Merida’s top flight full suspension cross country machine, the Ninety-Six RC 10000 leaves no stone unturned in the hunt for speed.
How does an outright XC race sled perform when it’s not raced? Pete has been finding out how Merida’s Ninety-Six RC 10000 manages the daily use.
Key features:
- Fox 34 Factory SC 100mm fork
- Fox Float DPS Factory shock
- SRAM XX1 AXS 12-speed drive
- Shimano XTR 2-piston brakes
- Reynolds Blacklabel XC wheels
- Fox Transfer SL
- £9,500.00 RRP
- Merida-Bikes.com
Geometry
The Ninety-Six is available in Medium, Large and XLarge.
Reach on the Medium is 453mm with a seat tube of 440mm. Head angle is 68.5 degrees with a 76.5 seat tube angle. Chainstays are 435mm across the sizes and the wheelbase on the Medium is 1169mm.
With the Merida Ninety-Six RC 10000 being the range-topper, there’ no real surprise that this bike is dripping with the very best of kit. That all starts with the CF5 carbon fibre frame, sporting 100mm of travel. That travel is handled by a Fox Factory DPS shock, paired to a Step Cast Fox 34 fork with 100mm travel.
SRAM’s XX1 AXS Eagle 12-speed drive is on drivetrain duties with a power meter on the crank, if you needed any more confirmation that this is a cross country race bike. Shimano XTR 2-pot anchors handle the braking duties and these units come with carbon levers. Because, you know. XC. Reynolds Blacklabel XC carbon wheels sound like a swarm of angry bees behind your ankles, shod with suitably racy Maxxis Rekon Race rubber. Fox Transfer SL dropper deals with the seat height and the rest of the kit is Merida’s own. Both the fork and shock have a Gripshift to operate the lockout.
After a few weeks of riding far too far on the Ninety-Six, I’d definitely begun to appreciate how it had got my back end out the door for more than the usual winch and plummet riding on the hill behind the house. I stated that covering the ground on Ninety-Six feels like cheating, and as my legs have been coaxed into life, this feeling has only increased.
Whether it’s the low hum of the Rekon Race tyres or the aggressive buzz of the Reynolds freehub, you always know when you’re moving fast, and that’s most of the time on this bike. I was struggling to get anywhere near full travel from this bike, the idea being that you run the bike soft enough to take the hits, with the linkage ramping up to stop bottom out, and the twin lockout handles the rest.
While I do think it was a case of getting used to an out-and-out race bike, getting full travel from a bike such as this shouldn’t be difficult. With that in mind, I whipped the spacer from the shock to hope that full travel might be a thing I could enjoy.
Removing the spacer did the trick on the tracking and for taking the hits, at a small cost of efficiency across the ground. I’m not sure which I preferred, the original stiffer setup with lockout for the climbs or road sections, or the more open setting for singletrack and full lock out for everything else. Perhaps I should have whipped the shock spacer out sooner…
Regardless, for getting mile after mile covered, little I have experienced recently offers the same return for your investment every time you put power into the pedals. The Ninety-Six RC even does a decent turn on the downhills, but that front Rekon Race sure does make things interesting. The 2-piston XTR brakes will start to complain when the descent gets to any decent length too. Reliability-wise, the bike has been faultless since it arrived. Nothing but crisp shifting, fast rolling good times as spring started to make itself felt.
What do we think?
The ‘run your suspension then lock it out’ concept might not be for everyone, but the Ninety-Six is a rapid bike in any spec, let alone the cream of the crop 10000 offering. Far more of a daily driver than I might have expected, this bike just gets from A to B and back again with the least fuss.
We love:
- Easy speed
- More capable than you might think
- Light as a feather
Could do better:
- It’s almost ten grand
