Saracen Ariel 142 – Review
Saracen Ariel 142
We’ve taken Saracen’s 140mm trail bike through thick and thin, uphill and down again…
The Ariel is billed as a solid platform for “trail biking”, and sports the best marketing term ever “Carved from a block of solid awesomeness” – full credit to the copy writing team for that one! We took a first look back in April[link], and gave an update on the tweaks we’ve made a few weeks ago[link].
The bike has had a full and thorough hounding across a range of terrain. She has tackled a whole range of trail centre riding from gentle social pootles, hungover megatrains and big all daytrips with sandwiches. Off piste she has gamely carried me round big rides like the Dyfi Enduro (60km and 7000ft of climbing! Urgh!) and been on big mountain blitzes up Snowdon and Moel Siabod, as well as riding all but the harshest of the homegrown downhill that North Wales can provide. Most recently she slipped on some burly wellingtons in the form of a set of Spank Spike Race 28s shod with Continental’s finest Der Kaiser Projekt (Ramstein) rubber and headed south to the lofty peaks of the French and Swiss Alps. It’s fair to say in this time, with plenty of miles under our belts we’ve come to know each other really rather well.
Let’s start off with a whirl through the frame. A linkage driven single pivot keeps the back end stiff and feeling precise, and a choice of 135mm or 142mm with a 12mm axle lets you keep things personal. Swapping between the sizes is a straightforward job, the dropouts and axle spacers are clearly labelled and colour coded. The 142 comes, rather aptly, with a 142×12 rear end. The wheels have proved to be solid and dependable. ISCG 05 mounts and routing for dropper post (including a sneaky hole for a stealth post) hint at the potential of this frame. The 143 comes with a KS dropper post, the 142 and 141 go without. A tapered headtube is held at the front by some neat and tidy welding and the paintjob is thick and seems pretty durable, it’s retained a nice fresh shiny look, though a few good rock strikes have chipped it, it’s not flaked at all. Cable routing is sensible, with the rear mech and back brake on the upper side of the downtube, while the front mech runs down the lower side. I was concerned that this would expose it to blows from wayward rocks, but despite plenty of dings in the undercarriage the mech has happily meched away with no bother. The slightly dropped toptube give plenty of room over the bike, and the cockpit on my 17” (Medium) feels comfortable with the saddle up on the climbs, in the middle for pottering, and down for the steepness. The Fox CTD shock has been a solid little unit, and the CTD (Climb, Trail, Descend) tuning seems about right. It’s proved itself again and again keeping the back end in check on long steep Verbier singletracks, and adding some efficiency to climbs as well. Impressive for a “lower end” shock.
On to the build, Fox 32 Evo CTD forks with a 15mm bolt through axle keep things the front wheel attached. As seen previously, these didn’t last very long with the rebound cartridge needing replacement after about 18 hours. Mojo in South Wales came up with the goods, and since then they have been much better. The 32 is slightly flexy and doesn’t feel as stiff as some similar forks such as RockShox Revelations, and at times I’d have appreciated something like a Fox 34, that said it has performed admirably on all sorts of terrain. Again the CTD setup is pretty effective.
The wheels are a good standard set of wheels, cartridge bearings in the hubs and a solid shape to the Sun Ringle rims (the profile, obviously!) To be honest the standard wheels didn’t get too much use as I didn’t have several sets of 142×12 rear wheels (nothing wrong with them at all mind!), so I swapped them out and ran with a pair of Stan’s Flows on Hope Hubs for XC duties, and the superb Spank Spike Race 28s for DH adventures. I’ve had the Stan’s for a couple of years and they have been faultless as a nice light XC wheel that can take a beating. We got hold of the Spanks for the Orange 322 Whistler adventure last year [link] and they did 6 weeks in paradise no bother at all, as such I was happy to dig them out for this bike. Solid, dependable, and light for a DH wheel, they have once again held their own. A naughty jumping alpine marmot (or perhaps a rock) took out a spoke, and they have taken a beating but are still running true, as is the freehub (not too clicky) and the bearings within. Want light DH wheels? Buy these!
The tyres left a little to be desired in terms of puncture resistance and grip, and to get the best from the bike I very quickly switched to Continental Rubber Queens, Barons or Der Kaiser Projekts.
Stopping the wheels from turning, Saracen spec a set of Deore brakes with Shimano’s floating rotors (180/160mm). They lack the brand appeal of the SLX/Zee but again, faultless. For UK use the 160mm rotor on the back has been fine, and out in the Alps I’ve run some Superstar 180mm floating rotors to deal lengthy descents. I’ve had no issues at all with them, a bit of heat staining on the back rotor due to a hungover day riding steep Super Morzine filth (Nice one Emily, Porridge is still a good un!) but no problems with fade, or lack of power even a long way into the gnar.
Getting the wheels turning again, the drivetrain is a mix of SLX derailieurs, Deore bits and FSA cranks. Again, no bother at all… spotting a theme on this bike?! Saracen really have put together a powerful little package here. The only addition I made was the great Blackspire Twinty chain device. It has a taco skidplate, a slider down the bottom, and the mech keeps things in order up top. Basically everything a chap might need from a 2×10 device. I’ve been very impressed from the word go with this. A concern was raised about the wear on the slider, but after some heavy use the wear is pretty minimal.
Up front Saracen branded bars are wide enough for most tastes at 740mm, but sadly the 70mm stem was very swiftly taken off, and has done a great job as a paperweight on my desk. I popped a 35mm Easton Havon on, and lost a winkle of climbing ability, but a worthy sacrifice for some precision to the steering. Again, this is a pretty personal thing, but for most uses I really think that 50mm should be plenty. The Saracen lock on grips have been great, as has the Kore Saddle and Saracen branded bits such as the seat clamp & seat-post. It’s nice that the little bits that should work, do!
This bike has taken a hammering, that’s fair to say. It’s put in the miles, up and down the hill. A superbly put together package, and a good bike straight out of the box, with a few personal tweaks this has become a great bike for pretty much all occasions! I’d run a shorter stem, better tyres and perhaps up the fork a bit – do that and you really do have a proper mountain bike, one that will do you proud.
Saracen also offer the 16X series with a bit more travel and it looks very much like the 2014 offerings will be 650b/27.5” – it would be very interesting to ride the two back to back and see how things get on.
The acid test – would I buy one? Yes. That was simple!
RRP – £2649.99 but with 2014* looming, keep your eyes open for deals!
*Well, 2014 bikes…
