First Look: Lee Cougan Crossfire Trail XC Bike
Lee Cougan is looking to take a slice of the XC pie with the all-new Crossfire Trail, a 120mm travel, 29" affair. Slotting into the lineup alongside the 100mm travel Crossfire 428, this new platform is the Italian brand's answer to the technical savagery that now litters XCO courses the world over.
A slacker 67.5° head tube angle is paired with a steeper 75.5° on a flex-pivot suspension platform with a frame design that takes an unusual approach to improving torsional stiffness.
A slacker 67.5° head tube angle is paired with a steeper 75.5° on a flex-pivot suspension platform with a frame design that takes an unusual approach to improving torsional stiffness.
Crossfire Trail Details
• Carbon Frame
• 29" wheels
• 120mm fork
• 120mm rear wheel travel
• 67.5° head angle
• 75.5° seat angle
• 430mm chainstays
• Starting Price: €5,249 /$6,399 USD (RE Eagle with MicroTech)
• leecougan.com
• Carbon Frame
• 29" wheels
• 120mm fork
• 120mm rear wheel travel
• 67.5° head angle
• 75.5° seat angle
• 430mm chainstays
• Starting Price: €5,249 /$6,399 USD (RE Eagle with MicroTech)
• leecougan.com
Some readers may be more familiar with Lee Cougan as an American brand, thanks to the incorporation of the US flag in its 1990s logo. Indeed, its origins are American, but its HQ now resides in North Eastern Italy (and has done for the last 15 years), sitting alongside Basso Bikes under the umbrella of the Stardue Group. Basso and Lee Cougan share an R&D department; all their bikes are designed in Italy, but are still manufactured in Taiwan, the same as they ever were.
Not a brand looking to imitate the designs of bigger, more well-established competitors, Lee Cougan already has some interesting bikes in its stable. The Rampage Innova "soft tail" stands out from the crowd, thanks to its shock-less suspension design. Though the name is suggestive of something with a little more squish factor, the Rampage Innova delivers just 30mm travel through a pivot-less flexing swingarm, using two hydraulic pistons at the seat stay to seat tube junction to damp rear wheel displacements. You can see a video of the so-called Integrated Structural Suspension in action here.
Pre-amble aside, let's dig into the details of the all-new Crossfire Trail, a bike with a rather more conventional approach to suspension travel.
Construction & Frame Details
The Lee Cougan Crossfire Trail frame gets a full carbon construction, and it weighs a claimed 1,850 grams in a size medium. That is inclusive of the 165mm x 40mm trunnion shock, which is partially recessed into the downtube. They refer to this feature as the Structural Crossbar System, claiming that it improves torsional rigidity around the bottom bracket area by 30%, something that is essential for pedaling efficiency. That improvement is relative to a design wherein the shock is mounted in a more conventional way with tabs extending up from a standard downtube, as is the case on the Crossfire 428.
Cable routing is internal, entering through the headset. There is a remote lock-out system in place for the fork and shock. For the latter, there is a custom metal cable guide visible on the underside of the downtube that routes the cable to the compression dial, preventing it from a developing sharp bend that could cause issues with the cable pull. Also down here is a custom extension for the shock valve, that would otherwise be inaccessible with the shock mounted to the frame.
Tire clearance is maxed out at 29" x 2.4" with the Crossfire Trail's 430mm chainstays. The swingarm construction is a little unusual in that the chainstays wrap around the front of the seat tube fore of the main pivot. Positioning the lateral bracing member here improves clearance behind the seat tube for the tire. The main pivots run on oversized bearings, with lightweight, hollow aluminum axles.
The bottom bracket is a 92mm Press Fit, and the Q-Factor is 168mm. The production bikes will not be devoid of chainstay protection, as the ones shown at Bike Connection were. All frame sizes except for the S have room for two water bottles inside the front triangle.
Lee Cougan partnered with Granite Design to integrate a multi-tool with a mini ratchet wrench into the steerer tube. The top tube bosses can also be used to add a custom Miss Grape frame pack.
Geometry
The Crossfire Trail is available in four sizes; S-XL, with reach spanning a 413mm to 485mm range. The geometry is more progressive than that of the Crossfire 428 marathon bike, with a 67.5° head angle and a more upright 75.5° (a smidgen slacker on the L & XL).
The Crossfire Trail is certainly not pushing any boundaries though, with a number of competitors offering slacker head angles and steeper seat tube angles - the (Orbea Oiz) is one example. Of course, not every rider is searching for the longest, slackest XC machine out there, and the Crossfire's updates do bring it nicely up to date.
Builds & Pricing
Team Eagle (€8499/$9999 with DT Swiss | €7869/$9399 with Microtech)
Transmission: Sram XX SL Eagle AXS
Fork: Fox 34 Factory StepCast, 120mm travel, FIT4 (3-Position Remote)
Shock: Fox Float DPS Factory Remote
Seatpost: Fox Transfer SL Factory, 125mm travel (100mm for size S)
Brakes: Magura MT8 SL
Cockpit: Lee Cougan Comptrol integrated (S,M/85mm; L,XL/95mm)
Wheels: Microtech RK25 / DT Swiss XRC 1501
Tires: Continental Cross-King 2.3" (Black Chilli compound, TL-Ready)
Race Eagle (€7659/$8999 with DT Swiss | €6899/$8299 with Microtech)
Transmission: Sram XO Eagle AXS
Fork: Fox 34 Factory StepCast, 120mm travel, FIT4 (3-Position Remote)
Shock: Fox Float DPS Factory Remote
Seatpost: Fox Transfer SL Factory, 125mm travel (100mm for size S)
Brakes: Magura MT8 SL
Cockpit: Lee Cougan Comptrol integrated (S,M/85mm; L,XL/95mm)
Wheels: Microtech RK25 / DT Swiss XRC 1501
Tires: Continental Cross-King 2.3" (Black Chilli compound, TL-Ready)
RE Eagle (€5899/$7099 with DT Swiss | €5249/$6399 with Microtech)
Transmission: Sram GX Eagle AXS
Fork: Rockshox SID RL, 120mm travel
Shock: Rockshox Sid Luxe Ultimate, Remote lock out
Seatpost: KS Range, 125mm travel
Brakes: Magura MT4
Stem: LeadTech Trail 60mm
Handlebar: FSA Comet 740mm
Wheels: Microtech RK25 / DT Swiss XRC 1501
Tires: Continental Cross-King 2.3" (Black Chilli compound, TL-Ready)
All builds are available an all three colours: Boreal, Raw Black, and Arctic White.
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But other than the cables, I like the looks of this bike.
The ideal seat-tube angle (for a given rider) depends on travel and terrain.
The effect of terrain slope is intuitive: if we want to maintain an ideal seat-tube angle when climbing, the static (i.e. flat ground, unsagged) angle has to be steeper than ideal by the slope of the climbing terrain. Everyone's trails are different, so this varies from rider to rider. "Winch and plummet" riders are the most extreme case - not because their climbs are necessarily the steepest, but because the only time they're seated is on climbs, so they have no need for the seat-tube angle to be suitable for seated pedaling over mixed terrain.
The effect of travel is often overlooked: More travel means more sag when the rider's weight is heavily rearward on a climb due to the slope of the ground, so the static seat-tube angle of a long-travel bike has to be steeper than that of a short-travel bike to compensate for the greater sag.
Finally, keep in mind that old-school seatposts usually had offset heads, exacerbating the problem of already too-slack seat-tube angles - and we couldn't just use a straight post and slam the saddle forward because the front-centre was so short that we would've gone over the front every time we hit a small obstacle.
Not all XC bikes need to be steeper on the STA.
Some of us don’t fit on them.
XC riding on XC terrain is what we used to do ages ago, so the geometry that (sort of) worked then is similar to what works now for similar conditions. Other categories of riding have greatly expanded the terrain, speed, and riding styles of modern mountain biking, which have necessitated new geometry for those categories. XC needed only some minor tweaks, which - inexplicably - have taken longer to arrive than the creation and refinement of other categories.
My opinion is that XC bikes benefit from a steeper seat-tube angle than the traditional 73°, which requires a longer reach to maintain a suitable butt-to-bar length. Not as steep as a long-travel chassis, though, for the reasons discussed in my previous post. I believe most XC riders and use cases benefit from a modest amount of the typical geometry modernization changes, though I'm sure there are some use cases and rider preferences that will favour true old-school geometry.
Wink, wink... quietly proceeds to build a bike that looks suspiciously like a Giant Anthem....
Describing it like that is like calling a Stumpjumper's suspension a "double-row-bearing pivot platform", or an Ibis a "bushing pivots platform". It doesn't actually tell anything about possible characteristics. Because "flex-pivot" is just another way to allow needed movement between members, but it's the location of those pivots, not the type, that influence kinematics l.
Anyway, they are "born in the USA, grown in Italy".
....sarcasm for anyone who only likes good jokes.
Did you mean slap a 01 on it, Cletus?
Almost like that part was in the article.