Rurok Kanlaon Review (2019 model)
Pros and Cons
Pros:
Cons:
- Flip chip makes the bike more versatile
- Potentially infinite rear geo possibilities
- 27.5 or 29er
Cons:
- Geo felt off
- Stiff frame
- Fit and finish was good but not great
Who it's for:
- People who want versatility
- Riders who want to support a Pilipino company
- Riders who like a stiff, responsive frame
Who it's NOT for
- Riders who live in rocky terrain
- Riders looking for immaculate fit and finish
More thoughts on the 2019 Rurok Kanlaon Hardtail
today we're in beautiful sedona arizona reviewing the ruroc con leon
i gotta say i have loved the response from all of my filipino fans you guys are awesome i love how much pride you guys have in your country and in the ruroc frames as well this bike has taken a little bit longer to review than normal for a couple reasons number one it's so versatile between the slay and play setups it's taken me a while to run it in multiple configurations and get used to it i didn't want to just review it in one and then be done and two we went super budget build on this with the box prime 9 race face affect cranks the shimano mt400 brakes and to be honest we went a little too cheap and the brakes never felt great and i've had this on about five rides and the brakes are awful they're the worst brakes i've ever tried i clean the rotors i cleaned the pads i i scoured the pads i re-bled them nothing did it in fact i've still got them on the back and i can't skid i cannot make the back tire skid that's how bad they are rim brakes would be better than these so that's really been frustrating because i haven't been able to get this up to speed because i haven't been able to slow it down uh so thanks for your patience as i've been doing this so i've changed a few things i'm running a guide rsc or guide ultimate front brake i put 200 mil rotors on it i wanted to put a guide rear brake on but that means disconnecting this pulling it out of the frame re-threading a guide re-bleeding it and all that and i just am not interested in doing that it's enough of a pain that i'm just gonna leave the crappy mt-400 on there also you'll notice i've swapped out the rear wheel i am running the nuke proof horizon wheel stay tuned for a full review of this wheel but the spank wheel was stiffer than i wanted and this is a stiff frame i'm gonna tell you right now this frame rides stiff and with that stiff wheel it was beating me up way too much so i put this horizon wheel on that i'm very familiar with i know what it rides like on other bikes and it has softened the ride quality of this a little bit better and made it more tolerable for the rocks here in sedona all right we're gonna do a couple laps today lap one is in play mode we're running 29 by 2.3 in the rear 29 by 2.4 in the front i lowered the travel on the dvo diamond from 160 to 140 so now it's a 140 29er i feel like 160 was just too much for this the guys at ruroc said oh keep it at 160. it's a rowdy bike keep keep just ride it that way and it didn't feel right the c2 angle was too slack it just the front end was too high i just wanted to lift off everything it just felt weird it's much better at 140. so we're ready to rock and roll with that change we change the wheel change the brake and uh reduce the front travel and this thing's ready to review here we go lap one play mode on the pyramid trail in sedona
right off the bat you notice the cable noise and the chain slap you also notice the stiffness of this frame this is a stiff frame now if you're over 200 pounds i think you're going to appreciate a stiff frame a lot of bigger riders can make a soft frame flex and feel noodly under them especially in the bottom bracket area but if you're under 180 pounds this thing's gonna beat you up and ping-pong you around the box 9 has a nice crisp shifter feel unfortunately
the clutch isn't strong enough and you can hear it slapping the chain stay and i've missed a few shifts and even lost the chain under power due to that weak clutch so i cannot recommend the box prime93 for serious mountain bike use it's just a little too light duty this is chunky and even though i've got that softer newproof horizon version two wheel it's beating me up i'm feeling it in my wrists i'm unclipping in those bumps it just transfers a lot of vibration to the body and i realize most people will never ride a hard tail on crazy terrain like this but i also think that makes it the perfect place to test them to really see what they're capable of because every hardtail feels great on smooth buff trails they make two sizes of this bike a long and a short oh that climbs nice here comes a steep
switchback that was a little sloppy on that but we got it this is a long
it's got a 457 reach
yeah tackle those switchbacks nicely you feel that steep seat tube angle 77 degree seats of angle i like that
feels really good on the seated climbs and on the standing climbs the head angle feels a little steeper than the geo charts suggest
feels a little bit like a 67 degree head angle more than the 66 of the geotron oh that's so much better with a good front brake
yeah this bike climbs well i'm really impressed
it accelerates quick because it's stiff there's no flex in the frame when you put power down and it translates to forward motion really nice one thing that's surprising is how much vibration you feel in the bars even though i got a fork up there the frame still transfers vibrations up to your hands
it's a little bit hard to get in that manual spot on that back wheel even in play mode not quite as playful as some bikes
and here you can hear that cable rattle on the internal cables oh likes to jump though play mode is definitely more playful than slay mode it goes right where i point it i'm not fighting it two hard rim strikes there front and rear this is a brutal trail it does not feel as heavy as it is we had a heavy build with all these budget parts on it and it's been fun trying it out with these budget parts
that's a little unnerving because you don't have as much traction as you need with how stiff the screen is
yeah this is brutal talking a lot just beat me up and because of that stiffness i have less traction and less control
through this terrain it's a tough trail it's gotten harder since i really laughed a lot of two and three foot mandatory drops on it
i'm not a fan of these ons of tires they are pretty awful
had them wash out on me we just went a little too budget on every single component here but that's okay that's part of the experiment is how cheap can you go and still have a great experience
oh let's try that again i picked a bad line the stiffness is really coming into play on this trail
it's a bumpy trail but i'm bouncing across obstacles instead of tracking up them and so traction's really tough even with low tire pressure
had to dab
oh a lot of wrench strikes and they're hard rim strikes nothing's given back there
this bike has such a fun playful nature hidden inside that i need to unleash
but these black diamond trails aren't the place for it
man my confidence is low on this
the stiffness is really hurting my confidence it definitely feels better with a 140 fork than a 160.
let's see if we can get playful on this see if the bumps can stop long enough to have some fun
not quite as playful as a chameleon or a nimble nine or my middle child or even my banshee okay let's open her up
and that's stiff and that table rattle's
awesome you know i'm being harsh on this
because i want you guys to know what it's like compared to other bikes if i put a big asterisk on it like keep in mind this is the first hardtail ruroc has made with that in mind there are so many wins
at its price it doesn't quite stack up to the competition has a few little flaws that need to be ironed out
i'm trying not to just talk about the stiffness but it comes into play in almost every aspect of how this bike rides
that head angle is a degree steeper than i want but the seat angle is perfect
the chain stay length feels good
i totally understand why companies send blinged out top spec bikes for review because when this had bad brakes i was finding it hard to click with the bike and that's not fair oh that's fun that's not fair on the bike now we got it dialed
okay it wants to play that's a better manual yeah wants to play but you can't get going too quick because then you have to lay on the brakes and deal with what's in front of you and that's a little scary if you come to visit beautiful sedona don't throw your garbage in the bushes please we live here and nobody wants to see that so that was the ride in the play mode on the size long this has a 457 reach a 429 chainstay nice and short and a 66 degree head tube according to their geochart this bike definitely has a playful attitude in there it's like a little puppy dog that just wants to play all the time and it never really got the chance on this trail because it couldn't hold its own in the chunky stuff it was a little bit out of control and skittish and it didn't want to stay planted on the ground that's due to the stiffness of the frame so for people that live in rocky desert terrain like me this isn't a really good choice but if you live where there's flow and more mud than rock or berms or just smooth trails man this thing has such a playful attitude and you could have a lot of fun on it now i'm going to switch it into sleigh mode and that's not quite as quick as i'd hoped you can't just do it real quick on the trail i'm going to do it here but it involves taking off the wheel because you can't easily swap it it'll take me about five to ten minutes but i'll get it swapped and then we'll hit this again in slay mode one cool feature about the axle is that the handle comes off and it's the six mil you need to change the dropouts
i wish this had some sort of tongue and groove to slide into some grooves so it would kind of self-center a little bit i'm struggling to get this started and i don't want to strip it it's a little bit awkward to swap it's not quite as slick as like santa cruz or timber jack dropouts but the fact that it can do this is super unique i can see people cross threading this and messing up their dropouts and bolts on the derailleur side it's a little tricky because the shifter cable is kind of in the way so you can't do a full 360. so you want to pull that out not the end of the world most people are not going to be swapping these they're going to try it out find the setting they like and leave it it's not quick and convenient enough to climb in one and descend in the other it'll just take too long so you'll probably experiment find the one you like and leave it there so now we're in sleigh mode you'd think that moving that 20 millimeters wouldn't make much of a difference it's made a huge difference our reach is now 441 significantly shorter our head angle is now 65 degrees significantly slacker our bottom bracket's now 20 mil lower it's a 67 mil drop that's a big bottom bracket drop and our chain stay has grown to 449 so now our chain stay is longer than our reach so it's going to be interesting to see how this ride is different let's go try it again in slay mode so here we are in slay mode it's essentially a bike with completely different geometry it's almost like a second review at this point and that's what's so cool about this bike you can have two bikes in one and maybe infinite bikes in one if you keep changing and experimenting with different dropouts i love that concept all right let's ride it on the same exact trail in slay mode now i definitely feel the slacker seat tube it feels like an over forked bike oh this climbs
significantly worse it climbed great in play mode wow that's very interesting how different it can feel
whoa that rear end is significantly longer way harder to manual i don't know if i could loop out if i tried
i'm not noticing the shorter reach at the moment i haven't done much down oh i like the head angle though i like the way it steers
yeah wants to be leaned and steered with the feet more now i like that the way that it steers it corners better in this mode to me it just feels like it tracks better which makes sense longer chain stay slacker head angle lower bb all of those things make a bike corner better for me
i know what you're thinking slacker head angle makes it corner better absolutely
we'll see how it does on the steep switchback coming up wow i noticed that slack slack seat angle
it's weird the bike feels less sufficient feels like i'm riding a trek slash almost feels like there's a bob in the pedaling there's not because it's a hard tail but you're in such a rearward position definitely climbs different it's a much lazier climber right now sluggish even and not because of the head tube i'm definitely holding back in my riding the jarring nature of the frame is killing my confidence hear that cable rattle
the cable is not the chain
man this is tough terrain this super sharp lava rock
but in my process of reviewing this i've had this on about eight different trails including smoother ones and even those i got beat up a bit i feel like my rear wheel is going to be damaged from the stiffness of this as well i like the slacker head angle man i wish i could have the head angle of this on the play mode i think that'd be a blast short chainstay with the slack head angle i like the low bottom bracket feels pretty planted okay here we are at that switchback oh definitely feeling that slacker seat angle
wants to almost wheely just feels over forked that's the only way i can describe it still got up that fine though but you do feel your weight has shifted way back
and the front end wants to lift a little more
interestingly enough i haven't had any pedal strikes in the past when i was in uh sleigh mode i did have noticeably more pedal strikes than i'm used to but i'm doing okay today
it's interesting it's a little too bad that the reach gets shorter in sleigh mode i get it you can't make the reach longer when you're slacking it out this is one of the longest chainstays i've ever ridden almost 450. that is super long and it feels great in the corners it just you can kind of relax in the center of the bike and not work so hard because your weight's pretty evenly balanced between front and rear you don't have to get over the front you don't have to be aggressive you can just chill out relax and let the bike do its thing and it'll corner well
i like that slacker head angle it's absorbing some more of the bumps a little better i'm carrying higher speed than i did before man my body's tired though this is beating me up
yeah you can hear that clutch on that box three just not keeping up i think i'm having more fun at the moment in the slay mode
feels a little better in this stuff
less playful but less sketchy too okay that felt like more traction for some reason
i feel like i'm getting bounced around a little bit less it could be that longer chainstay the front fork feels like it's working a little better doing what it's supposed to do still not at 100 confidence my butt buzzed the rear tire there
man this thing does not want a manual like the second you get into manual pose it sucks it right back down
that's a bad line okay there i kind of had to stay over the front a little with how slack it was that felt much more in control in slay mode than play mode way less sketchy if we can possibly get this climb oh we got it it's a little wheelie in there nice all right it definitely feels more capable and confident in slay mode which is weird because i wouldn't describe play mode as twitchy or scary but i had very little confidence on this i feel like play mode was getting bounced around a little more and slay mode i'm in charge and i'm telling the bike what to do instead of the other way around
yeah for some reason just feels more lethargic when you stand up to sprint
like this would not be fun as a single speed in slay mode just too lazy feeling
i really can't charge too hard because that rear rim is just gonna get beat i predict people smashing wheels on this frame unless you live in the muddy philippines and it it would actually be a great choice for there
like pj the owner says they don't really have rocks so they didn't have to worry about compliance when building it it doesn't have that pep that it had in play mode which is so amazing who would have thought changing those dropouts 20 mil would make it feel like a completely different bike super interesting
so this would jump well at whistler and off a big groomed lip
but popping off of little features it doesn't really want to it just sucks that front wheel down it wants to go fast though in this mode holy cow
that was fascinating what a difference 20 mils made it felt like a completely different bike now we're going to set this up one other way as a mullet with a 27.5 by 3.0 rear wheel to see how it handles the same trail here we go run number three in slay mode with the 27.5 by 3.0 and there are millimeters of clearance in there it is so close but we're gonna go for it so i've ridden molar bikes before not on the channel i'm not usually a huge fan where i really like a 27.5 rear wheel and a 29 front wheel is that steep bike park runs where you just have successive berms that are super steep that you can link back and forth
boy this is a softer ride though i love that still climbs like it's in slay mode
i don't like running a wider rear tire than the front either i know a lot of you do
wants to push the bike i feel and i feel they don't quite corner the same i prefer a narrower rear top rear tire than front
i am getting beat up i am tired this is lap number three i've probably only done i don't know six or seven miles but it feels like 25 with how fatigued my body is it is probably 30 percent softer though with this plus rear wheel which leads me to think the way to ride this bike in rocky terrain is plus front and rear you can definitely feel the different widths between the two the front wants to push and the rear wants to grab
i like it the other way where the front wants to grab and the rear wants to slide a little oh that slack head angle on the bar position feel good stack height feels good
yeah the front just wants to push that's weird the back end is getting buffed around less
front end still getting buffed around
so loose and blown out in here i'm wishing for more front end traction plenty of rear traction
so yeah a lot of people think hardtails just make your feet hurt but they transfer vibrations to your wrist too
now i've got the smooth
rear end well relatively smooth with a stiff front end
this is the most confident i've felt on it and part of it's me relearning this trail
just getting used to it riding it three times back to that
oh that's awkward that has never felt great on any of the setups if this were my bike i'd run it with 3.0 or probably 2.8 that 3.0 is kind of close to rubbing the chainstay i'd run the roast most compliant wheels i could find
barely i'd run the most compliant wheels i could find like these nights and then i'd run a 3.0 up front and a 2.8 in the rear almost one down there too bad you can't run the plus tires in play mode that'd be fun to try all right we're finishing out this loop it's definitely more pleasant with this plus wheel in the back really change the nature of this bike front end is still a little skittish on that ons attire i think the plus tire would fix that and that'd be really fun to test out but i've run out of time on my test lap today
there are always more experiments i wish i could try i've ridden enough plus tires to know what this would feel like with that plus up front and that that'd be my preference plus front and
rear
it's not quite as quick not quite as racy with that plus wheel but it's a much better ride experience so there you have it the ruroc con leon this is such an interesting bike with that dropout system it's like having two bikes in one for me personally i didn't feel like one setting was way better than the other for everything the play was way better for climbing and it was poppier and more playful and i like the longer reach the sleigh cornered better and i like that slacker head angle and i like that i can run the plus tire in the slay mode i think i would want the best of both worlds i'd want the head angle of the sleigh paired with the playfulness of the play with room for the plus and i think that'd be a killer bike i feel like it's two bikes in one and each bike is 70 percent of a great bike and personally i'd rather have one bike with no adjustability that was perfect for me then the option to switch between a seventy percent good and a seventy percent good that doesn't mean it's not for you though some people will really like the way that this rides and i have to give a huge shout out to pj at ruroc he is the most humble person i've ever talked to i give him and his partner a huge props for making such a cool bike as their first hardtail and he has listened to my feedback so well and he's going to be implementing a lot of the changes that i recommend some of the downsides of this bike are the internal cable routing it's a little bit of a pain to set up but worse than that it rattles inside the tube and you just hear it and who cares how good your bike looks if it's rattling down the road i'm pretty biased against internal cable routing on a hard tail i much prefer external and i would have been able to swap to better brakes if it was external but since it was internal i didn't even want to bother with it because it was enough of a pain the box prime9 did not live up to my expectations it was rattly it skipped a few shifts under power that clutch just is not strong enough there's just way too much chain slop in that i've heard the box two and one are adjustable with their clutch but they're also significantly more expensive which kind of defeats the purpose of prime nine in the first place i am not a fan at all those mt400 brakes the spanx stuff has worked but it hasn't really blown me away i just feel like it's really cheap quality like one of these the allen key wouldn't even go in it was set to the wrong tolerance so while it works it's cheap for a reason and once you get installed it's okay i've had a couple pedal strikes in the lower mode but it still wasn't bad i've had some heel rub on this because these come out a little bit early and you can see all the chain slap without a chain protector there all in all though this is a really unique bike and super cool and i applaud rurock for what they're doing if you live in a smooth location where you don't have jarring hits like this this is a really interesting bike and i think it could be a lot of fun for you for me i would definitely run it in the plus setting front and rear mullet isn't my favorite unless it's really steep and you're able to dive bomb into into downhill berms but for everyday trail riding for where i ride hard tails mullets don't have a huge benefit for me and i definitely do not like a narrower front tire than the rear that just feels wrong the back is super planted and the front wants to push in comparison so yeah plus front and rear this would be a really fun thing way to go rorok i love your outside of the box thinking and i love how you guys went out and made a bike company because no one else was doing what you wanted to do cheers to you guys there's a link in the description below where you can order your rock thanks for watching there's a party in the mountains and you're invited
i gotta say i have loved the response from all of my filipino fans you guys are awesome i love how much pride you guys have in your country and in the ruroc frames as well this bike has taken a little bit longer to review than normal for a couple reasons number one it's so versatile between the slay and play setups it's taken me a while to run it in multiple configurations and get used to it i didn't want to just review it in one and then be done and two we went super budget build on this with the box prime 9 race face affect cranks the shimano mt400 brakes and to be honest we went a little too cheap and the brakes never felt great and i've had this on about five rides and the brakes are awful they're the worst brakes i've ever tried i clean the rotors i cleaned the pads i i scoured the pads i re-bled them nothing did it in fact i've still got them on the back and i can't skid i cannot make the back tire skid that's how bad they are rim brakes would be better than these so that's really been frustrating because i haven't been able to get this up to speed because i haven't been able to slow it down uh so thanks for your patience as i've been doing this so i've changed a few things i'm running a guide rsc or guide ultimate front brake i put 200 mil rotors on it i wanted to put a guide rear brake on but that means disconnecting this pulling it out of the frame re-threading a guide re-bleeding it and all that and i just am not interested in doing that it's enough of a pain that i'm just gonna leave the crappy mt-400 on there also you'll notice i've swapped out the rear wheel i am running the nuke proof horizon wheel stay tuned for a full review of this wheel but the spank wheel was stiffer than i wanted and this is a stiff frame i'm gonna tell you right now this frame rides stiff and with that stiff wheel it was beating me up way too much so i put this horizon wheel on that i'm very familiar with i know what it rides like on other bikes and it has softened the ride quality of this a little bit better and made it more tolerable for the rocks here in sedona all right we're gonna do a couple laps today lap one is in play mode we're running 29 by 2.3 in the rear 29 by 2.4 in the front i lowered the travel on the dvo diamond from 160 to 140 so now it's a 140 29er i feel like 160 was just too much for this the guys at ruroc said oh keep it at 160. it's a rowdy bike keep keep just ride it that way and it didn't feel right the c2 angle was too slack it just the front end was too high i just wanted to lift off everything it just felt weird it's much better at 140. so we're ready to rock and roll with that change we change the wheel change the brake and uh reduce the front travel and this thing's ready to review here we go lap one play mode on the pyramid trail in sedona
right off the bat you notice the cable noise and the chain slap you also notice the stiffness of this frame this is a stiff frame now if you're over 200 pounds i think you're going to appreciate a stiff frame a lot of bigger riders can make a soft frame flex and feel noodly under them especially in the bottom bracket area but if you're under 180 pounds this thing's gonna beat you up and ping-pong you around the box 9 has a nice crisp shifter feel unfortunately
the clutch isn't strong enough and you can hear it slapping the chain stay and i've missed a few shifts and even lost the chain under power due to that weak clutch so i cannot recommend the box prime93 for serious mountain bike use it's just a little too light duty this is chunky and even though i've got that softer newproof horizon version two wheel it's beating me up i'm feeling it in my wrists i'm unclipping in those bumps it just transfers a lot of vibration to the body and i realize most people will never ride a hard tail on crazy terrain like this but i also think that makes it the perfect place to test them to really see what they're capable of because every hardtail feels great on smooth buff trails they make two sizes of this bike a long and a short oh that climbs nice here comes a steep
switchback that was a little sloppy on that but we got it this is a long
it's got a 457 reach
yeah tackle those switchbacks nicely you feel that steep seat tube angle 77 degree seats of angle i like that
feels really good on the seated climbs and on the standing climbs the head angle feels a little steeper than the geo charts suggest
feels a little bit like a 67 degree head angle more than the 66 of the geotron oh that's so much better with a good front brake
yeah this bike climbs well i'm really impressed
it accelerates quick because it's stiff there's no flex in the frame when you put power down and it translates to forward motion really nice one thing that's surprising is how much vibration you feel in the bars even though i got a fork up there the frame still transfers vibrations up to your hands
it's a little bit hard to get in that manual spot on that back wheel even in play mode not quite as playful as some bikes
and here you can hear that cable rattle on the internal cables oh likes to jump though play mode is definitely more playful than slay mode it goes right where i point it i'm not fighting it two hard rim strikes there front and rear this is a brutal trail it does not feel as heavy as it is we had a heavy build with all these budget parts on it and it's been fun trying it out with these budget parts
that's a little unnerving because you don't have as much traction as you need with how stiff the screen is
yeah this is brutal talking a lot just beat me up and because of that stiffness i have less traction and less control
through this terrain it's a tough trail it's gotten harder since i really laughed a lot of two and three foot mandatory drops on it
i'm not a fan of these ons of tires they are pretty awful
had them wash out on me we just went a little too budget on every single component here but that's okay that's part of the experiment is how cheap can you go and still have a great experience
oh let's try that again i picked a bad line the stiffness is really coming into play on this trail
it's a bumpy trail but i'm bouncing across obstacles instead of tracking up them and so traction's really tough even with low tire pressure
had to dab
oh a lot of wrench strikes and they're hard rim strikes nothing's given back there
this bike has such a fun playful nature hidden inside that i need to unleash
but these black diamond trails aren't the place for it
man my confidence is low on this
the stiffness is really hurting my confidence it definitely feels better with a 140 fork than a 160.
let's see if we can get playful on this see if the bumps can stop long enough to have some fun
not quite as playful as a chameleon or a nimble nine or my middle child or even my banshee okay let's open her up
and that's stiff and that table rattle's
awesome you know i'm being harsh on this
because i want you guys to know what it's like compared to other bikes if i put a big asterisk on it like keep in mind this is the first hardtail ruroc has made with that in mind there are so many wins
at its price it doesn't quite stack up to the competition has a few little flaws that need to be ironed out
i'm trying not to just talk about the stiffness but it comes into play in almost every aspect of how this bike rides
that head angle is a degree steeper than i want but the seat angle is perfect
the chain stay length feels good
i totally understand why companies send blinged out top spec bikes for review because when this had bad brakes i was finding it hard to click with the bike and that's not fair oh that's fun that's not fair on the bike now we got it dialed
okay it wants to play that's a better manual yeah wants to play but you can't get going too quick because then you have to lay on the brakes and deal with what's in front of you and that's a little scary if you come to visit beautiful sedona don't throw your garbage in the bushes please we live here and nobody wants to see that so that was the ride in the play mode on the size long this has a 457 reach a 429 chainstay nice and short and a 66 degree head tube according to their geochart this bike definitely has a playful attitude in there it's like a little puppy dog that just wants to play all the time and it never really got the chance on this trail because it couldn't hold its own in the chunky stuff it was a little bit out of control and skittish and it didn't want to stay planted on the ground that's due to the stiffness of the frame so for people that live in rocky desert terrain like me this isn't a really good choice but if you live where there's flow and more mud than rock or berms or just smooth trails man this thing has such a playful attitude and you could have a lot of fun on it now i'm going to switch it into sleigh mode and that's not quite as quick as i'd hoped you can't just do it real quick on the trail i'm going to do it here but it involves taking off the wheel because you can't easily swap it it'll take me about five to ten minutes but i'll get it swapped and then we'll hit this again in slay mode one cool feature about the axle is that the handle comes off and it's the six mil you need to change the dropouts
i wish this had some sort of tongue and groove to slide into some grooves so it would kind of self-center a little bit i'm struggling to get this started and i don't want to strip it it's a little bit awkward to swap it's not quite as slick as like santa cruz or timber jack dropouts but the fact that it can do this is super unique i can see people cross threading this and messing up their dropouts and bolts on the derailleur side it's a little tricky because the shifter cable is kind of in the way so you can't do a full 360. so you want to pull that out not the end of the world most people are not going to be swapping these they're going to try it out find the setting they like and leave it it's not quick and convenient enough to climb in one and descend in the other it'll just take too long so you'll probably experiment find the one you like and leave it there so now we're in sleigh mode you'd think that moving that 20 millimeters wouldn't make much of a difference it's made a huge difference our reach is now 441 significantly shorter our head angle is now 65 degrees significantly slacker our bottom bracket's now 20 mil lower it's a 67 mil drop that's a big bottom bracket drop and our chain stay has grown to 449 so now our chain stay is longer than our reach so it's going to be interesting to see how this ride is different let's go try it again in slay mode so here we are in slay mode it's essentially a bike with completely different geometry it's almost like a second review at this point and that's what's so cool about this bike you can have two bikes in one and maybe infinite bikes in one if you keep changing and experimenting with different dropouts i love that concept all right let's ride it on the same exact trail in slay mode now i definitely feel the slacker seat tube it feels like an over forked bike oh this climbs
significantly worse it climbed great in play mode wow that's very interesting how different it can feel
whoa that rear end is significantly longer way harder to manual i don't know if i could loop out if i tried
i'm not noticing the shorter reach at the moment i haven't done much down oh i like the head angle though i like the way it steers
yeah wants to be leaned and steered with the feet more now i like that the way that it steers it corners better in this mode to me it just feels like it tracks better which makes sense longer chain stay slacker head angle lower bb all of those things make a bike corner better for me
i know what you're thinking slacker head angle makes it corner better absolutely
we'll see how it does on the steep switchback coming up wow i noticed that slack slack seat angle
it's weird the bike feels less sufficient feels like i'm riding a trek slash almost feels like there's a bob in the pedaling there's not because it's a hard tail but you're in such a rearward position definitely climbs different it's a much lazier climber right now sluggish even and not because of the head tube i'm definitely holding back in my riding the jarring nature of the frame is killing my confidence hear that cable rattle
the cable is not the chain
man this is tough terrain this super sharp lava rock
but in my process of reviewing this i've had this on about eight different trails including smoother ones and even those i got beat up a bit i feel like my rear wheel is going to be damaged from the stiffness of this as well i like the slacker head angle man i wish i could have the head angle of this on the play mode i think that'd be a blast short chainstay with the slack head angle i like the low bottom bracket feels pretty planted okay here we are at that switchback oh definitely feeling that slacker seat angle
wants to almost wheely just feels over forked that's the only way i can describe it still got up that fine though but you do feel your weight has shifted way back
and the front end wants to lift a little more
interestingly enough i haven't had any pedal strikes in the past when i was in uh sleigh mode i did have noticeably more pedal strikes than i'm used to but i'm doing okay today
it's interesting it's a little too bad that the reach gets shorter in sleigh mode i get it you can't make the reach longer when you're slacking it out this is one of the longest chainstays i've ever ridden almost 450. that is super long and it feels great in the corners it just you can kind of relax in the center of the bike and not work so hard because your weight's pretty evenly balanced between front and rear you don't have to get over the front you don't have to be aggressive you can just chill out relax and let the bike do its thing and it'll corner well
i like that slacker head angle it's absorbing some more of the bumps a little better i'm carrying higher speed than i did before man my body's tired though this is beating me up
yeah you can hear that clutch on that box three just not keeping up i think i'm having more fun at the moment in the slay mode
feels a little better in this stuff
less playful but less sketchy too okay that felt like more traction for some reason
i feel like i'm getting bounced around a little bit less it could be that longer chainstay the front fork feels like it's working a little better doing what it's supposed to do still not at 100 confidence my butt buzzed the rear tire there
man this thing does not want a manual like the second you get into manual pose it sucks it right back down
that's a bad line okay there i kind of had to stay over the front a little with how slack it was that felt much more in control in slay mode than play mode way less sketchy if we can possibly get this climb oh we got it it's a little wheelie in there nice all right it definitely feels more capable and confident in slay mode which is weird because i wouldn't describe play mode as twitchy or scary but i had very little confidence on this i feel like play mode was getting bounced around a little more and slay mode i'm in charge and i'm telling the bike what to do instead of the other way around
yeah for some reason just feels more lethargic when you stand up to sprint
like this would not be fun as a single speed in slay mode just too lazy feeling
i really can't charge too hard because that rear rim is just gonna get beat i predict people smashing wheels on this frame unless you live in the muddy philippines and it it would actually be a great choice for there
like pj the owner says they don't really have rocks so they didn't have to worry about compliance when building it it doesn't have that pep that it had in play mode which is so amazing who would have thought changing those dropouts 20 mil would make it feel like a completely different bike super interesting
so this would jump well at whistler and off a big groomed lip
but popping off of little features it doesn't really want to it just sucks that front wheel down it wants to go fast though in this mode holy cow
that was fascinating what a difference 20 mils made it felt like a completely different bike now we're going to set this up one other way as a mullet with a 27.5 by 3.0 rear wheel to see how it handles the same trail here we go run number three in slay mode with the 27.5 by 3.0 and there are millimeters of clearance in there it is so close but we're gonna go for it so i've ridden molar bikes before not on the channel i'm not usually a huge fan where i really like a 27.5 rear wheel and a 29 front wheel is that steep bike park runs where you just have successive berms that are super steep that you can link back and forth
boy this is a softer ride though i love that still climbs like it's in slay mode
i don't like running a wider rear tire than the front either i know a lot of you do
wants to push the bike i feel and i feel they don't quite corner the same i prefer a narrower rear top rear tire than front
i am getting beat up i am tired this is lap number three i've probably only done i don't know six or seven miles but it feels like 25 with how fatigued my body is it is probably 30 percent softer though with this plus rear wheel which leads me to think the way to ride this bike in rocky terrain is plus front and rear you can definitely feel the different widths between the two the front wants to push and the rear wants to grab
i like it the other way where the front wants to grab and the rear wants to slide a little oh that slack head angle on the bar position feel good stack height feels good
yeah the front just wants to push that's weird the back end is getting buffed around less
front end still getting buffed around
so loose and blown out in here i'm wishing for more front end traction plenty of rear traction
so yeah a lot of people think hardtails just make your feet hurt but they transfer vibrations to your wrist too
now i've got the smooth
rear end well relatively smooth with a stiff front end
this is the most confident i've felt on it and part of it's me relearning this trail
just getting used to it riding it three times back to that
oh that's awkward that has never felt great on any of the setups if this were my bike i'd run it with 3.0 or probably 2.8 that 3.0 is kind of close to rubbing the chainstay i'd run the roast most compliant wheels i could find
barely i'd run the most compliant wheels i could find like these nights and then i'd run a 3.0 up front and a 2.8 in the rear almost one down there too bad you can't run the plus tires in play mode that'd be fun to try all right we're finishing out this loop it's definitely more pleasant with this plus wheel in the back really change the nature of this bike front end is still a little skittish on that ons attire i think the plus tire would fix that and that'd be really fun to test out but i've run out of time on my test lap today
there are always more experiments i wish i could try i've ridden enough plus tires to know what this would feel like with that plus up front and that that'd be my preference plus front and
rear
it's not quite as quick not quite as racy with that plus wheel but it's a much better ride experience so there you have it the ruroc con leon this is such an interesting bike with that dropout system it's like having two bikes in one for me personally i didn't feel like one setting was way better than the other for everything the play was way better for climbing and it was poppier and more playful and i like the longer reach the sleigh cornered better and i like that slacker head angle and i like that i can run the plus tire in the slay mode i think i would want the best of both worlds i'd want the head angle of the sleigh paired with the playfulness of the play with room for the plus and i think that'd be a killer bike i feel like it's two bikes in one and each bike is 70 percent of a great bike and personally i'd rather have one bike with no adjustability that was perfect for me then the option to switch between a seventy percent good and a seventy percent good that doesn't mean it's not for you though some people will really like the way that this rides and i have to give a huge shout out to pj at ruroc he is the most humble person i've ever talked to i give him and his partner a huge props for making such a cool bike as their first hardtail and he has listened to my feedback so well and he's going to be implementing a lot of the changes that i recommend some of the downsides of this bike are the internal cable routing it's a little bit of a pain to set up but worse than that it rattles inside the tube and you just hear it and who cares how good your bike looks if it's rattling down the road i'm pretty biased against internal cable routing on a hard tail i much prefer external and i would have been able to swap to better brakes if it was external but since it was internal i didn't even want to bother with it because it was enough of a pain the box prime9 did not live up to my expectations it was rattly it skipped a few shifts under power that clutch just is not strong enough there's just way too much chain slop in that i've heard the box two and one are adjustable with their clutch but they're also significantly more expensive which kind of defeats the purpose of prime nine in the first place i am not a fan at all those mt400 brakes the spanx stuff has worked but it hasn't really blown me away i just feel like it's really cheap quality like one of these the allen key wouldn't even go in it was set to the wrong tolerance so while it works it's cheap for a reason and once you get installed it's okay i've had a couple pedal strikes in the lower mode but it still wasn't bad i've had some heel rub on this because these come out a little bit early and you can see all the chain slap without a chain protector there all in all though this is a really unique bike and super cool and i applaud rurock for what they're doing if you live in a smooth location where you don't have jarring hits like this this is a really interesting bike and i think it could be a lot of fun for you for me i would definitely run it in the plus setting front and rear mullet isn't my favorite unless it's really steep and you're able to dive bomb into into downhill berms but for everyday trail riding for where i ride hard tails mullets don't have a huge benefit for me and i definitely do not like a narrower front tire than the rear that just feels wrong the back is super planted and the front wants to push in comparison so yeah plus front and rear this would be a really fun thing way to go rorok i love your outside of the box thinking and i love how you guys went out and made a bike company because no one else was doing what you wanted to do cheers to you guys there's a link in the description below where you can order your rock thanks for watching there's a party in the mountains and you're invited