Zoceli has been teasing their handmade steel 29er Naosm full-suspension enduro bike for over a year now. But after a number of iterations and prototypes, Czech freerider, designer & frame builder Martin Saida seems set to offer his unique short-link, virtual pivot enduro bike to a broader audience.
Zoceli Naosm steel 160mm full-suspension 29er enduro bike
We’ve gotten more used to seeing new full-suspension steel bikes in recent years, but designer/fabricator Saida and his Zoceli bikes certainly didn’t take the easy single-pivot way out. Instead, they go the more complex, tunable route of a short-link four-bar. The result is better rear axle path and shock leverage control, thanks to its effectively variable main pivot point – call it a virtual pivot, but not VPP for any patent attorneys listening.
That allowed Zoceli to focus on building super stiff front & rear triangles, connected together with machined aluminum linkages rotating on durable bearings. So essentially since October of 2019, Saida has been ironing out the kinks in prototype-after-prototype… refining linkages, shock curves, welding tolerances with that thin-wall steel tubing, and of course how best to build in a bottle opener.
A quick side note on naming… Saida has opted for simplicity, if a bit of tongue-in-cheek. In Czech “z oceli” essentially means made of steel, as all of the bikes are. And this bike’s name “na osm” means here for eight referring to Saida’s comment that eMTBers say they’ll go for ride for a beer, so why not just make it 8 instead of just one. Drink responsibly of course, in the pub that’s at the bottom of every bikepark lift after the last run, or in the impromptu #vanlife campground that pops up in lift-served parking lot every weekend.
That kid’s bike you’ll find down the page, “na nanuk” means for an ice cream pop. And lastly, that next gen freeride prototype, “do bordelu” would lead you into a mess (literally: to a brothel) after you jump it off a cliff.
Tech details
Other custom built steel MTB options…
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