“The best bike we’ve ever made”, say independent British mountain bike brand, Airdrop. Airdrop came into being 3 years ago when founder Ed Brazier designed and built the first Edit in his garage in Sheffield, UK. They have come a long way since then, moving out of Ed’s garage into a dedicated workshop in Sheffield, releasing a dirt jump bike, then a hardtail, a V2 Edit, and now with fully revised geometry – the Edit V3.
Airdrop Edit V3, alloy enduro mountain bike
The Edit V3 is an alloy 27.5″ full-suspension mountain bike with 155 mm of rear wheel travel, building on lessons learned in the bike’s first two iterations. The Horst-link four bar suspension design is progressive enough that it can be run with a coil shock, plus it offers plenty of mud clearance out back.
On the geometry front, Airdrop haven’t gone for any attention-seeking extreme values. Instead, they say the Edit V3 is “longish but not too long, lowish but not too low, and slackish but not too slack.” Available in four sizes – Small through to a ‘genuine’ XL, serving riders from 155 cm to 198 cm. The geometry is consistent throughout the sizes; 64.5° head angle, 74.5° (actual) seat angle, -12mm of bottom bracket drop, and a fork offset of 37mm. Naturally, the reach is short (425mm) on the small, increasing in 25mm increments up the sizes to 500mm on the XL.
Airdrop have stuck with 6061-T6 alloy, but almost all the tubes are new with custom butting, revised shaping, and smooth welds in key areas. All machined areas have been re-designed to be simpler and cleaner with fewer mud-traps. An all-new CNC chainstay yoke eliminates the old loamshelf and improves mud clearance in a big way. A 2.6″ tire will fit now, no problem.
With a relatively steep effective seat angle of 77.8°, we’re guessing this bike is a pretty efficient pedaller. The seat tube itself is straight allowing you to mount a 170 mm dropper onto any size frame. The V3 gets a redesigned CNC rocker driving a trunnion mounted metric shock.
The rear end is updated in line with new industry standards with Boost 148mm spacing and a custom Airdrop CNC through-axle. The rear also features a removable mech hanger, 180mm brake post mounts, and replaceable dropouts.
Airdrop wanted to make an ‘easy to live with bike’, so have gone with full external cable routing with their own custom Airdrop CNC cable guides keeping things neat and tidy inside the front triangle.
Builds, pricing & availability
Airdrop offer stock and custom builds of the frame and full bike with both coil and air shock options. Starting at £999 (~$1320) will buy you the frame only. Up to £3699 (~$4890) will buy you, quite literally, the works. The Edit V3 WORKS is Airdrop’s highest spec option featuring a Rockshox Super Deluxe Coil RC3, a Rockshox Lyrik RC2 up front with 160mm of fork travel, a Hope Pro 4 wheelset & a SRAM X01 Eagle 1×12 drivetrain. More spec than you can shake a stick at.
Order direct from Airdrop to get the latest Edit, and they’ll assemble your bike to order in house at their workshop in Sheffield.
