Yeti Cycles SB4.5c Bike Check with Nate Hills

I haven't had any coffee yet today, so bear with me. So who the hell am I? Nate Hill is here. We are live in Moab, Utah, at the edge of the beautiful Slickrock Bike Trail. Pretty much a giant skate park, super fun to ride. I'm gonna do a bike check for you guys today. You're probably here watching because you've been checking out my Follow Cam Friday video series. I do a new video every Friday, shredding trails with my friends, pretty basic concept. Just having fun on the bike. And turns out I get a lot of questions as to what bikes I've been running, so I'm gonna start doing a series of bike checks for you guys so you can check out my rigs. You can leave me questions in the comments if I don't answer everything in this video. All right, so here we have one of my bikes. This is a Yeti SB4.5C, 4.5 inches out back, 114 for you that enjoy the metric system like I do. I've paired it with a 140 fork. So what do I do with this bike? This is like my all day trail weapon. I do some of the mellower enduro racing on it. It has surprised me at how capable it is on the descents. I have no problem hucking this thing 10 feet to flat and it takes it, I don't even know how that's possible. All right, so let's talk about the suspension here. Out back, I do have a RockShox Monarch Plus. I weigh about 150 pounds with all my crap on my body, so I run about 160 in the air chamber. I do run a light tune in this bike. It feels better that way, I think. Light rebound and compression tune. And I also like some progression, especially with a short stroke shock like this. So I have three bands in there to take up some space, three volume spacers. It feels pretty good. It still feels supple this way, but it ramps up hard at the end and you're not hitting the bottom. We don't wanna hit the bottom. The Switch Infinity technology on the Yeti gives it a pretty good mid-stroke support and that's sweet. So a couple more bands in there adds to that feel. Out front, I have a RockShox Lyrik 140. A little custom jobby there, a little shorter air shaft to get 140 out of a Lyrik. I like the stiffer chassis on the Lyrik, so I had those guys make me a little stubby fork to pair with this sweet bike. I'll run three tokens in that guy. Same thing, I like it to feel supple off the top, I ramp up hard at the bottom of the stroke. I run about 85 pounds in that thing. I usually run my low-speed compression a couple clicks from all the way closed and I always run my high-speed all the way open unless I'm on a road. I do have a Maxl Stealth in there, pretty sweet. It's basically a Maxl without the quick release. You need a six mil to take the thing off and it doesn't get caught on rocks when I'm smashing through things. Okay, so drivetrain. I am running SRAM's new Eagle X01. I have a 10 to 50 range out back and I always run a 36 in front. Plenty of gear for climbing. You never get spun out. I mean, a 3610 is like you have to be going 40 miles an hour to spin that thing out, so that's sweet for racing. I also have the granny bailout if I need to for going uphill like the old XX1 stuff was except it's got another gear. So that's perfect for what I'm doing here. I have a custom chain guide that my friends over at Yeti helped me fabricate. Basically mounts into one of the shock pivots and I do run a MRP top guide just for a little bit of added security. It doesn't weigh anything. I've run chain guides for 20 years. I always have run the single rings on all my bikes for the whole time I've been mountain biking. This is like not a new deal to me. You just run a chain guide because you do. The SRAM stuff works great. You probably won't lose your chain, but that one time that you might, you wanna have a guide on there and that's how that goes. Oh, wheels. I'm running SRAM Rome 50 aluminum wheels. Good combination of weight versus durability. Pretty much beat on these things and they hold up just fine for indoor racing, trail riding, that sort of thing. They're reasonably light and snappy. They're really laterally stiff, but they're vertically compliant so they don't beat you up when you're descending and you don't get bounced around when you're cornering really hard. They feel stiff and great, so run those. Of course, wrapped in Maxxis tires. I've generally been a Minion DHF guy for this whole season. I like the 2.5 3C tubeless ready EXO out front. Running an Aggressor 2.3. I kind of go back and forth between the double down casing and the EXO casing depending on what I'm racing or what I'm riding. If I need a little more flat protection, I'll put that double down on there and give her hell and smash everything I can find. Yeah, the Aggressor was a kind of newer tire this year, I guess, and I've been running that a time and a half back for most of the riding that I do. It's pretty sweet for just about everything. Good all around rear tire. All right, brakes. Guide Ultimates with a carbon lever. They feel great. I run 180 rotors front and rears to keep things simple on all my bikes basically so I can switch things around, whatever. Makes my life easy. I always run metallic pads. They make a little more noise, but they last a lot longer and I like the feel of them over the organics personally. You run a dropper post, right? You better run a dropper post. Reverb 125 Outback's got me covered. I couldn't ride a road bike without a dropper post. I'd just crash everywhere. I don't know what I would do. Saddle SME3 Ergon Pro. Basically a good, durable, comfortable saddle. The best saddle I always say is one that I don't even have to think about. I just sit on it and it works. It's sweet. While we're talking about Ergon, I have some GE1 grips here. This is a newer rubber compound. It's kind of sticky and soft and feels really comfy on the hands. Don't get any hand pump or anything like that. Cockpit here. I do have a new SRAM Descendant carbon bar on here. Mated with the 50 millimeter Descendant stem. The bars are 750, pretty standard width. I like to run all the same bars on all my bikes, keep all the widths the same, so nothing feels crazy when you're switching back and forth. I run a 50 millimeter stem on this bike. 50 is good for about everything I do. I do run a power meter. Stages makes wonderful power meters. It's on my non-drive side crank arm, nice and safe in there. Quiet. I'm not a huge numbers geek, but it is good to have some data. It's basically just a tool to help you determine what the hell's happening in your race runs because you get to the bottom and you're drooling and you don't know what happened. So yeah, I've been enjoying using that all year and it'll help me prepare for next season properly. All right, everybody. Thanks for watching. If you guys have any questions, you can leave them in the comments. I'll try to answer as many as I can. Check out my Fall Camp Friday video series. New episodes every Friday. Shredding trail, laughing at my friends. Good times. Subscribe to my channel. Now I'm going to Love Muffin to get coffee.