Whyte E5

My MTB weapon of choice in the UK for the last 4 years. The Whyte E5 has been an excellent bike for many reasons, but mainly because it just kept going no matter what I threw at it. And I threw stuff at it. From 70kph descents through dense forest, multi-day epics across Wales, sweet flowing Trail Centre singletrack, to some truly scary technical descents in the Lakes. It hasn't really missed a beat. Apart from that time I broke the frame. And the carbon swingarm. Apart from those two minor faults, it has been a bloody belter.

The frame didn't really break anyway, it just developed a stress-fracture to one of the welds on a lower shock mount. It was one of the first releases of the E5, and may just have been a manufacturing/design defect from the day it was made. The swingarm was my fault. I incorrectly assembled the washers for the pivots and as I tightened the bolts to the rear shock a large rending sound was heard....a difficult moment.

However, Whyte were good with the warranty and sent me out a brand spanking new frame. I did have to wait a while for the Vietnamese to knock up a new production run as there was a backlog of warranty frame required apparently. Clearly other people broke their E5's at the same time.

It's a different bike to the Stealth Black, XC/Marathon bike I bought in 06'. It's evolved quite a lot over those 4 years, different fork, brakes and shifters/mech and new hoops too. A few parts survived though, Easton ML bars (god knows why...), XT chainset (M760), Easton EA90 post (with the single bolt underneath, horrible). Until it's become a slightly confused bike now. For example I have Roval's insanely good Traversee 'all-mountain' wheels (1580gms) with a Pike 454 Air U-turn up front sporting a 20mm axle? Wrong, I know. Worse are the Maxxis Minion tyres i'm running front and rear. Although in my defence they are the 2.35" single ply version and I run two front tyres for a bit more rolling speed. 

When I was in the 'research phase' for the E5 back in 2006 there was a new breed of lightweight medium-travel bikes emerging on the scene. I'd been riding with around 120mm travel for a few years or so and liked where that compromise was at with pedalling efficiency and bump-eating ability. However, I felt like my bike at the time (Scott Genius MC-10 04') was a little sluggish (not to mention too tall, too steep, too short, too complex to set-up, crap pivots etc) and so was keen to try some of the next of generation of bikes, as that's really how I saw it.

Enter the Mountain Mayhem 24hr race set in the Malverns. Or more specifically, the demo programme and short demo course they made available for the 2006 event that year. I had booked 7 bikes on-line prior to the event, bikes as diverse as Yeti 575 ASR right through to the new carbon Scott Ransom. I had an idea that I would like the E5 so I left that until the end of the day. Needless to say as soon a I jumped on it I could tell it just pedalled better than anything else out there at the time. Jon Whyte's Quad-link system (now revised to give a more linear shock stroke) was efficient and gave a real feeling of real zip and energy, something previous bikes had lacked.

So it was decided. I bought an E5 as soon as I could afford it and I was set. At the time I was living in Bracknell, so my local haunt was The Lookout at Bracknell forest. Mainly singletrack with some nice man-made trails built around the place. Could get pretty choppy there through winter, wet off-camber roots covered with the South's slippier-than-butter chalky clay. From these humble beginnings I took the E5 pretty much around the UK for some truly mint riding, from racing around Cwmcarn (Wales), to bike hiking escapades up 900m of the mighty Helvellyn and High Street in the Lakes.

The Maverick SC-32 forks were swapped out after a couple of years. I'd spent literally hour after hour stripping them down, messing with oil weights and shim stacks trying to find that elusive perfect damping, and in the meantime become accustomed to the torsional flex and the funny stares from other riders. Still, no one likes to admit they just spent £2800 on a bike with crap forks. The Hope hubs/Mavic 717 rims were ok, but they did flex and were way too skinny for any rubber bigger then 2.1". Hope Mono Mini's disc brakes? Well they were just shit.

So the time has come to usher in a new breed of mountain bike. One that is stiffer and stronger, lighter and plusher, with an easier maintenance schedule too. A bike that is designed for a new breed of rider too; the all-mountain/XC pretender category. Which bike is it then? Well that would be the next blog topic then wouldn't it...