Raleigh Kodiak 2 Review

I've been riding more with my fast buddies Chris and Marc this year. Our trail of choice is Chestnut Ridge, which is increasingly deviating from our traditional, hand made twisty singletrack of central Ohio into a roller coaster ride of berms and jumps. My Karate Monkey, which works so well in the tight and twisty stuff, isn't quite so confident when the trail gets fast and steep. I've been changing it how I can: first, I swapped the single speed drivetrain for 1x10, then a longer rigid fork to slack out the front end, then a suspension fork, then a suspension seatpost. This setup works OK, but once I got it into my head that I needed a full suspension bike like Chris and Marc, I found myself scouring the sites online every evening, looking for dually deals.



I finally ended up ordering a Raleigh Kodiak 2, using their widely available corporate discount. With an additional 5% discount they sent me after ordering my Pardner fat bike, the total came to just $855. Shipped. That's not much dough for a serious mountain bike. Would it be a heavy pig, full of cheap parts and cut corners?

For the most part, no. It's a nicely finished bike with decent components, but with a few critical caveats. Those, of course, we'll get to later.

It's always fun to get a big box. I wasn't home when it arrived on a Wednesday, so I had to have it delivered to the local Fedex store to be picked up Thursday after work:

Alas, some damage to the box:

Many folks who have used the Raleigh discount have reported shipping damage, and my experience was no different. A bent derailer hanger:

I straightened out the hanger as best I could in my bench vise. It's a pretty beefy piece of aluminum, so it took the extra bending without cracking.

Raleigh was kind enough to pack allen wrenches and a pedal wrench with the bike. I didn't use any of this stuff, but still:

The rest of the bike was packed up well. Just need to work on that hanger padding:

Henry and equally big neighbor kid Griffin were very eager to be my first test riders:

But I had Friday off for a real test ride at Chestnut Ridge. The initial climb to the apple bar went well:

The drivetrain is Sram 1x11, with a dinner plate sized rear cog:

The shifting was just OK, but I expect with a truly straight hanger it would be fine. I never felt the need for more gears around CR. In fact, this low gear of 30x42 is quite a bit easier than my usual 32x36. Or 32x20 on my single speed.

The rear suspension is a simple single pivot design, 120mm of travel. I found this worked really well for me. It was supple over the small stuff, but didn't seem to bottom out on the drops and jumps on the More Cowbell loop at CR:

The Suntour front fork wasn't quite so supple. I played a lot with air pressure on this ride, but I could never get small bump compliance that didn't bottom out after a drop. It wasn't a good match for the rear suspension. Maybe it would be better after it gets broken in.

The finishing kit is generic Raleigh stuff, but it looks decent enough.

Wide bar, short stem, lock on grips:

The brakes were Tektro Auriga hydraulic brakes. After using the mechanical Tektro disc brakes with underwhelming results on my Pardner, I wasn't expecting much. But, these were really nice. Even brand new and not really bedded in, they felt on par with the Shimano Deore hydros that I usually run. And they use easy to deal with mineral oil. No reason to avoid these Tetkro brakes:

The rims were generic, wide, and claimed to be tubeless ready, and the Kenda 3" tires worked OK at CR:

All in all, I was pretty impressed with the parts and build quality of the Kodiak. On some of the cheaper Bikesdirect bikes I've seen, there's clearly some cheap stuff and corners cut. But this Raleigh can stand proud next to any big name bike:

I was feeling good enough after my first ride on top of CR that I took the repeater to climb back up to the apple bar again to do it all over again:

Handling on the Kodiak was fine. I didn't think much about it, honestly, which is a good sign. Not twitchy, not slow, just ride it and go. Even things like the new banked turn on the Fireball loop weren't that big of a deal:

But there's a couple of big flys in this ointment of budget full suspension. The Kodiak was never particularly inspirational on the climbs at CR (and I ended up doing the apple barn climb three times!). Sure, a heavy full suspension bike isn't going to have the spring of my Karate Monkey, but it's a bit of downer to have sit and grind up climbs.

The killer flaw, though, was the chainstays. Or rather, their length. The Raleigh website claims they are 434mm long, a nice contemporary number. But even on my first ride around the street, I had trouble picking the front end up. When I measured they chainstays, they came out actually to be 465mm long. This steals some of the fun and nimbleness from the bike. Probably, I could get used to this in time, but when I tried to pick the wheel up over a curb on my KM immediately after riding the Kodiak, I almost went over backwards.

When I reached out to Raleigh about this discrepancy, they had no comment (they didn't actually say, "no comment," they just never responded.) The website is still incorrect.

I really wanted to like this bike. It was well put together, nice parts (except for the fork, but for just $850...) and a great price, but I really couldn't see myself keeping it long term.

Raleigh has a 30 day satisfaction guarantee on their bikes. 26 hours after I picked it up, it was boxed up and back in my car, heading back to Fedex. That's a record for short term bike ownership for me.

I should have its replacement here on Friday.