Bike Check: Aidan's Felt Virtue 50

Bike Check: Aidan’s Felt Virtue 50

Aidan’s been ripping around on Felt’s trail bike, the Virtue 50 all year in Victoria, Vancouver, and a couple other spots around BC. We borrowed it from him after last weekend’s ProCity Enduro at Hartland to take a look at what he’s running

Felt’s designed the Virtue as their ‘trail bike’ line, which means 130mm travel out back, a 140mm fork and a really fun bike to ride. While everyone is just so excited to offer a carbon super bike, Felt’s kept your options open by offering a full aluminum frame option for the Virtue. For a bike that’s all about fun, this makes sense. A little bit of extra weight, and super durable. With an all aluminum frame, the Virtue 50 isn’t as svelte as say, a carbon hardtail xc race bike. Not that you’d expect it to be, that’s not at all what you would look to a bike like the Virtue for. But given that Victoria is short on shuttle accessed runs, and even the ‘down’ trails here tend to have their share of ups, we’ve been happy to find it does ride surprisingly well uphill, handling better on the techy up’s than a bike that’s this much fun on the downhills should. Felt would like to say this comes down to their Equilink suspension, designed to separate drivetrain forces from suspension action via that extra little bar you see behind the seat tube on the Virtue. And yeah, it’s really fun to ride downhill. Aidan was kind enough to let me take it on a trip up to the South Chilcotin mountains this August, where it handled the extended downhill’s like a champ. Even though the frames a bit small for me, it still felt like I was sitting in the frame, not tottering around above it, giving the sensation that you can take corners as fast as you’d like and still stay in control.

As is usual with Felt, the Virtue 50 shipped with an admirable selection of parts for it’s price point. Shimano Deore drivetrain for the most part, but bumped up to SLX on the brakes and an XT Shadow Plus clutch derailleur once again demonstrate Felt’s knack for putting in money where it counts while still keeping costs down. The Virtue 50 gets 130mm of rear wheel travel courtesy of RockShox’s Monarch RT, including climb, trail, and descend settings, appreciated over prolonged climbs. Up front, a RockShox Sektor silver gives 140mm of travel, including a remote lock-out switch. Not a standard feature on a fork with that much travel, but again, nice when you’re riding out to the trail or on long climbs. Felt also shipped the Virtue 50 with a KS eTen dropper post, featuring an odd, non-remote lever function. I’m sure this saved money, and keeps one more lever off the bars, but taking your hands off the bars to drop the seat isn’t always what you want to be doing while riding. That being said, remember a few years ago when you had to stop and get off your bike to change your seat height?

In addition to Felt’s stock build, Aidan’s made some changes to the Virtue 50 to make it his own. Most obvious being the incredible looking Ardent gumwall tyres from Maxxis. He’s also dropped the front derailleur in favor of a 1×10 setup, going with a 30 tooth Sequence chain ring from Whistler based company Chromag. Chromag was one of the first companies to license the narrow-wide idea from SRAM last December, so the Sequence rings use the same tooth profile as any of SRAM’s rings. He’s also thrown on a Chromag Fubar Accute bar, a bit wider than the stock bar from Felt, and put on the always reliable ESI grips.