TESTED: Norco Sight Carbon 9.2

Words: Lachlan McKillop   Photos: Robert Conroy

Canadian brand Norco has a strong heritage in gravity. Founded in 1964, the company was on the cutting edge in the early 1990s and since then has gone from strength to strength with their dual suspension lines. The Sight was launched in 2013 and incorporated the company’s latest ART suspension system which came directly from their Aurum downhill bike (which I tested early last year). What I’m getting at here is that Norco have a great sense of what goes downhill well and what is fun to ride. With the launch of the new Sight Carbon it was going to be interesting to see what they could do by not only tweaking the frame but bringing in a new wheel size too.

The new Sight Carbon is planted in the Norco all-mountain range, with 140mm/130mm front and rear travel. The bike is capable but still is not as beefed up as the all new Range which has just been released. It sits firmly above its smaller brother the Optic, which has 110mm travel, and combines more gravity oriented geometry as well as more travel. In our case it also boasts the new 29 inch wheel size the bike has adopted for this year. 27.5” models are also available in the Sight, as they are in the Optic and Range too, with 10mm of more travel at each end than their bigger-wheeled counterparts.

Initial Impressions
It might still be called a Sight, but this bike has been completely updated. The Sight Carbon 9.2 on test uses the latest addition of 29 inch wheels, as well as more relaxed geometry, Boost hub spacing and a suspension path that lessens the chain growth ever so slightly. The Sight Carbon arrived in a large box (always a good sign) and to my surprise there was minimal work to put it together. Bars on, front wheel in, front brake on, dropper connected, shocks inflated – done. Put together in under 20 minutes. One of the best bike builds from a box I have had, so hats off to Norco.

The quality of how the bike was put together was great too. My first pet hate with any test machine is the cables out the front of the bike – basically no one wants a bird nest up there, it just looks bad. For the first time since working with AMB these cables were perfectly neat out of the box which has to be applauded. The cables for the majority are internal which is always aesthetically pleasing. The internal system is great, with large holes in the frame to get all sort of cable or hoses through – perfect if you are trying to replace brakes, gear cables and droper hoses. The finish on the frame is really well done, with smooth paint and no markings or paint bubbles and although the paint is loud up close it’s a pretty cool scheme. 

The Sight Carbon 9.2 sits second from the top and utilises RockShox suspension front and back with Shimano taking care of the shifting, brakes and rolling duties (hubs).

Key in the suspension is the addition of a new metric sized shock. With metric offering more bushing overlap this delivers a laterally stiffer shock which allows the suspension to work better through its travel when it may be under flex. The build is burly and to be quite honest very close to how I would build my own bike – downhill tyres, one-by chain ring and some wide handlebars. This added a new level of wanting to take this onto the trail.

Once the bike was together it was time to set up the suspension. The first thing you will notice is how the rear shock feels. Norco has utilised the new Deluxe shock by RockShox which does feel a little different, but as I will explain later it will make a huge difference on the trail. The bike out of the box feels quite progressive as the suspension ramps up at the end of the travel. Although Norco has made this one less progressive than the last Sight, it is still noticeable. Setting up sag was a breeze, 30% in the rear, 25% in the front and three tokens in the fork to give me the feeling I was looking for.

There were a few things on this bike I really wanted to check out. Firstly wondering whether it was going to overlap too much with their latest Range. The Sight Carbon uses angles and travel ranges that are up there with what some of the EWS guys are racing on. The second was to do with the design of the bike. I have seen on previous Norcos that the chain growth is a lot and with the bike running a long cage rear mech the noise coming off the bike was going to be interesting. And thirdly I wanted to know how the 29er wheels were going to feel. Norco’s stated aim is to make the 29er versions of the Optic, Sight Carbon and Range Carbon have similar ride characteristics to the 27.5” models – but can that be the case?

On The Trail
We always get asked what size we want for testing and to keep things consistent I really try to stay on a medium – being 175cm tall I am bang on average height so I assume a medium should technically always work. Norco also work to pretty standard reach and stack measurements, so if you fit a medium (like I do) on one of their models, you will on all of them. The sizing of the medium is comfortable – with a low stand over, long wheel base and short stem the bike feels gravity orientated from the get go. The use of the RaceFace 35 stem in 50mm is pretty short for an all-mountain bike, but on the trail with the larger wheels it really does work to give more aggressive handling. The bars come in at 800mm wide which I do think is overkill for an all-mountain bike. I had more than a few moments on trails with tight sections where the bars would catch – and even lost a bar plug from doing so on my second ride. This isn’t a big issue since you can either chop your bars down to suit or replace them. But that wasn’t possible on test so I was left feeling the 800s were a little on the wide side of things.

The rest of the fitting was a breeze and with the short cockpit and short rear end the bike is playful and you feel at home on it pretty damn quickly. After only a couple of laps I was riding the Sight Carbon like I had been on it for months. The short cockpit is something I wouldn’t usually run – I would generally have something 10mm longer than this – but it actually felt perfect with the larger wheels and meant I could ride more aggressively. Which is exactly what the geometry and suspension encourage.

The bike is a more than capable descender and the large wheels give you the ability to roll over everything with ease, while the gravity oriented head angle, bottom bracket height and chain stay length allow the bike to be flung, turned, gapped or plowed with relative ease. Although the shock is stated to be less progressive than previously, I did find that it was quite punchy at the end of the travel. The rebound had to be wound down slightly to give a slower than normal return to make sure I wasn’t getting shaken around on hits throughout the trail. Once I played with the rebound it was fine, but it is well worth noting that this bike won’t be as simple as just matching your old suspension settings.

Throwing the bike into a corner, or just turning, is really nice – firstly in part to the short chainstays I’ve touched on. The short back end created a playful ride that allows a certain level of nimbleness in the corners. The tyre choice of the bike makes a massive difference – this set up is something I would more see on an enduro bike. Up front is Schwalbe’s Magic Mary and on the rear the Nobby Nic. Both in 2.35” the tyres have insane amounts of grip. This is a tyre choice I would run on a bike as an upgrade, not something I would expect to see out of the box. Kudos to Norco on providing a wicked tyre choice. The RaceFace 30 rims give the tyres an excellent shape and their wider internal diameter suits the 2.35” tyres extremely well, allowing them to not become too round on the rim. Basically this means they are well-supported at the lower pressures you’re likely to run, so will squirm less under cornering and feel more consistent. The wheel size has been incorporated well and, using the gravity knowledge that Norco has, they have pushed the larger wheel size to become not so much about climbing and more about going down.

The Sight Carbon uses quite a high front end as well, and for me this is a big plus. There is nothing worse in my mind than a front end being too low. This is from the top tube design as well as the slightly longer front fork. Why, you might ask? Because a low front end whilst descending can leave the rider with too much weight over the front wheel and potentially puts them in an over-the-bars situation. The Norco goes against the grain a little in the trail market and utilises a front end that you would more likely see on something like the Range. When the taller front end is paired with the stiff Boost spacing, tapered headtube and metric shock the bike seems unfazed by larger hits and plowing through sections of trail. These features are confidence-inspiring when getting in sticky situations on the track or just trying to push the bike to the limit.

The larger wheels do increase the climbing capabilities of the Sight by quite a margin. They hold speed really well and allow you to get the bike over pinches and climbs easier than the smaller wheel equivalent. I did find, however, that with the taller front end and shorter chain stays the bike was hard to get in a position to get the front wheel to stay down adequately. Although this bike isn’t an XC bike and I’m usually only climbing to get back down the trail, I would have expected a little better climbing performance.

Shimano’s XT groupset was bombproof all test as we have come to expect from the big S. The larger 11-46 cassette shifts astonishingly well and gives a huge range for riders. I do feel however that the 30 tooth ring up front is a little too small and although it can be upgraded by the rider I feel at least a 32 should be standard. The use of the long cage rear mech is a little bit of a negative though, although it seems the bike requires the extra length due to chain growth when low in the cassette. It means the chain does tend to create a lot of noise on the chain stay (even with a great chain stay protector that comes fitted) and on the chain guide fitted to the bike. It would take some experimenting, but possibly a link or two out of the chain may sort this out. 

Our Take
The latest evolution of the all-mountain Sight Carbon from Norco has the bike headed in a more gravity oriented direction. The brand has gone about creating a machine that is playful on the trail and capable above its stated travel. With the use of a stiffer chassis and axle spacing, the Norco can be pushed and pushed and still come back asking for more. I feel that although the bike performs above the 130mm rear travel there is still no overlap with it’s bigger brother the Range – as that bike has also been beefed up. The Sight is going to work for any rider who has gravity on their mind but still wants to ride the local trails with their mates. Although climbing is not the bike’s strong suit, I really don’t think it matters as this machine has shredding in its DNA. So make your way to the top in your own time, and save your Strava attempts for the way down.