Knolly Warden MX
Wheel Size: 29’’ front / 27.5’’ rear
Travel: 170 mm front / 170 mm rear
Geometry Highlights:
- Sizes offered: XS, Small, Medium, Large, XL
- Headtube angle: 62.5° / 63.25° (adjustable)
- Reach: 482 mm (size Medium)
- Chainstay length: 438 mm (Size Medium)
Frame Material: Aluminum
Price for Complete Bikes: $5,199 to $5,999 USD / $6,899 to 7,899 CAD
Intro
Knolly hasn’t been shy about the fact that the Warden was getting an update — it was announced on their website well before all the details became public — and given that they’ve updated the rest of their full-suspension offerings within the last year, it made sense that the Warden would follow suit.
The Warden is still meant to be Knolly’s more freeride-oriented long-travel bike (to go with the more Enduro-race-focused Chilcotin 170), but the new Warden now gets mixed wheel sizes, a touch more suspension travel, revised geometry, and a bunch more.
The Frame
The updates to the Warden are (mostly) in keeping with the changes Knolly has been making across their lineup for a while now, matching the new Endorphin, Chilcotin, and Fugitive.
The Warden is still offered in aluminum only and gets Knolly’s new (and greatly improved, at least in my book) design language, with a straight top tube, less dramatically curved downtube, and generally tidier lines all around.
The suspension layout won’t surprise anyone, either — it’s still Knolly’s longstanding Fourby4, which is essentially a Horst-link four bar with an extra pair of links stacked on top of the main rocker link to give some extra control over the leverage ratio independent of other kinematic variables. The rear suspension travel has grown (fractionally) from 168 to 170 mm, still paired with a 170mm-travel fork, but Knolly doesn’t go into detail about the finer points of the suspension kinematics.
The prior-gen Warden was meant to roll on matching 27.5’’ wheels, but the new one gets a dedicated mixed-wheel-size layout. That actually makes it Knolly’s first dedicated MX bike, following the Endorphin, which can be run either as a 27.5’’ bike or a mullet.
As with Knolly’s other recently updated bikes, the Warden still uses a 157mm Superboost rear wheel spacing, and it gets a UDH derailleur hanger. There’s room for a water bottle inside the front triangle and a set of accessory mounts underneath the top tube. Enduro bearings are used throughout, with flat faces on the pivot housings to make replacement easier down the line.
Fit & Geometry
Knolly has added a smaller fifth size to the Warden lineup and is now labeling the options S1 through S5 (roughly correlating to XS through XL in that naming convention).
All five get a 62.5° / 63.25° headtube angle (adjustable via flip chip), with a 0.5 / 9.5 mm bottom bracket drop, depending on the flip chip setting. We assume those numbers are relative to the rear dropout, but we have contacted Knolly to confirm. Toggling the flip chip changes the effective seat tube angle on all five sizes between a stated 77° or 77.75° effective seat tube angle; the actual seat tube angle starts at 70.8° on the XS frame and steepens to 73.8° on the XL, but which geometry setting that number is drawn from is not stated.
The reach figures on the new Warden have grown fractionally on the S2 through S5, as compared to the Small through XL sizes on the outgoing one; the new S1 is much smaller than the old Small, at 431 mm (vs. 452 mm on the prior-gen Small). Reach grows by about 25 mm per size from there, up to 533 mm on the S5.
The stack height has grown substantially but is still relatively moderate by modern standards (605 to 637 mm depending on size, in ~8 mm increments). The chainstays on the new Warden are still not especially long, but they’re much more so than the outgoing bike, which had 433 mm ones across the full size range. The new Warden’s chainstays are now size-specific, starting at 434 mm on the S1 and S2, and then growing by 4 mm per size from there, up to 446 mm on the S5.
The Builds
Knolly offers four different builds on the Warden; as has been the case with most of their recent bikes, they hit a fairly narrow range of price points, focusing on high-end suspension and solid but not super fancy parts elsewhere. The very modest differences between the two SRAM GX builds are interesting, but the specs that Knolly has put together here are generally quite solid values.
Here are the details of the Warden’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 38 Performance Elite
- Shock: Fox Float X2 Factory
- Wheels: Spank Hexdrive
- Dropper Post: SDG Tellis V2
- Drivetrain: SRAM GX
- Brakes: Magura MT5 (w/ 203 mm front / 180 mm rear rotors)
- Fork: Fox 38 Factory
- Shock: Fox Float X2 Factory
- Wheels: Spank Hexdrive
- Dropper Post: SDG Tellis V2
- Drivetrain: Shimano XT
- Brakes: Shimano XT 4-piston (w/ 203 mm front / 180 mm rear rotors)
- Fork: Fox 38 Factory
- Shock: Fox Float X2 Factory
- Wheels: Spank Hexdrive
- Dropper Post: SDG Tellis V2
Some Questions / Things We’re Curious About
(1) How does the new Warden ride, and how does it compare to both the Chilcotin 170, and the rest of the Enduro / Freeride bike market as a whole?
(2) And does the Warden really feel like a Freeride bike, specifically, or something else entirely?
Bottom Line (For Now)
The new Knolly Warden looks like an interesting take on a modern Freeride bike, but we’re curious to get on one to find out more. Stay tuned for more if and when we’re able to make that happen.