Santa Cruz Nomad Raffle Ticket

The Santa Cruz Nomad C S in detail

Big mountain riding is a nomadic existence. Meeting friends in farflung car parks. Pinpointing trails you're not sure are even rideable. Sending the ones you know are. Shiny new bling gets battered, shattered and bruised. That’s life. That’s how it should be. That's why the Nomad exists.

Probably the most abused bike in our line up, every Nomad has a story to tell. But each Nomad we've made keeps coming back for more. It's not Stockholm Syndrome, it's called sealed bearings in all pivots, a lower link grease port, shuttle guards and free bearing replacements. Why scrap a frame when a simple bearing service can make one last a lifetime? That's our stance on sustainability at least, and it's why our carbon fiber doesn’t just mean lighter, it means tough as hell backed up by a lifetime warranty and crash replacement support.

There’s no time for puzzling when on a road trip either. That's why we chose 27.5 wheels as the go-to for the widest variety of riding styles and rider sizes. When peeling your bike out of the van at a new spot your only question should be “Is this a full face or a half lid kinda ride?” The 64-degree head angle and 77-degree seat angle puts you in the sweet spot when winching up to the top of a big drop in. Meanwhile proportional chainstay lengths mean handling is never compromised, regardless of frame size.

And when we say big travel, we're not talking about your Transit's odometer. We're talking 170mm of 38mm diameter fork and 170mm of VPP rear suspension compatible with both coil and air shocks. The details are completed by a neat mud flap to protect the rear shock, plus tidy cable routing within the frame and swingarm, and rubberized DT protectors to shrug off strikes. So van-lifers unite. The Nomad is the kind of bike you need never worry about all summer long. Sorry we can't say the same for the locked public washrooms and parking tickets.

Lifetime Frame Warranty

Santa Cruz Bicycles will repair or replace at its option any frame made by Santa Cruz Bicycles it determines to be defective in materials or workmanship. The warranty will be in effect for the lifetime of the frame and is available only to the original owner. Notwithstanding the foregoing, frames purchased prior to May 1, 2015 are covered under the previously-existing warranty for five years from the original date of purchase. In the event of a non-warranty situation, Santa Cruz Bicycles will make replacement parts available to the original owner at a reduced charge for the applicable warranty period described above.*

The New Santa Cruz Nomad - More Travel Than a White Van // ft. Sam Dale

Technology

Santa Cruz carbon frame
We don’t just use carbon to build bikes because it looks cool and everyone is doing it. We pioneer advanced materials and production methods to build the most durable and high-performance bicycles because it’s the way to ensure that riders can just enjoy riding their bike. Our experience with carbon production allows us to build bikes that are extremely reliable.

We design, test and prototype our carbon technology in Santa Cruz, CA. Our carbon lab gives us the capacity to research carbon layup optimization that we can apply to our production frames, and research and test new manufacturing processes and techniques. Our production bikes are strong as hell, and we feel we have a good handle on our toolbox of materials, but having the carbon facility in the same building as the engineers allows us to push our understanding forward, and take advantage of emerging materials technology.

Our frames are manufactured in our exclusive factory (Skybox). We founded this manufacturing facility ourselves because we wanted to be able to control how our designs were produced, to ensure quality control, and to make sure the advancements we design remain proprietary to us (we’re not being selfish, it just sucks when someone peers over your shoulder to get the answer you’ve worked hard to figure out). What’s more, if something needs improving, we have the capacity and capability to change it, before it gets into your hands.

We’ve been using VPP® suspension since 2001. Rather than contracting a series of kooky inventors to try to build ever more complex and wack-a-doo suspension designs or proprietary shocks so the Marketing department has something to talk about, we’ve stuck with what is an extremely versatile and high-performance mechanism. VPP® is designed to work with the best available technology from suspension manufacturers that will be supported long-term. It doesn’t require novelty shocks and hardware that offers dubious long-term support.

VPP® can be optimized to strike the right balance between pedaling efficiency and all-out bump chomping prowess. The suspension on our cross-country bikes is tuned so that every ounce of energy a rider can generate is transferred to the forward trajectory. And our bigger-hitting, longer travel bikes are exceptionally capable of isolating impacts from the rider so they can ride harder with more confidence in the very worst terrain. Short counter-rotating links connect the front and rear triangles to create an extremely robust chassis. Simple linkages contain the pivot points to prevent slop from developing over time; grease ports make it serviceable; pivots run on large diameter axles and bearings, which we offer free lifetime replacement for.

Eagle-eyed riders may have noticed that we have two styles of the VPP® design now. The lower-link mounted shock configuration gives a very progressive rate with excellent small bump, mid-stroke support and great bottom out resistance. Ideal for bikes that are designed for challenging terrain. The upper-link mounted shock style that we use on other trail bikes gives more pedal platform, ideal for bikes that require maximum support and good bottom-out resistance to make them snappy handling, pedal-efficient flyers. Having control over a versatile design like this allows us to tune the suspension to the characteristics we most want for each application.