Morewood Sukuma
Morewood; hailing from South Africa, it’s one of those enigmatic bike brands which few people have seen, even fewer have ridden, and yet they have an almost mythical reputation for stunning looks and equally stunning performance. I well remember the first time I ran into a guy with a Morewood Izimu out on the trail and had a pedal around; the lateral stiffness was in a class of its own, and was a real eye opener.
Although Morewood built their reputation on gravity bikes, they now cover the full range from XC race to World Cup DH, and after a particularly long gestation period the 150mm travel Sukuma has finally been brought to life to cover all the ground in between these two extremes. Its release coincides with the appointment of a new Australian distributor who is offering the Sukuma (meaning ‘Arise’ or ‘Awaken’ in Zulu) as a frame only for $2,450, or in a range of semi-custom build kits.
Our full Shimano XT test rig would set you back around $5,695 complete with a RockShox Revelation RCT3 fork and a KS Supernatural adjustable seatpost. It also came with top-shelf Schwalbe EVO Snakeskin tyres, a Kodex riser bar and the tubeless-ready wheels and stem are both from Ellsworth’s component brand ‘Loaded’. Without pedals, the Sukuma came in at 13.0kg (large frame and shock 3,210g); certainly a respectable weight and 100% trail worthy from the get go, so we were itching to see whether Morewood’s latest bike could live up to the reputation of its predecessors.
Split, but Still Single
Morewood have always been firm advocates of the advantages of single pivot suspension designs; the Sukuma uses the Dave Weagle designed Split Pivot system, which has a rear pivot concentric with the rear axle. Morewood maintain that this is still functionally a single pivot as the rear wheel arcs around a fixed point, but with the advantages of being able to tune braking behaviour and leverage ratio independently of the wheel path.
The original Sukuma prototypes used a 142x12mm Maxle rear end however for production that has changed to a custom X-12 axle from Syntace, which is a much cleaner and sturdier system in our eyes. Although the majority of the frame is 6061 Aluminium, the seatstays are moulded from carbon fibre to reduce weight and allow for a fairly radically shaped seatstay bridge. There’s masses of tyre clearance in the rear triangle to and the Sukuma definitely upholds the Morewood reputation for lateral stiffness. The machined chainstay yokes and truss style rocker plates give the bike a very purposeful and engineered look which we’re rather fond of, too.
The main frame itself is largely built along traditional looking lines, using relatively straight tubes with subtly manipulated cross sections to increase strength and weld area at the junctions. The shapely tapered headtube uses an external lower headset cup to guarantee you can’t ovalise the frame from a serious front-on impact and shock-horror, there’s room for a water bottle cage inside the front triangle. The press-fit bottom bracket shell has ISCG tabs, so you can run a chain device should you desire, and like many bikes now the front derailleur is a direct mount unit. The pivots all have laser-etched torque settings, and the main pivot itself uses a massive torx bolt to minimise any chance of stripping it; very nicely done.
Cable routing, including for the now almost ubiquitous dropper seatpost, is generally very clean with the exception of the rear brake line, which by necessity takes a slightly more obvious path over the main pivot. Welds are all neatly stacked C’s, and the paint is glossy and thick. The colour scheme and branding is all very low key and ‘adult’ too; today’s hi-vis colour du jour is tomorrow’s fashion faux pas, whilst the muted white/black or black/grey of the Sukuma will look good for many years to come.
Things are anything but traditional, however, when you take a closer look at the seat tube. It’s straight and round from the top to the rocker pivot, but from there the seat tube has a square cross section with a pronounced S-shaped kink, and the whole lower section down to the bottom bracket is pushed asymmetrically over to the left side. It’s possibly the most radical piece of hydroforming we’ve seen on a bike to date, all done to make room for the front derailleur and the main pivot whilst boosting stiffness at the bottom bracket. That main pivot is also quite unusual, as Morewood has managed to incorporate the lower shock mount into the pivot itself; a system they call Dual Concentric Design. Although this layout sheds a modicum of weight due to requiring one less bolt, probably its greatest advantage is that the shock is being compressed into this already heavily reinforced section of the frame, so they don’t need to add extra metal elsewhere to absorb the shock load. Despite its initially conventional appearance, there’s some pretty clever frame manipulation and technology going on with the Sukuma.
More Good from Morewood
Geometry is really one of the key elements in how a bike rides, and the Sukuma is just about faultless for a modern all-mountain bike. The top tube is long enough to let you stretch out on climbs, but short enough when combined with a stubby stem to keep your weight centred for easy weight shifts on the descents. We’re fans of the playful feel of short chainstays, and at a smidgen under 430mm the folks from Morewood have hit the sweet spot for keeping handling lively without sacrificing high speed stability. The Sukuma is designed for forks in the 150-160mm zone. For general all-mountain use the 150mm fork yields a near perfect head angle of 67.5-degrees, but if you spend most of your time concentrating on the descents a 160mm fork will slacken things out by half a degree or so.
Whichever way you look at it, the Sukuma’s numbers tell a story of versatility and stability over an incredibly broad range of conditions, which is of course the very definition of an ‘all-mountain’ bike. The frame stiffness was a definite plus out on trail, with the Sukuma equally heedless of rutted descents and high speed corners; point and shoot with confidence no matter how questionable your line choice may be. Morewood’s downhill heritage is clearly on display when descending; the ride is planted and purposeful, and you’ll run out of courage long before the bike reaches the limit of its capabilities.
We’re very familiar with Dave Weagle’s highly regarded DW-Link suspension, so expected good things from his Split Pivot brainchild as well. Overall we weren’t disappointed, but there was a bit of an adjustment period. In typical DW fashion the Sukuma’s shock uses very light compression damping, relying primarily on chain growth to counteract the tendency of suspension bikes to squat under acceleration. This is a good thing; relying on the shock to control unwanted suspension movement invariably leads to stifled small bump compliance and an unnecessarily harsh ride. However, the main pivot on the Morewood is particularly high, meaning that chain growth often more than counteracts squat effects and leads to slight extension of the rear suspension. When seated it’s not significant, but it is particularly evident when pedalling out of the saddle in the granny ring.
The resulting up and down movement under power in the granny ring takes a bit of time to get accustomed to, and there’s no question in our minds that the Sukuma gives up a little pedalling efficiency as a result. Whilst it mightn’t be the most efficient climber on the market, it is nonetheless a very capable one. We got the feeling that the same chain force that’s trying to extend the swingarm is also forcing the rear tyre into the ground—the result seemed to be added traction as you applied torque to the pedals. Regardless of the exact reasons, we found ourselves scampering up some fairly unlikely pinches aboard the Sukuma, and as such have to commend its overall climbing ability.
The Sukuma that we tested came with a Fox RP23 shock but newer stock is likely to come with a three-position Fox Float CTD. In either case it’s worth using some Pro Pedal platform damping for extended climbs, while the rest of the time the Sukuma could be pedalled happily in the fully open. There’s no mid-stroke wallow to the suspension action, but instead a consistently supple feel from top to bottom that gobbles up terrain like a half-starved Pacman on power pills.
The high-volume air can gives you a bit of wiggle room depending on just how hard you want to push the Sukuma; for normal all-mountain duties it allows you to use 25-30% sag and still get full travel without harsh bottom out. If on the other hand you’re pushing the big-hit boundaries of what constitutes all-mountain, or are particularly light and hence running low air pressure in the shock (which makes it inherently less progressive) you might consider adding a volume reducing spacer inside the air can to make it ramp up a little more towards the end of stroke. Whichever way you go, the rear wheel hugs the ground tenaciously without feeling soggy or lifeless. Want to get airborne? No problem with the Sukuma; we overshot a couple of familiar doubles by more than a metre thanks to the liveliness of the suspension, and stuck the flat landing without faltering thanks to its suppleness and the stiffness of the frame.
One of the big pluses of the Split Pivot suspension is allegedly the ability to maintain consistent braking behaviour regardless of what the suspension is doing and the Sukuma delivers, with possibly the most neutral braking of any bike we’ve ridden to date. Whilst you undoubtedly adapt your braking style to whatever bike you’re familiar with, it’s nice to be able to throw out the anchors and know that the suspension feel will remain consistent.
For those buying a complete build rather than just a frame, we’d like to report on a few key components. Firstly, the RockShox Revelation RCT3 has consistently proven itself a top performing and reliable fork; plush and smooth with plenty of damping adjustment and just the right amount of progression to keep it from bottoming out. We think it’s also noticeably stiffer than many other 32mm-stanchioned forks on the market, and it’s a tidy match for a versatile Sukuma build. Secondly, the Loaded stem and wheels look like quality kit, and are available in a range of colours so you can give your bike its very own personality. With a bit of rim tape the wheels convert easily to tubeless, and the 21mm inner width provides a bit more support to the tyre sidewall than narrower rims. Thirdly, the KS range of adjustable seatposts have shown their reliability and performance to be as good as anything on the market and the remote lever is unquestionably the most ergonomic and elegant available. Lastly, the Kodex Strut Bar may look a little strange to begin with, but its 750mm width and 11-degree back/3-degree up sweep seems just right on the trail; it’s one of the nicest feeling handlebars we’ve used, and can of course be cut down as far as 700mm should you still be rocking old-school widths.
African Awakening
It’s been a long time coming, but Morewood’s Sukuma has definitely been worth the wait. No boutique manufacturer is going to be able to compete on price alone with the big-name companies, but price conscious riders are not who the Sukuma is intended for. It’s designed as the quintessential mountain bike, able to take on whatever challenges, uphill or down, you choose to point it at. Outright efficiency is not its priority, but rather it’ll let you climb just about anything so that you can slash the turns, huck the gaps and nail the chutes on the way back down. And it’ll make you one of those rare people who’ve ridden, and can testify to the quality of, a Morewood. It mightn’t be as rare as having seen an elephant graveyard, owning a Unicorn or possessing autographed photos of the sasquatch, but it’ll still make you the envy of other riders, and justifiably so. Morewood is back with a vengeance, and the Sukuma is the herald of that new dawn; awaken and ride on.
Thumb Up
Super supple yet supportive suspension
Understated and enduring style
Flex-free frame
Thumbs Down
Granny gear bob and pedal feedback
May look too ‘Plain-Jane’ for some
Specifications
Frame: Hydro and Mechanically Formed 6061 Alloy
Shock: Fox Float RP23 150mm travel
Fork: RockShox Revelation RT3 15QR 150mm travel
Headset: Cane Creek 1 1/8 - 1 1/2
Handlebars: Kodex Stutbar Alloy riser 750mm
Stem: Loaded XC
Shifters: Shimano XT
Front Derailleur: Shimano XT
Rear Derailleur: Shimano XT
Cassette: Shimano XT 11/36 10-speed
Chain: Shimano HG74
Cranks: Shimano XT 24/36
Bottom Bracket: Shimano
Pedals: N/A
Brakes: Shimano XT
Wheels: Loaded X-Lite
Tyres: Schwalbe Nobby Nic/Hans Damph
Saddle: WTB
Seatpost: KS Lev
Weight: 13.0kg without pedals (Large frame 3,210g)
Available Sizes: S, M, L (tested) and XL
Price: $5,695 (frame $2,450)
Distributor: Pushie Enterprises 0404 885 896 / www.pushie.com.au