Scott Bikes have been launching their 2015 line in Davos Switzerland this past week (more info to come on that shortly). Luckily for you though there were a few 2015 Scott Bikes on display at the Avanti/Sheppard’s dealers meeting and the DH Gambler was one of them. And as you can see it is one badass bike. My camera and your screen don’t really do its hot pink paint justice, but this bike is a head turner and for 2015 there have been a few updates. Read on to find out what.
Well it was inevitable really, Scott were reasonably early adopters of the medium wheel and the big story about the 2015 Gambler is its wheel size shift to 27.5 and the geometry changes to accommodate the larger wheels.
It’s pretty clear in this little GIF what’s happening, I don’t really think you need me to spell it all out for you. But I will: it features a lower BB, the same rear travel and the same length stays, all with bigger wheels.
But the the main story is just how adjustable the Gambler is, in fact it’s adjustable at three main points. First up here at the shock mount you can flip the geometry chip to lower the BB by 10mm, which means you can run it at either 343mm or 353mm.
Out the back of the bike there are more options, this time chainstay length as well as a new axle standard. The short length gives you a length of 425mm; moving the axle out lengthens the chainstay to 440mm. The IDS-X Dropouts have a unique axle and dropout interface which locks the axle into place. This design eliminates the need for pinch bolts on the rear axle. Scott were tired of the rear ends of bikes coming loose after long days in the bike park so they set out to find a solution. After many one off prototypes they found this solution in the form of eccentric and conical shapes on the axle and dropouts. These shapes key into each other and lock the rear end down tight. In addition, the stiffer feeling rear end provides for better and more consistent cornering traction over traditional axle/dropout designs.
Finally in the adjustable department are the new headset cups from Syncros which give a +2º to -2º range of head angle. Each frame and complete build comes with these as standard. 
As you can see from this image, you can run your fork as steep as 65º and as slack as 61º. With the three options to change the bikes geometry, you have one heck of a versatile DH sled that can be customised to pretty much any DH course or bike park in the world.
Oh I almost forgot, taking a leaf out of Foes book of tricks, Scott have gone for a longer stroke Fox shock to make fine tuning the suspension feel easier, as well as that the kinematics of Scotts Floating Link have been altered. Combining just the right amount of support with comfort at high speeds, the linkage was optimised for use with the new FOX RC4. When FOX shifted to the smaller shaft on the RC4 Scott realised that a new kinematic was necessary. The Floating Link pivots around an imaginary floating point allowing the designers to fine tune all aspects of the leverage ratio enabling the shock and linkage to function in harmony.
This linkage allowed the engineers to decrease the shock hardware rotation from 36° to 9° on one end and 12° down to 4° on the other end. This not only increases durability but also improves small bump sensitivity. Furthermore, unlike most bikes on the market, the bearing loads are drastically decreased at the beginning of the shock stroke further enhancing traction performance.
There are other neat little touches, like this cable guide/fork bumper.
Some very cool Syncros colour matched parts.
As well as some sweet updated graphics.
Two Gambler models will be available in New Zealand: the top spec’d 710 (featured here) as well as the 720 (below).
