Tiong Hin Co Tyre – MTB Zone

Dirt Rag Magazine sat down with Pivot’s fearless leader earlier this fall and downloaded him on everything Pivot. The interviewers did a great job of getting inside Chris’s head and got a great picture about Pivot’s philosophy, our attention to detail and got a great lesson on suspension theory. The article, with a review of the Mach 5, is on newstands now. The Mach 5 review is online now, too: http://www.dirtragmag.com/print/article.php?ID=1246&category=stuff_reviews

The 140mm-travel Mach 5 is Pivot’s vision of the proverbial “jack of all trades” mountain bike. Pivot’s head honcho, Chris Cocalis, described his approach to the Mach 5: “The whole idea of the bike is that it has neutral handling, not overly slow nor overly quick. Some of the newer 140mm bikes fall more toward a ‘freeride-light.’ But the Mach 5 falls more toward our cross-country based bikes. It has all the capabilities, but at the same time has the pedal feel that somebody would feel comfortable doing an endurance event or 24-hour race on this style bike.” I totally get the idea of having “one bike that does it all” and was anxious to evaluate how well the Mach 5 fared in the pursuit of that lofty goal.

To kick off this test, Chris Cocalis stopped by Dirt Rag HQ to talk tech, and join the staff on a group ride. Chris gave us a primer on the dw-link rear suspension that Pivot uses on their bikes. The brainchild of Dave Weagle, the dw-link is a version of a dual-link suspension, where there is an upper and a lower linkage. According to Chris, a key benefit of any dual-link bike is that the wheel travel path doesn’t have to be one constant arc, it can be an S- or a V-shape, something other than an arc. The Pivot suspension has a rearward wheel travel path in the first part of the travel, designed to produce better square-edged bump performance and allow the suspension to roll through the smaller trail junk a lot easier….

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