New bike teaser
- Thread starter Tantrum Cycles
- Start date
Thanks @Electric_City
I should probably just leave it at that, but I want to add one more comment.
No way people were gonna be left hanging. They might have waited a bit longer than expected, but nobody bailed or cancelled, which I am very grateful for. But I wouldn't have started it if I didn't know I could deliver.
All kickstarter bikes have been delivered as of Jan. Done. On to the next batch, shooting for 200.
I get that from time to time. I used to yell at people and say "do you know how old he is??" But I'm losing the ability to bitch about that.
I did a consulting project for Toby Henderson's Box Components. I had to go to Taiwan and he made me some biz cards. He said, there's too many Brian's over at the factory so we'll just call you Doc Brown. And he put it on my biz card as my job title.
Somewhere there's a picture of me at Interbike with a Delorean, ranting about the time space continuum or something
yup. Did shocks for Ligier. Great great time. '92. I would carry a suitcase with 8 shocks back and forth from the states to each GP. Try that thru customs now. I learned the word for shocks in each language for each grand prix, just for customs interegation.
Senna and Prost. We had Eric Comas. Got 3rd in qualifying and (I think) in the race at the French grand prix with a french team and a french driver. Against Senna and Prost, that was winning.
There's a young me adjusting the rebound
on the 4 post shaker table
So its official. Someone with buttons strike "Monkey" and put "Doc Brown" under Tantrum Cycles for this guy.
NOTE: I did not win Sea Otter. But a demo rider won the Cat 2 men's 25-29 DH race on a Tantrum Meldown
The weekend before the race, I advertised for demo rides in Santa Cruz.
@rockofullr got in touch and brought along a few friends to show me the Flow trail in Soquel Demo forest. Whether you like "flow" or not, this is one wild rollercoasterspacemountainvideogame ride.
anyway, they liked the bikes enough to ask if they could race them at the Sea Otter DH. I said, "sure, they're demo bikes"
Karl Lange won his class and rockofullr got 5th. The fields were pretty stacked with a lot of people moving down a class since it was such a big event.
No, Sea Otter will never be accused of being a technical challenge, but every brand there wants to win. This was Karl's first win (in Cat 2) and Tantrum's first win, so I'll take it.
The weekend before the race, I advertised for demo rides in Santa Cruz.
@rockofullr got in touch and brought along a few friends to show me the Flow trail in Soquel Demo forest. Whether you like "flow" or not, this is one wild rollercoasterspacemountainvideogame ride.
anyway, they liked the bikes enough to ask if they could race them at the Sea Otter DH. I said, "sure, they're demo bikes"
Karl Lange won his class and rockofullr got 5th. The fields were pretty stacked with a lot of people moving down a class since it was such a big event.
No, Sea Otter will never be accused of being a technical challenge, but every brand there wants to win. This was Karl's first win (in Cat 2) and Tantrum's first win, so I'll take it.
... Paging @rockofullr , @rockofullr please to the courtesy phone... The 
is awaiting for your review!
is awaiting for your review!
YEAH BOYS!! What a killer weekend. Give me a few minutes to type up a review. Been hectic catching up on life after a 4 day weekend of racing bikes and partying.
And now..... The moment you've all been waiting for....
The Bike (please correct me if I get anything wrong @Tantrum Cycles )
Tantrum Meltdown (L) - setup with 29" front end and 27.5" rear end but the bike I was on was using the longer dropout from the 29" rear end.
Fork - DVO diamond (160mm)
Shock - DVO Topaz
Brakes - Magura MT Trail Carbon
Drivetrain - SRAM Eagle GX
Cranks - Truvative descendant Carbon
Cockpit - Diety Stem (50mm I believe) and 787 bars
Dropper - Bike Yoke (with sweet color matched DVO lever)
Saddle - WTB pure or rocket
Wheels - DT 1500
Tires - HRIII
Review:
To preface this, I demo/ride a lot of bikes so I've ridden most every "enduro" offering from the usual suspects, except for some reason Trek. I'm currently riding a 2017 Alu Comp Capra. The review is based on riding the bike for one day at Soquel Demo Forrest, mostly on the flow trail and racing/practicing on it at Sea Otter.
Over all I really enjoyed this bike. The geometry was about as dialed as anything else I've ridden and the bike felt natural for me right off the bat. The quality of the bike and attention to detail is top notch, and damn it looks good. The pounded aluminum finish on the bike Karl was riding got a ton of compliments, and girls wanted to touch it
. One thing I really appreciated was the solid as a rock rear end. Lots of bikes these days (I'm looking at you Pivot) have noodly rear ends and I'm too big for that nonsense.
In terms of the ride, I'm a fan. The suspension does what Brian says. It sits higher in the travel while pedaling seated or standing and it is active just like a normal bike during descending. The higher pedaling position was very noticeable while seated and not really noticeable while standing. I did notice that the suspension was nice and stiff while pedaling standing. The Sea Otter course has plenty of pedal sections at high speed with bumps and the bike ate them up. There was no issue with the bike becoming overly stiff while smashing the pedals and crushing through bumps. Additionally I can only assume being higher in the travel helps to avoid pedal strikes, which I get a lot of on certain bikes (Firebird) and a few of on my Capra. The longer rear end (bike was setup with the 29" dropout running 27.5" rear wheel) made life hard in the tight turns of the Demo Flow trail but really shined in the fast rough bumps of Sea Otter.
The only time I felt anything strange with the linkage was when I was goofing around doing "carpark tricks" as the brits call it. When I would stoppie to rear wheel hop I felt like there was a little weird stiffness in the top of the stroke. I'm guessing this was because my weight was pushing the chainstay forward activating the "Missing Link". I never felt any unusual harshness in the top stroke while riding though.
At the Demo Flow trail I felt like the bike was a bit dead and hard to get off the ground (like a Yeti SB6 with an X2) but I think that was a suspension setup issue. After my first day of Sea Otter practice I was working hard to get the bike over jumps and the front end seemed to be sitting low through some of the high speed whoops and bumps. I have never run DVO suspension and didn't have enough runs to dial things in myself so I spent some time with the DVO techs working it out. They were able to get me more support and progressiveness in the fork and tune the pressure and rebound on the shock. One note is that they didn't have a baseline compression setting for the shock since it had been custom valved (it sounds like this linkage doesn't need nearly as much LSC as most). After these fixes the bike was running way better.
The 29/27.5 combo was interesting. On the tight, twisty Demo Flow trail it was a bit hard to get over the front wheel and drive the bike through tight corners. But on the rough, loose and fast Sea Otter course I could sit down into the bike and let the big wheel eat everything up.
I wish I had been able to do back to back timed runs on this bike and my Capra to see which bike was faster. It's always so hard to tell from feeling. Unfortunately I cased a stepdown and mashed the headset on my Capra during the first day of practice so that wasn't an option. To compare how they feel, the Tantrum was very planted and stable and my Capra likes to pop and snap side to side more.
There were a few complaints from my buddy Karl regarding the bike he was on, medium Meltdown 27.5 both ends and 170mm Diamond up front. There wasn't enough room in the seat tube to slam a dropper all the way in. We ended up getting a cut down seat post for race day and the extra room really helped. This will be an issue for anyone considering a medium frame. The bike I was running fit the Bike Yoke all the way to the collar so it's not an issue on the large. Karl also thought the reach on the medium was too long for his taste (he rides a medium SC Hightower).
In conclusion I like this bike. It measures up against any other enduro bike while descending and provides superior pedaling performance. I had a blast riding it and posted my best Sea Otter result.
Pros:
Improved pedaling performance
Stiff rear end
29/27.5 combo eats up rough terrain
Stable/planted feeling
Cons:
29/27.5 combo can be difficult in tight turns
Less poppy/snappy than my Capra
Long reach for the size M
Dropper post fit issues for the size M
TLDR
I like this bike. It pedals like a champion and descends on par with any other enduro bike out there. There might be a bit of weird suspension action if you try to do car park tricks on it but I never noticed anything while riding.
The 29/27.5 combo was interesting and everything I didn't like about it on the twisty/tight flow trail was what made it great for the high speed moto whoops at Sea Otter.
DVO Diamond and Topaz are legit.
The Bike (please correct me if I get anything wrong @Tantrum Cycles )
Tantrum Meltdown (L) - setup with 29" front end and 27.5" rear end but the bike I was on was using the longer dropout from the 29" rear end.
Fork - DVO diamond (160mm)
Shock - DVO Topaz
Brakes - Magura MT Trail Carbon
Drivetrain - SRAM Eagle GX
Cranks - Truvative descendant Carbon
Cockpit - Diety Stem (50mm I believe) and 787 bars
Dropper - Bike Yoke (with sweet color matched DVO lever)
Saddle - WTB pure or rocket
Wheels - DT 1500
Tires - HRIII
Review:
To preface this, I demo/ride a lot of bikes so I've ridden most every "enduro" offering from the usual suspects, except for some reason Trek. I'm currently riding a 2017 Alu Comp Capra. The review is based on riding the bike for one day at Soquel Demo Forrest, mostly on the flow trail and racing/practicing on it at Sea Otter.
Over all I really enjoyed this bike. The geometry was about as dialed as anything else I've ridden and the bike felt natural for me right off the bat. The quality of the bike and attention to detail is top notch, and damn it looks good. The pounded aluminum finish on the bike Karl was riding got a ton of compliments, and girls wanted to touch it
. One thing I really appreciated was the solid as a rock rear end. Lots of bikes these days (I'm looking at you Pivot) have noodly rear ends and I'm too big for that nonsense.In terms of the ride, I'm a fan. The suspension does what Brian says. It sits higher in the travel while pedaling seated or standing and it is active just like a normal bike during descending. The higher pedaling position was very noticeable while seated and not really noticeable while standing. I did notice that the suspension was nice and stiff while pedaling standing. The Sea Otter course has plenty of pedal sections at high speed with bumps and the bike ate them up. There was no issue with the bike becoming overly stiff while smashing the pedals and crushing through bumps. Additionally I can only assume being higher in the travel helps to avoid pedal strikes, which I get a lot of on certain bikes (Firebird) and a few of on my Capra. The longer rear end (bike was setup with the 29" dropout running 27.5" rear wheel) made life hard in the tight turns of the Demo Flow trail but really shined in the fast rough bumps of Sea Otter.
The only time I felt anything strange with the linkage was when I was goofing around doing "carpark tricks" as the brits call it. When I would stoppie to rear wheel hop I felt like there was a little weird stiffness in the top of the stroke. I'm guessing this was because my weight was pushing the chainstay forward activating the "Missing Link". I never felt any unusual harshness in the top stroke while riding though.
At the Demo Flow trail I felt like the bike was a bit dead and hard to get off the ground (like a Yeti SB6 with an X2) but I think that was a suspension setup issue. After my first day of Sea Otter practice I was working hard to get the bike over jumps and the front end seemed to be sitting low through some of the high speed whoops and bumps. I have never run DVO suspension and didn't have enough runs to dial things in myself so I spent some time with the DVO techs working it out. They were able to get me more support and progressiveness in the fork and tune the pressure and rebound on the shock. One note is that they didn't have a baseline compression setting for the shock since it had been custom valved (it sounds like this linkage doesn't need nearly as much LSC as most). After these fixes the bike was running way better.
The 29/27.5 combo was interesting. On the tight, twisty Demo Flow trail it was a bit hard to get over the front wheel and drive the bike through tight corners. But on the rough, loose and fast Sea Otter course I could sit down into the bike and let the big wheel eat everything up.
I wish I had been able to do back to back timed runs on this bike and my Capra to see which bike was faster. It's always so hard to tell from feeling. Unfortunately I cased a stepdown and mashed the headset on my Capra during the first day of practice so that wasn't an option. To compare how they feel, the Tantrum was very planted and stable and my Capra likes to pop and snap side to side more.
There were a few complaints from my buddy Karl regarding the bike he was on, medium Meltdown 27.5 both ends and 170mm Diamond up front. There wasn't enough room in the seat tube to slam a dropper all the way in. We ended up getting a cut down seat post for race day and the extra room really helped. This will be an issue for anyone considering a medium frame. The bike I was running fit the Bike Yoke all the way to the collar so it's not an issue on the large. Karl also thought the reach on the medium was too long for his taste (he rides a medium SC Hightower).
In conclusion I like this bike. It measures up against any other enduro bike while descending and provides superior pedaling performance. I had a blast riding it and posted my best Sea Otter result.
Pros:
Improved pedaling performance
Stiff rear end
29/27.5 combo eats up rough terrain
Stable/planted feeling
Cons:
29/27.5 combo can be difficult in tight turns
Less poppy/snappy than my Capra
Long reach for the size M
Dropper post fit issues for the size M
TLDR
I like this bike. It pedals like a champion and descends on par with any other enduro bike out there. There might be a bit of weird suspension action if you try to do car park tricks on it but I never noticed anything while riding.
The 29/27.5 combo was interesting and everything I didn't like about it on the twisty/tight flow trail was what made it great for the high speed moto whoops at Sea Otter.
DVO Diamond and Topaz are legit.
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That looks very fast and fun. I like how they threw in two rocks, too, for some variety
During the Pro Men's Final I always take a few minutes, in my drunken course wandering, to stand next to the "rock garden" and yell,
"WATCH OUT FOR THE ROCKS!!!!!!"
It's a fun course until you have to race it. Then you just pedal your lungs out in the Monterey sun and hope you don't blow a corner and lose all your hard earned momentum just before a flat section.
As a side not I should mention that Brian @Tantrum Cycles is a really cool guy. Fun to have a beer and a bowl with and full of great stories from the old days of bike racing and designing (as well as car racing and general OG shenanigans). He's a bit opinionated and stubborn like most of us here and that's probably why he seems to fit in.
If you get a chance to meet up with him on his cross country bike demoing quest you should.
If you get a chance to meet up with him on his cross country bike demoing quest you should.
At first it sounded like the medium is just too big for a medium (reach & seat tube length), but then you said your friend likes his medium Hightower. Wouldn't he fit a small on most of the new bikes?
I'd ride a XL Hightower but a large Capra 29.
I'd ride a XL Hightower but a large Capra 29.
Based on height he is solidly in the medium range. He's a strong dude and rides fast so I don't think he'd appreciate going down to a small. He is just kinda stocky so TT length/reach and standover are critical.
Looking at Brian's geo charts the reach on the med Meltdown is similar to a High tower (Meltdown 435, Hightower 430) and the TT length is a little longer (Meltdown 635, Hightower 601). Those numbers seem similar but combined with the longer wheelbase (Meltdown 1184, Hightower 1165) it probably just seemed like a longer bike than what he usually rides.
It's always tough to talk about how a bike feels versus how it performs. Especially when one bike is your bike that you ride all the time and feel super dialed on. It would have been great to get a baseline time for him on the Hightower to see if he was faster on the smaller bike. I suspect that the extra bike length helped hold the line in fast sections. I often feel like a bike is "big" or "long" until I get it up to speed. In the parking lot I feel great on a medium (I rode mediums for years since I'm between sizes at 5'11") but when I'm going fast I end up too far off the back.
Despite the complaint about the length of the bike Karl said he loved how it cornered, so who knows. He did put down a good time on it.
First of all, my apologies to Tom Rolly for the pic of rockofullr. I forgot to give him credit above. The pic of Karl is courtesy of my phone.Congrats Tantrum Cycles Factory Racing Squad!
Thanks @Bike078 and thanks @rockofullr and Karl for a great week.
I mean, Tantrum Cycles just won the first event entered
I'm just getting back from my post sea Otter trip and getting caught up.
Awesome review as well. I have only a few general comments. The bike rockofullr was riding was a bit of a mutant. It had 29er dropouts with a 27.5 rr wheel. why? I built that bike as a 29er with 160 mm travel, The Shinning. But the bb is a little high and the HTA a little steep for my tastes (at 65.5). It's good in Indiana, but I didn't think I wanted to take it to Sea Otter, so I slapped a 27.5 rear wheel, which brings the BB and HTA back to the Shinedown mixed wheel numbers with a 63.5 HTA, but with a longer 441 mm CS instead of 428 for the 27.5 rr wheel.
I wish we would have had the chance to swap dropouts, which would help the tight turn issues, without hurting stability. For me, this makes more difference than the 29er front, which I'm still in love with for terrain gobbling as well as cornering. I did notice tire squirm on the front of my own Shinedown on the Flow trail in Soquel (2.5 High Roller on 30 mm internal rims), but that was in super fast, high load berms. It was also the first time I ran a 2.5 front instead of a 2.35, so..........
For Karl's ride, I think swapping a 35 mm stem for the 50 would get the length right for him. The seatpost insertion was a big issue. Basically, he would need a 100 mm dropper to get full drop. My screw-up on that front, in my attempt to get shorter CS, I sacrificed too much seatpost insertion.
Fixed on next version.
@Tantrum Cycles I saw your tent setup this morning but you weren't there.
Can we get your bikes muddy?
Can we get your bikes muddy?
Missed ya! Other than for happy hour and free beerz, our group stayed away from the Susquehannock side because of the mud. While enjoying said free beerz you were entertaining some peoples from NY, didn't want to interrupt.
The bikes look nice though! That metal finish on the one is certainly eye catching.
Look for the home of the Brave. Resurrected after 13 years dormant. This thing used to take me to the NORBA National DH circuit, sponsoring myself racing and selling my ideas.
Not much changed. A little younger now.
Ya, wasn't great riding or demo. Cool event though.
Thanks for the props on the bikes
Since I've only been married for 3 years to current wife, that motorhome....well, I told my wife, we just need to cover up all those memories with our own.
Almost forgot. This guy has had the bike for awhile, swapped out for a larger frame.
http://twentynineinches-de.com/2018/06/01/tantrum-shinning-2-0-update/
http://twentynineinches-de.com/2018/06/01/tantrum-shinning-2-0-update/
Can we get Franz Beckenbauer to translate?
I translated the conclusion in google translate.
After the test started with a too short frame a bit bumpy, I can say that I like the TANTRUM Shinning 2.0 so far very well. The frame is somewhat heavy, the bottom bracket unusually high and the frame does not harmonize with all the cranks on the market, but otherwise the matching bike and especially the Missing Link kinematics is quite a serious challenge to the big manufacturers with their established technologies. Although the extraordinary kinematics does not work miracles, it works except for the slightly too low progression for my driving style and helps the bike to a remarkable downhill performance with at the same time unusually good uphill characteristics.
After the test started with a too short frame a bit bumpy, I can say that I like the TANTRUM Shinning 2.0 so far very well. The frame is somewhat heavy, the bottom bracket unusually high and the frame does not harmonize with all the cranks on the market, but otherwise the matching bike and especially the Missing Link kinematics is quite a serious challenge to the big manufacturers with their established technologies. Although the extraordinary kinematics does not work miracles, it works except for the slightly too low progression for my driving style and helps the bike to a remarkable downhill performance with at the same time unusually good uphill characteristics.
I thought everyone here read German,,,,
when you put it that way, it sounds, lyrical, almost poetic.....
Read yes, verstehen, nicht.
What exactingly am I looking at? It's like some sort of bar end situation in the middle of the bar
how people stuck in the 90's make "aero" mtb clipsWhat exactingly am I looking at? It's like some sort of bar end situation in the middle of the bar
but why
in these instances, i've learned to not ask that question, because there is no logical rational answer.