MARIN FOUR CORNERS ELITE £1700
› Is Marin’s steel explorer ready for all four corners of your world?
Marin is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year with some interesting machines that evoke old colour schemes and classic materials – and one of these birthday bikes is the Four Corners Elite.
The first point of interest is the tubing. While it can’t match carbon or aluminium in terms of strength to weight, steel is still a great option for hardworking bikes where comfort rather than stiffness is a priority. That said, the Columbus Thron tubeset Marin has opted for is a bang-up-to-date set of pipes, with external shaping and varying wall thicknesses that depend on the stresses each segment has to handle.
Marin has also added a full suite of modern features. These include not just internal control routing, but threaded holes for P-clips if you’d rather keep the cabling and brake hoses external for ease of servicing – the best of both worlds.
To maintain the stiffness of the steel frame, fixtures have been brazed on rather than welded, which means the gold-coloured filler is still visible on the unpainted frame. It’s not particularly neat, and the test team were divided on whether it looked good in a raw way or just untidy, though there was much SPECIFICATION 11.13kg (M) Columbus Thron butted chromoly steel Chromoly SRAM Rival 1, 40, 10-42 SRAM Rival hydraulic discs WTB KOM i21 rims, Formula hubs
Weight Frame Finishing kit
Marin stem, flared drop bar and alloy seatpost, WTB Volt Race saddle, 40mm Schwalbe G1 Evo tyres more approval for the seatstay bridge and the custom-cast, thinwalled dropouts. These come with both rack and mudguard mounts and are particularly neat. The steel fork has lowrider and conventional rack and mudguard mounts.
Both the frame and fork get very smart, quarter-turn Naild thruaxles. These have a locking catch and locating notch for foolproof security, and the system is fast to remove and install.
Clearances are huge at both ends. The Marin will take 45mm road tyres with mudguards, or even a low tread 29x2.1in mountain bike tyre without ’guards. Three bottle cage bosses
Steel is a great option for hardworking bikes where comfort rather than stiffness is a priority