Ibis Ripley

03/12/22 16:01 Filed in: Gear

Time flies when you are stuck in a pandemic. Or something.
It seems like just a few months since I got my Ripley, but it was early 2020 before the pandemic struck. That's more than 2 years. Actually going to be three soon!
The Ripley is the first bike I've had with a Dave Weagle suspension - in this case DW link. It does what the brochure says: it doesn't bob with pedalling but it responds to terrain inputs. It does lack the plush feeling that other suspension designs have, but it doesn't seem to detract from performance.
I took the Ripley up to Thredbo once. While the Flow trail in particular doesn't have gnarly terrain and doesn't seemingly require loads of travel to navigate, at speed on the 120mm travel Ripley I felt like I might get vibrated to pieces. Jumping on the Slash instead was much more comfortable. Even tame trails at speed reward more travel with a plusher ride.
But on XC trails it rips.
It jumps well.
It climbs well.
It is pretty light.
I can (just) get a bottle under the shock into the cage down there.

For me, it replaced a full XC race bike and I don't believe it is slower anywhere but it is faster in many places. Head angle is several degrees slacker than the XC bike. Seat angle is several degrees steeper than the XC bike. The 200mm dropper post gets the seat well out of the way - giving me more leg travel than I'd get with a lesser dropper post.
I am running a 60mm stem. With the reach on this bike it is perfect when standing but a bit short when seated. I think a 90mm stem would be better when used as an XC race bike. I even have the stem, but it has a 31.8mm bore for the bars while the bars on this bike are 35mm diameter. (If it were the other way I could shim it...)
Rowney Sports indicated that most of their builds use a 140mm travel fork. The default by design on the Ripley is a 130mm fork. I read in the release info on the then-new Ripley that they'd raised the bottom bracket so that people running a 120mm fork wouldn't hit their pedals and that decided it for me to run the 120mm option. With two bigger bikes at my disposal it didn't make sense to try to upfork the Ripley and stretch its use envelope towards bigger terrain. It did make sense to downfork it and push it more XC-wards.
I should probably make a separate entry for the fork as I find the same model on two of my bikes now, but suffice to say I like both the fork and how it performs on the Ripley.

I did a full protective vinyl wrap on the Slash, but I wanted a less labour-intensive option for the Ripley. I purchased a roll of wide and thick protective tape and cut three pieces for top, down and seat tubes. That has worked well as those are the parts of the frame that get the most abuse. The outside of the chainstays would benefit from more protection, but otherwise I'm content.
The tape I used is from Effetto Mariposa. It is too thick. It might provide extra protection being 1.2mm thick, but standard 3M automotive film does a great job on thousands of bike frames. That thick it is difficult to bend on compound curves and even hard to cut cleanly.

The Ripley is an enthusiastic bike; it encourages going faster and faster and has the traction and handling to back that up. With some medium weight wheels and fast rolling tyres (1500g Bontrager carbon wheels from my Slash and Pirelli Scorpion XC M & R tyres) it feels like the bike I was after: a playful but race-worthy bike.

Michael Hanslip Coaching

If you want to go faster, you have to pedal harder

Ibis Ripley