Gorilla Monsoon Review

[Daniel MacPherson]

The pathless pedaled has posted a long review of the All City Gorilla Monsoon on his website. This is the first formal review I have seen of the bike.

http://www.pathlesspedaled.com/2018/05/16/review-all-city-gorilla-monsoon/

The one thing that surprised me was the weight of the bike. The reviewer rode a 50cm and listed the weight at around 29 pounds. I wonder if the frame and fork were designed and tested as a mtb frame whence the extra weight. You could probably build a Karate Monkey with similar components and reach the same weight.

Daniel

[Igor Belopolsky]

I am not a bit surprised it weighs that

[Adam Paiva]

A friend demo'd one for the Farmer's Daughter Gravel Grinder ride we did this past weekend.  His quick review :

the short story is that it makes a solid ditherer

Goes down hill on dirt really really terrifyingly fast. Goes uphill slow as fuck

Needs different bars that aren’t wildly uncomfortable

I picked it up and gave it a quick pedal. It felt like it weighed 40 lbs and it was way too small for me to give any meaningful feedback but those huge tires sure do roll over anything in their path.

[Sukho Goff]

Somewhere on the GM page on their website QA I think I saw them answering that their 61cm frame weighed over 9 pounds. I ride the same size as Russ and would not be happy if my 50cm bike weighed 29 lbs without racks and fenders. That's full on, super heavy duty touring rig stuff. Are the lawyers having more and more input on bike design nowadays or what?

Sukho in PDX

[Randall Daniels]

It's a rigid mountain bike so one shouldn't really be surprised by the weight. Maybe overall it's a little higher than it should be due to some of the parts choices, I bet there is quite a bit of overweight in the wheels and tubes that could easily be lost.

Otherwise that's pretty par for the course for steel, mountain bike, rigid, and 27.5+ IME. 

Just for comps; the Soma B-Side is 5.1 pounds for the small, figure at least another 3 lbs for the fork. So a comparable MTB frame upsized to 61cm is going to be pretty close to 9 pounds. 

[Daniel MacPherson]

I wonder if they had to make that biplane fork beefier (and thus heavier) to pass the safety standards compared to a unicrown disc fork.

[Alex Wetmore]

Forks with crowns are just heavier.  Crowns generally aren't very light castings and there are multiple overlapped joints instead of mitered joints.  You can't build a fork with the same fork blade and steerer profile in unicrown and with a crown and have the one with the crown come out lighter.

That being said, commercial forks tend to be very conservative in their fork blade selection, and weigh even more.  And fork crowns do look nice and are a strong way to build a fork.

alex

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From: 65...@googlegroups.com <65...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Daniel MacPherson <macphe...@gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, May 23, 2018 2:16:51 PM
To: 650b
Subject: [650B] Re: Gorilla Monsoon Review

 

I wonder if they had to make that biplane fork beefier (and thus heavier) to pass the safety standards compared to a unicrown disc fork.

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[CMR]

I think we're overplaying the importance of frame weight in that 29-pound figure, that's a whole lot of heavier group and wheels too.

[Greg Walton]

Keep in mind the WTB Riddler tires weigh almost five pounds (if they are the "tough" model).  If you're expecting rode bike climbing feel, you won't get it slinging those big boys around.

The 1x Apex drivetrain w/mechanical discs seems not bad, weight wise, the wider rims will add a bit.  For a directional comparison, here's a Aluminum Fuji CX bike with similar specs that comes in at just over 20lbs (claimed) https://archive.fujibikes.com/2016/Fuji/cross-132.  It has the step up Rival 1x drivetrain, so some savings; The wheels are not super lightweights, but some savings.  Tires are Challenge Grifo 700 x 32, 60tpi at 395g, three pounds lighter than the WTBs.  

Greg

Seattle

On Wed, May 23, 2018 at 3:37 PM, CMR <cmiller...@gmail.com> wrote:

I think we're overplaying the importance of frame weight in that 29-pound figure, that's a whole lot of heavier group and wheels too.

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