Spot Bikes Ryve 115 Review: Downcountry Takes Flight – Spencer Harding | The Radavist | A group of individuals who share a love of cycling and the outdoors.

Today Spencer is digging into the downcountry offering from Spot Bikes, the Ryve. Spot Bikes had a major makeover some years ago and since then have brought to market a number of full-suspension mountain bikes that utilize their intriguing Living Link suspension design. Living Link incorporates a small titanium leaf spring into the lower linkage, imbuing some rather enjoyable riding attributes. To sum it up succinctly, the Spot Ryve has pop – lotsa pop. Combine that with lightweight construction and thoughtful details, and you get one hell of a trail bike, even at only 115 mm travel. Let’s take a closer look…

Spot Bikes Ryve 115 29 Quick Hits

115 mm rear wheel travel
130 mm fork travel
Carbon frame
Living Link Dual Pivot Suspension
4 Star Build (as reviewed) $5799 ($4799 on sale now)
Colors: Twilight Purple, Matte Black, Hot Tomato (pictured)
30 lbs, 2 oz (size XL)

Why All the Ryve?

Spot Bikes made a name for themselves in the singlespeed world in the late 1990s with their belt-driven bikes. Owned by the Lumpkin family, which founded the component company Avid (sold to SRAM in 2004), the Golden, Colorado-based Spot has continued to innovate with its range of mountain bikes.

The brand’s patented Living Link suspension design, which incorporates a titanium leaf spring into the rear half of the lower linkage, is the “special sauce” that makes Spot’s squishy bikes stand out. All the full-suspension bikes in Spot’s lineup use the linkage, but the Ryve caught my eye. Why? Well, having framebag space, even on a full suspension, is crucial for how I like to roll.

Plus the Ryve’s geo is almost a dead ringer for the geo of my beloved Ibis Ripley AF, but with a lighter frame, steeper seat tube angle, and only 5mm less suspension. It seemed to me like a real contender for replacing my prized steed. Spoiler warning: I won’t be replacing my Ripley, but the Ryve was a very fun bike to ride for a few months.

With the banner ad on Spot’s site proclaiming “downcountry domination” to describe the Ryve, I think we can safely call this a downcountry bike. While less contrived and broad than “gravel”, “downcountry” is a similarly nebulous category. I continue to think that the bike industry is making better and better short-travel bikes, and the “trail” delineation will migrate toward that end of the spectrum.

Getting Bendy with Living Link Suspension

At the heart of the Ryve is Spot’s patented Living Link suspension. The layout will be familiar if you have pedaled a dual-link suspension design such as DW-link. The layout allows for a solid rear triangle for stiffness and reliability. By replacing the bearings on half of the lower linkage with the Ti leaf spring, Spot has eliminated a few bearings to wear out and a point of failure (the spring was testing to 10 million flex cycles). The motion of the spring can be hard to imagine, especially as a part of the whole very complex suspension system. Let’s let the engineers talk here:

“As the suspension compresses, the leaf spring begins to flex, supporting the rider and widening the sag sweet spot. As the leaf spring continues to flex it stores energy that assists the system’s compression until, at full-bottom-out and maximum compression, it returns to a relaxed state. As the bike’s suspension enters its rebound phase, the leaf spring goes from relaxed to partially flexed, storing and controlling rebound energy. Midway through the rebound, the leaf spring is fully flexed, a position in which it is fully loaded up with rebound energy. As the rebound continues toward its relaxed state, it releases that stored energy.“

Long story short: the spring is flexed mid travel and relaxed at rest and top out. There is a handy slider infographic on Spot’s site to visually decrypt this if you wanna cruise over there. The Titanium plate also creates a laterally and torsionally stiff pivot point, flexing dynamically vertically but remaining stiff on other axes.

So what does all this mean? The stored energy in the Living Link makes this bike poppy, maybe too poppy if I could ever imagine that being a thing. More on that later. I’m constantly decrying the planted feeling of many full-suspension bikes while wanting something more lively. Here, the Ryve delivers. For all you skateboarders out there, you know when you get that perfectly popped kickflip that just wants to keep ascending as you catch it? Hitting jibs on this bike feels like that, before you know it the bike is in the air and it wants to keep going, begging for you to tuck just a bit more.

I had to turn my rebound settings 3 clicks down from normal on the Ryve as a result of the inherent characteristics of the linkage. This seems to be a pattern with other folks I’ve spoken to who have also spent time on Spot Bikes. I don’t think this is a detriment, but I want people to know what to expect.

Spot Ryve Frame Details

One of the first things one might notice about the Ryve frame is that the downtube has a large square gap where the shock mounts. This is Spot’s ‘Doppelbox”, designed to box in the shock mount from either side while allowing trail detritus to drain away from shock bushings instead of pooling.

The frame protection is superb on the Ryve, with rubberized padding on the chainstay, seat stay, and downtube. The chainstay protection wraps continuously up the seat stay and past the chainstay toward the shock mount. Spot did an excellent job here. The frame is kept safe and the ride stays quiet.

While the main triangle has only one bottle mount, there are additional mounting points under the downtube. I wouldn’t put a bottle there personally, but maybe some tools or other riding accouterments. The generous front triangle easily fit a few off-the-shelf frame bags, instantly boosting its water capacity up to 2 liters. Frame bag space is crucial for water storage when temps creep into the triple digits on my local trails in Southern Arizona.

While my bike was equipped with the lowly cabled GX Eagle drivetrain, the Ryve frame uses a UDH dropout for the extra-blingy build kits with Sram Transmission. One could go all-out with a build, if one wanted.

Spot Ryve Geometry

Settling into the familiar territory of modern mountain bike geometry, the Ryve doesn’t rustle any feathers in the numbers. The seat tube angles increase from 75º to 77.3º across the size range. The headtube angle stays consistent at 66.2º on all sizes. The XL I reviewed had a 505 mm reach, which sounds long but feels more compact in this landscape of ever-steepening seat tubes.

I appreciated the steep seat tube angle combined with the characteristics of the Living Link. Typically, a steep seat tube angle takes away from the playful nature of a bike by pressing the rider’s body more forward over the bars. On the Ryve, that is balanced by the poppy nature of the linkage.

I found the headtube to be a bit short on the XL Ryve, but that is a symptom of a greater issue across the whole bike industry. I’ll pen a Dust-Up diatribe about it someday, but if this were my bike, I’d slap some riser bars on it for sure. It feels fair that a bike this focused on performance would have plenty of saddle-to-bar drop to keep former XC racers feeling at home, but I hold no such nostalgia.

As Reviewed: 4-Star Build Spec

As I try to keep sticker shock to a minimum in my reviews, I opted for the “cheapest” of Spot’s build kits for the Ryve.

Fox Performance Float Fork 130mm
Fox Factory Float DPS EVOL Kashima Shock
Stans Arch S2 aluminum wheelset
Sram G2 brakes
Sram GX Eagle drivetrain
Race Face Aeffect Cockpit
BikeYoke Revive 185 mm Dropper post
SDG Bel Air V3
Schwable Wicked Will tires
$4799 (on sale now)

Many parts of this build fly under the radar as just darn good enough. Sram GX holds it down in the midrange cabled drivetrain world. The Stans Arch wheels did just fine, even if they get a bit beat up in rocky-ass Arizona. The Race Face Aeffect cockpit felt just fine. These are fairly standard, and they fade into the background of being quality without standing out in any meaningful way.

The BikeYoke Revive had one of the most solid “thwack” top out noises of any dropper I’ve used and I loved it. I always knew when the saddle had returned. I used the revive function a few times to instantly fix the squishy feeling dropper, it lived up to its name.

Speaking of saddles, my tender bits are usually very unhappy about narrow, stock MTB saddles. I am happy to report I found the SDG Bel Air V3 very comfortable even for all-day rides in jorts. I swapped to one of SDG’s new animal print versions of the Bel Air for extra style since it was technically the same stock saddle…but way cooler. Moooooooooo.

In a first for me, I wished I had more braking power on this bike. I have never found two-piston brakes to be insufficient in my days, but I yearned for more power out of these G2s. The move would be swapping to larger rotors.

A full suite of Fox shocks felt familiar and predictable. I’ve spent a lot of time on Fox performance forks over the years and I really love the simplicity of the Grip2 damper. I’m not an in-depth suspension tinkerer, so I appreciated the quality and simplicity of the Performance level fork. I’d like to give a quick nod to the quality of Spot’s build kits – even the “lowest” level comes with a Fox Factory rear shock.

On the other hand, I found the tire selection holding the bike back. Riding on the stock Schwable Wicked Wills didn’t provide enough traction in the looooooose and dry spring conditions around me. After talking to the engineer at Spot, he recommended swapping to a Maxxis DHR. Someone at Maxxis also advised using it as a front tire specifically. Rowdier tires complement the Ryve if you plan to push it to the edge of its capabilities. If you want to keep it light and fast, the Wicked Wills are a fine set of tires.

Spot offers the Ryve as a frame-only option. Since the Ryve uses a 130 mm fork and standard boost spacing, one could easily swap an average hardtail’s parts over to the Ryve. Hell, it even has a BSA threaded bottom bracket. $3,499 for a frame ain’t cheap any way ya cut it, but it’s less expensive than a whole new complete bike.

A Short Note About Climbing

I’ll be short and sweet about the climbing quality of this bike: it climbs like a bat outta hell. With the suspension wide open, lean on those pedals and this bike throws all that energy into getting your ass up the hill. Combine that with a lightweight frame (don’t come after me, actual XC racers) and you are flying up any climb. That poppy suspension still maintains impressive traction in technical climbing situations as well. Treat yourself to an upgrade to higher engagement hubs and you’ll have a pedal-powered rock crawler.

Descending: Nitpicky and Uprooted

This is where the Ryve felt more timid, but that’s to be expected with a shorter-travel bike. The 115 mm of travel feels far from unlimited but never harsh at the bottom out. In high-speed, chunky sections of trail, the Ryve would get lost in the sauce and not stay on its line. In almost any other situation, the Ryve remained quite capable; just don’t expect to plow on this bike. The Ryve will require you to be nitpicky about your line choice as terrain gets rowdy. I like that feeling instead of being able to plow; it keeps me engaged and sharp.

I’ve sung the praises of the poppy feeling of the Ryve today with its linkage and light frame, but there is another side to that coin. In contrast to the “planted” feeling I dislike, the Ryve feels “uprooted.” The Ryve felt like it wanted to slide out from under me in the very loose and dry Tucson trails. This feeling was less pronounced on softer and flowier trails in Utah and Colorado. After some suspension fiddling and a front tire swap, I got the feeling under control, but never shook it entirely. Now this seems embarrassing, but in the end, I chalked it up to the weight of the bike. While being heavy by weight weenie standards, 30 lbs is a light bike for me.

Final Thoughts

I absolutely loved the poppy feeling of the Living Link suspension, always pushing me to hit every little bump and hop as high as possible. The Ryve is a full-face-grin-inducing bike to ride. It does get lost in the rough stuff, particularly on rocky trails, to no one’s surprise.

If you love pedaling as fast as possible uphill and picking your way through the tech on the way down, you’ll probably love the Ryve. I could easily see the Ryve at home as an AZT or Colorado Trail bikepacking bike. I didn’t get the opportunity to test it loaded, but I have confidence in the pedaling characteristics I experienced. If all those jibs and side hits are constantly calling to you, the Ryve is here to answer their call.