This Bulls 29er Hardtail Rejects Convention for a Surprising Ride
The first time I spied a Bulls was at the ABSA Cape Epic mountain bike race in South Africa. It was being piloted by one of the race leaders from (surprise, surprise) Team Bulls, who took the bike Top Gun-style up a steep mountain pass to the sky, leaving a contrail of dust in its wake. From that fleeting glance, two things became clear: It must be very light and very fast. Now that the German-made bikes are available in the US direct-to-consumer via BullsbikesUSA.com, I’ve gotten the opportunity to get behind the handlebars of one myself—the Bulls Black Adder 29er ($3,300)—and can confirm that the bike is pretty light (the second-tier, 21.8-pound model I tested is 2.2 pounds heavier than the flagship) and very fast.
I can also confirm something that surprised me about this rigid XC rocket: It’s pretty comfortable. Comfort is sometimes considered a bad word in the XC racing world, but when you’re going to be clocking upwards of 115km a day on the thing, you’d like to finish with all the freshness you can muster. That quick-yet-comfortable combination is courtesy of the monocoque carbon frame and what Bulls calls its Endurance Lite Concept, which means they make the bike stiff where it needs to be (like through the bottom bracket for power transfer), but flatten the seat stays for better compliance and forgiveness over rough terrain.
The second-tier model Adder I tested came fully dressed in Shimano XT, which provided reliable shifting and crisp braking. My rocky East Coast testing ground is not hardtail country, but the bike was still remarkably fun to ride. Bulls smartly paired this stiff, light Adder frame with the stiff, precise 100mm Rock Shox RS 1 Solo Air fork; I felt like I had laser focus and pinpoint precision with the ability to flick the bike at will through the many scattered rocks and chaotic roots I encountered on my test rides.
Was it as fast and fun as a full-suspension bike would be? No. But it was surprisingly able and definitely fun. One upgrade I would suggest for future Adders is outfitting the bike with both front and rear thru-axles. Currently, the bike has a front thru-axle with the RS 1 fork, but has a dropout and skewer in the rear, which feels slightly unbalanced. Even so, I found myself looking forward to riding the Adder to see what it could do on rides where I felt it was out of its element, because it kept pleasantly surprising me.
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I was not surprised at how well the Adder performed on inclines. Being of Alpine pedigree, this bike is all about bagging KOMs/QOMs. But the way it was engineered to devour that vertical terrain is surprising: While manufacturers of similar XC bikes are tightening up the rear triangle and shortening the chainstays to 17, even 16 inches, Bulls went in the opposite direction, lengthening them to just shy of 18 inches on the small (my tester) and medium bikes, and slightly more on the size large. The longer stays may steal a bit of snap on the pavement, but on technical terrain they work like a dream. My rear wheel stayed glued to the ground on even the rootiest, stupid-steepest trail I could find. It also never kicked up, as the rear wheels of tighter-stayed bikes sometimes do, when I got out of the saddle to charge over the crest of a climb. If I lived somewhere less East Coast-rocky with long, demanding climbs, the Adder would be my bike of choice.
That said, I did have to change some specs to make the Adder more able on these East Coast trails—and frankly, they were spec changes I believe Bulls would be wise to adopt. I think a modern 29er hardtail should come built as close to tubeless-ready as possible. In the field, riders like myself routinely run 20 psi or less for superior traction and performance. The bike came with Schwalbe Rocket Rons—they’re good tires, but they’re not explicitly labeled as tubeless, and even my mechanic thought they couldn’t be made tubeless. It took some digging on the tire manufacturers website to decipher the nomenclature printed on the tire. In addition, the WTB XC25 Lite rims did not come taped (Bulls told me they should have, so perhaps this was a quality control oversight) and the bike didn’t ship with tubeless valves. To go tubeless on the Adder, you’d have to 1) find out on your own, as I did later, that the Rocket Rons can actually work sans tubes but just aren’t clearly labeled as such, 2) tape the rims, and 3) source valves. As a result, I rode the Adder for my initial test rides with tubes, pumped to pinch-flat resistant pressure, which made the bike bounce harshly on successive bumps. This was resolved after I made the bike tubeless, and dropped the psi. But I think Bulls should make it clearer to the average rider that the bike can be tubeless, and ship it with taped rims and valves.
Which brings me to the topic of rear wheels. The press-on axle end cap unpressed, which allowed the freehub body to essentially fall off on my test model after removing the rear wheel twice to change tires. The problem wasn’t apparent to me until I could barely wrestle the wheel back on, and then couldn’t shift or keep the chain on the rings once I brute-forced it back into place. My mechanic noticed, reinstalled the freehub, and pressed the axle cap back on. Problem solved—but something to keep an eye on if you routinely remove the rear wheel and toss it in the trunk.
Finally, I’d love to see future Adders spec’d with 1x drivetrains, which would even further lighten the overall weight and improve climbing prowess without compromising race performance. For 2015 (this bike’s model year), Shimano XT 1x wasn’t an option, but Bulls could certainly investigate that route going forward with, I think, great success.
Overall, the Adder has the single-minded focus of conquering climbs—but with a few modifications, it becomes a fully competent machine for going fast and having fun wherever your cross-country riding takes you.
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