Devinci are one of a few brands to be making use of Dave Weagle’s Split Pivot design across their full-suspension mountain bike range. We were lucky enough to get out on a pre-production Dixon trail/all-mountain bike to see how it handled.
Ride & handling: Likes to be pushed to its limits and will take hard riding all day
At an impressive 11.9kg (26.2lb) without pedals, the Dixon has a lively, snappy feel that really encourages speed. It’s a bike that’s more than happy being ridden on the edge of control. When it comes to climbing there’s some pedal-induced bob when you’re out of the saddle and pushing hard in the middle ring, but this can be tamed with the Fox shock’s ProPedal platform damping lever.
The bob and kickback through the pedals is more of an issue in the granny ring, but Devinci say they’re going to address this. Plus, production bikes will come with a SRAM X0 double chainset rather than the Truvativ AKA triple seen here, so it shouldn’t be a problem. The Dixon really comes into its own when the speed picks up, though. Whether it’s fast-flowing singletrack or a more aggressive descent, you needn’t worry about pummelling the bike hard.
The solid, reassuring frame, stiff rear end and well balanced feel of it just makes you want to ride harder and faster. The rear suspension picks off the small bumps nicely and, when the terrain becomes more testing, there’s no unnecessary dive through the travel. It’s a bike that’s happy to be stoved into turns, launched off jumps or hammered along singletrack.
Frame & equipment: Highly anticipated Split Pivot design delivers 145mm of rear wheel travel
The Dixon’s 6066 T6 aluminium G4 tubeset is hand-welded in Devinci’s Canadian factory. The tapered head tube makes the front end stiff and the low-slung top tube gives plenty of standover height. The 145mm (5.7in) of rear wheel travel was commendably taken care of by the Fox RP2 XV shock on our test rig, though the production version of the SL will come with the RP23.
Lurking in the seatstay pivots sit two ovalised chips, or the Full Response Geometry. These can be switched around, allowing you to alter the head angle by about 0.5 degrees and the bottom bracket height by 7mm. The 142 x 12mm rear axle slots through the highly anticipated Split Pivot, which is designed to separate acceleration and braking forces.
Spec highlights on the Dixon SL include the Easton components smattered throughout. The Haven wheels are stiff and light, for example, which helps enhance the lively ride. As our test sample was a pre-production model, the spec wasn’t standard and included SRAM’s X9 shifters and front mech rather than X0. Shifting was still crisp, though, and we didn’t experience any reliability issues. The Kenda Nevagal tyres proved to be good all-rounders in most conditions.
