Whistler Mountain Bike

Reviews

Tomac Primer 220

Our thoughts on the DH rig from Tomac.

Author: Chris Armstrong | Created: 2008-07-25 23:21:40 | Location: Whistler, BC

Tomac has a long and storied name in the mountain bike world.
6 time World Champion, 4 time NORBA World Champion, 1 European World Title, 10 time National Champ, 1 BMX national title and even an Amateur National Motocross Championship.

He has been called the best mountain biker of all time, and I would have to agree with that. Lots of guys have had great talent, but not many of them won XC & DH races, consistently for 15 years.

To say the least, he knows his way around a bike.

WMB Tomac Primer rear end. XT derailleur, Gravity 170mm cranks, LT1 chain guide, 50/50 Crank Brothers pedals & Fox DHX 5 rear shock.

In 1998 he and his friend Doug Bradbury started Tomac bikes, and without getting into too many details it has gone through some changes in the last 10 years. Two years ago Joel Smith purchased Tomac Bikes from American Bicycle Group and sat down with Johnny T and Doug Bradbury and started working on some new bike designs.

One of those was the Primer 220. It was one of the first bikes to be sketched out, but took a couple years to finalized as it went through several versions and concepts before the production version was ready.

WMB Tomac Primer front end. Manitou Travis 203mm forks with intergrated stem. Hayes stroker carbon brakes with 8" rotors.

The Primer is a high single pivot with linkage design that features a 9.5”x3: DHX 5 coil shock. On my medium frame the chain stay length is 17.36” (441mm), with a BB height of 14.84” (377mm). Effective top tube length 23.62” (600mm) and the full wheelbase is 46.10” (1171mm). The head angle is a somewhat slack 64 degrees with a 62-degree seat tube. The Primer comes with a custom hex axel and also has pinch bolts to keep your rear wheel held fast in place..

As it stands my Primer weights in at 47.5lbs, but I have heard of full on race versions that were on a serious diet bringing their weight down to the low forties / high thirties. But my goal wasn’t to build a bike that was as light as possible; it was to build a bike that would survive riding the Whistler Bike Park 40 times a year with minimal maintenance. As the Primer is available as a frame set only, so some care went into choosing components that would be able to take the repeated abuse that Freight Train hands out.
Manitou Travis 203mm forks with direct mount stem. Gravity cranks, bars, stem & seatpost, Hayes carbon Strokers (8” disks), Sun Ringlé ADD wheels, Kenda tires & tubes, Shimano XT derailleur, Shimano Saint shifter, Shimano chain & cogs, and to top it off a WTB Power V saddle.

WMB Tomac Primer controls. WTB 4 Front grips, Hayes Stroker Carbon, Gravity bars, FSA Orbit Xtreme 1.5" to 1.125" headset.

So how does it ride?
Definitely worthy of its namesake. The combination of angles and the simplicity of the single pivot design have piqued my interest. It seems that nothing was too much for the bike, it begs me to go faster and seems to only get more stable as the speed increases.
On more than one occasion I have been scared silly by the speed that I was able to through sections on it.

Now I did notice a couple things that are worth considering. Due to the slack head angle it does become a bit hard to turn in tight trees, but this is a full on race frame that is meant to be ridden hard and fast on downhill courses. Fitting in a shock through the seat mast can be a bit challenging due to the tight confinements, but if you have some patience and take your time it won’t be overly hard, choices for rear shocks are minimal due to specific hardware requirements.

Opinion: This is the fastest, most stable DH bike I have ever ridden. Go check one out.
Plus: Stable, fast, simple to work on.
Minus: Shock choices are limited.

MSRP:$3,500 to $6,500 depending on how you build itm.
Website: http://www.tomac.com

Rating: 4.5/5

(Disclaimer: Tomac is the bike sponsor for the Whistlermountainbike.com race team, all the parts used in this bike build up are also from team sponsors.)