Whyte PRST-1

Frame: 6061 clamshell box section and tube

Fork: Whyte Plus 4’s

Stop: Hope XC4 disc brake

Go: SRAM ESP 9.0 rear mech and shifters, XT front and chainset, Shimano SPD’s

Wheels: Mavic 317 disc, Hope Hubs, IRC Notos 26 x 2.1 tyres

Trim: Giro Nisene Twin Tech Gel saddle

Total weight: 27.4lb complete. (bell, computer etc.)

From: ATB Sales 01424 753566

Prices: Superbike spec. £2695, XT spec. £1995, Deore spec. £1550, Frameset £1295

Test logbook

We’ve had it in the fleet for 6 months and it’s been ridden in every condition from hardbaked trail to snow and ice around the Moors, Dales, Peak district and more vicious parts of the local woods, clocking up around 400 miles in the process.

Three facts you need to know

The Preston (PRST-1) name comes from the menacingly ugly unstoppable robot dog from Wallace and Grommit’s “close shave”.

Whyte is the surname of one of the bikes designers, Jon Whyte, (the other was Adrian Ward, who’s now gone back to Formula 1 racing). The firm has been set up by ATB Sales, the Marin importers for whom Jon was already designing the very succesful FRS range (Mount Vision etc.). ATB Sales knew Marin wouldn’t touch anything as radical as this so they decided to take the huge risk of R+D-ing and producing the bike themselves.

The bike is not the same as BMW’s. The BMW bike uses their long established motorbike “Telelever” system which uses a similar lower wishbone and shock set up, but uses telescopic sliders rather than a cartridge bearing linkage at the top.

The Reason

Bikes don’t look this strange unless they have to so what are Whyte trying to pull here?

The concept was born after testing couldn’t find a front end that performed as well as the Marin rear end. Preston was started from scratch to provide a more balanced performance and try and eradicate some of the common problems of telescopic forks too – namely significantly steepened steering angles under full compression of long travel forks and the problems of stiction and seal / bushing wear in telescopic systems.

The Rig

There’s so much innovaton on this bike it takes a while to go through the what how and why. So are you sitting comfortably?

Right from the bottom of the forks we’re hitting fresh thinking. The “Big Gripper” clamp system uses a broad ‘latch’ that swings shut and then fastens with a 180 degree catch on the side of the dropout. The latch holds an aluminium bobbin that is bolted onto the end of a conventional hub using a central skewer. The system is a mix of technology from race car panel fastenings and the fork ends of a Honda RC30 race bike and it locks the front axle in place very quickly and securely for maximum steering precision. The same system is used at the rear, with the drive side ‘latch’ also carrying the rear mech hanger, so the whole lot swings out of the way for super quick wheel changes (once you’ve got the hang of it). Rather than carry unneccesary weight on V-brake versions, the disc brake mounts are plates bolted onto the rear of the cast dropout unit. However not only does the long washer stack and bolted plate cause loads of squeal until it’s copper greased and tightened down super hard it also looks like an afterthought on an otherwise neatly detailed wagon.

The ‘Plus Four’ fork legs use the same two halves welded together construction as the mainframe to enable a multi faceted profile to provide lateral strength across the upper part of the leg. The narrow track of the forks takes some getting used to when you look over the handlebars but the whole set up tracks with stunning precision and no trace of flutter. The lower wishbone is supported by an extruded X-Box profile section which then bolts into the crucial eyeball joint. This ingenious bearing is actually designed for use in those unstoppable quad bikes that farmers seem to live on these days, and we’ve certainly had no problems with it loosening despite regular builds ups of filth and grit in that area. The bearings in the linkage at the top of the fork are fully sealed cartridge units but again after 6 months they were still super smooth and coated in the original grease when we stripped the upper assembly down.

The short headtube uses a Cane Creek aheadset for lightweight, but from experience they’re not the most durable of things so keep it sweet and greased. On the plus side it’s well up out of the way of filth, even if the shorter headtube increases potential for lateral loading.

The steerer tube is one of the two areas we’ve had trouble with. The trouble is the central slot through which the top bearing axle passes through. The original steerer was a fairly soft alloy pipe which only survived as long as the first big stack down a flight of steps. The wheel, forks and bars all swung round with full weight of the exiting rider on them and we suddenly had 15 degrees of play in the stem, which wouldn’t go away however much we cranked up the Pace unit. Whyte were already aware of the problem though and had contracted Middleburn (the chainset people) to produce much higher grade, butted, replacement steerers which they were sending out to all existing owners FOC and retrofitting to unsold stock. In went the new steerer and we haven’t had a problem since. Another point worth noting is despite the severity of the impact neither the fork legs or lower wishbone suffered any damage whch was something we had been worried about previously.

The lower wishbone is a very neat multi-part welded box section that pivots on the mainframe spar at the rear with the shock sitting in the central well. Unfortunately the lower end of the shock is in a prime filth collecting spot and our lower shock mount bushings gave out after about 5 months which was dissapointing. The rear bushes also gave up the ghost shortly afterwards, which was a suprise as we’ve ridden Marin’s into the ground without a murmur from them. Checking with the designer Jon Whyte the problem is apparently cheaper bushings supplied from Fox, but to counter the problem ATB sales have designed and produced a new set of O ring fitted upgrade bushes which will be available very shortly.

The other negative feedback we’ve had from riders has been the paint quality, particularly in reference to cable rub. As we built our bike up from a frame we took one look at the cable clip on the top bottle cage and threw it away. Instead we routed the cables (zip tied loosely into a bundle) through the ‘upper triangle’ of the fork and then down under the lower headset race where we threaded the rear mech cable and the brake hose through the shock mount in between the shock and the frame itself. The cable then exits under the rear wishbone pivot and swings under the shock to the bosses on the rear end. We slapped the big jelly frame protector that Whyte helpfully supply across the side of the frame where the hose and cable contacted, and we’ve never had a problem. The only loss of paint has been on the swingarm due to heel rub, but it’s certainly no worse than anything we’d expect from a long termer of any brand. We asked Jon Whyte about this too and his reply was that cable routing ahs been changed since the original samples were sent out, but paint weight / thickness was a consideration when they were speccing the bike.

The mainframe spar uses the same ‘two halves welded together’ construction as this years Marin’s and the long seam weld is an absolutely fautless tribute to Taiwanese skill. The seat tube is conventional butted 6061 and rear top tube is a teardrop profile number. The only problem we had was the shim used around the seatpost lets spray from the rear wheel straight in down the seat tube if it’s aligned with the slot in the frame, so align it to one side and tip the frame upside down after wet outings to let it drain!

If you’re running the aluminium seatpost life with the QR clamp is fine if you’re firm with the fastening, but we soon changed to an allen bolt and stripped all the grease off pipe and carbon post when we started running the USE Alien. As several of our riders have mentioned the little Alien seat clamp bolts also need to be tightened and re-tightened beyond what seems wise on a very regular basis for the first few rides which is a major pain until it settles in and stops shifting.

The rear end looks fairly conventional at first glance, but Whyte have pulled off a great “why did nobody think of that before?” move by continuing the front section of the swingarm unit down below the bottom bracket and looping the chainstays back to the dropout from beneath. Not only does it create a neat chainring protector but it increases triangulation of the rear end massively for superb tracking, enhanced by the ‘Big Gripper’ dropout system out back. The only downside is an increased risk of chainsuck in really heavy going, but it’s only bothered us twice with the XT chainset even in the absolutely vile conditions of autumn. It’s certainly not as bad as the Bontrager ringed bikes we’ve ridden with coventional chainstay set ups.

Spec

As previously mentioned, the bike was built up from frame and wheels but it’s ended up with a pretty much “Superbike” level spec. As many of you rightly point out the ultralight Conti tyres are an absolute joke except on bone dry hardpack so we reccommend swapping these overgrown innertubes (and the superlight inners inside them) before you even leave the shop so your LBS can sell them to some delighted weight watching whippet. Yes it’s a bad spec. move but unfortunately loads of manufacturers are doing it at present so Whyte are no more guilty or innoncent than anyone else I suppose. Hope XC4’s have improved immeasurably since we fitted new pads but they’re still more subtle than terrifying so go for bigger discs and C2’s if you want to really stop hard.

We fitted a Giro saddle just because we had one, not becasue there was anything wrong with the SDG, but we went for the Roox carbon flat riser bar as it’s wider and lower than the specced Easton monkey bar. We also plugged in a Pace stem for pimp points but it’s no lighter than the impressive Whyte original.

Transmission is Gripshift ESP 9.0 / XT based as it was what we had lying around and we wanted the rigidity of the splined BB. Thanks to Preston’s speed and climbing prowess, we ran the XT chainset as a double (with big end XTR block) for the first four months.

The only other extras we fitted were a Cateye Enduro computer (which has been a superb mileage logger and suprisingly encouraging speedo) and a Tokyo Bell TB-220 for crowd control.

As well as the Superbike and XT spec. Whyte have now also added a Deore equipped bike at £1500, which sounds like an excellent, workable way to get started.

The Ride

There’s been a lot of opinions flying back and forth in print and rumour about the ride of Preston so here comes our ten penneth;

Initially the front air shock takes a fair bit of experimentation and fettling to get the performance characteristics you want. The beauty of the Plus Four system is it’s amazing smoothness and tracking ability, both of which are maximised by running the fork as soft as you can to let it follow every tiny ripple and undulation. The downside of the softly, softly set up is that the fork has no progressiveness to it’s stroke, so it’ll bury itself to full travel very quickly. This is particularly obvious when you’re braking downhill, where the front end will dive heavily or when you’re honking up the other side where out of the saddle bob is nearly the complete 4″.

The obvious answer to this is to pump more pressure into the shock, but then you’re losing some of that sublime smoothness.

Thankfully the fork reduces the problem by the way it behaves through it’s travel. As the shock compresses, the steering angle hardly alters which means no steepening tuck or dive like a long travel telescopic unit, but the same smooth arc carving round the turn whatever the terrain is doing. It feels curious to begin with but as one of our feedback riders says, the more you get used to it the faster and faster you can rail through corners as conventional bikes judder sideways into the rough all around you.

The linkage also tackles blunt strikes with absolute contempt. Whether it’s boulders, kerbs or whole flights of stairs you’re ploughing up (once you’ve got decent innertubes in) Preston just melts them to nothing. The faster you go the smoother it seems to fly too, which makes blasting off fireroad sections into tight singletrack at 20mph+ an absolute blast – top link bobbing up and down like a siesmograph pointer as your handlebars stay totally unmoved through big strikes or rapid washboard.

Point it uphill and the ultra sensitive suspension keeps steering traction secure while the wheel just rolls up and over whatever lies in your path. If you need to clear it over anything bigger the high bar position plus the lighweight fork structure with it’s shock set well back in the frame means popping the front wheel up and over is effortless, with total cut and paste control.

As several of our other testers have commented, the rear end is totally overshadowed through no fault of it’s own. Like the Marin’s it owes it’s ancestry too, it’s an excellent balance of 4″ of strike swallowing travel with sharp dig in traction and power response to fire you up to speed or up the loosest chutes. With the underslung chainstays it’s supremely stiff in terms of tracking and cornering response, cutting through off camber sections with pin sharp feedback and poise. But – and this is funny when you think how well Marin have traded on putting the boot into linkage systems – it just isn’t as eerily smooth as the front end (though of course they rightly say that’s because the swingarm has to cope with the lumpy power output of a heavy breathing human two stroke engine.)

The spar mainframe does a very good job of keeping all the dots in the right order, with bags of clearance and only a slight trace of centre section twist under real provocation – and then only because either end is so damn stiff. Bottle cage placement isn’t the most natural, but rider reach and weight distribution are bang on for fast riding all day, with enough manouevrability for mixing it on singletrack. As usual for Whyte / Marin we slung on a 100mm stem to quicken the handling form it’s stock 120mm neutrality. The only compromise is no lowered bar option (it’ll clout the top link) but though head down hammerers might disagree we reckon the position is fine for all-day comfort and control.

Verdict:

So what do our jury reckon? There’s no doubt it’s a real divider of opinion and styles. We can see that if you’re into big drop offs, jumps, heavy braking and really slow speed technical stuff and get back up the other side by brute force not finesse you’ll miss out on the point of Preston entirely. By the time the shock is set up to handle the strikes and inputs you’re giving out it will perform no better (if not noticeably worse) than a similar rear-ended bike running something like Psylo’s, X-Verts or Pace up front.

On the other hand if you ride hard and fast XC or want to cross serious terrain with the minimum of pain and suffering but the maximum of control then – once it’s set up – Preston is genuinely stunning. Occasionally the front end will get out of it’s depth if you’re anchoring late and hard into something steep, or your stiffer forked mates sprint up a road hill out of the saddle. Still, the bottom out is never savage, and the ‘flaw’ is actually accentuated by the fact it’ so competent elsewhere.

Once we’d adjusted to the steering and dialed in just the right pressure to maximise travel without bottoming often, the bike was untouchable through fast moor or wood singletrack. We’d would float down washed out riverbeds in the big ring with both ends hammering but the centre section and rider totally calm and collected. In fact it’s so smooth and carves so well through turns we actually stopped riding it on group rides for a while because it just felt like we were cheating and we wanted the satisfaction of actually trying to stay with better riders ourselves rather than passing them with unfair assistance.

Though it’s no featherweight, the lightness and agility of the front end and the laterally stiff and responsive rear Preston also rides several pounds lighter than it’s actual scale weight as soon as you get it off road plus you’ve also got the advantage that you’ll be thrashing through technical sections significantly faster so accceleration is less of an issue anyway.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing is that – once the replacement bushings for the Fox shock mounts are available – the fork will be pretty much maintenance free which puts it into a whole new category of performance.

To sum up, not everyone will like Preston either because of the way it rides, or just the way it looks doesn’t match their style so giving it a score seems pointless. But if you spend a little time to adjust the suspension and adjust yourself to the way it sweeps through corners, the speed and smoothness, up, down, along and around the trail is phenomenal. Just be careful with those chafing cables though.

For the full low down on the rest of the range pedal your smooth rolling mouse over here but don’t go expecting any bright colours now.