[Closed] Evil The Following first impressions... For anyone interested

This is an outrage, I base all my life decisions on what strangers write on the internet and now i can't even be sure they're competent? What am i to do? As a foot note I always ask people for a resume before allowing them to start a conversation about the bike they're riding when I meet them in real life, I strongly suggest everyone here does the same.

Cool bike btw

I like your bike mboy...its pretty

Off to BPW in the morning, lets see how it fares there!

heads off to strava to check whether your beating my below par times on the blues 😳

EDIT he hasnt logged them yet - IM FASTER THAN AN EVIL RIDER!!!

If he's riding in Aldi gear, I'm sure all will be forgiven 8)

brant - Member

I have no comments on him as a rider. I question his lack of experience on similar contemporary bikes, that I would hope a journalist would have.

Why would a bloke posting his opinion onto a forum be held up to the standards of a print journalist?

Besides - I could understand the OPs post in full - try that with Steve Jones.

@v66ern Evils don't do blue.

@v66ern Evils don't do blue.

😆

so he'll just be riding the blacks?

brant - Member
I have no comments on him as a rider. I question his lack of experience on similar contemporary bikes, that I would hope a journalist would have.

Mboy- Member
I’ve ridden it on all the trails so far that I took my Whyte T-129 to when it was new, and crucially the Evil not only feels better on the descents (on the climbs the Whyte would be left for dead!), Strava backs it up with data that I’m usefully quicker on the Evil!

I'd say he has. The T129 is bang up to date and has a very good reputation. It's designed for similar stuff with similar geometry. Good comparison TBH.

so he'll just be riding the blacks?

The Following exists in a parallel dimension beyond trail grading.

Wow, some world class asshats on this thread. A real new low for this place. Just straight up nasty, petty, rudeness about someone sharing his joy and open, honest opinion about a new bike.

Although for missing the point of these bikes completely this has to be the winner. Given how flawed the logic is I'm still not even sure if it was written seriously. Apologies if it was tongue in cheek, otherwise - back under your bridge.

Actually, despite the marketing guff, I suspect that the target demographic for these short but slack 29ers will be XC mincers. People who want a bike that will give them the confidence to tacke the bits of trail that currently scare them, but who don't need lots of travel and want a bike that's fast on the easy bits too (where they spend most of their time). In which case an XC mincer is the ideal reviewer. How can you tell me whether this bike takes away the fear you felt at the top of a descent if you've never felt that fear?

No deadly serious I'm afraid. I am that demographic 🙂 Although I didn't mean to imply that we were the only people who could enjoy such a bike. So I should have said "a target demographic" rather than "the target demographic" I guess.

Fair enough, trollery accusation retracted.

Although I think any "XC mincer" who had one as their bike would get very frustrated very fast. They really don't encourage (or reward) mincing at all.

roverpig is being a bit self-deprecatory with "XC mincer", I think he means a general trail rider, not super aggressive, and aware that crashing can really hurt and **** up one's life. He's maybe also poking fun at all the gnarcore folks with their sleds and rigs and gaps and hucks and sending it etc, they all take it so damn seriously. Yawn.

Anyway that's my interpretation, if I'm right then I'm one too.

And he's right about the bike. It's certainly bringing out the best in me.

I love this idea that only expert riders should be allowed to review bikes. That might make some sense if only experts were allowed to buy them.

Since i was the bad boy who dared to question the OPs riding ability, i should really reply, although Gotma seems to get what i was hinting at.

I don't particularly care if someone is awesome, average or an accident waiting to happen - riding a bike is about having fun. If the OP is enjoying his new bike, then it's a good bike (goes for any bike as far as i'm concerned).

His review goes into a fair bit of detail, which doesn't really do it for me as i find it hard to get excited reading the technical details. Tell me how it carves through turns and offers loads of feel and i can dig it - mention head angles and you'll lose me. In this case, it does hint of padding and trying to impress.

If the OP is a riding god (he says he's not btw - and i believe him) then perhaps the in-depth discussion of angles, pressures and how they affect the bike may be relevant. If he's a regular cyclist, then the fact that this bike is so good will be lost on him. He may notice it's easy to go fast on, both up and down but where the bike will really shine is beyond his abilities to test. If he'd have kept it simple, then [i]this[/i] wouldn't have happened. It smacks of an Average Joe talking like a Pro to me.

It's a lovely bike mboy, enjoy it and don't worry about trying to impress the internet.

p.s. I like the idea of us normal gents + ladies writing bike reviews.

Let it go mate, we got it. If it's not for you, that's fine. There are other threads.

Interesting comments on who it might be "targeted" at. Think it shows the difference between the 29er wheel perception stateside and here. Evil seem to be pitching very much as an aggressive trail bike, if you look at some of the videos of Strobel you'd be forgiven for thinking it's a short travel DH bike or 29er dirt jumper to be honest! Stateside this seems to be a type of bike they are pretty familiar with, but over this side of the pond 29er seems to be more of an XC thing, hence comments that it must just be a bike for XC Mincers who want a little more.

That said people seemed to "get" the Codeine, so curious why the pondering about what this is intended for? Let's just say- Intended use is like a Codeine with a wee bit less travel?

But that's the crux of it - people equate travel with gnarr and so if your bike has 100mm rear you will be a mincer/your bike can't handle fun stuff. I wouldn't worry about it, we can be smug in our state of enlightenment.

I really doubt Evil intended to target roverpigs "XC mincers", I think their strategy was to make a great bike and work forwards not pick a market and work backwards. But I think he's right that the Following is as applicable for that kind of rider as it is for the more aggressive hucksters. Maybe the less aggressive rider has more potential that the Following can help tap into.

so from strava, he did do the blacks AND im equally as fast/slow down willy waver #winning

But that's the crux of it - people equate travel with gnarr

I wouldn't worry about it, we can be smug in our state of enlightenment.

But that's the crux of it - people equate travel with gnarr

NAIL HEAD

+1

I think I'm going to stop using the term XC mincer 🙂 It was indeed supposed to be self deprecatory, but it's also a bit derogatory and means different things to different people, so isn't really helpful. Over in the Smuggler thread Gavin refers to himself as a mincer, then talks about riding down the WC downhill track at Fort Bill! I suspect we have very different views on what constitutes mincing 🙂

Back to the more interesting question of who these long, low slack, but short travel 29ers are aimed at. Clearly they suit lots of different riders, but what I'm trying to work out (in my usual rambling way) is whether they suit riders like me. In order to do that I guess I've got to define that type of rider somehow.

Let's get away from mincing and talk about confidence. There are descents that I'd like to ride down that I don't have the confidence to tackle. One way of getting that confidence is through a more capable bike. Yes, I know there are better ways but maybe they are best left to another thread. Traditionally the problem with a more capable bike was that you'd pay for it on the climbs and the tamer trails, but these bikes seem to offer the extra confidence without that penalty (as long as you don't want to smash through huge rock garden or land big drops to flat). That's all I was trying to get at really.

You describe a bike you haven't ridden very well IMO!

I look forwards to it getting the roverpig treatment when you do get the chance.

It's not super-long by the way as the back end is tucked in. The Smuggler is 15mm longer (comparing medium frames) in wheelbase, and the Whyte T129 SCR is a few mm more on top of that.

I know the numbers as I agonised a while between the small and medium sizes.

Regarding 'capability', where I think the Following wins is a great combination of suspension, geometry and stiffness, it's a package that works well together. It's much more than just the travel in this case.

His review goes into a fair bit of detail, which doesn't really do it for me as i find it hard to get excited reading the technical details. Tell me how it carves through turns and offers loads of feel and i can dig it - mention head angles and you'll lose me. In this case, it does hint of padding and trying to impress.

If the OP is a riding god (he says he's not btw - and i believe him) then perhaps the in-depth discussion of angles, pressures and how they affect the bike may be relevant. If he's a regular cyclist, then the fact that this bike is so good will be lost on him. He may notice it's easy to go fast on, both up and down but where the bike will really shine is beyond his abilities to test. If he'd have kept it simple, then this wouldn't have happened. It smacks of an Average Joe talking like a Pro to me.

I'm not a riding god by any means but I'm fast enough to test a trail bike (though it would be idiotic for me to write a test of a downhill bike). And despite my lack of riding godness, I notice things about bikes that most people I ride with don't notice - and that's riders who are both quicker and slower than me.

Change head or seat angle by 0.5 deg or tyre pressure by 10% or fork/shock pressure by 10% or damping by a few clicks or BB height by 5mm and I will notice. It's bloody annoying because I'm not someone who likes fiddling with bikes and I have a very lax maintenance schedule (best summed up as clean/lube stanchions/chain and check tyre pressures and ignore everything else) but sometimes I'll go out on a ride and something feel wrong about the bike. I can't always tell immediately what's wrong with the bike but there always is something (usually tyre pressures).

I think often better riders are so good at subconsciously adapting to imperfections in geometry and suspension that they don't notice small stuff, not until they're in race mode and against the clock and maybe working with a coach/engineer on maximising their speed. It's that same ability to adapt to an imperfect situation that lets them ride past the ragged edge without crashing - sadly I rarely get away with that...

So, went to BPW on it yesterday...

[img] ?oh=3cb0af4e1b24417bc3372ac18110bd98&oe=55F0DB05[/img]

Impressed with BPW on the whole (it was my first visit), did feel that the uplift drivers clocked off a bit early both for lunch and at the end of the day (like 10-15 mins early) which cost me a run, possibly two, but I still got 10 in all told.

Did some of the blues, some of the reds and some of the blacks. Can safely say I wasn't the quickest down any of them (Strava backs this up), but I was pleasantly surprised with many of my times versus some of those I know/consider to be faster riders than myself. Maybe I'm slightly less average than I think I am, who knows! I know that yesterday, as is often the case, I was riding with a quick bunch of guys (one of them got a few KOM's on his first trip there!) that were pushing me to go quicker. I had some real fun, and left a few people I previously considered quicker riders in my wake on the day! Bit gutted that the one run Strava didn't pick up properly was probably the one I felt was my best of the day, my 2nd time down Wibbly Wobbly, which I pulled a fair gap over a couple of the guys I was riding with by the bottom of it and it felt like a near perfect run.

Can confirm that my wheels definitely left the ground, quite a number of times in fact! Maybe I'm only a semi-mincer, not a full blown one? 😉 Seriously though, if you're not confident getting air, go to BPW and just start on the blues. I'm definitely not the most confident person in the air still, but I was having fun yesterday, and even cleared a few smaller tabletops and doubles.

So... The Bike... Well I'm still very impressed with it. One thing it is not is a super plush trail eater. On some of the trails at BPW it felt a touch undergunned at the rear end in the travel stakes, but then if I was buying a bike purely to go and play there, I would have bought something like a Whyte G-150, Orbea Rallon or the like. BPW was a last minute thing when somebody I know couldn't make it for the day. The thing is though, the bike more than coped with all the trails, and encouraged me to go quicker than I would have normally.

On another note, I'm renaming the bike "Marmite"... Whether on the internet, or in the flesh, it seems nobody is indifferent to it, everyone either loves it or hates it! It's certainly a talking point... Which is either a good thing or a bad thing, depending on your point of view.

On the smoother trails, the bike was incredibly quick. My afternoon descent of Sixtapod & Willy Waver combined felt quick, and when I got home, Strava confirmed what I felt (3rd fastest STW Forumite out of the 51 in the Strava group FWIW, 122nd overall out of about 6000 odd). The Bike felt awesome on the reds too. As for the blacks, well I got down them in one piece, and didn't disgrace myself is probably the best way to put it...

Right then, time to sling some lighter tyres on it and ride it round a field in Gloucestershire this weekend as part of a team of 5 at Mayhem... You'll know who I am, I'm the one that will be riding the murdered out inapropriate bike! :-p

Thanks OP. I love Evil bikes (uprising owner). Nice to read about your experiences and opinions 🙂

stealthy ... is there actually a bike in that pic?

Will the Following take a CCDB inline? I replaced the monarch on my Phantom with one and was blown away by the difference in performance, it was practically a different bike. Some of the comments about the Following's behavior in the bigger stuff made me think about how my Phantom behaved before the CCDB upgrade.

I'd even go as far as to suggest that the tunability and action of the CCDB inline has more of an effect on short travel bikes than longer travel bikes as you use all of your travel more often and you want it to be used perfectly.

Thanks for your views. Good luck at the race.

Will the Following take a CCDB inline?

I'm not sure whether there is really an issue with the behaviour in the bigger stuff or whether people are just struggling to properly get their head around the right shock setup. The fact that the leverage ratio means 30% sag on the shock and frame guide are noticeably different seems to cause some confusion. Also, on MTBR in particular there seems to be a fair few folk who are heavier than average, and by [url= http://www.bikerumor.com/2014/08/14/suspension-setup-series-4-fix-your-ride-by-adjusting-air-volume/ ]RS's own admission[/url] a larger volume can is not suited for heavier riders, so they may be better going back to the standard can (this is not an Evil issue, it's the same regardless of the bike). Lastly I do kinda get the sense that some riders (not here, elsewhere) are expecting some sort of plushness that simply doesn't exist with this sort of bike. As you'll know from your Phantom, short travel 29ers are friggin ace and have a whole heap of upsides, but magically making 120mm feel like a 160mm pillowy plush ride is never going to be one of them.

For anyone that hasn't seen it yet Vital did a slideshow thingy that talks about tuning Monarch air springs with bottomless tokens, which could be useful for anyone needing more progression without forking out £50-£80 for a replacement air can.

[url= http://www.vitalmtb.com/photos/features/How-To-Get-The-Most-Out-Of-Your-RockShox-Suspension,9020/Slideshow,0/bturman,109 ]Vital Rockshox Guide[/url]

magically making 120mm feel like a 160mm pillowy plush ride is never going to be one of them.

Yeah it does feel like some of those folks are trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.

The Following is special because it's superb at what it does instead of trying to be all things.

magically making 120mm feel like a 160mm pillowy plush ride is never going to be one of them

Yeah, never going to happen and kind of missing the point. I only have 105mm too so I really care that they are being used effectively!

Should get to ride mine for the first time on Sunday after it gets built up tomorrow (very kindly on borrowed wheels whist I wait for my LB rims).

I can't find anything on how to set up the rear shock? I see the sag marker thing, I take it a good starting point is enough air in the shock to get that to 30% and then play around with the rebound etc?

The 30% sag marker just gets you in the ball park, you'll need to get take a look at the o-ring on the shock body to get it right.

It's very easy to over sag. You want the whole 30% on the marker just barely uncovered.

I'm running 240-250 psi, weighing 82kg dressed to ride with pack.

There's a shock setup section [url= http://evil-bikes.com/products/the-following/ ]on the Evil site[/url]. Weirdly it doesn't show up on a mobile device though, so that might be why you can't find it, check on a desktop machine. I copy and pasted the info below. Tis a good starting point.

Rock Shox Monarch RT3 Debonair: Prior to performing shock adjustments, determine riding weight ( fully geared up ). Push the shock O-ring against the wiper seal and push the sag adjuster on the non drive side of the Delta Link forward. Lean up against a sturdy wall, friend, or telephone pole and sit on the bike. Being careful not to tip over, dismount the bike and check the SAG indicator. The SAG indicator should barely cover the 30% mark and the O-ring should measure between 10-13mm from the shock body for ideal setup. The Following uses a high volume air canister which compliments the progressive spring curve of the Delta System Suspension, if a less progressive feel is desired then experiment with different air volume spacers. We also found that the Following performs great in the “Descend” position for most riding conditions, however, for sufferfest climbs and high speed trail riding the “Pedal” position also works well. NOTE* These are just guidelines to start you on your suspension tuning journey. Its very important to tune your front and rear suspension together to get the best set up possible. Play around and find that special tune, then write it down so you don’t forget! NOTE* The dual progressive leverage rate curve might make some spring rates seem stiff, we encourage you to try different rates that will allow you to sit deeper into the suspension travel and find that perfect set up. - See more at: http://evil-bikes.com/products/the-following/#sthash.JudrinvT.dpuf

The dual progressive leverage rate curve

I know I'm going to regret asking, but what does that mean?

Lucas [url= http://www.vitalmtb.com/v/25453 ]Vital suspension setup basic[/url]

I know I'm going to regret asking, but what does that mean?

blurb written by Marketing Engineer, now obsolete as it's not +

Thanks guys I'll take a look at that lot - Id id look on the Evil site but missed the shock set up page! Actually I still cant see it in Chrome so thanks for pasting it in.

It's a slightly guff way of saying that the leverage ratio changes quite significantly through the travel, which is what makes the DELTA link different, apparently.

More here http://evil-bikes.com/tech-crap/

There's a lot going on in 44mm of shock travel isn't there?

I think the 'dual' bit means it behaves differently in slow or fast compression. I think.