ED’S SANTA CRUZ NOMADS ALUMINIUM 2018 £4,299

It’s time for the Nomad to move on but Ed’s sorry to see it go

The fact that I’m genuinely sad to give this bike back speaks for itself. After 12 months of riding, I haven’t come up with anything meaningfully bad to say about it. Its 170mm of travel makes it a lot of bike for UK trails, but suits my DH-orientated preferences perfectly. Lift-assisted runs of World Cup tracks, a multi-day enduro and numerous days with over 2,000m of ascending – the Nomad has taken it all in its stride. What seals the deal for me is that it climbs spectacularly well too, considering its weight and geometry. A marginally steeper seat tube would improve things further, but that’s being picky.

Those who’ve been following my long-term reports will know that I started the year on an XL frame, to try out a longer front centre, but a few months later downsized to a large, to sharpen up the handling. A decision I definitely don’t regret. Happily, this frame switch coincided with the lower link bearings needing replacing. While the low-slung ‘VPP’ linkage gives great suspension performance, it gets exposed to a lot of crud and I’ve eaten through plenty of DU bushings this year.

My alu-framed S model came with a RockShox Lyrik RC fork and Super Deluxe R shock, which performed admirably. The same can be said of the SRAM Code R brakes, which I skidded through a lot of pads but only had to bleed once. Unfortunately, the 12-speed SRAM GX Eagle drivetrain was a regular cause of exasperation. Pernickety set-up, unreliable shifting and derailing jockey wheels prompted a change to an 11-speed Shimano XT system, which proved much easier to live with.

The 2019 Nomad S is specced similarly, save for getting a Fox 36 Performance fork and Race Face AR Offset 30 rims in place of the e*thirteen TRS ones on my bike. Given that I buckled the rear rim on day one and later wrote it off, this is probably no bad thing. Would I spend my own money on this bike? Yes. Even if four grand is more than I’d want to spend and every man and his dog rides a Santa Cruz! www.santacruzbikes.co.uk