Knolly Fugitive
Wheel Size: 29’’
Travel Options:
- 125 mm rear / 140 mm front
- 140 mm rear / 150 mm front
Geometry Highlights:
- Sizes offered: Small, Medium, Large, XL
- Headtube angle: 64.75° to 66° (adjustable, see below)
- Reach: 492 mm (size Large)
- Chainstay length: 438 mm (Size Large)
Frame Material: Aluminum
Price for Complete Bikes: $4,599 to $5,799 USD / $5,999 to 7,699 CAD
Intro
Knolly announced an overhaul of their lineup when they revealed the updated Endorphin last fall. They followed suit with the new Chilcotin in February, and now it’s the Fugitive’s turn.
(That leaves the Warden as Knolly’s final full-suspension bike awaiting an update, and their website says that “the current Warden is sold out, but we won’t keep you 27.5 fans waiting too long.”)
But for now, let’s turn our attention to the new Fugitive, which is Knolly’s mid-travel Trail bike and “most versatile model in the Knolly line-up,” as they put it.
The Frame
If you haven’t seen Knolly’s other new bikes, then the new Fugitive will probably look quite surprising — again, Knolly is truly overhauling their lineup, with very different design language than we’ve historically seen from the brand.
But if you have kept tabs on the transformation of Knolly’s lineup, then there aren’t any huge surprises here.
The Fugitive is still made from aluminum, rolls on 29’’ wheels, and uses Knolly’s standard Fourby4 suspension layout. Fourby4 is essentially a Horst-link arrangement with an extra pair of links to actuate the shock, which Knolly says gives them some extra control over the leverage curve. Knolly doesn’t publish kinematic data for the Fugitive, but says that they’ve increased small-bump sensitivity and bottom-out resistance as compared to the prior-generation version, and improved pedaling efficiency while they were at it.
Knolly now offers the Fugitive in two different travel configurations; it gets a stated 125 mm of travel from a 50mm-stroke shock, or 140 mm from a 55 mm shock. The standard builds come with a 140mm-travel fork (Fugitive 125) or a 150 mm one (Fugitive 140) but Knolly says you can run forks from 140 to 160 mm travel on either; the frame is shared between the two regardless.
As with the new Endorphin and Chilcotin, the Fugitive features Knolly’s updated straight top tube, less curvy downtube, and some other tweaks to the construction, including Enduro bearings in all the pivots and flat faces at all the bearing locations to make pressing replacements in and out easier.
There’s still room for a water bottle inside the Fugitive’s front triangle on the whole size range, and Knolly has added a set of accessory mounts underneath the top tube. The cable routing is internal, the bottom bracket shell is threaded (with removable ISCG tabs), and Knolly’s typical SuperBoost (or “Trail157,” as they call it) rear-wheel spacing is here, too. The rear brake mount is for a 180 mm rotor, and tire clearance is stated at 29 x 2.6’’. Knolly has also, unsurprisingly, added a UDH derailleur hanger to the Fugitive.
Fit & Geometry
Knolly offers the new Fugitive in the same four sizes (Small, Medium, Large, and XL) as the outgoing one, but it’s gotten a bit longer than the outgoing bike — though not as emphatically so as the new Chilcotin.
Reach now starts at about 440 mm for the Small and grows by roughly 25 mm per size, give or take a few millimeters depending on the travel configuration and geometry setting. That’s around 5-10 mm longer than the outgoing version, depending on size and geometry setting.
The effective seat tube angle hasn’t changed much, at around 76 to 77° (again depending on size and settings). But the headtube has gotten a good bit slacker, with the Fugitive 125 coming in at 65.25 or 66° (Slack or Neutral settings, respectively), with the taller fork on the Fugitive 140 dropping those numbers to 64.75 or 65.5°.
The Fugitive’s chainstay lengths are now size-specific, starting at 430 mm on the Small and growing by four millimeters per size. The outgoing model had 432 mm chainstays across the board. Bottom bracket drop is listed at 35 mm regardless of travel configuration or geometry setting, but the bottom bracket height for the Fugitive 125 is stated at 334 mm (Neutral setting) or 324 mm (Slack); the Fugitive 140 is 3 mm higher.
The Builds
Knolly offers the Fugitive 140 in four different build tiers and the Fugitive 125 in three. The most affordable Marzocchi / Deore build on the 140 doesn’t make its way over to the 125, but the other three tiers get the same build on either platform, apart from changes to the suspension and tires.
As they tend to, Knolly has prioritized high-end suspension and opted for less ultra-fancy drivetrains, wheels, etc. on the Fugitive. That’s a sensible way to make a high bang-for-buck build, and like many of Knolly’s recent offerings, the Fugitive stands out for being a notably good value for money spec-wise, especially for a smaller, more niche manufacturer.
Here are the details of the Fugitive’s builds:
- Drivetrain: Shimano Deore 12-speed
- Brakes: Shimano Deore 4-piston (w/ 203 mm front / 180 mm rear rotors)
- Fork: Marzocchi Z1 Air
- Shock: Marzocchi Bomber Air
- Wheels: DT Swiss M1900
- Dropper Post: SDG Tellis V2
- Drivetrain: SRAM GX
- Brakes: Magura MT5 (w/ 203 mm front / 180 mm rear rotors)
- Fork: Fox 34 Performance (Fugitive 125) / Fox 36 Performance Elite (Fugitive 140)
- Shock: Fox Float X Performance
- Wheels: DT Swiss M1900
- Dropper Post: SDG Tellis V2
- Drivetrain: SRAM GX
- Brakes: Magura MT5 (w/ 203 mm front / 180 mm rear rotors)
- Fork: Fox 34 Factory (Fugitive 125) / Fox 36 Factory (Fugitive 140)
- Shock: Fox Float X Factory
- Wheels: Spank
- Dropper Post: SDG Tellis V2
- Drivetrain: Shimano XT
- Brakes: Shimano XT 4-piston (w/ 203 mm front / 180 mm rear rotors)
- Fork: Fox 34 Factory (Fugitive 125) / Fox 36 Factory (Fugitive 140)
- Shock: Fox Float X Factory
- Wheels: Spank
- Dropper Post: SDG Tellis V2
Some Questions / Things We’re Curious About
(1) How does the latest version of Knolly’s Fourby4 suspension perform on the trail? What sets it apart from some of the other popular suspension designs?
(2) How much does the travel swap impact the feel and performance of the Fugitive, and does it feel better suited to one setting or the other?
(3) And where does the Fugitive land on the spectrum of Trail bikes, from relatively XC-oriented to notably game-on and descending-focused?
Bottom Line (For Now)
The new Knolly Fugitive looks like a promising take on a well-rounded, do-it-all Trail bike, and we should start spending time on one soon. Stay tuned for much more on how the Fugitive stacks up.