Cairn Cycles e-adventure gravel bike (Fazua powered)

MattyB

E*POWAH Elite World Champion
Jul 11, 2018
1,266
1,279
Herts, UK
Not an MTB, but here's another new Fazua powered e-bike, this time in the gravel/adventure genre with 650b wheels and chunky gravel tyres. It's got a bonkers (presumably prototype) paint job too:

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"Cairn Cycles e-adventure bike first ride impressions

There are next to no photos of me on the bike because I was too busy razzing about being an idiot

Cairn Cycles came to BikeRadar’s home town of Bristol to show off the new bike, and our test loop took in a familiar mix of gravel roads, singletrack and sketchy off-piste mountain bike trails.

To start, we took in a few of Bristol’s more vertiginous locales en route to the trails and hoofing up these while taking advantage of the Fazua system’s Rocket mode was great fun, with enough assistance to move comfortably through traffic.

It’s been said a million times, but getting to the top of this climb I was just as puffed out as I would have been on a normal bike, but I’d got up it in about half the time it would normally take me.

Off road, the bike is an absolute hoot.

Having the motor placed so low on the frame gives the bike a super planted feel over rough terrain. The effect is most pronounced on rough and steep climbs, with the assistance allowing you to power easily through choppy terrain.

On corners, the front end feels super stable. The wide Ritchey bars contribute to this, but the low centre of gravity also helps.

The additional weight of the motor does make it a little harder to flick the bike about compared to a non-assisted bike, but the effect is a little less noticeable than something like the Orbea Gain — with its hub-based motor — that I rode last year.

I rode the bike with a set of MasonxHunt 650b Adventure Sport wheels — the same wheels I used during my wheel mullet experiment last year — fitted with a set of 1.5in Panaracer GravelKing SK tyres.

I think these tyres are a perfect match for a bike like this. The extra heft of fat rubber isn’t a concern on an e-bike and the extra control and comfort they afford is invaluable.

We (accidentally) took in some fairly sketchy off-piste mountain bike descents on our loop. While a gravel bike will never be the perfect ride for such escapades, the sure-footed handling of the bike here left me impressed.

The dropper post undoubtedly helped and I can absolutely see these becoming standard issue on gravel bikes in a few years time.

Cairn Cycles e-adventure bike overall impression
Our ride was only 30km long, but I finished very impressed by the Fazua system. The power delivery is very smooth and the motor reacts to changes in cadence in a more natural way than competing systems.


I found the difference between the Breeze (eco) and River (tour) modes a little vague for my liking, but Cairn was keen to stress that the ride characteristics of these modes can be tuned to a degree by the end user, with further remote modification by Cairn and Fazua themselves possible.

With that said, I spent the vast majority of my time in Breeze mode and found the additional oomph it provided to be more than enough to boost me about at a truly reckless speed.

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175mm cranks wouldn’t normally pose a problem on a gravel bike, even on one with a particularly low bottom bracket, but as you have so much more power on tap with an e-bike, you’re much less likely to have to ratchet your way up awkward climbs.

This means you tend to pedal right through the stroke, even on the gnarliest terrain, and I found myself striking the cranks on a number of occasions.

Come production, so long as it doesn’t adversely affect your pedalling, I’d hope to see 170mm cranks, or possibly even shorter, specced on the bike.

It’s worth noting that this is relatively common issue when we review e-MTBs and we’ve found dropping down a crank size or two has next to no effect on pedalling performance.

Cairn e-adventure bike early verdict
I was pretty surprised when I heard that The Rider Firm was spreading its wings into the e-bike market — the company has not been afraid to try new things, but an e-bike is in a whole different league compared to its other ventures.


However, I finished my short time on the Cairn Cycles e-adventure grinning ear to ear and very impressed by the whole package.

The handling of the bike is superb, the build is almost perfect for the intended use and the Fazua system might just be the best I’ve used so far.

My time on the bike was too limited to draw any final conclusions and details will undoubtedly change before it reaches production, but overall, I think Cairn Cycles is on to a winner and this is definitely one to watch in the future."
 
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Mabman

E*POWAH Elite World Champion
Feb 28, 2018
1,048
1,735
Oregon USA
I assume they use the EU cutout? I have two homemade gravel bikes that are unrestricted and even if the Cairn's is set for speed pedelec it would lack power to assume that speed for very long and use a lot of battery while doing so even with a consistent human pedal input. No doubt that e drop bar bikes are becoming the next big thing for the manufacturers but a TA PAS and cutout are not going to make them all that popular IMNSHO as 100 mile + gravel races are won averaging 20mph to begin with.
 

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