CARBON WASP TRUFFLE

We’ve rooted out Carbon Wasp’s new Truffle, but would it leave us buzzing?

£2,800 (frame + shock) • 29in • carbonwasp.com

Unless you’ve had a carbon frame repaired or you’re also into time trialling or track racing, you’ve likely not heard of Carbon Wasp. However, it only took a few metres of the brand’s local Leeds trails to put it on my ‘persons of interest’ list. It should be on yours too, especially if you’re after a uniquely individual and impressively well sorted lightweight trail/down-country frame.

By way of background, the Leedsbased duo at Carbon Wasp have been working with carbon-fibre for over 15 years. In that time they’ve brought tons of broken frames back to life, produced some limited edition frames for other brands and when I visited, they were making £800 aero handlebars. And despite starting off by making his own hardtail in his back bedroom, it’s taken this long for Adrian Smith to finalise a production mountain bike frame.

And, it’s not a hardtail. The Truffle (something to do with rooting around in woods) is bang on the current Xc/fast trail trend. It’s got 120mm of rear travel from a flex-stay design and delivers a 65.5° head angle when matched with the same fork travel. It is strong enough to take up to a 140mm fork if you want to go slacker though, and the 76° seat angle means that you won’t be looping out on climbs if you do.

Reach is a stability-boosting, reactiontime buying 480mm on the size L and production swingarms will have plenty of room for both a 29x2.4in tyre and a 38t chainring, “just in case Nino calls”. And while Adrian is joking when he says that, those Carbon Wasp track bikes and time trial bars have won Olympic gold medals and every level of championship, so this is no amateur operation.

A decade and a half of seeing where other bikes fail and developing its own composite expertise in the process is clearly woven into the Truffle. Specifically, that’s why Carbon Wasp uses more impact resistant cross ply sheets in its lay-up than most brands. “Outside of obvious design weak spots, it’s random impact damage or loadings that you’d never put into an FEA simulation that are the main causes of the broken frames we see. Cross ply isn’t as strength efficient as unidirectional sheet, which is why our frames weigh a bit more than the lightest options (claimed weight is 2.1kg without shock). They should be a lot tougher in terms of everyday accident survival than a pure race rig, and we like the damped, precise feel you get from this lay-up, too.”

HOW IT RIDES

As a result the Truffle is a very precise, resolutely stiff and surefooted bike.

Front wheel placement is impeccable, and there’s no bow or bend from the front end if you really bury the nose into a high G turn, cross threaded with roots or a random rock pile. I had a proper opportunity to test that as Adrian led me a right dance through the trails near the Leeds workshop/lab where they design and machine all the initial moulds. It’s also where Adrian and Chris lay up the different carbon plys by hand and the short punchy climbs confirmed that