Review: Knolly Warden LT

While Knolly are well known in their own slice of the world, they’re less known over the pond in Europe, so that’s exactly where we tested the Warden LT to see how it fares in a land of never ending mountain passes, ringing cowbells and people dangerously close to being addicted to cheese.

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Construction and Features

The Warden LT is an all-aluminum, 168mm travel, full 27.5” bike. That last point being something of a diminishing breed, with the full 29” and mullet bikes having taken over the market in recent years.

The biggest thing that jumps out to everyone who first lays eyes on the Warden is the extra pair of links. We’ll get a bit more into that in the suspension section, but this is part and parcel of Knolly’s Fourby4 suspension system and allows them to have a bit more separation between handling the acceleration and deceleration responses and squishing the shock.

The 6066 aluminum frame uses Knolly’s own tubes and forgings. One of the big focusses is on the seat tube, with its kinkless design allowing for the long insertions needed for big drop seat posts. That design does make for one of the biggest loam shelves in the business though. But maybe you’re a fan of collecting and admiring the dirt from your ride?


The frame and links are held together with titanium pivot hardware that should result in no worries about corrosion. There’s also a mix of angular contact and regular bearings along with bushings on the dog bone link that drives the rocker.

The pivot designs almost do away with additional washers between the bearings and frame parts. Only the dog bone link, with its bushings, has some captive washers in there. That does mean that a lot of the bearings are sitting out there in the elements but there is less to fall under the washer when you’re taking the bike apart.

There’s space for even a 750ml bottle inside the mainframe, and while there are no dedicated gear strap mounts, like we’re seeing on a lot of new bikes, there is plenty of space in the mainframe to strap all the essentials you need for a ride.

Cable routing is internal in the mainframe, entering via some rubber bolt on pieces that actually double up as fork bumpers should you wish to run the Warden LT with a dual crown fork. The cables exit at the back of the seat tube via another bolt in piece and then run externally across the top of the seat stays.


The 73mm wide threaded BB includes a bolt-on ISCG tab part that has both versions of the ISCG standard. There’s an additional S3 or E-Type mount for a top chain guide. Headset is a standard ZS44/56 affair and the rear brake mount is a 160mm post mount, which is pretty small considering that nowadays even gravel bikes are coming with 180mm rotors.

Out at the back of the bike is a 157mm wide rear hub spacing, which along with the skinny tubing at the rear does mean that the Warden does have a lot of tire clearance. So much so that Knolly states the biggest tire that the Warden can fit is 2.8” wide.

The underside of the belly on the down tube is well covered by a bolt on protector that when removed grants access to a Di2 battery compartment. The chainstay is protected well in the middle of the tube, but a bit scantily clad at the ends along with the underside of the seat stay.

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Geometry & Sizing
The Warden LT comes in four sizes from S to XL. While the sizing names may be familiar, it’s worth delving into the geometry as what is an M size for Knolly lines up closer to an L size from a lot of other brands. The Warden LT is also adjustable in geometry via two lower shock mount positions. The Slack position is labelled on the bike with the other, Neutral, position being what the majority of the geometry table is displaying.

Reach ranges from 452mm to 520mm and is joined by low stack heights that range from 588mm to 613mm. A lot of that is due to the very short head tubes on all sizes, something that isn’t communicated in the geometry table. Our M size had a 110mm long head tube which can be closer to S sizes from other brands.

The BB in the neutral position is quoted as 348mm, and when in the slack position measured up at 344mm on our test bike, which is a bit more in the realm of even longer travel bikes than enduro style bikes but isn't sky high.

Head angles are either 65.25° or 64.5° depending on the setting and out back the chainstay length is the same 431.5mm for all sizes. It’s weird to be calling that short, but given the current norm, it is definitely on the short side of things when you’ve been looking at big travel 29ers for a long time.

Effective seat tube angle is 77° degrees across all sizes, and with no other information on the seat position in the geometry table it’s a little hard to know exactly how the seated position is going to feel. If you know that effective top tube isn’t the best measurement, but can use it to roughly gauge the seat tube slackness then the 635mm top tube length starts to indicate a fairly slack actual seat tube angle - 69° on the M size I tested.

Seat tubes are also very short, and along with the kinkless design of the tube mean that they play well with long dropper posts. The M size had a 405mm seat tube, some 45mm shorter than the Privateer 141 that I recently tested. This is also another point to be aware of when sizing your Warden LT along with the dropper post drop you’d prefer.

Picking a size for the Warden LT was a little tricky. Looking at only their general sizing guide I was smack bang between an L and XL. But looking at the sparse geometry table, and as reach numbers approach and pass 500mm, which is what would happen on the L and XL, I start to feel less and less an active part of getting the bike to the bottom of the hill. Plus, with that slack seat angle those reach numbers would yield a very stretched out seated position.

I settled on an M size for its manageable reach measurement that I know to work well for my size and riding preferences, along with the chance to get a more comfortable seated position. But I was aware that I had a very short head tube and seat tube to deal with.

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Suspension Design

The Warden LT uses Knolly’s Fourby4 suspension system. This works out as a four bar Horst pivot system that has an additional two links that then go on to drive the shock. That short dog bone and rocker do add in extra pivots to the bike, but Knolly claims this allowed them to separate the braking and acceleration characteristics of the bike a bit more from the shock compression.

The four bars, made up from the chain stay, seat stay and red upper link, go into positioning the bike's instant centre and determining the axle path. The extra two links take what those four bars are doing and go onto compressing the shock, with the additional links and pivots giving Knolly more options to adjust the leverage ratio while leaving the instant centre position and migration unchanged.

Unfortunately, Knolly doesn't publish much information around the specific suspension graphs of leverage ratio, anti-squat and anti-rise. But delving into the topic further with Noel, he's not really an advocate for solely using anti-squat and rise to explain how a bike is going to pedal or brake. And this is true, as anti-squat and rise only explain how a bike's suspension is going to react to the load transfer from acceleration or deceleration, not the bigger topic of how they ultimately pedal or brake. Nevertheless, some information on these factors would be good as the public become ever more aware of these factors and start to understand how they explain how a bike is going to perform. If you fancy learning more about load transfer, anti-squat and real world considerations for them then check out our Enginerding on the topic.

The Warden LT uses a 205mm trunnion mount shock and 62.5mm stroke to get the 168mm of travel. Suspension leverage ratios are also changed when moving from the Neutral to Slack positions. In Neutral the bike has 28.5% progression starting at around 3:1 and in the Slack position the progression rises to 30% and starts around 3.2:1.

It's also possible to play around with the shock stroke on the Warden to adjust the rear travel from 160mm to 175mm. That Is usually accompanied by a corresponding change in fork travel, from 150mm to 180mm, but it can be mixed around and tweaked and is something that Knolly attributes to it's small size to be able to allow this as a possibility to customers.

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Extra Credit - Fox 38 Factory fork. Shimano XT drivetrain and brakes with 203/180 rotors. Industry Nine Enduro S Hydra wheels with Maxxis Assegai and Minion DHRII tires in EXO+ and 3C compound. RaceFace Turbine R dropper post. RaceFace Next R bars with Aefect R stem. Chromag saddle and grips.

Available in Raw, Defender Green, Mclaren Papaya Orange, Black or Gold, depending on size. Starting at $6,300 USD.

Frame Only - Available in Raw, R8 Avus Raw, Defender Green, Mclaren Papaya Orange, Black or Gold. Starting at $2,501 US.

Our test bike came with a mix of the Extra Credit and Dawn Patrol builds, but with a RockShox Lyrik Ultimate fork alongside the SuperDeluxe Ultimate shock and Reverb dropper post, SRAM GX drivetrain and Code R brakes. All finishing kit was Chromag and the wheels were the Industry Nine upgrade option. The full bike without pedals came in at bang on 15kg, or 33.07lb.

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The seat also needed nudging forwards in the rails a touch to get a comfy pedalling position. The slack actual seat angle and high seat height combined to give a stretched out feeling that needed addressing.

Rear shock sag was recommended at 30% sag from Knolly, and for my 75kg all kitted up weight the SuperDeluxe needed 140psi to get it. There were two volume spacers installed.

Going off the sticker on the fork and the Trailhead app, it suggested 68psi with -9 clicks of rebound for the Lyrik Ultimate, with 1 token installed.

After spending the last five years riding a lot of 29er bikes in different guises I was interested to see how a long travel 27.5” bike would feel like again. I spent the best part of 18 months traveling the world with an older Transition Patrol not all that long ago, and had bundles of fun on that bike. So the small wheels weren’t completely foreign to me, but it had been a while.

Climbing

With the seat slid forwards and a tower of stem spacers the seated position became comfortable for short blasts where you’re pushing really hard on the pedals to make best use of the diminishing light, or long days in the saddle grinding up some never-ending climbs.

It’s also a bike that never gave me the urge to lock the shock out all that often. Only on the longest of road climbs was it maybe necessary, but with a smooth pedalling technique it never shouted for the lock out. If you tend to pull a bit more on the bars and bob your head and torso around then you might find yourself needing to lock the shock out more often to account for that added body movement.

With the shock left in open for most of the time, there's a nice amount of suppleness in the suspension to generate good levels of traction and grip, ripe for tackling tricky pitches in a climb or clawing up damp trails. There's also a good level of support that helps keep the bike from feeling like there's a delay when you want to burst forwards.

While climbing around on technical sections of trail the Warden is very manoeuvrable around the tight and twisty, and also getting up and over obstacles on the trail. It never really gets flustered or becomes unstuck when climbing off-road and could take on any climb that came its way. It's a good bike to be on to tackle any sort of climb put in front of you.

While it is unflustered when climbing, it can feel quite muted. There’s definitely no sense of urgency to it, but it will get you to the top of every climb. There’s no spring in its step, but then does a bike like this need to have that? Sure, it’s nice to have it, but perhaps it's not a necessity.

Descending

Cruising around on trails at a slower speed it does feel a bit like the bike isn’t really giving you anything back and is sometimes a bit hard to hold a line with. The bike also barely came out of the slack setting, mainly to try and get the bottom bracket down to avoid the feeling of being top heavy and toppling over into the corners. Increasing the speed on trail does make the Warden give more back. It’s a bike that can go really fast and attempt to keep up with some of the 29er enduro bikes that are more common today. But there’s a bit of a window to where the Warden feels at its best on the trail as up at the ragged edge it does begin to get a bit wild aboard it.

It also isn’t a bike that eggs you on to go faster and push harder. While pottering around at slow speeds you don’t get the sense you’re being nudged by the bike to pick the pace up a bit. You tend to just end up riding the bike faster and then discovering that in the middle zone is where it goes best.

The window of operation started to become more apparent on much rougher sections of trail that are best hit at speed and with a bunch of aggression. In those sections the Warden LT started to feel less precise and more unsettled. While it could hustle along through those fast rough parts, I really had to pay less attention to what was going on beneath you and just get on with it. If I paid attention to it a bit too much then I'd likely reduce the speed to get it back in its comfort zone. So, while it can go really fast, you need to ignore a bit of the chaos happening and just get on with the job in hand. Up at these speeds and aggression levels it didn’t feel that it’s where the Warden LT excels.

When the trail is a little more mellow and a touch less demanding, then the Warden starts to shine and everything starts to slot into place. Over in the Alps there are a few trails that really have a Canadian feel to them, those secret trails around the Sea to Sky zone being my reference. They’re soft, loamy, undulating and starting to become just a touch more rooty and rocky as the soft ground breaks up and exposes them. While I call them a little slice of Canada here in Switzerland, they’re somewhat replicas of the stomping ground for Knolly and this was the light bulb moment with the Warden LT.

Give it something like this, and it is in its element. Not absolutely at the ragged edge but still cracking on and terrain that just undulates so smoothly up and down as well as left and right that you’re not getting all twisted up and chucked around. All the while needing to absorb the constant pitter patter of those roots and rocks that are just breaking through the soil as well as support you in the undulations as the trail makes its way down the hill.


Despite the angular contact bearings, there is some noticeable flex in the bike. You can notice the rear of the bike moving around when you really get motoring in particularly rough sections of trail that have a lot of twisting input from terrain and rider alike. The pivots are very small in diameter and the rear tube sections are very thin. This increased flexibility doesn’t lend itself well to inspiring the utmost confidence up at the ragged edge and when you need to be precise but forceful and aggressive with your riding. But again, that doesn't seem to be where the Warden excels.

That slightly higher than normal bottom bracket, and low bar height, might also be contributing factors to the recommended 30% sag, and the Warden LT does feel better with more sag in the back, along with a much stiffer than recommended fork setup. I even experimented with sag approaching 35% to get the bottom bracket lower and counter some of that deadlift position feeling to it, but that was getting too far into a corner of setup and the negatives of the big sag began to outweigh the positives. But, even with 30% sag in the shock the Warden LT wasn’t banging off the bottom out bumper all day long. While I could bottom it out with some good hucks to flat, it felt like there wass a good dollop of bottom out support in there and the increased sag didn’t yield too much of a sluggish feeling in the suspension.

On that note, it is an easily manoeuvrable bike, some of that attributed to the slightly shorter reach in real life than on paper with the tower of stem spacers and high amounts of sag. It’s a bike that does like to play on the trail. A manual here, a nose bonk there are all welcome, possible and encouraged.

Over the past few years, I’ve been riding a lot of bikes so focussed on speed and aggressiveness of trail. Understandably, too, as there are so many of them out there right now that need testing. But having ridden over in that Canadian area the idea of a big pedal out to ride a big tech line, maybe not at the highest of speeds, seems to be what the Warden LT is for, and so excels at. If there’s a stopwatch involved then the Knolly would rather go grab a beer. This is also something that Knolly were alluding to when we were discussing setting up the test bike. While the Warden LT could enter an enduro race, that’s not really i's forte.

It’s a bike that’s going to transport you to the top of a hill in a non-rushed fashion and then make you smile on those technical, steep and tricky descents where your satisfaction in riding is going to come from clearing a section of tech rather than death gripping and hitting it as fast as humanly possible. And in those soft and meandering trails, often described as loamy, it's actually a joy to ride. There’s many a way to have fun on a bike and with all these ridiculously fast but sometimes single minded 29ers of late I might have forgotten about some of the other ways to have fun on a bike other than just scaring myself with speed.

Maintenance

While there’s no overlapping and scissoring design, nor any really hidden nooks and crannies in there, the Knolly does have some details in there that either need attending to or keeping a close eye on during testing.

The straight seat tube is great for getting long drop posts on all bikes, but it does make for one of the biggest loam shelves in the business down at the bottom bracket. The additional link arrangement up above the seat stay also creates a great place for mud and debris to collect, and with the constant movement of the bright orange link while riding it means that it’s often grinding around in that mud and debris.

The cable routing coming out of the back of the seat tube also acts as a big anchor point for mud and allows water to get into the frame, given that it’s right in the firing line from the back wheel.That cable routing at the rear of the bike is pretty unsecured and prone to rubbing to the point of wearing a significant chunk of the orange link away. There’s not a lot to do about it either - you pull more cable through to give some clearance and two impacts later and the cables are back to rubbing on the link.

The protection on the chainstay is fairly minimal too, leaving the ends unprotected. The underside of the seat stay is also unprotected and looked pretty battered after testing had finished. So it’s best to go over these areas with some extra protection before you head out for your first ride.

The pivots use 5 and 6mm Allen keys and most have the torque values printed on them. But during testing quite a few of the pivots would repeatedly come undone and needed tightening up to much higher torques to stop them from undoing so regularly. While there’s no pivot washers to drop under the washing machine on most of the pivots, the dog bone does have some sleeved washers that key into each other, so it’s good to make sure they’re back together properly when you assemble them.

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How Does It Compare?


Up against something like the Nukeproof Mega, with its 160mm travel out back, 170mm travel fork and full 29” wheels the Knolly definitely starts to feel like a bit of a slouch. The Mega has already got its thoughts at the fastest route to the end of the trail before you’ve even summited the climb. The Knolly is taking the chill option to the top and its eyes are more on the tech lines that you figure out like a bouldering problem. Sure, it can try and follow the Mega down the same tracks, and if you hold on it might go the same speed through most of the sections. But the composure up at real race speeds and race tracks isn’t quite there as much as the Mega and that breed of long travel 29er.

On paper the M size Warden LT and L size Mega 290 are identical in reach, but in the real world the Mega rides much more like its on paper measurements. The 10mm longer headtube and 44mm higher stack have the Mega in a good hands to feet position a lot easier than the Knolly, which needs a lot of stem spacers to raise the bars up and some more rear shock sag than the Mega to drop the bottom bracket a little, cutting that on paper reach down a bit.

Compared to something with shorter travel but still with 29” wheels, like the Privateer 141 we tested, the Warden LT is definitely a capable bike. When the short travel 29er might start to remind you that you’ve only got a bit of squish, the Warden feels like it has much more in reserve in the squish department. But against many of the modern short travel but big intentioned 29ers on the market today, the Warden still lacks a bit of that efficiency in ground covering. The Warden is a bike that dances to a different rhythm. It’s a bike for having fun in finding the gnarlier lines to ride down and meandering down the slightly mellower of trails.

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Technical Report

SRAM Code R Brakes: While this slice of the Alps does give brakes a hard time, the Code Rs did throw up some problems while testing. The 180mm rear rotor is too small and with long runs the brakes would fade considerably to the point of pulling to the bar by the bottom. They were bled repeatedly but the problems persisted and the hose even became loose in the fitting at the lever.

RockShox Suspension: Easy to set up with the guides and performs well. But the active character of RockShox is there and the Lyrik Ultimate had an with the damper, giving almost no indents in the rebound clicks, and on long runs the rebound damping decreased enough to be noticeable. The Reverb dropper post was also not without its problems, with the lever blade coming loose on the lever body and the post consistently being slow to return from day one.


Industry Nine Wheels: The Industry Nine wheels did stay true for the testing period, but the tension of the spokes did drop quite a bit, especially in the rear wheel. This resulted in some very noisy wheels when braking hard or pushing super hard on the pedals. They did hold the tires and tubeless pressure very well and shrugged off hits from the ground when the EXO+ tires bottomed out.

Chromag Finishing Kit: The Chromag bars, grips and saddle were all very comfortable. I know that these touch points are very personal but the angles of the bar were easy to get on with and the touch of the grips and saddle worked really well for long days riding and for holding on for dear life alike.

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Pinkbike's Take

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Reviews and Tech Reviews Enduro Bikes Knolly Knolly Warden