We first showed you Felt's new Equilink bike back in June. We didn't have a chance to ride it then, but Interbike's Dirt Demo gave us an opporunity to take a Virtue for a spin. Felt had a sizable fleet of variously-specced Virtues available - the large-size one we took out was specced with an LX/XT mix and RockShox Revelation forks.
The Equilink design uses upper and lower linkages connected together by the eponymous strut. The idea is that thrust forces (from pedalling) try to rotate the lower linkage downwards, but that pulls on the Equilink strut which rotates the upper link slightly downwards as well to prevent squatting. It's a bit like a high/forward pivot single pivot design in that respect, but unlike the simpler design the effective pivot point swings downwards through the stroke to minimise pedal feedback at the extremes of travel.
You don't get the super-plush, "hovercraft" feel of some bikes, but it's notably effective under hard, out of the saddle efforts. You can pedal like a particularly uncoordinated gorilla on this bike and it won't start spooging about.
The taut feeling under power smacks of race bike, and the steepish angles, middling-wide tyres and light weight of the Virtue aim it firmly at the marathon/enduro race market. That's not to say that it wouldn't be a capable trail bike - one of the nice things about the Equilink system is that it's tolerant of being run a bit softer than recommended, so if you want it to be a bit more plush just let some air out of the shock - it won't start behaving spectacularly oddly.
It's certainly a worthy entrant in the "fast long-travel" market - we'll have a proper test soon.
