2007 Banshee Chaparral
Areas of Expertise:
The Banshee Chaparral is a cool customer on the trail and can handle technical terrain quite well. It can fit a large amount of people’s riding style and is capable for doing light downhilling, freeriding, and trail riding. The suspension on the Chaparral has 7″ of travel in the front and 6″ or 7″ in the back which lends itself nicely to a variety of riding styles. The big Totem in front helps direct the Chaparral smoothly wherever it’s directed to go.
All Banshee full suspension bikes have a slightly rearward axel path at the start of the travel designed to smoothly absorb square edge bumps with minimal impact on the riders speed and control. As the suspension moves further into the travel, the axel path gradually becomes more vertical. This is designed into the system to limit the amount of chain-stretch experienced as the suspension approaches the bottom out position.
The Chaparral we received featured a Fox DHX Air which made the bike more of a trail riding rig but it could handle lots more. The Chaparral feels securely planted in varying conditions and it never felt sketchy or out of control. It can handle downhilling, although the Fox DHX Air takes some fine tuning to set up. Once dialed in it can handle light freeriding and some downhilling without too many issues. If you’re going to be running big tires for these disciplines, tire clearance is an issue. We’ll explain this later.
Trail Riding
- The Chaparral shines as a Freeride Trail bike and that’s what its intended purpose is. The Chaparral can accept a front derailleur and it pedals quite well when teamed with a platform shock like the Fox DHX. The Chaparral utilizes a faux bar suspension linkage. I never felt any major braking problems when applying the brakes going through rough terrain. Using a telescoping seat post allows the Chaparral to utilize a full sized seat post length. With the high pivot location however, the seat post can not be dropped as low as I would have liked. Cutting the seatpost could easily remedy this for you depending on the seat post range you desire. If you’re going on a longer ride you will have to carry the water on your back as there aren’t any holes for water bottle mounts.
Dirt Jumping
- The Chaparral isn’t designed for Dirt Jumping but it is capable of jumping when it needs to. Teamed with the Fox DHX Air however, you’re going to have to adjust it accordingly for maximum effectiveness. The overall weight, size, and geometry of the Chaparral also aren’t the best for jumping although with a smarter build you can get the weight down. The telescoping seat post can not be dropped very low which is a setback when dirt jumping, again cutting the seatpost could easily remedy this for you depending on the seat post range you desire.The overall stance of our Chaparral had a fairly high center of gravity feel and the geometry was somewhat relaxed to fit it more into the trail bike category. The top tube had a nice profile to it and offered good clearance if a telescoping seatpost wasn’t used.
Downhill’s
- The Chaparral can handle mild downhill’s but due to the DHX Air that was equipped, the mid-range travel was quickly used up. If you’re going to be using this for more freeride/downhilling, I recommend getting a coil shock. Once the DHX Air ramps through its full travel, the rear tire we had on the Chaparral would rub the front derailleur cable mount. While this shouldn’t necessarily happen, you’re not using the shock to its potential if it can’t use its full travel and the Chaparral can easily ramp through that with an air shock. The bike tracks down hills quite nicely. It soaks up the bumps adequately so long as you don’t run through its full travel. Utilizing the Turner 4Bar setup, the rear end tracks quite well and is very stiff. The faux bar setup has the rear axle on the chainstay and there’s no pivot near the axle (Horst style). It provided a very stable feel when railing corners and rough terrain. Inherent in the suspension design some rear braking can induce some unwanted common braking characteristics such as making the bike squat a little and stiffen up the rear end ever so slightly when braking. It never proved bothersome and can easily go unnoticed if you’re not looking for it. The rear tire clearance will also be an issue when running big tires.
Freeriding
- This Chaparral is strong and can definitely handle Freeridng when set up appropriately. The Chaparral is a lighter version of the Scream so if you don’t need a full-on Freeride bike, the Chaparral might be the ticket for you with a coil shock. The Chaparral navigates easily around tight corners and berms nicely but the telescoping seat post if not cut might prove bothersome for freeriders as the seat can not drop quite as low as I wanted it to. If you’re planning on freeriding, make sure you get a coil shock on it.
Slopestyle
- The way our bike was setup, the Chaparral would be a bit hard to maneuver around a Slopestyle course. On the surface it seems like the Chaparral could shine in the Slopestyle category but with the overall build weight coming in at over 42lbs, this bike while capable isn’t the easiest to throw around. The geometry isn’t as conducive to jumping as it could be given the big totem (dual crown stance) and the telescoping seat doesn’t go low enough without cutting it to allow for quite as much mobility as I’d like for Slopestyle riding.
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