SUSPENSION

The Jekyll’s shock offers two riding modes, ‘Elevate’ mode gives shorter travel, stiffer spring rate and steeper geo, whilst ‘Flow’ turns the bike to longer travel, soft spring rate and slacker geo. The Dyad rear damper, whilst being relatively easy to set up, certainly offers up a different ride characteristic to standard dampers and at first this takes a little getting used to. The simple answer is to charge–on, for that’s what its 160mm front and rear was designed to do and not be nervous of the bike’s light feeling. The shock, adjustable in the amount of travel offered on the hoof, will interest some riders and does save effort on flat and climbing sections, but to be honest the bike is so light and carries so much speed that I found it pretty unnecessary out in Spain. No doubt it would come into its own on a shitty Welsh bank when the ground is far heavier.

Up front the Supermax takes getting used to visually and no doubt there are many cynics to the system, however having ridden it reasonably hard and watched video analysis from Clementz giving it seven bells of shit down world level stages flex is certainly not an issue. I did have to run higher pressure than recommended to keep the shape of the bike and would prefer more low speed compression damping but this is a tunable option with the Supermax. Because of my higher air pressures the fork lacked a little damping and in terms of chassis stiffness my gut feeling is that it’s almost too stiff, but I’d not take that comment too seriously until we get time to ride the bike back to back with another fork.

Just ridiculously fast everywhere. Absolutely insane. It’s a bike that can be moved form one side of the track to another and the speed into and out of corners will rock all challengers. In the more involved terrain its lightness can mean a slightly nervy ride characteristic at times, so it’s not a bike that can be taken into collisions in quite the same manner as you might on say a Kona Process or YT Capra. Its strength is its manoeuvrability and acceleration, a bike that glides, and it’s not that the Jekyll is slower in tougher conditions, it’s just that the feeling is different. Because of the way the damping worked at higher pressures together with the crazy lack of weight the bike skips across the tops and because the majority of 160mm bikes are the wrong side of 30lb then it’s never going to feel the same type of bike. My overwhelming feeling of the Jekyll is that it simply opens up the landscape, it’s an inspirational mountainbike.

First up it was noticeable how direct the drive through the cranks and large bottom bracket was. And how stiff the Supermax fork was with its square profile internal that glides on needle rollers, there was certainly no weakness in those departments. Magura brakes were reliable stoppers for the time we had, so too was the RockShox Reverb Stealth, and whereas Clementz uses a chainguide for security there wasn’t one fitted on the production bike. I don’t believe the aluminium wheels to be a weak point when the Mavic Crossmax wheels spin so well either.

Put into a race environment during the press event in Ojen it soon identifies what the Jekyll is all about and runs against the clock is no better way of finding out about a bike and yourself. I’d definitely be interested to ride the bike with different tyres in wetter conditions and would like to get set up with a RockShox Pike with 50mm offset similar to the Supermax fork geo. In a way it would be unfair to come to any conclusions without riding it back to back with other 160mm bikes to see how it fares. In terms of the rear the Dyad damper does the work of supporting pretty well but the stiff rear end/double stacked bearings did feel a bit edgy at times, but the flip side to that is the precision and direct drive you get from the bike.

There is no doubt whatsoever that this bike is a very important part in the Clementz success story and offers the Frenchman a time advantage for its all–round ability. It leaves me curious as to how it performs in different terrain against the rest of the 160mm pretenders and I wish it had been available when we did our enduro bike test in the last issue. It’s roughly the same money as a Lapierre Spicy/Santa Cruz Bronson/Scott Genius LT. Only the Lapierre beats it on damping out of the box and the Jekyll is lighter than any of them. Up front the single sided fork didn’t even cross my mind visually when riding and overall it’s definitely a bike you’d be very happy with as your one and only bike. It’s a lot of money, but then it’s a lot of bike and offers something special.

Price: £5999 (TBC)

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