• Specialized Enduro SX Trail
• £1,099 frame only
• Specialized

Specialized’s current Enduro range carries the strapline “earn your turns”. Which means that the bikes are designed primarily with descending in mind, while making the climb back up a not-too-unpleasant experience. Comfortable in the knowledge that some riders would be more than happy to further compromise uphill prowess for enhanced downhill capability, though, Specialized offers the frame-only SX Trail. It’s the same shape as the other Enduros, offers the same 150mm of travel, but gives you a beefed-up chassis and a big, sturdy coil shock.

Frame

Make no mistake, this is a sturdy bit of kit. Out of the box our Large frame weighed 4.5kg (9.9lb), and it’s not hard to see where the mass comes from. The most obvious thing is the huge 5th Element coil shock. It’s a 225mm eye-to-eye unit, with a steel coil spring and the clever platform gubbins in a remote reservoir (there isn’t room for the usual fixed reservoir on the smaller sizes). We like big shocks – a long stroke means a lower leverage ratio, which means lower shock speeds, lower spring rates and an easier job for the damping. You also get a bigger volume, so the whole thing’s doing less work with more oil which is always a good idea.

Most of the weight, though, is pure metal. The SX Trail is made from Specialized’s A1 aluminium rather than the posher M5 of the S-Works Enduro, and there’s a lot of it in there. The forged headtube is actually the same as the one on the Demo 8. It’s interesting to see the different manufacturing techniques used by different companies – while the small-scale production of the likes of, say, Nicolai tends to mean lots of machined parts, Specialized’s volume makes forging the way forward, and it’s gone to town on this bike.

That headtube is super-thick at the ends (compare the diameter at the bottom with the headset cup) but slimmed down a bit in the middle. Forging does very useful things with grain alignment and work-hardening, which makes this headtube very, very unlikely to flare out or go oval. It’s machined internally for an accurate headset fit, but it won’t take a deep-insertion headset. Fortunately we noticed that just before trying to put one in…

The other mighty bit of forging is the bottom bracket shell. Or rather, the bottom bracket shell, front mech stub tube, swingarm pivot, ISCG mount and front gear cable stop, all of which are combined in one big forged chunk of aluminium. Then there’s the forward shock mount, the cunning split seat tube bit, the chainstay and seatstay yokes, the hollowed-out dropouts…

It doesn’t stop there. All the tubes that join the chunky forged bits together are manipulated into big, flared square sections. There’s plenty of tyre room, the seat tube’s long enough to run a pedalling-friendly seat post and still have room to drop it properly and the old Enduro’s often-troublesome under-BB rear gear cable routing has gone.

For added versatility, you get a choice of two shock brackets. One gives you more relaxed angles and a lower BB, the other slightly steeper angles (by a degree) and a higher BB (by half an inch). The back end of the shock is mounted on a cunning arrangement of spherical washers to stop any slight misalignment or twisting of the back end doing nasty things to the shock. It’s a good idea, although dismounting and reattaching that end of the shock to change springs is liable to be a tad fiddly.

Components

The SX Trail is currently available as a frame only in the UK (although there’ll be a complete bike for 2006). The US complete bike comes decked out with Marzocchi 66 forks and heavy-duty components, which gives you an idea of what the bike’s capable of. We went with a more conservative build – a Z1 FR instead of the super-long 66, a Shimano Saint groupset and Syncros bar and stem to go with the Derived seatpost that comes as part of the frame package. As shown in the pictures the full bike came in at a hefty 38-and-a-bit lb, although a lot of that is the Schwalbe 2.4in tyres – we’ve also run it with a lighter fork and 2.3 Contis at around 35lb and you could get a bit more off without too much effort. Saving weight isn’t what this bike’s about, though – if you want something lighter, you’d be better off starting out with the S-Works frame, which is a good couple of pounds lighter straight off.

You’ll have seen reviews of most of the stuff on this bike on the site already. The only problem we’ve had was with the Syncros seatpost that we somehow managed to bend, although a replacement has held up fine.

Ride

The whole Enduro range has a fairly clear downhill bias. They’re bikes designed for descendy fun that you can pedal back up, but climbing performance is definitely secondary. That goes double for the SX Trail. It’s an intentionally beefed-up version that’ll take a real pounding, but pays for it with extra heft.

That said, it’s actually not at all bad considering. The numbers look deeply unpromising for climbing, with 68.5° head and seat angles, but as it turns out the quoted seat angle is the angle of the physical tube, which isn’t even slightly aligned with where a regular full-length seat tube would go. Project a line from the BB axle to the middle of the seatpost and you get something more in the 73-74° line (it depends a bit how high the seat is). Combine that with a rangy 24.5in top tube on the Large bike and the weight distribution is actually quite effective. Obviously the front end’s pretty high and a bit wandery, and there’s no denying that you start to feel every ounce of those 38lb, but you get bags of traction, not much wallow, hardly any pedal kickback and, with the aid of some sort of fork lock-down, we had this bike up some climbs that defeated pretty much everything else. It might not flatter your physical exertion, but it rewards stubbornness…

It’s built to go the other way, though, and it’s an absolute hoot on the descents. It’s a big, long bike and can be a handful in the tight stuff (although it’s a lot more agile than you’d think) but on faster, open trails it’s fantastic. You can just aim it at where you want to go and start pedalling. The suspension gets better the faster you get, and combined with the weight and length you end up aboard a super-stable trail weapon. You have to muscle it a bit in turns, but it’s a more than acceptable trade-off for the totally invulnerable feel. It’s certainly capable of far more than we are. We see no reason at all why you couldn’t use this at a UK DH race with suitable spec, and it’s more than happy on drops. If you’re used to short freeride bikes the proportions may feel a bit odd, but anyone coming from XC/all-mountain bikes and looking for something meatier will feel right at home.

Of course, you start to think that it’s possibly a bit too good, as your favourite fast, rocky trails suddenly feel about as challenging as riding down your drive. But on the other hand you’re just changing your emphasis from getting down trails at all to choosing how you get down them. It’s a largely philosophical issue – we’re not going to try and second-guess what you want out of a bike, only you know that.

Positives: Bombproof construction, ludicrously capable, reasonably priced, just plain fun.

Negatives: Likely to end up a bit heavy for all-day rides, feels as big as it is, needs lots of bumps and speed to get the most out of it.

Verdict

We’ll probably be accused of some weird form of elitism here, but what the hell, we’ll say it anyway – a lot, possibly most, people won’t be riding the sort of trails at the sorts of speeds that make this bike make sense. On the other hand, everyone seems to be going faster and bigger all the time. Dedicated freeriders or downhillers will want something a bit more single-minded than the SX Trail, but if you’re coming from a more trail-riding direction, trying to explore your limits and looking for a bike that won’t let you down, have a close look at this.

Performance: 5/5
Value: 5/5
Overall: 5/5