A visit to Pivot Cycles headquarters

Sometimes this job is pretty ok. When I inquired with Pivot about a new Mach 6 to review in the Rag, Chris Cocalis, head honcho at Pivot, invited me out to enjoy a few days in sunny Arizona. He knew the riding around here in Pittsburgh can be dicy this time of year, making to hard to really discern much about the performance of a long travel bike. (It is really good for sussing out mud clearance issues…)

Anyway, I got the full tour while I was there, first on the weekend, and then on Monday when the whole crew was around. From the outside, Pivot HQ is just another beige building in an office park, but inside is another story. While frame production is overseas, Pivot builds all complete bikes in its facility, and still retains the ability to build a complete aluminum prototype in house. Lots of big machines and metal shavings everywhere.

This new 3D printer was pretty mesmerizing, like a campfire that made stuff rather than burned stuff. I think it’s working on a front derailleur mount for a prototype frame I wasn’t allowed to photograph, or talk about. It is pretty far along though, and Cocalis actually rode another proto frame on one of our rides.

The bike I could shoot, (beside the Mach 6 I was riding) is the aluminum versions of the next generation of the carbon DH bike, the Phoenix. The aluminum bikes shown here are race bikes for early season use by Pivot sponsored racers. Geometry numbers where kept close to the vest, but the impression I got while riding and BS-ing are angles as slack as anything else on the market. We’ll all know soon enough. Wheelsize will be 27.5.

After asking, and being denied permission to photograph various parts of various bikes in the development process, I did get to shoot something new. Grips! Yes it is not as exciting as a new bike, but hey, Pivot is of the opinion (as am I) that grips should have a single inboard locking collar, the outboard one is only good for hand pain…

The Mach 6 is on its way this way, which I’m pretty darn stoked about. It is a ripper, and it pedals well enough to ride all day. At least in theory, but that is theory I plan to test….

Photos

[portfolio_slideshow id=14935297]