Reviewer: Justin English
Date: 9-15-2008
Model: 2008 Trek Remedy 9
MSRP: $4729.99
Note: Justin would like to thank his awesome bike shop, Ray’s Cycle in Vacaville, CA
Trek makes a comeback? (skip lower for review)
Earlier this year Trek released a couple of new designs into the full suspension market. This was very much needed to revamp their mountain bike product line. Trek used to have a strong MTB market presence back in the days of OLCV and the Y bike. However, with so many companies coming out with new designs getting lighter and longer travel every year it seemed that Trek fell a little behind. After all they had Lance Armstrong racing their road bikes and creating a huge market known as the “Lance effect” for road bikes. Perhaps they forgot about us crusty mountain dudes? Now with Trek’s new efforts in technology it seems they are looking to recapture some of the magic they had back in the Y bike days.
ABP and Full Floater Marketing hype?
Ever since seeing the release of the Remedy 9, I was intrigued. Just take one look at that bike and you can see it has some nice lines. However, I was still hesitant to buy a bike based on looks and new marketing acronyms. I have been riding FSR’s ever since buying my first DH bike in 99 and haven’t ridden anything else since, so switching to the Trek was a somewhat scary idea. The idea behind the Active Braking Pivot is that it will act as a floating brake allowing the rear wheel to move independently of the braking forces reducing “brake jack”. This is better described here. Another concept that is included in this design is a full floating rear end. Instead of mounting the bottom of the rear shock to the frame, the Full Floater technology allows the rear shock to “float” between two independent linkages. This gives the Remedy a bottomless feel you normally only get with a coil shock. More on Full Floater here. The suspension in action:
What is a Remedy 9?
The Remedy line of bikes is the next generation of Mountain bikes commonly referred as “All Mountain” category, long travel for the super-gnar descents and light and nimble for huge climbs. Basically, it’s a do it all bike. I think it was Scott’s release of the Ransom which started this trend of light six inch travel bikes. Specialized jumped into the mix with the Enduro SL and now Canonndale has the Moto lineup. Unlike the Moto, Enduro or Ransom the Remedy is not currently offered in a carbon frame option. The Remedy 9 comes in an aluminum alloy frame. The first glance at the Remedy you notice the elegant shape of the main tubes. A couple taps on the frame and you can hear that the walls must be fairly thin. The fork is a Fox Float 36 RC2. The rear shock is a RP23 XV. More on the stock Remedy 9. A key feature of the Remedy is its slack head tube angle. 67 degrees is spec’d while still maintaining quick steering. Trek states that with the custom E2 Fox fork has a tapered steer tube that has a 1.5″ bottom diameter and a 1.125″ top diameter. This makes the steering noticeably stiffer since there is more material at the bottom of the steer tube where needed. The top of the headtube still uses the standard 1.125″ diameter to optimize for weight and component availability.
For my Remedy I changed the brakes to Avid Juicy Ultimate (about 50 grams lighter than thestock Juicy Carbon), tires to Kenda Nevegal 2.35 folding tires, the stem to a Point One, bars to carbon Easton Monkey Lite XC, and I slapped on a pair of Shimano XT clipless pedals. Total weight= 28.82lbs
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