PIPEDRE AM MOXIE MX3

£649 frame The ultimate do-anything hardtail?

This latest Moxie hardtail shares its top tube with The Full Moxie, Pipedream’s full-suspension bike, enabling it to be used with forks with 140mm to 170mm of travel. It’s currently only offered as a frame, but the Scottish brand built us up a bike to fit our budget.

The frame

Pipedream craft the Moxie from custom-butted 4130 chromoly steel tubes. Adaptability is the name of the game – not only can it take a range of fork lengths, but also 650b, 650b+, ‘mullet’ or 29in wheel set-ups. This is thanks to a pair of sliding dropouts, which adjust the length of the rear end from 425mm to 441mm. At its shortest, a 29er hoop does fit, but clearance around the neat chainstay yoke is tight (especially with the wide 2.5in tyres on our bike). With two bolts per side and a bolted stop, it’s easy to change the dropout position mid-ride. This set-up proved supersecure throughout testing. Like on the Cotic, cable routing is external. There’s only one set of bottle bosses.

We were really impressed with the finish – everything slotted or slid in with minimal fuss, suggesting excellent attention to detail. Pipedream offer the Moxie in four standard colours, but they’ll sell you a bare frame, along with a head tube badge and decals, so you can get it painted whatever hue you like. It only comes in three sizes – Longish, Long and Longer – but with short seat tubes (395mm to 420mm), these should fit a wide range of riders, up to 6ft 3in. Reach figures are lengthy, stretching from 440mm to 510mm.

The kit

Our bike was built with components available to Pipedream at the time – a Fox 36 fork with 160mm of travel, a Shimano drivetrain and Pacenti wheels shod with Hutchinson tyres. They don’t sell full builds, but can supply some parts, including DVO Diamond forks (as we went to press these were £599, down from £899.95) and Pacenti wheelsets.

The ride

As we were writing this review up, we checked back through our notes and were surprised to see that the Moxie was the heaviest bike on test – a testament to its great ride quality. The geometry is pretty much bang-on in our books. Our ‘Long’ frame had a healthy 470mm reach, a 64-degree head angle and a 315mm BB height. This gives the Pipedream a lovely balance between high-speed stability and agility in the turns. Leant over onto the tyres’ shoulder tread, it hooked into the dirt and carved through corners. At the same time, it was easy to

pivot around the rear axle and loft the front wheel into the air, either to avoid a momentum-killing impact or to initiate flight off a lip.

On climbs, the steep 77.5-degree seat tube angle is really appreciated, putting your hips well over the cranks and helping with weight distribution on steeper pitches. With the chainstays in their short position, the steep seat tube helps keep your weight over the front and the wheel pointing where you want it to.

The sliding dropouts with 16mm of chainstay adjustment are an obvious talking point. We rode the bike in both the long and short positions, as well as swapping in a 650b rear wheel to try it out as a ‘mullet’. The difference between the two lengths is subtle, but noticeable. In the longer setting there’s a touch more stability, giving the Moxie a surefooted feel. That said, we preferred it shorter, where it exhibited a more fun-loving ride personality. Much like the Ribble, the Pipedream skips around, encouraging you to square-off corners and rally around berms.

Our bike arrived with a 35mm stem, and initially we found it too easy to tip into a turn, making us reassess our lines early in the arc. We swapped this for a slightly longer 40mm stem, which calmed the handling down, while still retaining an accurate, snappy responsiveness. Because Pipedream are selling the Moxie as a frame only, we’d recommend having a play with a couple of stem options to find the right balance.

BANG ON GEOMETRY GIVES THE PIPE DREAM A LOVELY BALANCE BETWEEN HIGH SPEED STABILITY AND AGILITY IN THE TURNS