HOPE HB.916
£6,995 Beautifully-crafted high-pivot enduro machine
Aimed squarely at enduro riding and racing, Hope’s HB.916 is a completely different beast to the HB.160 it replaces, the biggest change being a new high-pivot suspension design. Their goal was to create a well-balanced, efficient bike that’s as comfy on short, sharp UK descents as it is on wide-open, bump-riddled alpine downhills.
THE FRAME
The HB.916 has a carbon fibre front triangle plus carbon sections in the seat- and chainstays, but that’s where the similarities with the HB.160 end. Hope have raised the main pivot to give its 160mm of travel a more rearward axle path, and ditched the Horst Link chainstay pivot for a concentric rear axle pivot. An idler wheel placed in-line with (but just behind) the main pivot helps mitigate pedal kickback, a trait common on high-pivot designs. With 26 per cent progression, the bike will work with a coil or air shock.
It wouldn’t be a Hope frame without CNC-machined parts, so the rocker link, seat- and chainstay bridges (bonded to the carbon stays), and pivot locations are all aluminium. In place of the HB.160’s unusual 130mm rear end, the HB.916 uses 148mm Boost axle spacing, making wheel swaps easier. Also new is the ‘Butty Box’ storage port in the down tube; not as slick as some, but it works.
Four sizes are on offer (H1 to H4). Reach figures are generous (470mm on our H2/medium frame), and the stubby seat tube makes it easy to jump up a size if you want to go longer. A flipchip lets you switch between ‘high’ and ‘low’ settings, or fit a 650b rear wheel
– as we did. In ‘low’, with the smaller wheel, we measured the head angle to be a slack 63 degrees, while the seat tube angle was a steep 79 degrees with the saddle in our preferred position.
THE KIT
Hope provide a good chunk of the componentry, including the wheels, bar, cranks, headset, stem and their new Tech 4 V4 brakes, along with a few other bits. Suspension is from Öhlins – a 170mm-travel RXF38 m.2 fork and a TTX2 Air rear shock. Our bike wasn’t quite the same as listed, as it had SRAM GX Eagle gearing instead of the pricier X01. It normally comes with EXO+-casing rear rubber, but our 650b back tyre had a lighter EXO carcass.
THE RIDE
Getting the Öhlins suspension set up takes a little time and trial-anderror to find the sweet spot. In the end, we ran slightly lower pressures than recommended in the main fork air-spring and used the low-speed