I recently parted company with the little, red, British beast and by now it’s back in the safe hands of the boys at [R]evolution, waiting to be passed on to some lucky punter. Hopefully you will already have read part one of this review (if not, check it out here), so I won’t waste your time recounting the spec again. Rather, I’ll get straight into the good stuff: what it was like to ride.

I’m of the opinion that having a different bike for each day and each style of riding is well beyond the reach of most people, so when it comes down to it, the majority of us will have one or two bikes, and one of them at least will have to do a bit of everything.

DMR seem to agree with me, at least to an extent, and that’s reflected in the versatility of the Sidekick 2 complete. Trails, park, street, jumps, the DMR did a bit of everything whilst I had it and for the most part it’s performance was very sharp; not completely flawless mind you, but we’ll get to that later.

There’s no doubt that if you were going to categorize the Sidekick 2, you’d call it a “street/jump” hardtail, so of course the logical place to ride it was at the park and the DJs. Now whilst I’m no trailboss or park guru myself, I can definitely tell the difference between a capable bike and a scary heap of shit, and thankfully the DMR is definitely the former.

Initially I was a bit sceptical about the length of the rear end on this bike, 16.5” is definitely a fair whack longer than many of the new school errbon frames and I expected the handling to suffer for it, especially on the back wheel, but I was pleasantly surprised. Manualling the Sidekick was a dream; it didn’t snap onto the back wheel like a bike with super short stays, but with a little extra encouragement it would happily lift it’s nose and hold it there as long as you wanted, the longer stays seeming to open up a wider balance point. The extra length will work against you when it comes to rotation moves but adds an extra degree of stability through the rhythms and at speed around the park.

The spec works pretty well for this sort of riding, the Moto Digger tyres hook up well enough, although I wonder if a standard Moto mightn’t be a better idea, at least on the rear, if your local trails are pretty hard packed. Whilst the Speed Guide didn’t give me any dramas at all with dropped chains, I do question it’s suitability as a street/park guide; something with a nice solid bashring would probably be a wise investment if sprocket grinds are your thing. The cro-mo Crisis cranks and the bolt up rear wheel lend a very stiff and responsive feel to the bike, an impression that is marred only by the seemingly jelly-sprung fork.

Yeah I know, I did this rant in part one too, but the park really brings out the glaring deficiencies in the Stance Static fork. It is so undersprung it’s not funny and compression damping is seemingly non-existent. If you weigh more than a bag of sugar, and ride street or trails with any frequency, do yourself a favour and buy some harder springs, or even a rigid fork if you want a really solid park setup.

So that’s how the Sidekick fared at it’s home ground, but what happens when she has to play an away game?

Time to step up to real MTB  territory: trails. Not beautifully groomed DJ trails, but the rocky, rooty, sandy fire trail and singletrack. There’s a fair abundance of short trail loops around here and the Sidekick got a good workout on most of them. Now it’s no cross country rig, and climbing up anything bigger than a gutter is probably going to make you cry, but it’s far from impossible. There’s enough length in the cockpit to make sure your knees don’t get intimate with the bars but when you finally reach the top of the hill the tight, nimble little bike becomes a blessing on the descent. Tight singletrack is where it’s really at home, flowing from one corner to another and easy to launch over any logs that cross your path. The tyres are oft beyond their abilities at speed, but that’s to be expected from a compromise tyre like these. A pair of tyres suited to your local conditions from Maxxis or someone shouldn’t break the bank, and will definitely help the DMR at the limits of cornering, although your choices may be slightly limited by the clearance in the frame. The Moto Diggers are big for a 2.35” tyre, but clearance around the chainstays is very minimal. I didn’t induce any rubbing, but it’d be worth keeping an eye on if you have a habit of flexing wheels.

Even the Stance seems reasonably capable in most trail situations, it’s soft nature absorbing small bumps with aplomb, and only being troubled when it’s faced with a drop of any reasonable size. Dirty trails do bring to light another problem with the fork though, that being it’s tendency to weep like a little baby, and attract plenty of dust and grime to it’s stanchions. Not a huge problem provided you remember to wipe them down after each ride, and re-grease the seals on a regular basis. The bushings seemed to develop a slight bit of play late in the piece. Nothing to be worried about as I had it, but just enough for a picky bastard like me to notice.

One part which did present a slightly surprising disappointment was the drivetrain, or to be more precise, the SRAM shifter. The shifts, which were initially beautifully clean, deteriorated slightly as the setup wore in, but it was actually the shift paddles themselves that grated on me most. SRAMs Impulse system is great, thumb/thumb shifting rocks and I was most impressed with that part of the design. Maybe I’m just spoilt with old-school XTR shifters, but the X-7 units just didn’t do it for me though. The paddles seem flexy and feel cheap and they just don’t share the beautiful mechanical nature of Shimano’s units. They get the job done, and didn’t spontaneously combust or do anything else silly, but they’re definitely not going to drag me onto the SRAM bandwagon.

Whilst I’m ranting, I probably should mention the brakes. As mentioned in part one of this write up, the front brake seemed slow to bed in, and some more use revealed that it just wasn’t going to bed in. Ever. The rear brake was a sharp contrast, a good solid feel and  plenty of power, but the front stopper had my heart in my mouth a couple of times when it did absolutely nothing to slow my approach towards the resident flora. Thankfully however, the problem seemed to be nothing more than contaminated pads, as there was an instant improvement when I chucked in the EBC Golds from my own Mags. Of course this begs the question, how did the pads end up in this state? I would like to officially state my “not-guilty” plea, and suggest that those damn gremlins have been at it again.

Gremlins aside though, the Sidekick left a distinctly good impression on me. You might be thinking that that’s an odd thing to say considering the complaints I just put forward, but it’s true. The negatives that I’ve mentioned are about the only ones that I can put my finger on, and the overall experience was a very good one. I cannot emphasize enough how well the bike functions as a whole unit. The finishing kit was flawless, the wheels did their thing without needing any attention, and the riding position and feel was just spot on.

At $2395, the Sidekick 2 complete may at first glance seem to be out-specced by cheaper machines from some of the big brands, but with the DMR the money is in the details. There’s no generic bits on this bike, it’s all quality aftermarket kit. Hubs, headset, stem and bottom bracket aren’t things that make a big impact on the showroom floor, but anyone who’s ridden a bike hard will tell you how important they are down the track. Hell, you only have to look back a few years and you’ll see that DMR’s frames were fetching around 700 bucks as frames alone. It might not be the bike for everyone, but if you’re after a tight, tidy little hardtail that you can use to do a bit of everything, give the Sidekick 2 some serious consideration.

See kiddies, this is why we need wider decks!

Shout outs to the boys at [R]evolution for letting me have the bike for this long, and to my mate Russ for doing his best to make me look good.