Using a Leaf Spring Design on a Trail Bike？ ｜ 2025 Pinkbike Field Test

Up next, we've got the Spot Mayhem 140. With just about the most aggressive name on test, this bike does sport some of the more conservative geometry. Weighing in at 31 pounds on the nose, this bike sports a 150 millimeter fork, 140 mil of rear wheel travel, and has a very unusual and novel suspension linkage. With not only a rather unique carbon fiber frame, but also a little tiny bit of titanium in there. Spot uses something they're calling the Inversion Living Link Layout to drive the rear shock. That is a little titanium leaf spring that they say offers the ultimate hover bike experience. As to whether that's the case, we'll get into it with some first impressions and the final review. Oh my gosh, oh my gosh. Old man geometry almost caught me out. This bike goes, man. I would say my three words, controlled, but reactive, and agile. You're happy that he likes it. I am happy because curtain reveal or whatever, I spent a good amount of time on that bike before the field test. I really enjoyed it, but I wanted to not. You did a first ride on that, right? Yeah, but it's good to see other people. That's what I thought. All right, well now it's time to find out if this Spot Mayhem actually caused any mayhem out on the trails. We've got some questions on the way, as well as those three words that Matt first thought when he rode the bike. There we go. Flower growing in, can't look at them. Oh yeah, let's see. Give us the reveal. The first three words after Matt's very first ride, he said, controlled, reactive, agile. You also mentioned some dadgio. Does it still hold up? Yeah, I would say so. Controlled, definitely takes a little bit, maybe, more thinking to get there. You got to be on it. For me, I could push into the bike and feel more control. Then reactive, yeah, it's definitely a snappy bike. Short chain stay, it's light, that pocket where you push into the bike. It's definitely easy to get a lot of power back out of it through corners and stuff. Then, yeah, that goes into reactive and agile, as well. We'll talk about the dadgio in a little bit. Let's save that one. Let's start with some climbing questions, though. First question, does this bike need a climb switch? I didn't use it very much. Any tech trail, left it wide open. Maybe the steeper fire roads would close it off. Why not? Did you find the same thing? Yeah, I didn't reach for it at all. It's another one of those bikes that they've done a really good job. Plenty of support. They've got all kinds of, they've got their living link, infusion, sidebar, crazy, whatever, suspension design. We'll talk more about that in the written portion of the review to really dig into it. Basically, they've got a kind of complicated suspension layout. They use a little titanium leaf spring, but whatever's happening, you don't need a climb switch. You just go, climb. This is the lightest bike that we had out of the eight bikes we have in this field test. Does it climb more like an XC bike? Yeah, definitely. The front end's a little bit more pointy. Going uphill around tighter switchbacks, definitely doesn't have that lumbering tractor trailer. Got to take it wide to get around switchbacks. You're over the front a little bit more, and it just carries quickly through those. Then in terms of suspension, I found that it just did the right amount of standing up. It wasn't in the ground and clipping pedals and stuff, but it wasn't totally locked out. You did get some good traction. Yeah, exactly. I'd say it's not a cross-country bike, but it's kind of like your ideal trail bike. We talked about the Canyon Spectral. We rode that. We also tested that bike. It's kind of similar to me in that way where it has a lot of support, but also somehow manages to good traction. You just have 140 millimeters of travel. It doesn't have maybe the harshness that some cross-country bikes have where they're just so efficient, kind of brutally firm. It doesn't have that, but it does have that nice level of support when you stand up and sprint around. Yeah, I'd say that's definitely true. Comparing it to the Canyon, it's definitely the closest. This one, the spot, you felt like you were on top of the Mayhem a bit more, and the Canyon, you were definitely lower down in the bike more so. Yeah, that could be geometry-wise, which that's a little bit steeper head angle, so you're kind of up a little bit more where the Canyon is a little bit slacker, so a little different handling. Then I guess we could also talk about the Instinct. Speaking about ride heights, that one, the Rocky Mountain Instinct, is riding really low and very active, where this is kind of higher and not quite as active, but it feels more controlled. Yeah, I'd say those two bikes for me were the most polar opposite, like suspension, geometry, and somehow they both went downhill pretty quick in that little time session we did. Yeah, we'll get to the downhill impressions in a second. Let's do one more question on climbing. How's it do in technical terrain? We're here in Whistler. There's plenty of good, I call it jank, techie, just kind of stair step, slow speed maneuvers. How'd it do? Yeah, definitely has a lot of zip to it, like any input you put into the pedals, it just climbs up and over those little steps very quickly while keeping the rear wheel on the ground. And the position too, even though it does have a seemingly shorter chainstay, I never found I was looping out or anything. Maybe that was because you have a bit more weight forward on the bike. And to me, it also felt like the roomiest cockpit, even though maybe the numbers didn't tell that tale. Did you find something similar? I didn't find it like too, I didn't feel too stretched out. I think like the DaVinci Troy, I might've felt the most stretched out, but on this bike, yeah, it kind of feels like a comfortable, like an all day pedaling type of bike. You can hop on it and go for long spins. You don't have that totally straight upright that some of the really steep seat angles can do. So I think it's kind of a nice blend and it's kind of what you'd expect from a trail bike. Definitely this one, in my mind, is the one for going on long rides, like putting in the miles. Yeah. So like full pulls, Lord of the Squirrels, that extra weight too, doesn't hamper it. Yeah, exactly. Or lightweight really. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This bike does, it is a very fancy bike. It's kind of like one of their, I think their five-star build. So pretty expensive, most expensive bike we have on test, but did have some carbon wheels and all that adds up to the lightest bike, which doesn't hurt for sure when you're climbing up something long. Yeah. Well, that's it for the climbing. Probably time to get into descending. I'll hand this to you and you can read some descending questions. Okay. So going downhill on the Mayhem, that suspension layout with the funky Lee Springs, pretty unusual. Can you feel that? Like, do you think it's there on the bike or does it just feel like a regular, normal dual suspension? I'd say it feels regular, which is really nice. If you do look at the suspension curves of this bike, which, you know, I wrote the first look of this a while ago, so I kind of was familiar with what they're doing. It looks like it could be complicated in the way that the, the way the suspension works, the way it feels is very predictable and it doesn't feel like it's doing anything dramatic in a really good way. I just, it's very predictable. Again, keep saying that word, but you can hit a big drop and it doesn't bottom out like a super good bottom out resistance without running into a wall progression. Um, yeah, it's enough. Yeah. I don't want to keep going on at this point, but just, it just works like you think it should. And that kind of lets you go into some rougher, junkier bits that you air into rock garden. You can just kind of keep trucking ahead. It just doesn't get hung up. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I definitely found that it had like a little bit more of a break in to get into, like almost like, you know, like one of those Mason jars where it's not cracked yet. Like you got to like push it to get in, but then it would like spring you back out nicely. So it was more so a bike for me that I had to like, I had to work it a little bit more, but it did have like a lot of support and kind of keep you moving through those bumps. Yeah. I think it's a good analogy. If this bike isn't very fluttery off the top, like sometimes we say like the bike feels fluttery, just kind of, it doesn't really have that. That first bit is a little bit firmer, but then once you get into it, then you're just, it's just so nice. It's just kind of that bottomless feel that you would want. Yeah. Nice. And then does this actually cause any mayhem? Is it like loud? Is there anything crazy going on? Yeah. When I think mayhem, I think a bike that makes you want to like smash and be aggressive. And it's not really a mayhem bike. It's almost like Henry was saying the analogy, he was picturing a lot of linen suits. That was like it's thing, you know, like it's a, it's calm, it's composed, but it's not, it's not a rowdy bike. You know, geometry is a little bit conservative, but so yeah, mayhem might not be the best name for the bike, but I don't think it's a bad thing, but this isn't really like your bike for the guy that wants to have his Enduro smash bike or your, you know, someone just wants to just huck things all the time and going on the super steep stuff. I mean, you can do those things, but it does have limits. Okay. Besides causing mayhem out there, anything to add to, you know, the conservative geometry or suspension feel like there's no geometry adjustment, so you can't make it slacker and you can't make the shock any more progressive or linear. So where does that kind of leave you? Yeah, I think luckily spot is settled on a really good shock tune. And I think that the shock tune allows you to potentially ride the bike harder than you might normally. If you're looking just at the numbers, like purely based on a geometry numbers, it looks a little conservative. It might make you feel that the bike could kind of have a little bit timidity or timidity. That's a good word or hesitancy in the technical terrain, but it doesn't really have that. I felt like knowing that it wasn't going to bottom out easily and knowing that there was support allowed me to push it harder. Yeah. How was that for you on the steeper stuff, kind of more rowdy trails? Yeah, I would agree. It wasn't like on paper, it wasn't a bike I was going to send it down like 1199 downhill track, but it was surprisingly good in some of those bigger impacts. And even through those bike park corners too, it just held up well and didn't do anything surprising for me, I think was the big thing. Yeah. I think that's what's nice about predictability and cornering. You mentioned cornering, it's super fun to corner. I mean, that's where that geometry comes into play. There's something to be said about a good cornering bike and this one is really nice, quick side to side, kind of again, and go back to that spectral. This and the spectral, I think are my favorite cornering bikes on this test. Okay. Last question. Do you wish for any adjustments? I'm fine without there being any adjustments. I think it's kind of nice to have a bike. You just set it up and ride it. I'm on both sides of the fence on this one. I'm going to fence it for adjustments. I don't mind if a bike has adjustments, but this is one of those bikes that works so well. There wasn't really anything that I wanted to change. Yeah. Change anything? I mean, there's enough different ways to set up air shocks these days and you can even over fork this bike. So I think that's enough and it doesn't leave people, you know, guessing and missing the mark on the bike setup. So, all right, that's it for descending. We're going to go check in with Dario and see what that funky leaf spring's like to live with. Welcome to the garage. I'm here with the Spot. We're going to talk about some of its peculiarities, let's say, because I think on this bike, despite being a pretty polished package overall, there were a couple things that frustrated us, but maybe you're going to be happy to live with those. First of all, tire clearance. I have here a normal piece of cardboard. It's pretty thin and I cannot, for the life of me, fit it through the space between the tire and the frame. Now these are advertised as 2.5 inch tires. They measure at exactly 2.4 and I would say are pretty low profile tread overall. The clearance on this bike is so minuscule. So if you live in a place where it's pebbly, muddy, you're going to pick up any sort of debris, run a narrow tire. Second, bottle fitment is a little bit tight on this bike. You know, you can fit a regular size bottle, but we found that at least with this cage, it knocks against the shock on rougher things. So you're going to want to run a very firm bottle cage and you won't be able to run a bigger bottle than this. Last thing, it uses T30 hardware and none of us have multi-tools that have T30s. We've got T30s in our tool bags, but found that if you needed to tighten up any of the collet axles on this bike, you couldn't do it with a multi-tool. Even if you could, the torque spec on this is pretty sensitive and has kind of a funky interface that requires you to sometimes back off the torque spec in order to get it tight enough to keep the whole system in play. Now, we did mention it in the review, but this bike is the only one on test without in-frame storage and also the only one on test without any sort of adjustable flip chip type dealio. Now, this is the livability section of the review. We're going to try to keep all things relative and compare the bikes to each other on a spectrum. I'm going to give this a medium, kind of middle-of-the-road score. There are some frustrations that I think could be livable for a lot of people. The major caveat is that tire clearance. I think if you live in a place that has cloggy mud, rocks, sticks, they're going to get caught. They're going to potentially damage the frame. There's some pretty good rubber protection, but I think pretty major caveat to this whole thing. You could have issues with that. If you run a really narrow tire, you might not. Now, that's all for livability for now. I'm going to send it back to the boys inside. We're going to get their final impressions on the bike and get a sense of who it's for. All right, that was the rundown from Dario on living with this bike. Let's get into some pros and cons. Let's start off with the cons this time. It's the top con for the Spot Mayhem 140. From 30 seconds of riding this bike, Geo, everything else aside, the bike just seemed to pick up small rocks and jam them in the frame. They do have a nice little rubber gasket style to protect the paint, but even the clearance between the rear triangle yoke and the bottom bracket shell, a bit of that area got marred up. On some climbs, it would even pick up sticks and stop the and I would almost just get pitch forward enough. There was enough forgiveness for the tire to let that stick past, but it was pretty apparent. Very limited tire clearance. You're going to want to run a 2.4 and a narrower 2.4 would be ideal, so maybe even a 2.35. Tire clearance is a con. That's what we have for cons. Also, the bottle does fit a water bottle, which is nice, but there's not that much room for it. Yes, definitely tight. The one we had, all the bottle cages are a little bit different, but it did make some noise and just because it is so tight in there, you have to make it fit perfectly. You're definitely not going to get an extra large water bottle in there. Then another con, there's some T30 hardware on there. You had this bike for a bit and you noticed some creaking in there too, so you pulled it apart. Was that easy to work on or it was weird? Yes, definitely. The dual link design does have more moving parts than some of the simpler four bar bikes that we have. It does require a T30, which is something that's not usually on your multi-tool. If you're out on the field, you need to tighten up a shock bolt or something comes loose, it's really hard to tighten it. You might not be able to, so that's an inconvenience that I don't really think needs to be there. It was a little creaky initially and I put some grease on it and quieted it down, but I just think the hardware in the system, it's not quite as refined as an expanding collet design. They have their reasons for it and I listened to the engineer explain it. I just don't quite totally buy it where I think that there's a better way to do it. It's a little bit more finicky for your home mechanic to work on. Some pros then. I'll start with one. I think the no-adjustment thing is cool. We have a bunch of bikes here with tons of adjustment and those can be right for the person who knows what they're doing and they have a good guideline, but sometimes just a basic bike with the right geo and the right suspension from the get-go is what you want. Maybe it's a little bit narrower of a window to ride a specific trail for, but I think we got there. We felt comfy on this bike in a lot of different terrain. Exactly. I think the next pro leads right into that where that suspension tune and the way the suspension feels, it's excellent. It just really allows you to push the bike hard without feeling like anything is getting out of sorts. I think the suspension tune is dialed. Yeah, that's what we have for pros. I would definitely say the climbing aspect of this bike. It's lighter, the dual 29, it feels sharp in the tight techy stuff and you stay off the ground where a lot of these other bikes are maybe pushing the limit of ground clearance and extra sag for a trail bike. This one's a little more old school, but it's kind of refreshing in the same way. Yeah, I think that kind of brings us into the who's this bike for. For me, it's someone that wants a trail bike that's an actual trail bike. They don't want a shrunken down enduro bike or a mini downhill or what do people like to say? It's the downhiller's trail XC thing. It's not that. It's a trail bike. There's kind of through and through a great trail bike. It climbs well and it also descends well. Yeah, I would agree with what you said there. This is a trail bike through and through. Even here in Whistler, it did a great job, but commenters, you let us know. Are these trail bikes these days getting too far down the enduro rabbit hole? Yeah, let us know. Also, don't forget to subscribe so you can stay up to date on all the latest Field Test videos. You can also check out the written reviews on the Pinkbike homepage.