The Santa Cruz Bullit has Auto-Correct.

The New Santa Cruz Bullit is a burly enduro eMTB that erases braking bumps and deletes your mistakes. I took the Bullit through steeps, chunky rock gardens, flow trails, and jump lines. It performed great on the gnarly trails and with a bit of encouragement, it also gave me some pop on the jumps. The Path Bike Shop https://www.thepathbikeshop.com Deity Components https://www.deitycomponents.com The Bullit is Santa Cruz’s enduro eMTB with 170mm of travel front and back. Its 600Wh battery provides the juice for the gen 5 Bosch Performance Line CX motor. And the motor delivers its 85Nm of torque through the SRAM GX AXS Transmission. The bike is suspended on a Fox Float X Performance Elite shock And a Fox 38 Float Performance Elite fork with the new GripX2 damper. The front tire is a Maxxis Assegai with MaxxGrip and DoubleDown casing. And the back is a Minion DHR2 with MaxxTerra and DoubleDown casing. The wheels are Alloy Reserves. And you stop the bike using Maven brakes and 200mm HS2 rotors front and back. The bike comes with a Oneup bar, but we’ve kitted the bike with Deity’s Speedway Carbon 30mm rise bar, Supracush grips. and that gorgeous 42mm Copperhead stem. I’ve also fitted it with a set of bronze Supervillain pedals. In case you’re wondering, my face is doing all right. And I probably don’t need to say it but that crash was 100% rider error. If you try to roll a drop, you might get a makeout session with the Earth. That being said, I’ll have the Bullit for a bit and will be working on a full review (hit the subscribe button so you don’t miss that) and I can take the Bullit back out for some redemption. All right, let’s talk about the build spec on this bike. I have the GX AXS build. I don’t know pricing, but this spec or the 90 seem to be the sweet spot. The suspension on the GX AXS build is Performance Elite which is pretty much Fox Factory without Kashima on the stanchions. The main thing you get if you go up to the XO AXS RSRV spec is a lighter bike. The higher spec has carbon wheels, the X0 drivetrain, and Santa Cruz’s lighter CC carbon. In general, the entire range is reasonable and any spec would be solid. My only caveat would be that if I got the 70 build, I would probably swap out the brakes for some TRPs. And if you were to get this bike through The Path, they would make that kind of swap out painless. Speaking of brakes though, the Mavens have really grown on me. I had a bad experience with them at first because I was on a pair that needed a bleed. But having ridden three different sets of them now, I like these brakes. I personally still love my TRPs, but if I were to get a bike with Mavens, I wouldn’t feel the need to swap them out. All right, lets talk geometry. I am 5’6” on a good day and I’m riding a size medium. I have the bike in the low position, and that gives it a HTA of 63.3º. In the high position it would have been 63.6º. I’m not totally sure, but based on the Vala numbers, I think in the low position the reach might be 456. But the chainstay length is 443 which is 3mm longer than the Vala. And I believe the wheelbase on the medium is 1252. If I have any corrections, I’ll post them in the description or in a pinned comment. All that being said, I didn’t look at any numbers before riding the Bullit, but based on my first impressions, it makes sense that the chainstay is on the longer side. So let’s talk first impressions. For better or worse, the Bullit might make you appreciate trail maintenance less. It makes braking bumps mostly disappear, gives you tons of font-end grip in loose sections, and eats rock gardens so readily there might not be any leftovers and you might find yourself looking for bigger gnarlier servings. But the Bullit doesn’t feel like a point and plow sled. It stays lively and lets you change lines pretty easily. It’s not exactly a jibby bike, but it’ll play if you push it. I did have a couple sketchy moments on the Bullit, but I found myself smiling more than puckering. It’s like the bike has built-in auto-correct. It was just naturally inclined to keep the front wheel in front and pointed downhill. It probably gave me too much confidence. It was planted when the trail was rowdy and gave me pop if I put in the legwork. For my taste, it could be a bit more poppy, but that’s easy to do with volume reducers or even just putting it into the more progressive setting. But, this is all based on one day of riding and very little tuning. Once I’ve ridden the Bullit for a while longer I will give it a full review. So keep an eye out for that. 00:00 The Santa Cruz Bullit 01:45 The GX AXS Build 03:24 First ride - Car Crash 05:44 High speed rebound 06:09 Noises 06:29 Planted and eating the chatter 07:58 It eats. 08:22 Suspension adjustments 09:36 Tuning vs technique 10:29 More jumps 11:10 Going to the REAL GNAR 12:07 Climbing test 12:26 It gets steep and gnarly. 16:00 It gets steeper and gnarlier. 18:14 Final thoughts #mtb #emtb #bikes