Switchback Reviews the Litespeed Cohutta

070TRAIL
LITESPEED COHUTTA
While much of Litespeed’s new
road product line is carbon, they
are still exclusively titanium on
the mountain side of things, and
we now know this is a good thing.
For 2012, they have done nothing
short of resurrecting titanium as a
material that can go head-to-head
with the best carbon on the planet
within the hard tail 29er category.
Enter the 2012 Litespeed Cohutta.
Named for an epic 100-mile ride
in their home state of Tennessee,
the state in which the Cohutta is
still manufactured, they tossed
out every single tubeset they had
ever used in MTB construction
and started fresh. Litespeed has
always optimized tube shapes,
diameters and butting for each
specific bike, but the creativity
and imagination that started
with this proprietary tube set is
phenomenal and seems to be the
sort of mindset typically used
when designing a carbon frame.
Starting up front is a feature that
sets the Cohutta apart from other
titanium bikes—the monster head
tube. At 49 mm, the head tube
looks like a soda can, albeit a
beautiful soda can with a gorgeous
Litespeed head badge. This is
where the magic really starts.
Invested with more stiffness than
a standard titanium head tube can
muster, it also offers a boon to the
other tubes by way of landmarks.
Landmarks are the real estate
available to the welder and the 49-
mm head tube gives them plenty.
Litespeed has taken full advantage
of this, attaching a huge diameter
top tube and down tubes. The
top tube transitions to ovalized
at the seat tube to get that entire
extra diameter attached to the seat
tube. The down tube curves down
to the bottom bracket where it is
greeted by yet more real estate in
the form of a BB30 bottom bracket
shell. The result is a front end
designed to invest the bike with
Images | Ben Edwards
massive torsional stiffness; if we
have one complaint, and we do,
about other titanium 29er’s, it is
the lack of front-end stiffness.
Litespeed has also utilized the
cavernous space created by the
49-mm head tube to give you
options, lots of them. While
the bike’s geometry has been
dialed for a 100-mm fork ridden
at 72 degrees on our size large
(only the small is optimized for
a shallower 71-degree angle),
Litespeed uses something they call
“4nine technology” for “4ward
thinking” in their geometry.
Other than being a cute moniker,
it is the ability to truly dial the
Cohutta in to your riding style.
Fork options are incredible. You
can run a straight one and onequarter
steer tube at 80 mm if
you are a real XC race machine
or go the other direction and run
a 120-mm tapered steer tube if
you want more trial performance.
OK, not revolutionary, but using
Cane Creeks Angle you can adjust
the bike’s head tube angle, going
steeper by .5 of a degree or slacker
by an entire degree. Combine
that slacker angle with a 120-mm
fork and you will fundamentally
change the Cohutta’s ride quality
in the steep technical stuff.
Off the back of the massive front
triangle, Litespeed didn’t attach
any skinny rear triangle. More big
diameters and robust tubes dive
from the seat cluster and the bottom
bracket shell to meet a set of some
of the most beautiful drop outs on
the trail. To go with that rear end
Litespeed gave the rear disc, which
let’s face it, with the rest of the
bike’s stout build might find itself
coming into fast and furious service
in critical situations, a healthy nondrive
side angle brace. All of this
welding, from tip to tail, is done
with Litespeed’s made-in-the-USA
magic. Look closely, the welds are
smoother than Tennessee Rye.
As one would expect with Ti,
the Cohutta is billed as a bike
for life, certainly a bike to carry
you through any demanding
day in the backcountry with
bulletproof reliability. The cable
routing reflects this. Instead of
running cable below the down
tube and housing it top to bottom,
reliability has been created by
running cables up top, without
full housing. Rear brake runs
under the top tube while exposed
shifting cables run along the top
of the tube. It is clean, elegant, and
out of harms way. This elegance
is also helped by the fact that the
bars were free of any lockouts. We
would probably add a dropper
post to the mix, but even then
the bars would be a clean respite
from today’s crowded cockpits.
What’s all this innovative titanium
thinking going to cost you Less
than you might think, $2,600
without a fork. It’s not
cheap but factor in
the bike’s reliability
and it’s a downright
bargain. Sandblast it
and grab new stickers
every few years and it can be
handed down to your kid’s kids.
The Ride
On the trail it defies expectations.
Actually, it doesn’t just defy
them, it laughs in their face before
dropping them like 1 st period
French. The bike offers a level of
pure power transfer and liveliness
once thought unachievable in
titanium, in the dirt or on the road.
The torsional stiffness is simply
superb, rocketing up to speed and
maintaining it easily. Fire road
climbing and smooth rollers are a
given, but where we really noticed
it was climbing switchbacks and
steep, rocky, punchy sections. The
extra traction from the big wheels
is compounded by the rapid power
delivery blasting uphill switchbacks
and polishing off long technical
pitches with less heart rate.
Point down and again the bike’s
stiffness, axel to axel, and especially
the front-end, delivers razorsharp
handling at speeds well
beyond reasonable. It is handling
that is unmatched by any other
Ti mountain bike, period. The
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bike is planted and precise making
just about any trail seem quite
manageable. We rode the bike in its
100-mm, 72-degree configuration
and would imagine the slacker
120-mm setup would be even more
impressive. But, let’s not get too
excited. It is a hard tail 29er and
while it offers handling as good as
any steep angled, race-oriented 29er
we have ever ridden, when your
weight is forward, you can expect
some understeer and it won’t
forgive mistakes in choosing your
line like a double-sprung bike.
Here’s something else to consider,
if you are more concerned with
getting a titanium bike for its
buttery compliance, the Cohutta is
not for you. The titanium has been
tweaked to deliver more get-upand-go
than other titanium bikes,
and most carbon hard tails. The
big titanium stays ask much of
the big 29er tires and, unless you
don’t mind some bucking, a high
volume rear is a good idea. This is
really the only category we see the
bike giving up any performance
to the elite carbon hard tail bikes.
With carbon, engineers simply
have more options to create some
movement vertically in the rear
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without harming the bike’s lateral
stiffness. But we are talking about
very high-end carbon here and
even then the advantages of that
carbon are vanishingly thin.
In addition to all of this there is
just something magical about
the way the bike sits on the trail.
Beyond handsome, it is truly
beautiful, with proportions that
seem to speak to our hardwired
sense of attraction and desire. The
build is of course a big part of all
this performance and aesthetic:
Reynolds XC 29er carbon wheels,
Truvativ cockpit, FOX Float 29er
and SRAM XX. The total weight
for our large Cohutta with this
build was 21.2 pounds with LOOK
Quartz pedals and titanium cages.
Here again, it does give up a
pound or two of performance to
the true carbon thoroughbreds.
The Rider
The Cohutta rider wants so much
more than longevity, style and
handmade craftsmanship. They
aren’t just a titanium rider, they are
a performance rider and make their
choices based on a bike’s abilities
not its material. They expect a
huge helping of power transfer,
adjustability and precise handling
with a side order of titanium
ride quality. They want a dream
bike that is total magic, within a
fraction of being as good as the
best carbon 29ers in the world. S
THE BOTTOM LINE
PRICE: $2,600 (frame only)
GROUP: SRAM XX
WHEELSET: Reynolds XC 29er
Carbon wheels
OTHER: FOX Float 29er fork;
Truvativ Noir bar, post and stem;
fi’zi:k Tundra saddle
WEIGHT: 21.2 pounds (with pedals
and cages)
MORE: litespeed.com