KNOLLY DELIRIUM
£2,199.90 (frame) Long-travel rig from the home of freeride
Hailing from Vancouver, British Columbia, the chunky build of Knolly’s bikes is a reflection of the burly trails they’re designed to ride. The Delirium is the longest-travel bike in their line-up, with 170mm out back and the capability to be fitted with either a triple-clamp or single-crown fork. It’s billed as a do-it-all-machine for the more extreme end of mountain biking.
The frame
Once you’ve taken in the multitude of suspension links, what strikes you next about the Delirium is how small the front triangle is. This is due to the seat tube being positioned in front of the bottom bracket, though, and the reach is actually on the longer side of average (445mm on the medium frame).
At 64 degrees, the head angle is fairly slack. In contrast, the bottom bracket is pretty high – we measured it at 355mm in the ‘low’ geometry setting and 372mm in ‘high’, which is quite a lot taller than stated in the geometry charts.
Knolly’s own ‘Fourby4’ linkage controls the suspension. Used across their four-bike range, it’s basically a traditional four-bar Horst Link style design but with an additional rocker link that’s used to alter the shock’s leverage ratio.
The kit
With the Delirium only being sold as a frame (including rear shock) in the UK, we won’t dwell on the parts spec, but our test bike came fitted with some fairly high-end kit. The frame is designed around a 180mm fork and a top-of-the-range RockShox Lyrik RCT3 provided perfect damping up front. At the back, we found we had to run the Fox Float X2 shock considerably harder than Knolly suggest in order to give us a balanced set-up. The Delirium has a low stack height and was supplied with a low-rise bar, so we ran 25mm of spacers under the stem to compensate for this and raise the front end a bit.
The ride
When we first swung a leg over the Knolly we expected its long travel and burly build to make us feel invincible. But the tall BB and low front end created a rather ‘tipped forward’ riding position that didn’t inspire confidence and was at odds with the Canadian company’s claim to have created a bike that would “take you to the next level”. Although this felt a bit unnerving on the steeps, we liked the snappy handling that the shortish 429mm chainstays provided. The suspension impressed too, smoothing out the chatter and helping us to carry speed on flatter trails, even with slow-rolling Schwalbe Magic Mary tyres fitted (albeit the harder and more durable dual-compound Bike Park version).
Point the Delirium uphill and you’re definitely in for a workout. While the 1x11 SRAM NX transmission suggests pedalling is on the agenda, the slack seat angle and overall weight nearing that of a DH rig make this a bike that’s better suited to shuttle runs.
The whole package left us feeling a bit confused about when we’d actually ride this bike. We felt that unless we were taking on Canadianstyle freeride stunts, we’d most likely reach for a shorter-travel enduro bike – or, for more testing terrain, a full-on downhill rig – over the Delirium.