After a bit of time lost in the wilderness, Morewood Bikes is back. The first new model they will be releasing is the Zula LT. The original Zula was a trail capable marathon racer which many riders ended up riding as a local trail bike. The new Zula LT keeps the 27.5″ wheel platform but comes with more travel and a greater focus on trail riding. We chatted to Sam Bull at Crank Chaos about the prototype Zula LT.
The Zula LT’s single pivot suspension is good for 130 mm of rear wheel travel up from 100 mm on the previous Zula. Morewood have designed the Zula LT with a more progressive suspension curve to better suit modern trail riding. The Zula LT is designed to be used with a 140 mm fork.
The Zula LT will use a Cane Creek C-Quent shock. Sam is currently using Cane Creek’s highly adjustable DB-Inline shock to set the bike’s tune on the prototype. Once Morewood have that dialled, they will send the tune to Cane Creek to setup the C-Quent for the bike.
On the prototype frame, Morewood have reduced the head angle of the Zula LT to 68 degrees. While many modern bikes are going slacker, Morewood want the Zula LT to remain playful and poppy with good trail feedback. Morewood see it as a versatile local trail bike with which you can still go out and do loads of miles. The top tube is also a bit lower down while the spacing in the rear triangle is a bit wider to fit a burlier tyre.
A few more geometry numbers: the effective top tube length is 620 mm; the seat tube angle is 71.23 degrees; chainstay length is 430 mm; and reach on a large frame is 445 with a wheelbase of 1154 mm.
The Zula LT keeps things simple: there is no boost spacing and the bottom bracket is threaded. There is internal routing in the seatpost for a dropper post but the remainder of the cable runs externally on the underside of the down tube and chainstays. The Zula LT is a 1x exclusive affair with no mount for a front derailleur.
Pricing has yet to be confirmed but Morewood have indicated that they are hoping to make the Zula LT competitively priced.
68° head angle with a 71° seat tube angle on a 130mm frame.
Seeing as they are in the testing phase, they should rather drop the head angle and steepen the seat angle.
We'll probably see a production version of this bike somewhere in 2018.