Santa Cruz V10 Build

Frame and Suspension:

Frame - Santa Cruz V10 - Large

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Why the Santa Cruz V10?

The V10 is well known in the downhill community and we felt it was one of the ones that people wanted to know about. It has been on the race circuit and winning for as long as we can remember so we wanted to see what the latest revisions to the V10 had to offer. The V10 is a refined DH bike and it is commendable that Santa Cruz seems to continue to develop their bikes versus creating new models (or updating the model year / colors to sell bikes). Welded over at SAPA and made in the USA, the V10 is one of the few bikes that still are made stateside.

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The V10 offers 254mm of travel (~10″) which is a good bit of travel to say the least. Compared to other top end bikes, the travel on the V10 is quite a bit of travel compared to the typical 8 - 9″ of travel of other bikes. The V10 suspension utilizes their patented Virtual Pivot Point (VPP) suspension that aims to deliver a top notch ride. The VPP system allows them to tweak and manipulate numerous aspects of the suspension like the wheel path, leverage ratio, squat, instant center, and more.

Construction wise, the V10 is welded together in addition to using some machining and a carbon upper link. Some gussets are welded atop and beneath the down tube to aid in giving it a bit of additional strength. The V10 comes stock with a Santa Cruz rear axle, Santa Cruz seat post clamp, chainstay protector, derailleur hanger, and a bolted on carbon fiber mud guard. The mud guard is something more DH companies should try and implement whenever possible. It did help keep some mud away from the shock, however the top of the shock area is still susceptible to mud/debris flying in but the included mud guard does a good job at helping out a good bit.

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Many more photos of the V10 frame can be seen in the gallery. The guys over at Point One Racing also sent us over a nickel lower link that matches their limited edition stem we used to give our v10 a subtle unique look.

V10 Frame spec’s

• 1 1/8″ headset
• 83mm bottom bracket
• 30.9 mm seatpost
• 150 x 12mm dropouts

Shock - Elka Suspension Stage 5 & Cane Creek Double Barrel & Vivid

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Why all these shocks?

There are a lot of top notch shocks available on the market today and we felt it was important to try out a few on our V10 to see how they stacked up. The V10 we received uses an 8.75″ x 2.75″ shock. Packing in the task of controlling 10″ of travel in a 2.75″ stroke shock isn’t a small feat.

The Elka Stage 5 was custom tuned for the V10 and was a new shock on the market that we were anxious to try out. Elka works with the manufacturers and the buyer to deliver a custom shock that is designed for the user’s needs. The Elka Stage 5 features are outlined in the detailed preview we did previously on it.

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The Cane Creek Double Barrel is one of the finer shocks available on the market today and was said to work well on the V10 so we felt it was good to throw in the mix. The CCDB offers a plethora of external adjustments to help control the suspension including preload, high & low speed compression, and high & low speed rebound. To say it is adjustable is an understatement as it provided the widest range of adjustability of all the shocks we used. This can be a good thing, and a bad thing as well if improperly setup. The CCDB also used spherical bushings to mount to the frame that lets the shock perform quite well (by allowing it to move freely with little resistance) and aid in reducing wear and tear on the shock hardware. It offers some functional benefits over the standard bushing/3piece shock hardware that is typically used.

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The Vivid shock was used more as a baseline shock as the current V10 comes with either the Vivid or the FOX DHX5.

Fork - Manitou Dorado

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Why the Manitou Dorado?

The Dorado was used because like some of the shocks chosen, was new on the market and we wanted to see what it had to offer. This new Dorado represents an impressive step in the right direction of what Manitou needs to do more of. The damping in the Dorado is impressive to say the least and the hydraulic bottom out circuit is something that we wish every fork had. It allows for a nice ramp up at the end of the travel that also helps to dissipate the force of a big hit without returning a lot of rebound back into the rider. The Dorado offers a controlled ride with the TPC+ damping and easily maintains a good ride height without sacrificing big hitability or low speed sensitivity. The knobs have solid clicks as well and each little adjustment works nicely and can be felt. We’ve had our fork upgraded with a few new tweaks that Manitou has implemented including a softer top out bumper. Nothing is perfect, but we’ll expound on the Dorado in greater detail in a separate piece on where we think the Dorado could improve and talk a bit more about how it performs.

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