Staff Bike Check: Ady's Ibis Cycles HD6 custom build

A well known Tweed Valley fixture, Ady is our in house suspension wizard handling  everything from servicing, to data acquisition and custom tunes. His technical knowledge is as good as anyone out there, as alongside suspension work, his past life was spent singlehandedly creating, designing and building his own full suspension bikes under his own Swarf brand. Those bikes were incredibly well liked, with the Contour making it as far as positive Pinkbike reviews and a good number of them are still being ridden on the local trails today. How many people have that on their CV?

Alongside his suspension work here, he also spends a good chunk of his time on the hill leading groups for the Dirt School BASE College performance course and guiding visiting riders round the local trails. When he’s not at work, he’ll ride everything from a massive cross country epic, to the most technical of the enduro trails so his bikes need to cope with just about anything. This year, he’s riding an Ibis HD6 for his longer travel bike (alongside a Santa Cruz Blur) and with a good amount of time behind him now on the bike, we caught up with him to see how he’s getting along with it.

Before we get into the details on your HD6, give us a quick run down your other bikes and what you came to this one from?

My last longer travel bike was a Nukeproof Mega, 29 front and rear. I ran it with a custom NSR tuned Zeb at 170mm travel and a MY23 SDL Coil which also had a few tweaks to lighten the rebound tune (Adrian is quite light and likes a relatively quick rebound). I also have a Blur XC which has a nice light build, nothing particularly unusual about it other than the Code RSC brakes and 100mm Lefty fork. Finally, I’ve got an aging E-Bike in the garage which gets used for exploring and quick power hour turbo mode rides.

The HD6 takes over directly from the Mega and I mainly use it as a coaching and guiding workhorse as I’m having a bit of an XC kick on my weekends at the moment and clocking up loads of miles on the Blur. 

How is it going so far? Has it been a big adjustment from your last bike?

I actually found the HD6 took a little while to set up which was a bit of a surprise as, on paper (in geometry) it's not too far off of the Mega asides from being an MX bike. There is just a lot of adjustment on the X2 and I rarely go with the factory settings on any bike so that meant I had a bit of fiddling to do. I found it to be really good on bike park type trails and jumps right from to the first ride, but it wasn’t quite there on rough and technical trails. Most of the time it felt like it had loads of grip but it didn’t quite feel like I’d hit on the perfect setup for the shock for the first while.

As an experiment quite early on I tried fitting my custom NSR tuned Super deluxe coil and that instantly took the bike onto another level entirely. It now feels really amazing on all terrain with what seems like endless and predictable grip. Having got used to that same shock setup on the Mega, (can you tell Ady is a big fan of the NSR tunes yet?) I think all stock suspension just feels less good by comparison. Now that I’ve got a setup I’m fully into on the bike, it’s extremely good everywhere with no real weaknesses in any terrain. 

Strengths and weaknesses - what does it do best?

I think the bike shines on bike part type terrain, it feels confidence inspiring, settled and is particularly nice to jump. It's also great on steeper natural technical trails as it's quite a compact frame with a relatively short wheelbase, which suits Tweed Valley riding very well (our trails are mostly steep and quite tight). For an enduro bike, it’s pretty good uphill, with a comfortable pedalling position and decent efficiency and traction but riding XC bikes with fast tires has spoiled me on the climbs a bit, making everything else feel slow by comparison! 

Talk us through your build kit? You’ve quite a lot of nice non-stock parts on the bike?

I've got lots of different parts on this compared to the Mega. Hope Tech 4 V4 Brakes with floating rotors, Hope crankset, NSR coil shock, Hope wheelset and the XT drivetrain, plus Burgtec’s massive B Rage flat pedals. I particularly like the Hope brakes, they're super powerful with a nice feel. There aren’t many really powerful brakes that are also easy to control but these are almost perfect. I have 200mm floating rotors at both ends, which gives plenty of stopping power and heat management without becoming overwhelming. 

I'm a smaller, lighter rider so I like to keep bike weight down as much as possible and avoid anything too stiff as things can easily end up feeling harsh for me. To keep the overall feel of the bike compliant, I’ve gone with 26mm Hope Fortus aluminium rims and a 31.8mm Burgtec aluminium bar, which both help just to add a little give and tackle the edge off vibration and chatter. They’ve both worked out really well and I don’t find them flexy in use, just comfortable. 

I’ve brought over my NSR tuned Zeb fork (with the travel now bumped to 180mm) from my previous bike as it's something I know and love and it’s every bit as good on the Ibis. The Medium frame has enough seat tube length to allow the use of a 180mm dropper post which is something I've not been able to run before, so that’s a nice bonus, as I’ve had to compromise and use shorter droppers previously. The Hope dropper lever is nice too, it’s just a small detail but it’s easily customizable and there’s lots of leverage so it needs only a light touch. The drivetrain is just bog standard Shimano Deore XT. Not much to say about it, it simply works.

Any unusual metrics? Give us some of your key measurements.

I like to run my suspension quite soft and fast so I'm at 30% sag on the rear and 25% up front. The NSR Darc tunes allow you to run lots of sag without the bike becoming wallowy and the damping holds you up really nicely as soon as everything starts moving in rough terrain.

I’m on a Medium frame and I’m running the bike with a 35mm Burgtec Enduro stem and their 31.8mm Enduro bar cut to 745mm (plus grips). The smaller bar and shorter reach cockpit suits both my size on the Medium frame and our tighter local trails well. I tend to run the brake levers quite far in on the bar with very average lever throw and lever angle, so nothing too unusual there. 

I've got 165mm Hope Evo cranks on which I decided to try as everyone seems to be going shorter these days (I had a quick spin on a 155mm set and found them a bit odd feeling to pedal). I can't say I've really noticed too much difference from my 170mm ones so maybe I should have gone shorter after all! There’s certainly no negative to the 165mm length for me and the extra ground clearance is rarely a bad thing.

For pedals I went for the massive Burgtec B-Rage and I've found they give a really secure platform with loads of grip. Tires are the almost standard issue combo of a Maxxis Assagai Exo+ Maxxgrip up front (19psi) and a DHR2 MaxxTerra DD out back (23psi). They work great and I’ve had no punctures at all on that setup. 

Curious to look at an HD6 or take one for a ride? We’ve a range of especially nice builds on them in stock now and more demo bikes coming very soon.

Ady’s Full Specs and Settings 

Suspension Settings (all counted from closed)

RockShox NSR Zeb 180mm

45psi and 2 tokens

HSC 6 clicks (8 total)

LSC 12 clicks

Rebound 12 clicks

RockShox NSR Super Deluxe

Spring weight 300L/in 

HSC open

LSC 2 clicks

HBO open

Rebound 14 clicks

Specification

• Fork: Rock Shox Zeb with custom NSR damper, 180mm, 29”, 110x15

• Shock: Fox Float X2 Factory Series with EVOL, 230mm x 65mm (now switched for a custom NSR tuned Rock Shox Super Deluxe coil) 

• Wheels: Hope Pro 5 Hubs, Fortus 26 Rims 29”, R: Send II 27.5”  

• Tires: Front: Maxxis Assegai, 29” x 2.5” Exo+ / Maxxis DHR, 27.5” x 2.4” DD

• Brakes: Hope Tech 4 V4

• Brake Rotors: Hope Universal Floating Disc 200mm Front and Rear

• Cranks: Hope Evo 165mm

• Rear Derailleur: Shimano Deore XT M8100  

• Shifter: Shimano Deore XT M8100

• Cassette: Shimano Deore XT M8100 10-51T

• Chain: Shimano Deore XT M8100

• Chain Guide: MRP AMg SE  

• Headset: Hope

• Grips: Burgtec Josh Bryceland

• Handlebar: Burgtec Enduro 31.8mm, 20mm ride, cut to 745mm

• Stem: Burgtec Enduro Stem, 35mm

• Spacers and Top Cap: Burgtec

• Seatpost: One Up V2 Dropper, 180mm

• Saddle: Burgtec Cloud