Foes Mixer trail

You will find the evolution of this custom garage build on another thread, below is the straight up review after +200miles around OC including Laguna Wilderness, Whiting ranch, Ladera Ranch, and some street mobbing,




Frame: Foes Mixer trail(5.5 or 6" rear travel), size large, satin black
Shock: DVO topaz
Fork: DVO diamond (set at 150mm)
Hubs: Hope pro evo 4, red
Brakes: Magura MT trail blue/polished AL
Rotors:MaguraHT, 180's
Rims: Racecface arc 30
Spokes: DT comp
Nipples: brass pro loc
Tires: Onza ibex 2.4
Bottom Bracket: wheels manufacturing angular contact
Cranks: race face turbine cinch 170mm
Cassette: e-13 9-44
Rear Derailleur: Box one
Rear Shifter: Box one
Chain: KMC DLC
Bars: Spank Spike, Polish AL
Stem: Spank 50mm, Black
Saddle: chromag lynx dt
Seat Post race face $15
Pedals: Time DH4
Grips: Oury lock ons, blue caps
Headset: Cane creek forty

total weight with some mud: 31.5lb

 

Fabrication: Absoluty stunning aluminum work. Hydroforming, mandrel bent tubes, CNC work. It's all top notch USA made stuff

Frame stiffness: ridiculously stiff(that's GOOD) no lateral flex, no BB twist, no linkage play, no seat stay swagger, no top tube tango. I am a fat ass and mash gear. I can spot flexy $10k super bikes a mile away. This frame leaves nothing to talk about in this department.

Pedaling: high rating, very efficient, a slightly positive anti squat characteristic under the higher torque range of pedaling forces. Neutral to slightly "bobbing" under low torque high cadence square pedaling. I might call An IBIS DW link bike (I have ridden a Riply, mojo 3, HD3) slightly stiffer at resisting vertical forces while pedaling. That might be a negligibale point, but it's something I thought about.

Traction: this is a feature that deeply concerns me. The ability to maintain traction under pedaling over,in, or up chunky and deconsolidated features. Ellsworth, knolly, and IBIS DW bikes all seem to set a good standard here, in my opinion better than a hardtail. This Foes single pivot is really impressing me here. Up the creek beds and over wet boulder mixed in baby head rocks was a good test season this February. With lower torque pedaling the rear ended stays extremely plush and active. Laying down the hammer stiffens it up with some level of anti squat. I like it like this, I am not slipping much. I think it's an advantage over VPP, the newer specialized FSR stuff, and also over inferior single pivot designs I have ridden. How much better? Oh I don't know. It may be subjective but it's working for me. I understand with VPP shock set up and sag needs to be right in a very specific zone to have it "work" as intended.

Progressive leverage: In the 5.5" travel setting you can feel the latter third of the travel is fairly progressive and can get harsh on repeated high frequency hits. That felt more XC to me which might work great in non DH mode situations. But in the 6" mode it feels much more linear. Which is what I like about it. The ramp up seems to be late into the stroke . Comparitivly, with an SC Bronson, you get a very low leverage (or I think it may be regressive)early (butter smooth small bump) and trade for a very steep leverage change a little ways past sag point which make repeated high speed hits get rough when you are getting stacked. I have not bottomed out this Foes yet, and I am running 30% sag today. I am using about 95% of the travel and it still feels bottomless. Amazing, truly beating expectations.

Mixed Wheel size: How does that feel with two different wheel sizes? To be honest, it really just feels Good and intuitive. It's a bike and we ride them. I am comfortable on it. I don't feel anything dramaticly strange or dramatically performance enhancing. I can turn it at speed in tight better than a rental ripley or a 29er stumpy. I might lose a little ground in repeated tight switch backs to a 27.5 due to wheel/tire mass. One things for sure, coming from 26" I love the 29" front wheel. It gives me massive hole rollover, and caries speed, down TNA and not knowing the lines I feel this design saved me from a couple OTB situations. In fact I was mentally prepared for a body impact on rock, but road it out(DVO thanks).

DH holds a line and just goes. It work so great in DH situations, it is a confidence inspiring chassis. If straightline speed is your thing this is the package. If I was going to mammoth for DH I would step this fork up to 160mm to make it slightly slacker and use a higher rise bar.

Cornering I feel pretty good with laying it into a bermed corner 0ff the brakes. The off chamber loosey stuff is taking a little bit of a learning curve. But I think in a few weeks I'll have it down (you gotta remember I am coming off 26" + I got old and fsr

 

Credit where it's due:

DVO topaz rear shock:
The days of sending your FOX rear shocks to PUSH for a "factory" tune/revalve are over. The DVO is that good. It's a simple system. Three position low speed compression lever. Multi click rebound. That's all you need to tune. You can also play with the oil bladder air pressure(but for my weight it's pump to max and forget about it). And of course there are air spring volume spacers. But I have not needed that step yet. The rebound has a pretty sensitive range, which means each click is a pretty small adjustment. From baseline I am up or down two clicks max to remain in a non bouncy traction grabbing zone. The 3 position lever? Pedal/traverse/open. Pedal is not a full hydro lock. It's allows suspension movement, its smooth and not at all similar to "pro pedal". Traverse is pretty light low speed compression, and I did TNA in traverse mode and I did not die and it worked great. Open is full DH bump squashing mode, and I often pedal in full open mode no problem
5 out of 5 stars. (Waiver: I have not owned any of the most current competitors, so my evaluation is based on older shocks and the 6 new model rentals I did in the past 12 months.)

DVO diamond Fork:
I am historically a massive rockshock fork fanboy. The only reason I did not put a Pike on this bike was that Jenson had a significant price drop on the diamond 29er. It was a risk given I never had used a DVO product. Boy did I luck out. 35mm stanctions of rock crushing plushness. I am very happy. The tuning is a little more involved than the rear shock, but again I am close to baseline and getting great performance. The OTT setting, don't get confused by it. It's pretty simple. Heavier riders crank it up, lighter riders turn it down. You might consider it's purpose similar to volume spacers. The interesting part is that on low speed small bump stuff I can use a good amount of travel. But, hitting something much bigger and harder does not mean it's going to use a significant more amount of travel. So it seems good at regulating the velocity of the hits with a seamless feel. I don't feel or hear the transition into more compression (unlike rockshok)
4 out of 5 stars. 5/5 if it matched pike in weight

BOX One derailleur and shifter
It's good, really crispy shifting. The push push shifter seems strange on paper, but in practice is highly useful and efficient and is actuated with some pretty minor thumb movements. I read a review that the bar mount angle needs to be a little more before it hit the brake cramp. I can echo this, but it's splitting hair really. Works great where it is. I set it up with a new KMC DLC train, e-13 9-44 cassette and wolftooth 30t chainring. I have not missed a shift or dropped a chain yet. Shifting is precise. Chain and cassette are helping of course. Clutch. I read a report that the clutch return spring was weak. That must have been changed to a very stiff spring. It's so stiff I thought I cut my chain to short until I looked closely. I am getting zero chain slap.

Sram is dead to me. And Shimano is a long forgotten lover.

 

Pics?

 

Bike looks good. Still diggin the silver bar.

The mixed wheel size does not look off at all.

 

The OTT is a negative spring. Very different from volume spacers. The more you turn it in (it has 14 full revolutions), the more supple the beginning part of the travel becomes. It does not effect the progressiveness of the suspension (as spacers do). Do NOT try to turn it all the way in with the fork fully pressurized, you will break the bolt. Depressurize your fork completely, turn it in as far as you want (for your weight, go all in) then re-pressure your fork.

My DVO is superb at slow speeds, whether steep and chunky or little trail chatter. I am not impressed with the fork at speed compared to my Marzocchi 350, but I still have some twiddling and tweaking to do with the DVO before I declare the Marzocchi my favorite (again). I run my Zoke pretty soft, and use the 28 position damping dial to get the feel just right for the trail. I can try the same with the DVO, and use the 6 position dial to provide some resistance. My Zoke has a lockout for pavement climbing - which is nice.

Glad you like your Topaz. I like mine too!!!!

 

Here ya go, Foes fans!

https://www.pinkbike.com/news/foes-racing-on-tv-titans-of-cnc-season-opener.html

 

Update: I like my foes mixer trail custom semi dream bike more each passing week. Really getting settled into the performance and handling.

I am sort of psychoatic about cockpit set up. I originally had a 40mm stem on, I switched to 50mm and that suits me much better. I am going to change bars now. Currently I have 800 x 15rise x8degx5deg
I can use a little more rise, and I like 9deg sweep a bit better.

Brakes. I smoked my rear rotor again today. First time was on TNA and now today on Luge. I have 180mm rotors front and rear and really don't want to go to 200mm!!!!! Since I know I compromised the pads with oil, maybe it soaked in and that's the problem? Or I am just to much mass for the system I have. Heck, maybe I was dragging brake more than I thought. Front is no issue at all and I am heavy on the front brakes not scared

 

Bar upgrade. This one is just for @herzalot
#enve

 

Switch to Enve bars was good for -10 seconds on my Luge PR.

I like the 9deg sweep much more than the 8deg on what I had. That may not sound like a big change, but my wrists thanked me.

 

I've been thinking of this thread a lot lately, as I am experimenting with a mixed wheel setup on my Revel Rail. Dusty and @StrandLeper both had Foes Mixers and both raved about the performance. The front carves, the rear snaps around. Rollover advantage in front, but less dramatic push-up in the rear when the bike is at maximum tilt. I'm tall, so the 29er rear isn't as likely to go up my asscrack, but I can't understand why smaller riders aren't riding mullets on nasty terrain rather than full 29ers. Speed is not the major concern on Squamish's nasty drops.

I can relate to Dusty's comments about the bike just feeling natural. This comment resonates with me and my current mixed wheel experiment:

"To be honest, it really just feels Good and intuitive....I am comfortable on it."

And as I said elsewhere, this is not a case of expecting it to be great. I expected it to be awkward and unbalanced. It's neither.

 

This was taken from one of @StrandLeper's posts about his (aluminum) Foes Mixer:

This bike is otherworldly. It is not a spry climber, but I DID put a guy on a nice speshy in the trash can on the Willow climb.

The confidence this bike gives me on the downs is hard to understand. I wasn't trying to survive the stairs on 5 oaks, I was trying to ride them faster. I wasn't hoping to clean the Stairsteps waterfall, I was looking for the biggest drops. I wasn't picking my way down the TnA rock garden, I was blasting and looking for the fastest line.

I dig this bike!

Mind you, he was comparing to his Bronson - a full 27.5, and not comparing to a full on long travel 29er. I am guessing if he were on a Smash or a Ripmo, he would have had a similar experience.

 

I think the idea of a mullet is genius, gladness you’re diggin’ it Herzy!