East Coast Written All Over It

WHAT: Jamis Dakar XLT 2.0 WHERE: www.jamisbikes.com HOW MUCH: $2,300

2005 marks the 20th anniversary of the Jamis Dakar line. In that time, the bikes have evolved from skinny-tubed steel bikes with no suspension, spongy cantilever brakes and 18-speed drivetrain to, well, what you see here: a full-suspension bike with five inches of travel front and rear, a rugged aluminum frame, hydraulic disc brakes and a few more bells and whistles that we’ll get to shortly.

Those of you who read BIKE magazine may recognize this bike from that massive All Mountain test we did a few months ago. I’m dragging the bike back into the spotlight because 250 words is all the space we could muster in that issue, and that just ain’t cutting it.

THE FRAME So here’s the basic drawing board explanation…The 17-inch XLT shown here possesses a 22.52-inch top tube and 43.58-inch wheelbase. Head and seat tube angles are 68.5 (pretty lax) and 74-degrees (surprisingly steep), respectively. The main frame is constructed from Kinesis Kinesium aluminum and the rear half is built of 7005 aluminum.

Jamis has spent a good deal of time on the details here: cartridge bearing pivots, a bi-axially ovalized downtube and more gussets than you’d think possible (which is saying a lot since just about every bike in the world these days sports their fair share of head tube reinforcements these days). You’ve got the garden variety headtube/downtube junction gusset…but then there’s an almost equally large top tube/head tube gusset….and, wait, there’s also that nifty looking gusset at the top tube seat tube juncture.

Does the XLT frame really need this many reinforcements? I dunno. Perhaps this is merely a nod to macho aesthetics. Then again, the XLT features a pretty light, thin-walled tubeset, so my guess is that all this gusseting is indeed taking up residence on the frame in order to shore up the critical, high-stress areas.

NIFTY BITS & PIECES Greg Webber is Jamis’ product manager. Normally, I don’t throw names out there like that, but this guy deserves some notice. Webber, in my opinion, does a better job of outfitting bikes than just about anyone in the business. His bikes look like they were decorated more by a spare-no-expense bike geek than some budget-bound slave to an Excel spread sheet (which is actually what most product managers find themselves being).

But enough of my rambling—the proof is in the pudding, so to speak: Manitou Swinger SPV 4-way adjustable rear shock (most bikes at this price point feature a less expensive and less adjustable rear shock); Manitou Minute 3 fork with infinite travel adjust (another feature you won’t find on many bikes in this price range); SRAM Juicy Seven hydraulic discs (hard to do better than these); TruVativ oversized XR bars (very appropriate given the bike’s intended purpose); Shimano XT thumbshifters, front derailleur and rear derailleur (no sneaking a lesser model front derailleur or shifters….and Greg spec’d thumbshifters here instead of going the integrated brake lever-shifter route….a nice touch considering that many riders are still not sold on integrated braking and shifting for aggressive trail riding); Crank Brothers Candy C clipless pedals, Fizik Plateau saddle (not an inexpensive model); and, finally, a quality, easy to repair wheelset featuring Mavic XM317 disc rims (good stuff), thirty-two WTB 14g stainless steel spokes per wheel (not the cheap crap that’ll shear on you at a moment’s notice) and Shimano XT disc hubs (again, some companies would meet the price point by sneaking in Deore hubs here, but Greg goes the distance even on these low-profile parts).

The Dakar XLT 2.0 features impressive componentry such as the Manitou Minute 3 with Infinite Travel Adjust and this set of Avid Juicy 7 discs.

HOW IT RIDES For a bike with this much travel, the XLT is surprisingly adept in tight, twisty conditions. Jamis is an east coast company and their regional tastes come through loud and clear in the bike’s ride quality. Despite the very mellow head angle, the bike was perfectly at home in tight singletrack conditions. We had a ton of rain this winter and Spring, up here in my neck of Northern California, and the explosion of ferns, blackberries and stinging nettles have reduced visibility on our singletrack to about 2 inches in front of your nose—the XLT was perfectly suited to that style of riding. On the flipside, the bike was not exactly confidence-inspiring on fireroad descents. Even with the Minute 3 fully extended, the bike felt a tad twitchy and unstable on eye-watering, wide-open descents. That’s how it goes, though: it’s a rare bike (perhaps a non-existent bike) that excels equally well in both extremes. That’s that.

True, I could have tested the next size up. At 5’11”, I’m not exactly NBA material, but I am typically a shoe-in for a larger frame (something along the lines of a 19-inch model). The reason I stuck with the 17-inch frame, however, was that the standover height is 30 inches and that meant my Johnson was already dangerously close to the top tube. When it comes to steep, aggressive riding, stand-over clearance is a huge priority. The Dakar XLT doesn’t have much of it (relative to other bikes, at least). In short, the smaller frame constituted a trade off that I made work by swapping out the stubby 90-mm TruVativ stem for a 110-millimeter Bontrager. The bar was still dead center above the hub, so going with a longer stem didn’t actually screw with the handling.

Sharp-eyed readers may have also noticed that this bike sports pivots on the seatstay instead of on its chainstays. This is the 2nd year running that Jamis has had to bend to Specialized’s mighty patent lawyers. The Dakars used to have Horst Links here and the switch, inevitable though it was, is still a bit of a bummer. The bikes simply don’t descend as smoothly under braking as they used to. Having said that, I’ll readily admit that brake jack is not too bad on this bike—certainly not serious enough to warrant shelling out money for a floating disc brake conversion.

Though the Swinger isn't as quickly adjusted as some other "platform" shocks, the unit is extremely reliable.

Climbing? The bike climbs well…not on a par with the Giant Reign or Santa Cruz Blur I’ve been riding lately, but if you’re lagging on the climbs behind your friends, it’s not because this bike weighs close to 30 pounds. The XLT climbs better than its weight would have you imagine. For starters, it’s a fairly efficient frame design. Plus, the Manitou Swinger air shock does a fine job of providing resistance to pedal-induced bob. This is the fourth Swinger air shock that I’ve run to date and I am again impressed by their reliability. True, it’d be nice if the Swingers were more on-the-fly adjustable (say, a dial that you could simply turn to increase or decrease platform firmness), but it you’re willing to read the manual and vary air pressure, you can tune the Swingers just fine.

As for the components—no complaints here. Big fan of the Juicy brakes—great modulation, good power and the easiest brake to adjust on the market, bar none. As for the XT drivetrain, it shifted as reliably as you’d expect XT to shift…oh, and I forgot to mention, the bike isn’t outfitted Rapid Rise, which again will come as good news to some of you out there who dread making the shift with their next bike. The TruVativ componentry didn’t bend, snap or misbehave in any way. Nice stuff. Good, clean shifts from chainring to chainring on the crankset (not quite as smooth as a Shimano crank, but surprisingly close).

WORTH BUYING? Would I recommend the Dakar XLT 2.0? Yes, with a few caveats. This would be the perfect bike for me if I was still bobbing and weaving on the singletrack of upstate New York (props to my peeps in Buffalo and all that). While I appreciated the bike’s tight singletrack sensibility, I’d have to say that other frame dimensions and designs suit me better now that I’ve returned to the fast, wide open trails of California. The Dakar XLT, however, mates a proven suspension design with an impressive parts pick. It’s hard to go wrong with that combination.

For an up close view of more Jamis bikes, go to JAMIS BICYCLES' WEBSITE