Kinesis Crosslight FiveT

Kinesis have this bike down as a true all-rounder, with the FiveT being touted as a (deep breath) cyclo-cross/tourer/winter trainer/commuter. So is it a true do-everything bike or a jack of all trades and a master of none?

The Kinesis Crosslight family has a rich lineage and a strong following in the cyclo-cross world, insanely popular underneath the journeyman 'cross racer and definitely not shy of the podium either, such heritage shows through in the FiveT frame. Made of "Kinesis Double Butted 7005" tubing to a "race winning Crosslight geometry" it troubles the scales at 21.9lbs without pedals, so it's no lightweight race whippet, neither is it a chunky old barge. The quality of the frame is excellent, the welds are clean and tidy, and we think the sharp black with blue graphics make the bike look classy and a considerably more expensive machine, it's also available in a Tech Blue/Off White "colourway" which we might like even more 'cos it looks faster, and it's generously sprinkled with a whole pit-bucket of details harvested from those years of cyclo-cross experience.

Showing off it's hour of hell leanings most obviously the slightly sloping 'Ergo' top-tube is dramatically flattened on the underside towards the rear in an attempt to add comfort to shouldering when running the barriers. It's a sound idea in theory, but in practise as you never carry a bike completely flat on your shoulder, especially in the rough and stumble of a ‘cross race, the flat section never rests square and the sharp corner where the flat bit transitions to the curve of the tube digs into your boney flesh instead. Nice try though.

Other features are the ‘aStay’; the right-hand chain-stay that is heavily ovalised for mud and crank clearance, a gusset at the down-tube to head-tube junction for extra strength when crashing over roots and potholes or chunky touring. The rear brake and gear cable run along the top-tube to keep them out the mud and on the right-hand side away from body-parts when shouldering, yet the cable for the front-mech is routed under the bottom-bracket to avoid any seat-tube mounted roller mud-magnet complications. The front-mech cable stop on the down-tube has a somewhat superfluous cable-adjuster, we'd rather have one for tweaking the rear-mech on the move, but it's a nice feature shared on the rear-brake hanger, so points for gritty mid-ride pad-wear slack adjustment there. Although there isn't a front-brake cable adjuster so we'll have to take that point right back off again.

The frame comes blessed with twin bottle-cage mounts to upset the race purists but please the multi-taskers, a replaceable rear-mech hanger and even an old-school chain-hanger pip on the right-hand seat-stay, splendid. There's a full complement of rack and mudguard mounts on the frame although nothing at all on the carbon forks, which is a schoolboy error. Although if you downgrade to the alloy fork and save yourself £70 in the process you'll get mudguard eyelets. Sadly we had to file away a non-essential bit of our rack to get it to fit past the chunky alloy tubes of the seatstays, that might be worth checking.

Hanging off the front of the frame are some of Kinesis's own Crosslight Pro forks, carbon legged with alloy dropouts and steerer it's nice to see a carbon fork at this price. Initially we got some of the dreaded and infamous carbon-fork-cantilever-brake judder but after a bit of tinkering and raising the straddle yolk it went away completely. There isn't a hole in the crown should you want to fit a cable-stop hanger there if the problem refuses to go away though. The fork compliments the bike well, good mud-clearance, not too light, neither too heavy, taking the buzz off the trail and fuzzy tarmac and feeling confident rather than noodly and fragile.

Component wise the wheels are an obvious cost-cutter. Although they’re laced to well respected Mavic CXP22 24/28 hole rims and the wheels as a whole have stayed tight and wobble free the hubs, down in the catalogue as Formula, are unfortunately not up to par. Calling the bearings 'sealed' is optimistic at best, we managed to reduce them to a rusty pulp over two days damp riding, admittedly both days were long, wet, muddy, puddly and a trial for any component but the hubs were, in short, completely fuggered. Thankfully the old-fashioned cup-n-cone and bearings construction means that they are mendable and if you’re prepared to give them regular love and attention they’ll see you fine. Some new bearings and a fistful of decent grease had the wheels spinning if not as good as new then passable and good enough to keep us going while saving up for something with a bit more longevity.

The Kenda CX 700x35C tyres have a cartoon-like aggressive tread which makes them treacle-draggy on road, when climbing out the saddle you can hear the knobbles rip chunks out the tarmac. If you wanted to do more road based or genteel towpath action on this bike then you'd do well to swap these for something slicker and swifter and if you were racing you'd possibly look to strap on something lighter and less knarly. But for general pratting about off-road they’re a honeyed barrel of giggles as their fat carcass and chunky square edged tread design means you can make the bike do really bad things, really fun bad things, and rag it about pretty much like a mountainbike.

Tektro CR-520 brakes work well, aping the sticky-out design of the 'cross popular Froggleg brakes that offer gappy clearance between pad and rim should things get claggy and yet plenty stopping power, for a cantilever. The V-brake style fixing hardware of the pads make them easy to adjust too compared to other CX brakes, although the stock pads aren’t the best and wear alarmingly quickly, we replaced them with some metal-shoed V-pads for a better feel and easy pad replacement.

The FiveT opts for Tiagra 9 speed mechs and shifters, but goes off piste for the Truvativ Elita 48/34 chainset with external bottom-bracket, and it all works well and only slightly more clunky than the stuff in the shiny shiny cabinet, but like most low-rent external bottom-brackets this one is ageing prematurely, it's what they do. To fit in with it's "bit of everything" character the gearing is a bit of an unhappy medium, if you wanted to race then the gearing is too easy, and the gap between the 48 and 34 chainrings is too big so changing between the two leads to frantic rear gear changes to keep the same cadence, although the 34/25 means you can ride up some stuff others with hardman ratios might be off and scrabbling up. If you fancy a bit of pannier hauling then the easy end of the 12-25 cassette is too harsh for anything more than Touring Lite with, so you'll want to change that cassette for something larger if you're regularly loaded, or swap the chainset for a triple, luckily the frame is designed with room for an third chainring in mind, although you'll need new front changing gubbins as the STI is only a double clanger. But for swashbuckle commuting and jousting in-the-hills fun the gearing is fine, we still don't like that chainring jump though, even if it means we can grind up more hills. The KMC chain comes with a tools-free split-link making removal and cleaning easy, handy for a bike that could and should spend most of it’s life parts-deep in mud. Small round of applause for that tiny detail that often gets overlooked.

The KMC oversize handlebars are nice and wide at 42cm c-to-c with the tops extending almost the whole width before bending sharply forwards which we found great for on-the-tops control and it leaves plenty of room for cissy-levers, if that's your thing, and we even liked the curve of the not-quite-shallow drops. That Selle San Marco 'Ponza Power Lux' saddle isn't going to win any prizes but it's comfortable enough and even after several big rides didn't have our arse pining for a something else which is a high praise. Unfortunately it sits on top of The Ugliest Seatpost In The World. It does it's job perfectly well, contributes to a unfair percentage of the bike's total weight and we were thankful we couldn't see it whilst pedalling, it shouldn't matter but, well, you know.

Once on board there really is not much to report, and we mean that in a good way. Handling is neutral, with maybe a slight leaning towards the twitchy end of the steer-o-meter, far from being damning this is just what you want when you can't hold on much for the last 7 minutes of a 'cross race, are shooting for that gap between the buses or carving round a downhill bend with all your worldly possessions in panniers. The ride is stable and reassuring rather than nippy, on road it’s not going to win any prizes, especially as those tyres really bog it down, slicker treads would really up the nip nicely, but off-road it’s beautifully stable and you can punt it down stuff with gay abandon in the knowledge that it’s not going to want to buck you off at the first sniff of bump.

Out the box we found the position on the long and low side, which was fine on road but made any dirt steeps a wee bit compromised and we guess that quite a few people would want to play with stem flippage and swappage to get their position right, even just moving the STI units up on the bars would make a great difference.

The frame feels stiff enough, punching on the pedals produces very little sponge in the rear, although being a little on the chunky side it sometimes took two kicks to get the bike to actually surge. Certainly tight enough for an hours cut'n'thrust round a muddy field but certainly not harsh for longer jaunts and when loaded up there's no frame flex or shimmy. All good. Even after consecutive big days in the saddle on the FiveT we didn't feel in any way battered, we suspect that it's stability and good trail manners went a long way towards this.

This bike is a bit like a good friend that doesn't know what to do with their life so we'd buy it a pint, take it to the side and have a good chat, because we like them. If you want a bike that wants to do the one specific thing well, be that 'cross racing, commuting, touring or training then there's something that will need to be changed, tyres, gearing or forks, but if you understandably can only afford just the one bike instead of three then it is more than good enough to do all of the above without the compromises being actual hindrances. A commuter during the week that can morph into a cheeky racer or bridleway warrior for the weekend, easy. Winter road hack that can handle a bit of rough-stuff, no problem. Ride to work bike that can handle a little camping adventure come Friday evening, go for it.

Verdict

A great value and wholly capable do-it-all bike that would need a few tweaks should you want it to shine at any specific discipline, and better wheels. It's also available as a frameset so that might be a good option as a starting point if you want it to perform in one particular function more than another.