angle then the previous
model, this worried me when I saw it on paper. I like the handling to be sharp
and aggressive. I found that entering a corner takes a little more input but
once you hit mid corner the bike starts to perform. The new frame has a shorter stack (lower front end) so naturally your riding position is lowered. The rear
end seems to whip around tight corners, and I'm putting this down to shorter
chain stays. Then getting the power on exit comes efficiently and with minimal
flex.
Eagle Groupset, I
was sceptical to say the least, why would anyone put 32x50 gearing on a race
bike. To test it out I did some touring around steep fire roads around the
northern beaches of Sydney, and tackled some of my favourite hills at Stromlo
Forest Canberra, including part of an World Cup course. Amazingly I did
actually use 32x50 a few times. Even though I felt slower in places I posted
some PRs, illustrating to I may have been somewhat inefficient with the 36-36
granny gear that I had on my last bike. The gear changing experience is very
different to XTR Shimano. Changing into shorter gears is immediate and can be
done with a reasonable amount of load on the drivetrain. However changing into
taller gears is delayed in comparison and you have to be careful how much power
you are delivering at the same time as changing. I'm not looking forward to
replacing that finely machined cassette so I will be throwing on a new chain
every few months to keep the wear down.
After 500kms on the bike I'm really happy
with this new frame and drivetrain combination. Can't wait to race it this
weekend at the CORC 3HR Sparrow Hill.
Ride on.
Dave
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