Why These Stripped Back Hardtails Are So Much Fun

Welcome back, you beautiful people. I get stopped a hell of a lot with people asking me, what is this bike? I always say it's an oversized BMX with real brakes, front suspension, bigger wheels. Oh, and this is the brand spanking new Canyon Stitch 360. Dirt jump bikes or DJ bikes have come a long way from what they used to be. Back in the early days, riders would just use their XC bikes. They were heavy, long, and to be honest, not up for the abuse. As the sport evolved and tricks got crazier, the bikes had to step up. Over time, they've become lighter, shorter, stronger, and to be honest, way better looking. Let's break it down on what this beast is all about. Like I said, this is the brand spanking new Canyon Stitch 360, redesigned from the ground up by their engineers and their pro rider team as well. You can still smell the lacquer going off as that box fresh. The most noticeable thing when you look at a dirt jump bike is how small and compact it is. I'm going to kick it off with the frame. This is the Canyon Stitch 360, brand spanking new to the world. It's super compact, it's lightweight, and it's easy to throw around. You have a steep head angle, really short rear end, but the biggest thing I want to point out is how low the saddle is. Some people ask me, why is your saddle so low down? How are you supposed to pedal this thing when you go for long distance? Well, this thing's not designed to go long distance. This thing is more about throwing the bike around on jumps like these behind us. Having the saddle away from you, it just keeps it from getting all tangled up in your legs. Another thing you'll notice about the dirt jump bike is that it has a single speed, no gears going on. The gear ratio on this is pretty tight because you don't want such a big front chain ring where your foot will land on. This one's running a 30 to 12 on the rear, and preferably, they will be running a real thick chain, a bit like a BMX chain or a BMX chain because the amount of force that goes through this drivetrain is incredible. When it comes to braking on this bike, it's preferably just the one brake, and it's on the rear. Now, there is method in the madness when people are running two brakes, and that's because they want to stop the centrifugal force of the front wheel to stop it from spinning, so they can spin multiple bar spins. Talk about multiple bar spins, you can see all the cables all twisted up here. That means I can have free reign at about three bar spins in a trail so they don't get all mixed up and tangled and rip up my hose. Some people run a hydraulic gyro, which basically means you can do unlimited bar spins without thinking about reversing the cable back to where it was so you can do more bar spins or tailwhips. When it comes to suspension on the Dirt Jump bike, it's preferably just on the front with a fork like this with a brand new Canyon Stitch 360. This one comes with a RockShox Pike at 100 mil of travel, but it can range from where some people go as low as 80 mil all the way up to 120 mil. It all depends on what you're doing with the bike. Ultimately, the suspension is here to take away the shock from all those heavy impacts. You'll be running quite high pressures in here. I'm running 100 PSI with a few spaces in there, volume spaces in there just to make it super rigid, but it's a little bit of play. People out there, they run fully rigid, which is like an oversized BMX. They run a rigid fork. Back in the day, I used to run short bikes. Basically, I wanted the bike that was super compact, easy to throw around. Then soon as the evolution of slopestyle where the jumps got bigger, drops got bigger, the bike became a little bit too twitchy. It came a bit out of its comfort zone. I actually opted for a longer frame further on in the future, which I have done today. I've opted for the long frame. Now, Canyon do do a long and a short. The short is perfect for the skate park and small spaces and small dirt jumps like that where you want the bike to be throwable a lot easier, whereas when you're running bigger jumps, you want a bike that's a lot longer, a lot more stable. That's what they've done with this one. They've gone for a longer reach on the top tube. The BB is lower, giving it more stability on bigger jumps. Like most jump bikes out there in the world, this one is manufactured from aluminum or aluminum for your American folks. It keeps the weight down, keeps it super strong and rigid. Also, with hydroformed aluminum tubes like this, you can make it more aesthetically pleasing. A bit like these two here, your seat stays and your chain stays with a nice little taper making it look pleasing to the eye. The cool thing about this new bike is, and they did have it on the old one as well, is their integrated chain tensioner built in here. Obviously, because there's horizontal dropout, you want to keep this chain really nice and taut, but having this integrated chain tensioner is perfect. Moving on from the chain tensioner here, they've redesigned the whole chainstay to give it maximum clearance for your crank arms. Look how much room there is there. Some are really close. When it flexes, that crank arm can hit the chainstay. This is a lot more clearance. The wheels that are on this bike are the new DT Swiss D1900 DJ wheel, specifically built for dirt jumping. Now, it has 32 spokes, front and rear, tubeless ready, but primarily, when it comes to competing, they will be running tubes in their tires because you have less bead roll or anything like that. Also, it keeps the weight down. They run a super lightweight inner tube within the tire just to keep that centrifugal force and the weight down. Running inner tubes, you can pump that tire up really hard up to its max of manufacture pressure, which I have in this 50 PSI I've got in here, maybe a little bit more. It all depends on what you like. When it comes to tires on this bike, you want it to be high rolling. You want them to be rock hard as well. You don't want to have an aggressive tire because when it comes to hard pack stuff with the nobbles, it's going to deform and feel a little bit more squirrely on those trails. It's a high rolling tire. It's pumped up really hard. This is their Maxxis dirt jumping tire, specifically for dirt jumping. Now, let's talk about the cockpit. Like I've mentioned about the brakes, but one thing I didn't mention is that Canyon have brought out their own rear brake with their own lever. Take a look at this. The one thing that is great about it is there's no nuts and bolts for you to whack your fingers on. It's all nice and smooth and clean, especially when you're learning bar spins or hand tricks. There's nothing for that hand to grab onto to get hurt. The bar and stem on this bike is their Canyon G5 range. Now, there is a 30-mil rise in this bar, 5-degree upsweep, 8-degree backsweep, but the cool thing about this bar is it comes in a 780 and you can cut it down to whatever size you want. I've cut mine down to 750. It's my preferred one. Don't ask me. It's just personal preference. Now, the stem on this bike is super cool and compact. This is their G5 as well, but it's 31-mil in length. Now, that is a small compact stem making the cockpit look pretty aggressive and cool. There we have it, the brand spanking new Stitch 360 from Canyon, redesigned from the ground up. This bike makes me want to just ride all day, push the boundaries without the punishment at the end. This bike is a bike that you can just take out of the garage, go and ride dirt jumps, go ride skate park, go ride pump tracks, go and ride street, throw it around, mess it up, beat it up because it is hard as nails, this bike. You can throw it in the garage. You know, next time you go back into it, you can pull it out and it'll be perfectly fine for hours and hours more fun. Hopefully, this video has helped you understand what a dirt jump bike is all about. Hey, and if you love this sort of video and you want to see more dirt jump content, let us know in the comment section down below. Big thanks to Canyon for sending this out to me for a brilliant time at the dirt jumps and we'll see you next time. See you. It started to rain and that's good timing.