The brief

James wanted a no-holds-barred mountain bike which was light but also robust enough to smash the trails. When you want these two qualities in one machine, what frame do you start with? An Ibis.

The bike

The Ibis Mojo 3 was the perfect platform for a mid-travel trail bike because its geometry has a wonderful balance of modern angles and tube lengths without going to the extremes of a gravity-specific design. Their suspension design is also superb – there’s a reason why the DW Link is so legendary.

Apart from making this bike light enough for long climbs, we also made sure we kept a fun aspect to the build. After all, what’s the point of building the world’s fastest climbing bike if it’s terrifying to ride on the descents?

With this in mind, the bike needed proper suspension and tyres. Enter Formula and Schwalbe. Formula forks simply work so much better than their mainstream competitors, so how could we not spec them for this ultimate trail bike? The Schwalbe Magic Mary and Nobby Nic tyre combination is almost universally used by trail riders who want to ride fast but don’t like falling off on every corner.

As for the drive train, when we’re creating the ultimate MTB, we really only have one choice: Sram XX1 AXS. This drive train is light, super high-tech and not only works flawlessly but -- possibly more importantly -- keeps working flawlessly because there are no cables to degrade over time (and cable friction is the enemy of all modern gear systems).

We called on Magura for the braking department. The MT7 Pros have huge stopping power, a massive range of adjustability, and let’s face it, they just look really, really cool.

The wheels are a set of Curve carbon 27.5” rims laced onto DT 240 hubs; this combination gives us a level of strength, durability and performance that’s hard to beat.

We opted for a KS Lev Integra dropper post because it’s a model that has proven itself to be super-reliable, and, when it comes to dropper posts, that’s very important.

For handling, Syntace Vector carbon bars have such a nice shape and feel that they’re pretty hard to go past. When mated to SQ Lab 711 grips, your hands just sit perfectly.

The saddle is a Tune Komm Vor because James already owns a Komm Vor Plus and loves the shape and flex it offers, so why wouldn’t we use the MTB version for this dream machine? Finally, we carried the Tune theme through to the stem; the Tune Geiles is a no-brainer for any lightweight build...because it’s really light!

The result: an ultimate trail-shredding machine, and a very happy James.

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