Being a smaller part of the cycling world Australia often misses out on many of the more refined bikes being produced. Lately however, things have been changing. Aussies now have a larger range of bikes to choose from than ever before. One of these brands that has gained alot of respect from the overseas cycling community is Titus and thanks to … we can now get our hands on these fine machines.

Now because farkin is the best mountain bike zine in Aus we were able to score a Titus bike to review before everyone else. Yes people, farkin received the Loco-Moto before every other MTB magazine in Australia got their hands on one including AMB, so there!

Ahem. That’s enough bragging for now. You all want to know what the bikes like right? Well here it goes…

We received the Loco-Moto which from first glance looked to be a cross country / trail bike. It wasn’t Titus’ purpose built cross country race bike but it was by no means a freeride bike either.

Running 4-5 inches of rear wheel travel and 100mm travel forks it was fitted out perfectly for the trailriding community. Our bike was finished in a stunning anodised blue finish with all the manufacturing qualities you’d expect from a bike like this. Beautiful welds, simple yet effective gusseting and a very cool machined shock and pivot mount on the swingarm were some of the standout features.

The Parts

I must say we were pretty spoiled with the parts build up. Titus allow you to choose your own build kit for the bike offering a number of different options. They also said they’ll build up the bike with whatever parts you want so if you like you can have you very own custom parts build on your brand new Titus.

We scored the All Mountain II Kit which was one cool parts build up including one of the first sets of ’05 Fox FLT 100 forks in the country, Hayes Mag Plus brakes with titanium bolts and carbon fibre lever blades, Bontrager Racelite Tubeless wheelset, Manitou Swinger air shock, Chris King headset, Shimano XT drivetrain and finished off with an assortment of Titus bits and pieces including handlebars, stem, seatpost and seat.

Now with the frame only weighing 5.4 pounds including the rear shock plus the parts we had it was never going to be heavy. Using the scales lying around the farkin office we determined that the bike weighed around the 25-26 pound mark. It was very light and everyone who felt the weight of the Loco-Moto was impressed to say the least.

'05 Fox Forx RLT

First Impressions

Now onto the ride. I pretty much grabbed the bike from the office / Scott’s place, adjusted the seat and went riding. Probably not the smartest thing to do but I’d been at uni all day and was keen to ride.

The first thing I noticed, the grips were really bad. Anyway up the Toowoomba range I went. The bike accelerated very quickly, noticeably quicker than my hardtail. This could easily be put down to the light wheelset and the lightweight cross country tyres. I was rather disappointed in how much the bike was bobbing seeing as it was running an SPV shock.

I figured this was because I hadn’t bothered setting up the suspension before the ride. The first ride was good, there were a few little annoying issues which I planning to change when I got home but on the whole I felt I would really warm to the bike.

Once I got home I checked the pressures in the 3 way Swinger and low and behold I found pretty much no pressure in the SPV chamber. I pumped it up to 80 psi and went for a spin up the street and I was one very happy rider, the bobbing had pretty much disappeared.

Add some wider bars and new grips and I was in heaven. The bike was so much more comfortable and I was keen to get out and give it another thrashing, ahh I mean spin around the local trails.

Well with everything set up to my preferences and riding style the Titus ended up being better than I’d imagined. Climbing was exceptional for a 5 inch travel bike. With 80 psi in the SPV chamber nearly all of the bobbing had disappeared.

I found that the key to no bobbing at all was smooth pedalling. Once you put the power down the bike did react but not by much and was hardly noticeable. I had to look down at the shock a few times when cranking up a hill to see if the shock was even moving.

The paint looks pretty from different angles...

What goes up must come down and I can tell you I was looking forward to the down part a lot. With the wider bars and new grips I gained a lot more control over the bike. I was glad to see the Loco-Moto had some nice geometry.

The 70 degree head angle made descending a breeze. It was slack enough to get rid of the twitchy feeling you often get with cross country bikes but steep enough to ensure that the front end wouldn’t wallow around on the climbs.

The medium we tested had a 23.25 inch top tube which gave a balanced riding position. You weren’t in an aggressive cross country position or laid back and upright. It felt as though you could ride around all day on it with no worries.

The Loco-Moto was very stable through the turns despite the narrow, fairly average tyres. A statement on the sidewall of the tyre said they were made from low rolling resistance rubber which seems to have meant that the compound was as hard as you can get.

The Titus guys agreed the tyres weren’t the greatest and are stocking the bikes with bigger and better rubber. I took the bike on a few fast trails filled with the occasional water-bar. Even at high speeds the bike still tracked really well and did what you wanted, no wallowing through the turns and the Fox forks along with the Titus’ rear end kept the bike stuck to the ground.

Of course that is until you’d hit a water bar and then it was smooth sailing to touch down. I was quite impressed at how well it jumped even with the seat up my bum. At every water bar I’d gain more confidence in the bike to go bigger and bigger. The bike didn’t seem to mind and it never bottomed harshly once on landing.

The Loco-Moto handled brilliantly on the fast flowing stuff but what about the tighter narrow tracks? Well we weren’t about to be let down. The bikes light weight made it very nimble which made sudden direction changes too easy. Ducking in and out through the trees in some tight single track was just too much fun. I was even able to put in the odd pedal stroke to keep the speed up and along with the suspension allowed me to ride one particular section of track faster than ever before.

The Verdict

Did I like the bike? Yep, it was definitely the coolest trail bike I’ve ever ridden. It pedalled well once set up properly and along with the light weight allowed some seriously fast climbing for a 5 inch travel bike.

Descending was just as good, no sudden wash outs or twitchy handling at high speed. Well you can all see I loved how the bike rode but what didn’t I like? The grips were bad, I swapped the stock 25 inch risers for 27’s but this was more personal preference.

I also got my first taste of rapid rise shifting. For those of you who don’t know Shimano changed the shifting at the rear wheel to work in the opposite direction. I couldn’t change into an easier gear under brakes which left me often in a stupidly high gear at the foot of some steep climb. Thankfully I've been informed that Titus will be running SRAM gear on all their kits (unless requested otherwise).

A good look at the linkage

Other than that everything was great. The forks were what you’d expect from Fox and the rest of the parts worked perfectly. I spent a bit of time pondering over the uses for the Loco-Moto. I came to the conclusion that it was the ultimate trail riding bike that would easily be competitive in 12 and 24 hour races. If you wanted you could even drop the travel back to 4 inches and hit up a few cross country races thanks to it’s light weight and efficient pedalling. It’s not every day you come across a bike with the quality of the Loco-Moto. Of course this doesn’t come cheap, however if you after a refined bike that will do it’s job perfectly for a long time to come then I’d check out the Titus.

My usual ride features a few steep, loose, rough and rocky accents that are always a struggle on the hardtail because the rear wheel always tends to skip out at the worst possible moments. Dual suspension bikes make climbs like this a lot easier due the rear wheel staying planted to the ground. With nearly all bob in the rear end gone it was a lot easier to climb many of these sections.

Big thanks to the guys at Super Sports for going to great lengths to get us this bike, feel free to contact them if you have any queries regarding Titus bikes.

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Rapid Rise (unrelated to Titus)

Now I might as well get this out of the way. Rapid rise shifting is crap! I really didn’t like it. This was the first time I’d used it and I did give it a fair go. I know something like this will take getting used to because the gears are changing up instead of down and vice-versa. I ignored my attempts of wanting to change up while the derailleur is doing the opposite and instead concentrated on how well it worked. I like being able to go through a handful of gears to get into a significantly lower gear especially when a sudden steep rise come out of know where. Having my index finger clicking like crazy is annoying and seems stupid when the old system worked fine. I never once wanted to go through a heap of gears to get into a higher gear once when I was on the bike. Now my other gripe with the system, if your braking your slowing down and would need to get into a lower gear. You cant do this with rapid rise because the finger you use to change into a lower gear is braking. I had quite a few occasions where I could hardly turn the pedals because I couldn’t change gears before a rise in the track. I could change into a lower gear before I started braking but why should I when the old system worked fine. I would love to know why shimano actually changed the shifting direction. It puzzles me because I haven’t found one benefit of rapid rise

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