Editor’s Note: Grannygear has been testing and riding about on the Rockhopper SS from Specialized and now he has his First Impressions ready for you all to read.

By Grannygear:

The Rockhopper SL Comp SS is aimed at a person looking to get into a budget single speed, but wants a frame good enough to be worth upgrading. Lets take a minute trail side and look at some of the parts and features it comes out of the box with. Pardon the dirt on everything.

The RockShox Tora S-Lite 29er fork is set for 80mm and comes in a nice matching grey and black color scheme. It leaves off many of the features of the higher cost Reba fork, but has an air spring, compression, and rebound adjust (Turnkey Damping and Solo Air spring per the SRAM website). Really, those are the essentials. The stanchions are steel rather than aluminum. Weight is up on the Tora by nearly a pound over the Reba.

The wheels are built from Alex RHD rims and some plain jane hubs. The rear hub is a SS cassette hub, so that provides for a build with no dish in the rear wheel. Nice. Both hubs are standard 5mm QR. The Alex rims are quite narrow at 17mm inner wall width and a 21mm outer width. No mention of tubeless capability comes with this set-up and the rims have a typical rim strip in them, not glued down (tape). The tires are Specialized FastTrak LKs, 2.0 front and rear. I weighed the wheels as they came off of the bike: Rear wheel with OE tire/cog/skewer/rotor – 5lbs/4oz (2380g) wheel only (no tire or tube) – 3lbs/8oz (1587g). The front was 4lbs/8oz (2013g) complete and wheel only at 2lbs/12oz (1247g).

The brakes are Juicy 3s SLs with alloy backed pads and 160mm rotors front and rear.

The crank is a Truvativ FireX 1.1 SS crank, 175mm, with a 32T chainring matched to a steel 20T rear cog.

The rest is a mix of house brand stuff, bars, saddle, stem, seatpost, and a Cane Creek headset. I have been pretty happy with the seatpost and saddle. I am a big WTB saddle fan but the Specialized BG saddles have been winning me over. This one is color matched and is padded a bit more than the racy versions, not a bad idea at all on a SS hardtail The seatpost is pretty nice as a budget item, has not slipped, is easily tilt adjustable and weighs 72 grams more than a Thomson Elite of the same diameter and length. It comes with a riser bar at 660mm wide. I like riser bars on an SS for the upsweep bend, where as I can live with a flat bar on a geared bike.

The heart of any bike is the frame. You can upgrade all the parts eventually, but it is a good idea to get the best frame you can, both in fit and value. If it is lacking, all the fine parts hung on it will not help much. The M4 aluminum frame is made of nicely hydroformed main tubes and is good looking. The slightly arching top tube and bent seat tube give it a roadster look. The angles are a bit backed off from full aggressive with a 71* head tube angle and 73.2* seat tube angle. The chainstays are short at 17.3″. Very nice.

With a 2.2 Captain Control on the narrow Alex rims, I have decent tire clearance at the chainstay/BB area. If the rims were something really wide, like a Gordo, that would cut into the mud room back there, but in winter I usually run a narrower tire on any SS for that reason.

The coolest part of the frame in my opinion, is the tensioning system. The split shell EBB (Eccentric Bottom Bracket) is only used on a few production bikes that I know of: this Rockhopper, the bigger brother Stumpjumper SS, and the OS Bikes Blackbuck. There are big divisions in the world of SS riders as to what the best device is for tensioning a chain on an SS: EBB or sliding dropouts. If EBB is the way to go, this split shell seems to me to be the absolute best of the best, rather than relying on set screws or the outer face of the BB shell to hold the eccentric in place. So far, granted only a few hours of riding, the system has been flawless and adjusts very easily. I am not sure how many teeth it will compensate for during a cog change but I will try and find out. I did learn that the eccentric will not rotate 360* within the BB shell. Perhaps that is typical, I don’t know, but you can only tension it forward and up, if you get the idea. I wondered if this would give me a higher bottom bracket position than I prefer (low, typically), but the eccentric was designed to be at the correct final height when adjusted as this was taken into account in the design of the Rockhopper.

So, how is the sum of the parts? Really not bad at all. In fact, very good, notably:

The handling. I prefer the slightly slacker angles for the rutted and loose area I ride in. It takes a bit of shoulder to get a quick turn initiated, so if you really like a fast turning bike, maybe the steeper Stumpjumper is the deal for you. It pedals very well, feeling rock solid and snappy when prodded. There is some flex in the chainstays/seatstays that I can see when the bike is really loaded up at the crank, but it is nowhere near enough to get the tire to rub, etc. Fast fire roads and more open singletrack are a hoot and so far any distortion/flex in the frame has not shown to be a distraction.

Shorter chain stays are winning me over, especially on single speeds. I think the playfulness and ease of raising that front end off of the ground on trail is a big bonus. I never have had issues with climbing traction on 18″ chain stay equipped bikes, but the shorter versions are more fun overall. In fact, I am really liking the combo of longer top tubes, shorter stems, and shorter chain stays as I progress. But, that is me.

There is a quite a bit of flex in the front end, I expect mostly from the Tora. Putting the front wheel between my knees and twisting the handlebars shows a bunch of hula dancing going on and, if I am riding the bike and I lean it over while I remain vertical, then look down at the front wheel at the fork brace, I can see it move over and nearly touch the Tora, and that is at a few miles an hour. I plan on looking at this a bit more, maybe trying a different wheel, etc. I am getting pretty used to tapered headtubes, stiffer suspension forks and 15mm thru bolts and going backwards a bit is noticeable.

This XL frame, even with the 90mm stem, is still too big for me, but I only feel it when I am seated and reaching forward. Out of the saddle the extra room feels quite nice. If you are a tall guy, maybe 6′4″ and up, and you struggle to get an XL to really fit in the top tube, look at this one and see if it does not get you where you want to be. It is a full inch longer than many other XL frames.

Is it beating me up? Aluminum frames have a reputation for being harsh. Well, I can clearly state that it rides like a hard tail. Other than that, I cannot say that I am getting terribly abused by it compared to the steel Jabberwocky I have been riding. The Jabber is smoother overall, but the flip side is that the Rockhopper feels snappier underneath me and responds better when climbing. Everything is a trade-off and you cannot predict the ride of the bike by the material alone. The last steel bike I had before the Jabberwocky was a Surly Karate Monkey, generally considered to be a budget frame and not a smooth riding bike. It was pretty burly, likely as rough a ride as the Rockhopper, and was a lot heavier. In the end, everyone has their own perspective on what they can tolerate in a bikes ride/comfort level. Youth, fitness, terrain, etc…all make that a floating scale of reference. But, although aluminum keeps making inroads into being all things to all people, I don’t think that the Rockhopper is the frame to break the hold of steel as a more forgiving ride.

I miss my 180mm cranks. I do not believe that the FireX cranks are available in a longer length. Pity. For the long, grinding climbs we have here, the longer crank is very nice for taller riders. Specialized specs 180mm cranks on the Stumpjumper SS in frame sizes above a 15.5″, but the Stylo cranks on that model are made in the longer size.

I plan on getting more hours on the bike and then we will wrap up the testing on this starter single speed which so far has offered a high performance to cost ratio.

A phrase came to mind last night at the end of a 2.5 hour ride that may describe the Rockhopper SL Comp 29: Budget Hot Rod. Will it still feel that way after more saddle time? We shall see.
‘Budget Hot Rod’. I like that.