JCW’S WHYTE E-160 SV1 £5,200

Time for some fork fettling on the copper cruise missile

Regular pre-work and lunchtime rides have let me dive deeper into the Whyte’s ride character. The geometry is easy to get on with, the bike feels solid and planted on technical descents, and the quiet, natural-feeling assistance of the Bosch motor still impresses. I haven’t taken the plunge and tried removing the battery yet, which is said to be a fiddly job, but overall, I’m really pleased with it.

The one thing I’ve been struggling with is a harsh feel through the bar. This is likely due to a combination of factors, including the stiffness of the 38mm-stanchion RockShox ZEB fork and the chunky WTB HTZ wheels, both of which are beefed-up, e-bike-specific versions. The Whyte bar doesn’t seem to flex a lot, either.

There’s certainly no shortage of precision up front, but that does take its toll in terms of hand fatigue.

Before considering any hardware changes, I thought I’d try tweaking the fork settings. The E-160 uses the cheapest ZEB with the basic Charger R damper, which has nonadjustable compression damping. So the only option (short of a retune) for improving sensitivity is to play with the sag and spring volume.

I’d already gradually reduced the air-spring pressure from the 70psi recommended for my weight (on an e-bike) by the fork-leg sticker, down to 58psi. (Interestingly, RockShox’s TrailHead app initially echoed the 70psi advice but now suggests 62psi, so maybe I wasn’t the only one who found the original recommendation too high.) I still wasn’t bottoming the fork out, but didn’t want to take the sag below 20 per cent, because that would leave less travel in reserve for extending into dips and holes.

Delving inside, I found there were two Bottomless Tokens fitted as standard. I whipped out both volume spacers and then hit some fast, rooty trails to see how things felt. Better, in a word. The reduced ramp-up towards the end of the stroke let me use more of the travel, while still not hitting the bump stops, even when I lowered the pressure to 56psi. And the fork felt smoother over the small stuff, although that may have been due to it finally bedding in fully (something that can take a while on the ZEB) rather than the change in air volume. There’s still some tweaking to be done, but I’m getting there. https://whyte.bike