2015 Canfield Brothers 27.5 Jedi

Bike: 2015 Canfield Brothers 27.5 Jedi

Size Tested: Medium

Build Overview:

Fork: BOS Idylle Rare Air FCV

Shock: Cane Creek Double Barrel

Drivetrain: Sram XO1 DH 7-speed

Brakes: Sram Guide RSC

Wheels: 27.5″

Travel: 228 mm (9”)

Weight: 11.5 lbs (frame w/ CCDB Shock); 39.6 lbs as built

MSRP: $3,150.00 (Frameset including MRP Chainguide and Cane Creek Double Barrel)

Reviewer: 5’9”, 155 lbs.

Test Location: Whitefish, MT; Fernie, BC; Silver Mtn., Idaho; Whistler, BC

Noah Bodman reviews the Canfield Jedi for Blister Gear Review.
2015 Canfield Brothers 27.5 Jedi

The guys over at Canfield have been making something roughly akin to the Jedi for over 15 years. What started as the “Big Fat Fatty Fat” way back in the 90’s has evolved into the 2015 Jedi. Early versions were tall, had a lot of travel, and saw plenty of monstrous hucks.

Fast forward to the 2015 Jedi, and you’ve got a refined machine that’s been dialed in to haul ass down the roughest, steepest trails you can find.

The Build

Canfield doesn’t offer the Jedi as a complete bike, although they do offer kits with an assortment of Canfield branded parts, and they have a few different forks that you can buy directly from them. The stock rear shock is a Cane Creek Double Barrel, but for an upcharge, you can get a frame fitted with BOS or DVO options.

The build as tested:

2015 Medium Jedi w/ CCDB

BOS Idylle Rare Air FCV

SRAM XO1 DH 7-Speed Drivetrain

SRAM Guide RSC Brakes

DT Swiss FR570 rims

DT Swiss Champion 2.0 Spokes

Hope Pro 2 Evo Hubs

Maxxis Minion DHF 2.5” Tires

SDG Fly Saddle

Thomson Elite Seatpost

RaceFace Atlas DM Stem

Raceface SixC Bar

Time Z Pedals

The 2015 27.5 Jedi by the Numbers

Noah Bodman reviews the Canfield Jedi for Blister Gear Review.
(Click to enlarge)

For 2015, the Jedi sees a few changes from the 2014 model, the most significant being the bump up to 27.5” wheels.

It also gets some tweaks to the geometry, including slightly longer chainstays to fit the larger wheels; the stays bump up to 422mm (16.6”) from 406mm on the 2014 model. They also incorporated a slightly slacker headtube angle, which is down to 62.5°. Those changes also result in a longer wheelbase, which on my Medium is about 1196mm (47.1”), roughly 30mm longer than the 2014 model.

The Jedi is a decidedly low and slack bike; even though the Jedi has 230mm (9”) of travel, it still has a relatively low 350mm (13.75”) bottom bracket height. And while most bikes have continued their trend toward slacker angles, the Jedi’s 62.5° head tube is still very much at the slack end of the spectrum. And depending on where I set the fork in the crowns, my bike actually measures a bit slacker – around 62.3°.

The fit of the Jedi is fairly standard for a modern downhill bike. The front end on my Medium is roomy for my 5’9” frame without feeling overly stretched out. The sizing is longer than a Trek Session, a little shorter than a Giant Glory, and comparable to a Specialized Demo. I’m pretty comfortable on my Medium. This isn’t one of those bikes where I’m second guessing my sizing decision.

Suspension Setup

I’ve played around with the suspension settings on my Jedi a fair amount. It came stock with a 400lb spring, but for my 155lb weight, I found I was bottoming it out pretty hard and more frequently than I liked, even when I was running a lot of high speed compression.

So I bumped up to a 450lb spring, which for my weight yields a bit less than 30% sag. With that spring, I’m running very little high and low speed compression, and I’ve got the rebound set up to be fairly quick.

NEXT: Frame Details, Idler Pulley, Etc.

8 comments on “2015 Canfield Brothers 27.5 Jedi”

  1. Once again, kickass review man. Keep em comin! Need to get you on some of these trails bikes too so we can get a good idea on how they differ.

  2. So much of your review is wrong. I own the bike. Very easy to jump! The suspension decompresses and pops you. Rails in corners like a f1 car. Litterally squats and rails.

    • Rails high speed corners – yes (as I said in the review). But if you think this bike is a poppy, jumpy little park bike, you’re wrong. It’s got 3″ of rearward travel, a 62.5 degree head angle, and it’s an 11.5 lb frame. Knowing nothing else about this bike, that right there should tell you that this isn’t a whippy oversized slopestyle rig. And in my book, that’s a very good thing – I don’t want a park bike. I want something super stable that’ll monster truck down the nastiest shit I can find, which is why I bought the Jedi. But I’m not going to pretend like it’s something it’s not (i.e. a poppy, jumpy bike that’s designed for dicking around on A-Line at a moderate pace).

  3. I think that there is really a lot of rebound damping going on in the linked video. The rear suspension packs down deeper and deeper into the travel as the rider charges down the rock garden. I’m not surprised that this doesn’t feel poppy off jumps…

    • I’m actually running a bit less rebound damping than is recommended by Cane Creek. Keep in mind that the video is at 1/8 normal speed – the shock is actually rebounding quite quickly. Going off of Cane Creek’s base tunes, I would say that I actually have less issues with the Jedi packing up than I did on my Specialized Demo.

      And I played around with the suspension quite a bit. I’m 100% certain that the rebound settings have nothing to do with the bike not being poppy off of small hits. I’m 95% sure it has to do with the bike’s 3″ of rearward travel that does a really good job of absorbing small obstacles on the trail, which, in turn, means that the bike doesn’t like to pop off of stuff. To be clear, that’s not a bad thing – it just means this bike is really good at some things, and not so great at others.

  4. “The last thing I noticed about the rearward axle path is that I seem to get a lot of rim “pings.” As best as I can tell, this is because as the rear suspension decompresses, the wheel is returning to a more forward position. If another bump comes along right at that moment (which happens pretty often), the rear wheel tends to smack it extra hard. The suspension still does its thing and the wheel still gets out of the way of that next obstacle, but I get those audible “pings” from the rear rim pretty often on the Jedi. So far, it doesn’t seem like this is actually taking much of a toll on the rim, but it makes me feel like a hack.”

    This is why overly rearward axle paths suck/are not fast (look at WC results). The wheel literally runs into the next bump as opposed to skipping over it with a more vertical path.

  5. Noah,
    Not sure if you still have your Jedi, but…
    You wouldn’t happen to have written down your CCDB setting for the Jedi? I started w/ a DVO Jade, then an Avy DHS, but I haven’t had a CCDB on my Jedi, and Cane Creek has changed up their page and Canfield isn’t listed in their bike mfg anymore.

    • Hey Paul,

      Unfortunately I don’t have the Jedi anymore, and I don’t recall where I had the CCDB set. You might be able to shoot Canfield an email and see if they can get you pointed in the right direction.

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