Hello Vital MTB Visitor,
We’re conducting a survey and would appreciate your input. Your answers will help Vital and the MTB industry better understand what riders like you want. Survey results will be used to recognize top brands. Make your voice heard!
Five lucky people will be selected at random to win a Vital MTB t-shirt.
Thanks in advance,
The Vital MTB Crew
my new 2025 Vampire Fastarossa
the most versatile Enduro/DH bike going steel front triangle with an aluminum rear.
travel is adjustable 165 190 or 220
this bike sits a 42lbs full coil fro t and rear.DD tires.cushcore ext.....
ok.. so.. how does it ride ? Did you own Jedis/Balances or previous O.G CBF bikes ? super curious how this one rides.. Have not seen the suspension kinematics etc.. and really ignorant if this new system, in any of these 3 configuration resembles or aims at the same riding characteristics found in CBF.. I rebuilt my old 2016 balance, and although I find it rather small now.. the suspension is very special...
I've had three Jedis and a balance and a one.2
I've ridden the prototype words can't explain how well this bike rides downhill uphill whatever you want to do with it however you want to build it.... it's amazing My bike weighs 42 lb and can pedal it anywhere
I'm a big Canfield fan, both of em, and I love the old school freeride vibes this gives.
That said...a bike built to really work at 190 is going to suck at 165, and vice versa.
I can see this bike being really cool for someone who wants an enduro bike and a park/downhill sort of bike. 165mm travel to 220mm travel is wild. Even 165mm to 190mm.
I wonder if something similar is possible in a shorter-travel sort of way? Would it be possible to have a 120mm - to - 150mm travel potential? Or would it be making it the worst of both worlds since those two different travel ranges ride fairly differently? Hell, even 120mm - to - 140mm would be sick!
Its also just an FSR layout with a high pivot (and from the looks of it, terrible chain overlap on the chainring). Besides the travel swap-ability there are quite a few other bikes out there that offer the same thing, possibly even better depending on what you want.
I'd personally rather be selective and buy two bikes that were purpose built for what I want, then have one bike and own multiple forks/shocks + bits and bobs that need to be switched each time I want a different travel bracket.
I guess I am not the target audience because I just don't get it.
Kavenz give you that ability with the VHP frame. everything from 120 to 180mm in the rear. And supposedly 140 to 200mm in the front.
I`ve tried everything from 160F/120R to 180F/180R and its awesome. The only problem is that you always ride like your on a big bike.
"...always ride like you're on a big bike" is exactly what I was meaning when I said "worst of both worlds." If the range of adjustability is lower, how far away you move from ideal is lower.
A 120mm and a 140mm bike can have similar use cases with similar chassis tuning and similar geometry. A 160mm and a 190mm bike can have similar use cases. A 120mm bike and a 160mm bike are kind of fundamentally different in what they're looking to do and I don't think there's a lot of overlap in the details of making a good 120mm bike and the details of making a good 160mm bike (caveate: I'm not an engineer and I've not designed bikes for high-performance use, I'd be happy to be wrong).
It's a noble pursuit! But I don't need something that can DO IT ALL. I need something that can make the use case of my bike a little wider.
If I were in an MTB Area™ I'd be looking for a way to have two bikes instead of three. I'd like to get that midpoint between XC/downcountry and enduro covered because I'd definitely be doing all three of those styles of riding. As it is, I'm currently near a place flat enough to see the natural curve of the earth so it would be fantastic if I could cover my XC/downcountry riding and the light-enduro stuff found at the end of a few-hour-drive with just one bike.
spent a morning with chris and vampire last week. lots of details on design, how it works and got to see the titanium vamborghini - detail pics here https://www.vitalmtb.com/features/vampire-bikes-basement-chris-canfield
So your complaint is that you can adjust the bike too far from being a flat land xc bike? That makes no sense at all. Its an enduro / dh frame.
No. Just no, its not even fsr at all. CBF pedals through rough terrain and under sag better then anything I've gotten to try.
I get not wanting to swap bits but its still a well built design that can be set up to do one thing better then most. I'm thinking about one to replace my aging enduro frame. It'd be a one setup bike as I already have a dh rig.
I don’t think I was complaining. More just spitballing that the Kavenz bike might make too many compromises to make it worthwhile for use as a short travel bike. In my post above that, I say these adjustable bikes sounds really cool for someone who wants an adjustable enduro-to-DH bike.
Again, not lamenting that it was too adjustable or that it’s an enduro-verging-on-DH-capable frame.
I was saying the needs/design of a short travel trail bike are so different from an enduro/DH bike that I think those super adjustable bikes are giving something up on one (or both) ends of the bike design to accommodate a wide range of travel lengths and I wondered out loud if customers - a person like me - would be better served and get better bikes by releasing two bikes with narrower ranges of travel adjustability rather than one bike that covers (like the Kavenz) 120mm-180mm.
No complaints from me. Just thinking out loud to see if any of the super smart/experienced folks around here have something to say about those thoughts.
***I’m not sure why my reply is showing up like a wall of text. I have paragraph breaks in the text box. When I post they’re gone. I’ll edit again later when I get to an actual machine so it doesn’t look so…much like a wall of text.
***fixed now that I'm on a computer.
The design would in fact infringe on the FSR patent were it still an active patent.
It is both a Horst/fsr and CBF design. Getting the center of curvature on the top of the chainring is possible with many layouts.
Post a reply to: Vampire Bikes