TESTED: YT Jeffsy CF Comp 1

Words: Lachlan Mckillop Photos: Robert Conroy  

YT Industries is synonymous with gravity, the online-based German brand started off with pre-selling their high-end bikes over the Internet. But in the last few years the brand has gone from strength to strength, starting off with a huge amount of support in the freeride scene with Cam Zink and Andreu Lacondeguy to their now newly dubbed The YT Mob downhill team. We can see that this relative newcomer to the market knows a thing or two about how a bike should go down a hill fast. And now with a team of distributors internationally the bikes are popping up more and more.

I’m sure a lot of us saw the marketing campaign for Jeffsy. The ads appeared with different images with lines like “I hate Jeffsy” and “Who is Jeffsy”. Was Jeffsy a new rider? Was it a bike? We could all guess but not really know. As it turns out Jeffsy was the new trail bike from YT. A brand so seeded in gravity it was crazy to now see big wheels combined with shorter travel, but the bike still had the aesthetic of the Capra and the angles were more gravity than trail.

The trail market is huge, if not the biggest market in mountain bikes at the moment, with all the major manufacturers having something on offer. YT has marketed this bike as being the gravity rider’s trail bike. But was the bike going to be too suited to steeper terrain than most of Australia?

INITIAL IMPRESSIONS

Whenever a big box arrives at work, the first thing I start thinking is, what am I going to have to do to put this together? Being as time poor as the next guy doesn’t make it easy, so to open the YT box up and find a bike where I literally had to pop the wheels and bars on was a really nice treat. As YT deal directly, I’m going to take a minute to talk about just how well boxed the bike was and just how easy it was to get together. Everything in the box was separated with speciality cut cardboard, nothing was rubbing and everything was precisely labelled. YT get a great big tick for taking pride in their packaging, which is crucial for a brand that sells direct.

Standing back, beer in hand looking at the handy work, the bike does look great. With the black on black paint the Jeffsy is stealthy. The mainframe is very similar to its bigger brother the Capra but the linkage placement is slightly lower down. With many frames at the moment having a low standover, a lot seem to really be looking at the water bottle cage as a bit of an afterthought. YT has really thought about the space they have in the water bottle department and constructed their own side removal cage and small water bottle (holding exactly one pint). This is a nice little touch. With a similar aesthetic to its bigger brother it should be noted that this bike doesn’t really look like a 140mm travel bike, it must be the slack angles but it looks burlier.
 

The carbon construction is smooth and elegant; there are no rough edges on the frame, which is really pleasing to the eye. All areas that contact moving parts are met with either rubber padding or in the case of the BB area an aluminium piece to stop any damage. Although the cables are not completely internal (which to me is a small downfall) they are still neat and run down the down tube of the bike, hidden away in the middle of the tube.  The rest of the parts on the bike are all solid campaigners, a SRAM X1 mix, Guide RSC brakes, Monarch rear shock and the tried and tested Pike.

This build kit is a staple, and similar to what I run on my own bike. I’m not going to get into the SRAM/Shimano debate, but on the suspension level this set up really makes my life easy. I know exactly what I want it to feel like, so after chucking 3 tokens in the fork and 4 rings in the shock I was good to go.

Beyond a car park test and some quick practice in the snow, the first ride on this bike was the McKayos Race in Falls Creek. I’m not usually one to just jump into a bike full tilt, but as YT say the Jeffsy is a gravity riders trail bike and being similar angles and build to my normal ride I thought why not?

ON THE TRAIL

Jumping on the bike both in the race and on the local trails it just feels all too familiar but with the greater efficiency of a shorter travel bike. I was riding a frame size up than usual (large) but with the short rear end and low stand over it felt perfect. The extra length of the top tube if anything helped with greater stability.

The stock 60mm stem was short enough to make the bike manoeuvrable but long enough to not make it too twitchy. I don’t want anything much shorter than 60mm on a trail bike or it just becomes too hard to stay on course on the tight and twisties of Australia. The RaceFace bars have great back sweep although I’m not too sure if 20mm rise would be the best for all riders, but it definitely stays with the aggressive look and feel of the bike. Obviously bar rise is rider preference but I had to run the stack slammed to achieve the bar height I was looking for.

The first real ride on this bike was a race, not just any race but 1750 metres of descending over roughly 50 minutes. If a bike that is dubbed the gravity rider’s trail bike is going to be able to handle that then it’s ticked the box for me. After the first few jumps and off camber corners I felt all but at home (to tell the truth the only time I remembered that the bike was its first ride was after the race when I was looking for excuses as to my results). With the 66-degree head angle and low bottom bracket the bike took the hits and could rail the corners like I had been riding the thing for weeks.

The carbon construction of the frame really does take a lot of the chatter away from the bike, although I have not ridden the aluminium version of the Jeffsy. My own bike has similar angles with more travel and is aluminium, and does get more trail chatter. Cutting the chatter away is great for cornering, with the short rear end and Boost spacing (only on the rear) this bike just wants to be drifted and the carbon allows it give you more grip and not get out of control. The Onza tyres have a really nice tread pattern, the centre knobs were not too large offering efficient pedalling and the side knobs were consistent and bedded in nicely. The compound was a little on the hard side, for the sandier tracks of Sydney on a dry day the Onza’s were a little skatey.

Back to Falls Creek thgough, the race had everything from snow, to some tight and twisty corners then into wide-open fire trail with sharp corners. For the most part the riding was fast and the layout of the bike was confidence inspiring. You could put the bike where you wanted it to go, it would stay there and then pop you out and send you on your way. To me that is exactly what I want out of an “aggressive trail bike”

The suspension worked a treat, with no issues at all. The rear end feels bottomless; for going downhill this is great, but whilst climbing you will be using the pedal mode a lot. The softness of the shock does bob quite a bit, but nothing that the dampening of the Monarch won’t fix. It will take some time to get used to that though. I feel with this bike the rider will really benefit from playing more with their suspension, whether it is Fox or RockShox, play with tokens that these platforms offer because it does completely change the ride. The Jeffsy also incorporates a flip chip style system to either steepen or slacken the bike, I played with both and really favoured the slack setting. Though I could see if you were doing flatter trails the steep option may allow greater pedalling and climbing positions.

MY NEW MATE JEFFSY

The more I hung out with Jeffsy the more I realised that it could perform way above the expectations of the travel. This bike may only be 140mm travel but it parties on the track almost like something with 160mm of travel. Due to the suspension design as well as geometry that you would more see on a 160mm bike the Jeffsy left me wanting to hit bigger gaps, plow more rock gardens and ultimately spend more time in the saddle. The idea of using such gravity fed geometry really worked perfectly and left me grinning from ear to ear at the end of every ride (if you don’t believe me ask Robert the AMB photographer, he got a little stitched up with me wanting to hit features again and again).

After some solid saddle time there were a few things which I think could be improved. Firstly the cable routing; I found that the stock cable length was likely to get too close to the chain ring and then would rub on the ring and damage the outer. Riders will have to make sure that this cable isn’t too long. I can see why this bike isn’t completely internally cabled but it would be nice in the future to see this fixed. Also I did have a couple of dramas with the chain dropping on the RaceFace ring, I’m not sure if this is because it doesn’t quite match the SRAM chain but the chain did drop off on two different instances – one in the race and once on a trail ride. Lastly the rear Boost spacing is great, but I found it a little strange that the forks did not share the same spacing and it was unfortunate that the rear end does not have the option of running 27+ wheels. This is not a fatal flaw but it would be cool to have more options.

OUR TAKE

YT really have slapped the trail market in the face with some super slack angles on a bike without huge amounts of travel. The Jeffsy performs way above where you think it should. In terms of bike that can do most styles of riding this is getting pretty close. The build from the factory is great, which is something you would hope for with a direct to consumer brand, but you still may need to take it to a shop if adjusting the stack height under the stem (making the cables longer in the frame).

The bike is great value for money! It’s in front of a lot of other brands at the $6k price mark that it is currently at. YT have a presence in Australia and NZ but the one thing that would be hard is to have a bike to test and sit on. Any user with a gravity fed background is going to be super impressed with this bike, it’s poppy and leaves you looking for the next gnarly trail to send it down. For riders who are used to more XC style bikes this may feel a little different to what you are used to, but give it some time and you will see how far this little German can be pushed.

All in all, this bike hit the nail on the head of what the YT team had said. The bike is really designed for going fast downhill, which is going to be good for gravity riders but also for riders who usually ride smaller travel bikes. The Jeffsy is a confidence-inspiring bike, leaving you with a smile on your face after every ride. The bike really made me wonder if I should be riding 140mm bikes, not 160mm travel bikes.