Almost a month after it was unveiled to the world at large and at least a few months since Aussie ripper Shaun O’Connor was spotting testing one in Central Otago, the six inch Yeti SB66 is finally here at Spoke HQ. Now unless you have been living under a very big rock you will have seen the SB66 on numerous websites, but really Yeti’s own site has the most in-depth info and some cool visuals.
- Is it just me or is the SB66 silhouette pretty damn striking?
The SB66 is a massive departure in suspension design for Yeti and in fact is the combined effort of four separate engineers—two from Yeti and the two who came up with the Switch concept in the first place. At first glance the SB66 looks like a linkage actuated single pivot, but the thing is, the pivot is actually an eccentric micro-link that rotates in different directions as the SB66’s rear triangle moves though its six inches of travel, making the SB66 a dual link design. Like all suspension designers (well most) Yeti is trying to reach the holy grail of trail bike design, minimum anti squat, efficient pedalling and awesome bottomless descending. As far as Yeti is concerned it’s found it with this bike.
- Haven’t we seen that before? Yup, an identical tapered head tube to the 575 Spoke just tested, and it’s just as cool.
Honestly though, the videos below from Yeti do a way better job of showing you how the Switch Suspension on the Yeti works than I could, plus after watching them you’ll want to go ride! We’ll be giving the SB66 a bit of what for over the next few weeks and will bring you our opinions in print, web and video, so stay tuned. In the meantime you can check out all the nice clean photos of our test bike!
- Cool internal cable routing on the rear stays.
- … and more cool internal cable routing.
- Post mounts out the back. How’s that for clean lines?
- Race bred, you better believe it. Remember both Blenki and Justin Leov spent formative time on the Yeti programme.
The SB66 is agile.
The SB66 goes up.
The SB66 goes down.
I’ll have a carbon one in XL please… oh, and with full XTR like the test bike. Would have been cool if the internal routing went all the way from the head tube me thinks.
Their engineer must be now very disapointed to have nothing to do. Now they have found the holy grail and all. Bet there will be something bigger and better sooner rather than later. Can only hope so. This effort looks the goods for now though.
Sweeeeeet! It looks much nicer in the flesh. Everyone will be talking about the new ‘switch’ suspension, but it’s the geometry that’s also getting my attention.
Haha, my bike already does that when the pivot bearings are flogged out. Seriously, does this make any difference or are bikes entering the realm of “audiophiles” where they think they can hear a difference because they paid $1000.00 for a cable?
Has the rear brake line survived running through there? (first photo) Or is the gap bigger than it looks?
[…] 43 of Spoke features a full review of the new Yeti SB66. Right here you can check out the Yeti SB66 in action being ridden by Hadley Boyce on Bee Line at […]
whats that litle switch on the rear derailluer