New EVIL Offering - Forum Hot Seat with Evil Bikes

$4k frames in 2025: Are you comfortable being DOA?

i am slowly being priced out of MTB.

Man that's clean! Hoping something's down the road for mixed wheels!

They fixed the seat tube angle! As a tall guy, I would finally consider an Evil!
As for the pricing - please stop whining. This is pretty standard now, for better or worse. It’s less an an equivalent Santa Cruz. Go buy a YT. 

I'd love to try one... in a field of crab links, faux crab links and imitation crab link look alikes, this does stand out as different and interesting.  

As a 6'3" ish rider, I'm interested in the design/validation process that lead to a fixed chainstay size.  I'm a longer chainstay type of guy, but I can admit when I jump on a pivot, I'm not thinking of how short the chainstays are the whole time.  I feel like there is a riding style that is central to evil bikes that jives with slapping the back end in and out of things and that works with shorter chainstays.  That being said, this bike has a much longer front center then the last one, and the chainstays did not grow proportionally, so I'm interested in how that played out in the design process.  

Also, as a serial rear brake dragger, I'm interested to know as much as I can about the anti-dive kinematics of this bike.  I will admit that I felt like the previous evil bikes I've ridden rewarded a very advanced, off the brakes riding style and the suspension performance benefited from that.  Have they done rider testing with a wide range of riding styles/skillsets for this bike? I'm not sure it's truly important, Evil's brand and rider follwership was more of a, "if you know you know" and an advanced riding style.  Maybe this isn't that critical for their identity or target customer.  

Lastly, overall I think it's a good design update and I would (as noted above me) not take the bait on pricing criticism.  The writing is on the wall that if you want something that is under 3k for a carbon frame, you need to buy name brand, off the shelf crab.  If you want the limited run, fresh off the shell crab, you're going to need to pay in the 4k range for a frame.  Seems reasonable to be riding something different, that is going to sell less volume then Specialized.  

I suppose we can't be everyone's cup of tea - our goal is to make the best bikes we possibly can & yes, that price is competitive. Thanks! 

Bet

why do you think everyone should have the same length rear center but a size specific front center and do you believe every size rides exactly the same?

Is there kinematic charts we can see?

Please let there be a short travel MX wheel "play bike" with shorter chainstays, pleeeease!! A new mullet Calling!! I assume the eventual new Insurgent will be a 180-200mm Mullet too.

Can you run it mullet?  Just eyeballing it, it looks possible in some of the high setups, like high/170.

Appreciate you guys (Evil) releasing a bike and being present on the forums to chat about it.

Thanks & great question - it's a longer answer than we can reasonably sum up here, but we'll do our best. 

Your assessment is correct - an "agile" ride character has always been somewhat of a hallmark here at Evil. We try to walk the line between agile/fun, and stable/confident. Short stays make for fun wheelies & jumps, thus, we've always stayed on the shorter side. There's a great argument for size-specific chainstay lengths - that much, we do not debate. 

Our rear triangles are a relatively complex mold. Molds are quite expensive. Introducing another rear triangle mold increases total up-front investment significantly. Considering the bike industry as a whole is not doing so hot right now, we really had to take a hard look at cost/benefit. 

All other variables held constant, increasing chainstay length would output more travel and throw off the leverage rate. To maintain travel and ride character, this would require alternative links, alternative shock tunes, and/or an alternative front triangle altogether. It gets complicated quickly. 

Front center did grow significantly. You are correct in the sense that CS did not grow in quite the same proportion. That said, when you consider that the seat tube angle is considerably steeper, the rider's weight in the pedaling position is shifted significantly forward. Seated - the effect is much more tangible than the 5mm growth in CS length. Standing - the bike still likes to wheelie & jump. Trying to strike the best balance of uphill efficiency, while maintaining the lively, agile character synonymous with Evil. 

Braking - we hear you, although we've never found it to be much of a bother. Our DELTA linkage is a linkage driven single pivot design. The rear axle operating in a perfect arc around the main pivot. Within this design, there is no way to isolate braking forces, shy of a floating brake. We're always looking to improve, but we really like the ride character of our DELTA linkage & I don't think we're terribly excited about floating brakes. Big fans of "less is more" from a mechanical complexity perspective. We want working on bikes to be easy. To answer your question directly - yes, we test with a wide variety of styles & skillsets. 

Thanks for the kind words & we appreciate the sentiments around pricing. To touch on that from my perspective (hi, Dylan here), we went out of our way to ensure this bike was not only competitive, but actually priced less than many comparable models from other brands. While we do aim to produce & sell a top-tier product, we are not really interested in playing the Louis, Gucci, Fendi, Prada game like some brands. There's always a lot to consider here, but the market isn't doing so hot right now & we want our bikes to strike somewhat of an attainable luxury balance. We put all this effort in so people can ride them, not just dream of riding them. 

Anywhoo, hope this babble was at least insightful & thanks again for your comment! 

Thank you for your comment - this is addressed in another comment/reply within this thread. And no - of course every size does not ride exactly the same. 

This is something that we have not historically shared. Of course these can be reverse-engineered to a relatively accurate degree, although our engineering team prefers to keep the secret sauce a secret. 

Not by design, although you absolutely can. There's plenty of folks out there who have mulleted any one of our 29" models. Considering the steep seat tube angle on this one, a smaller wheel won't pose a huge detriment to STA, although it will lower the BB height, so that's something to watch out for. 

Thanks! 

Bike looks great, well done Evil. When does the new DH bike drop!? 🤘😵

Can run older eagle drivetrain with the stated spacing in the Faq?

I think everyone here agrees that we would absolutely love to see the Undead rise again. I mean, it is in the name after all... 

That said, for a small company like us, a DH bike is a passion project much more than it would be a smart business decision. Perhaps someday, although it's going to take the market recovering, and us sitting comfortably before that's going to happen. 

Yes, but you might need a new crankset to achieve that 55mm chainline. 

I like how it looks. I didnt even try to think how that suspension work 🙃

Whats the timeline for the rest of the product line to get updated? 

These updates on the following would make me very interested in owning one

I second this, safe to assume the rest of the bikes will get similar treatment. following will be 🔥

Going to be a bit. We're a small team and the industry is not doing so hot. Development is slow these days. 

Do you guys mind sharing a frame weight for a Large?  (sorry if this is posted in your faq videos, i'm at work and can't watch them)

I've been in the market for a new trail bike and I've been looking for a 140/150 travel frame.  I have a hunch that this bike could be slightly heavier then other options I'm looking at... however I recently played around with adding some weight to my nomad and I find that additional weight around the bottom bracket is nothing to be feared, if anything it's helpful.  

Love to see it EVIL!  I had  V1 Insurgent and still own my  2017 Calling and 21' Insurgent MX.  Questions?

Any hints on the new Insurgent?  At least tell me we will get some colorful options outside of shades of black and grey?

Any word on the Calling?!?!  I'm going to need a replacement sometime, and the Calling is still the best riding bike I have ever thrown a leg over!

This is something that is very useful to know and I appreciate the companies that make it easy to access. A lot of people want to either upgrade the shock or bring over a high end damper they already own. So this makes it much easier to get that person set up properly if the bike company hasn't already supplied detailed settings and spring rates for that shock

The Freehub review makes it sound very “poppy” and not stable, super fun probably! Would a coil shock rein it in a little and allow it to track through the rocks better? What’s the size large frame weight without shock?

what are the frame weights?