First look: Scott Genius LT 700 goes 27.5 (650b)

[redplanet]

First look: Scott Genius LT 700 goes 27.5 (650b)

par redplanet » Mar Juin 25, 2013 10:35 am

After last year's update of Genius platform to a conventional push shock and the introduction of the slightly less conventional 27.5 (650b) wheelsize, it was a matter of time before the longer-travel Scott Genius LT saw a similar update for 2014.

Designed as an enduro race machine, the Genius LT has gone down in both travel and weight, with 170mm of travel at either end, as opposed to the 180/185mm front/rear bias of old. The all-new carbon frame is based on the basic layout of the 2013 Genius. Scott's impressive carbon forming know-how has enabled the company to drop an impressive 400g from the 2013 frame, giving the new bike claimed weight of just 12.4kg (27.3lb) for the model pictured.

Apart from being butched-up over the standard Genius to cope with the extra travel and trail antics of Scott team riders such as Brendan Fairclough, the carbon frame of the LT has a few additional tweaks: the new bike has internal cable routing to keep things clean; and a neat chainstay-mounted chain guide hints at the bike's more aggressive purpose.

More importantly, the stilted-feeling DT Swiss Nude shock used on previous Spark and Genius models has been consigned to history, not just for the LT, but across the entire Scott range. The performance of this unit was a chink in the armour of an otherwise fast and furious trail steed.

[img:500:333]http://cdn.mos.bikeradar.com/images/news/2013/06/24/1372113990092-u1cd98vodhjn-500-70.jpg[/img]The Fox shock provides full travel (170mm), 135mm or a complete lockout via Scott's TwinLock remote

Scott chose to partner with Fox to create a new Nude unit. It still provides three travel settings, with 170mm, 135mm or complete lockout available at a flick of the bar-mounted 'Twinloc' remote switch. The reduced travel Traction setting reduced the air volume of the shock to give less sag, creating more upright geometry, a feature that Scott has long held to improve climbing performance over travel adjustment alone.

As in last year's Genius range, the remote also simultaneously adjusts the Climb-Trail-Descent damping settings of the front Fox 34 fork to match the three travel settings. This single change could prove significant to radically changing the trail manners of the Scott trail full suspension family and we're eager to try the new unit in anger.

The bike pictured also represents one of our first sights of the new, single-ring specific X01 11-speed groupset, which offers the wide range of the frighteningly expensive but functionally flawless groupset at a reduced cost.

[img:500:750]http://cdn.mos.bikeradar.com/images/news/2013/06/24/1372114206085-1ampfyylgd1t6-500-70.jpg[/img]The bulk of the technology behind SRAM's XX1 group appears to trickle down to the new XO1 group

We've not had chance to look at it in isolation, but it's fair to expect a weight penalty for the price reduction, although the cassette appears to share the slimmed down XD driver body standard as well as the 10-42T gear range. The cranks use alloy arms but still have the X-SYNC wide and narrow teeth, which serve to hold the chain firmly in place.

BikeRadar will be getting a first ride on the new Scott Genius LT soon, so check back for news of how both it and the new SRAM X01 groupset feel once tires hit dirt.
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