Yeti Cycles

SB130 Turq LR X01 Eagle Mountain Bike

Here at the Competitive Cyclist office, we take advantage of whatever time we can get on the trail. This often results in long lunch breaks that skip the chow-down hour and instead opt for heading straight to the trail to blast some berms, soak up some sunshine, and get a breath of fresh air. And much like those of us working away in the office here, we suspect that the staff at Yeti Cycles holds the same high regard to those lunch laps, and use them as trial grounds for playing around their Golden, Colorado trails, tinkering with setups, and tossing on different spare components here and there in an effort to fine-tune Yeti's rides to the perfect machine for their liking — and well, your liking too. To prove it, Yeti brings one of those lunchtime favorites to the market with the new SB130 Turq LR X01 Eagle Complete Mountain Bike. This steed is the product of generous days of playing around on local trails, and tinkering with parts to find the right balance of a beefier fork in the front, a little more travel in the back, and bigger tires that come together to make the Lunch Ride into the wild party-crazed sibling of Yeti's standard SB130.

Now, you'll still find the same frame as the SB130 — think of the SB130 LR as the punkrock twin brother, who, minus the band tee, studded jacket, and mohawk, has the same stock as its more conventional sibling. That means it features the same longer, slacker geometry for taking on the steeps, and steeper seat tube for pedaling up long climbs to earn your turns. Its 65.5-degree headtube is a full degree slacker than the brands 5.5, a bike that already pushed the boundaries of a long-travel 29er. Of course this contributes to unflappable stability when descending steep, technical terrain, but usually, a headtube angle so slack would be a bear on climbs and have lazy handling manners on the rest of the trail. This simply isn't the case with the SB130 as it employs a 44mm fork offset to bring the front wheel in closer to the rider so the contact patch is more aft than fore, for improved traction and a front wheel that's less likely to wander when the trail points up. Further helping in this regard is the 77-degree seat tube angle centering you right over the pedals letting you put the hammer down on the climbs. To push harnessing the watts and contributing to positive handling is the frame's Boost spacing placing the hub's flanges further apart and improving the spoke's bracing angle for a stiffer wheel and combining with the 1x-specific frame to allows space for tire clearances in the neighborhood of 2.5-inches with 433mm chainstays, the shortest we've seen yet on a full suspension 29er from Yeti for quick power transfers and the ability to get the front wheel up and over obstacles easier.

A Yeti wouldn't be a Yeti without its signature Switch Infinity suspension and the new-reconfigured SB130 LR utilizes some new linkages and a metric shock that frees up some precious real estate allowing for the fitment of a water bottle inside the main triangle, and packs in an extra 6-millimeters of travel beyond the standard SB130. What remains the same are the two silky-smooth Kashima-coated stanchions housed just above the bottom bracket that translates throughout the stroke of the Kashima-coated Fox Factory DPX2 shock to adjust the leverage ratio from supple, bump sucking plushness, to mid-stroke, anti-squat pedaling support, to a mild ramp up near the end responsible for its bottomless feel. You'll find that it bobs way less than other designs on the climbs and because its axle path isn't nearly as rearward as some platforms, it doesn't get hung up over square-edge hits letting you take speed and momentum over the obstacle. Whereas the older 4.5 required a little more precision when it came to line choices and favored maneuvering around obstacles, the new SB130 is tuned for full send and is happy taking on a point and shoot approach.

To expand the bike's capabilities, Yeti specs the LR with a beefier 160-millimeter fork to soak up more trail chatter, and offer a bit more of an enduro-ready feel than its trail-hungry sibling. It still provides a neutral, well-rounded riding position, but is a little bit more ready for action, soaking up drops to flat, or wheel-gobbling rock gardens. The 136mm of rear travel might not seem like a lot, but with a 160mm FOX Factory 36 up front and 29-inch wheels, this bike can save your hide when the going gets rough.

This build also benefits from the lightweight stiffness of Yeti's top-tier TURQ level carbon fiber construction ensuring a strong, durable, and responsive frame. High-modulus carbon fiber pieces are meticulously hand laid with precise layup schedules in molds to reinforce critical tube joints and high-stress areas without adding excessive weight and bulk, landing you a strong and exceptionally lightweight frame, coming in nearly 300-grams lighter than its standard Carbon series. Blending tuned chassis flex and its light weight allows the SB130 to climb with such ease while tackling hair-raising descents with composure and without equal. Yeti is so confident that it's perfected its carbon manufacturing process that it's now offering a lifetime warranty to the original owner on the frame. One last piece of tech that’s worth a mention is the internal tunnel cable routing that keeps the bike a whole lot quieter while riding and makes maintaining the bike a lot easier with the housing coming out at the exact same spot every time.