The Bombtrack beyond plus, one absolute beast of a bike, a bike I love and hope to never have to let it go if I’m honest. It’s taken me all over the UK at this point. As a tall person 6ft6 the Xl version and with the big volume tyres makes this bike feel tall even for me, which is one of the reason I really like it. It fits so good. So when I saw this bike pop up for sale (that’s right it’s second hand, it had previously been on a tour in Australia that was cut short due to covid) I had to grab it. The Bombtrack bikes tend to be a bit hard to get your hands on over in the UK. And this one already set up my beloved dynamo hub, it was a no-brainer just to grab this and save on waiting ages for a new one, then having to build a new wheel onto a dynamo hub. And in my size too, talk about luck.

It’s a steel framed carbon fork rigid plus bike. Well it used to be a plus bike, meaning the tyres used to be 3 inches wide, i’ve since changed that to a slightly easier tyre to get my hands on. Still a pretty chunky tyre though at 2.6inches maxis Rekon rear and Ikon front. Ohh and 29-inch rims (forgot to mentions that) if I wasn’t always riding a fully loaded bike, honestly these would probably be too big, but while fully loaded they feel great. It helps a lot when hitting the really rough trails, especially considering this bike is rigid. Why not get a suspension fork, i hear you ask, that’s a valid question because the beyond plus can take one, I think a 120mm -130mm travel fork off the top of my head. The main reason just comes down to maintenance, i do all the bike fixing and tinkering myself so another moving part to have to service, i just can’t be bothered. The other reason is for the most part with 2.6inh tyres i’m still mostly over biked a lot of the time on the trails that i tend to find myself. There is definitely sometimes where it would be beneficial to have a suspension fork, but them times normally don’t last too long.

The bike did come to me with full SRAM gx eagle all out and for the most part that has remained the same, apart from the crankset, I really hate the DUB cranksets, I think I have broken a couple of them now, so it’s got a Shimano XT crank with a 30t chainring on it now, the gearing on the back (still sram eagle) is 9-50t. I am slowly going to be replacing everything over to Shimano, that’s the next step, I just prefer working on Shimano, I find I can never get SRAM quite right, or when I do, it works for a couple of days then just doesn’t.

It’s just a solid overall bike and suits me, I love riding it, and it gives me a great balance when the gravel bike isn’t the right tool for the job this will be and vice versa.