Two months into it, Pete checks in with his thoughts on how the Saracen Ariel 60 Elite has performed since his first outing.
The big purple piece showed some early promise, stifled by some questionable rubber, but how has the Saracen Ariel 60 Elite performed since then?
Photos by Pete Scullion.
Key features:
- Fox 38 Factory 160mm fork
- Fox DHX2 Factory shock
- Shimano XT 12-speed drive
- Shimano XT 4-piston brakes
- DT Swiss EX511 rims on KT hubs
- KS Lev Integra dropper
- ยฃ4,399.99 RRP
- Saracen.co.uk
Geometry
The Saracen Ariel 60 is available in SM, MD, LG and XL.
Reach on the MD is 480mm with a seat tube of 410mm. Head angle is 64.6 degrees with a seat tube angle of 76.5 degrees. Chainstays are 440mm with a wheelbase of 1247mm.
The Ariel 60 Elite had a mixed opening to its test account. It was obvious from the get-go that the bike wanted to go fast and do it well, hamstrung only by the somewhat weak EXO casing tyres. The rubber was at least fast, adding to the bikes feeling of speed when the air was contained within them.
Speccing tyres like this, and tubed too, in this day and age doesn’t seem like the way to go and this was confirmed by a couple of rear flats on trails where flats just aren’t a thing. A set of Super Gravity casing Schwalbe Tacky Chans soon rectified this issue, however. Now, the Ariel had the grip and protection to match the bike’s desire for forward motion.
With the tyre upgrade coinciding with some decent weather, the opening outing for the upgraded Ariel was a run off one of my favourite mountains, the 1107m tall Beinn Ghlas. A cracking loop and a great way to see if a bike is singing the right tune. The climb has a bit of everything, as does the descent.
Rattling off the hill as fast as I dared brought a few things to light about the Ariel 60. Firstly, this bike is fast. I was braking less and later than I had previously on this hill, and the Schwalbe rubber had plenty of traction on tap and shrugged off a few square edges that would have killed the stock tyres.
As I approached my limit, the Ariel 60 seemed quite happy getting loose before coming back into line when I told it to. The speed and comfort walking the line of control and chaos was only muted by the relative stiffness of the carbon bar. On the shorter laps in the woods, this was never an issue, but on a descent well into the tens of minutes, my hands were dying.
I rolled out the very comfy PNW Components Ranger carbon bar rectify this and bring the bar width closer to the sweet spot too. I also opted to see how many air volume spacers were in the fork to see if that was a contributing factor, and found three fitted which seemed a bit excessive for my tastes. All three were removed to help the fork run a little bit more linear.
The next outing would be a ten hour, four-Munro day in the north west Highlands, and would show whether the changes made had hit the mark. With the forks now singing the same song as the wonderfully plush rear, the speed began to rise, the twangier bars meant I could hold on longer, and a set of Schwalbe Tacky Chans in Super Gravity flavour, Ultra Soft front and Soft rear, transformed the Ariel 60 into a real rocketship in all directions.
Possibly my only grumble at this stage was saddle height. With the kinked seat tube only offering minimal insertion depth, the dropper fitted cannot be slammed, leaving the saddle fairly high, which becomes more noticeable as the descents start to approach the vertical. If the seat tube was straight through, it’s likely I could run a 200mm dropper on this frame.
With the minor grumbles and the slightly more grumble-enducing stock rubber sorted, the Ariel 60 Elite started going like the clappers. The Fox Factory dampers were singing, the XT 12-speed gears are as crisp as you’d come to expect and their 4-pot stablemates with IceTech rotors brought everything back in line when you needed them to.
What do we think?
There are few bikes that match performance and asking price the way that the Saracen Ariel 60 Elite does. In reality, it’s a set of decent tyres away from being an absolute ripper straight out of the box. It’s half the price of bikes that do the same job but isn’t half the bike for it. The purple paint job option is a banger too.
We love:
- Light weight alloy frame
- Mint spec
- Confidence-inspiring ride
- That purple paint
Could do better:
- Stock tyres not up to the job
- Bars could be too stiff for some
- Seat tube not the steepest and lacks insertion depth
