7P8A8842 deniz merdano scor 2030 hailey elise
Long Term Review

Scor 2030 Review

Photos Hailey Elise for cover, Cooper Quinn and Deniz Merdano
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It's not the size that matters

I've learned damned well to keep my mouth shut about the capabilities of bikes I have not yet ridden on home turf. I have been pleasantly surprised many times and the categories are blurred, smudged, partied-out lines. The Scor 2030 came across our radar a while ago at Crankworx Whistler. Cam and I were invited to scare ourselves on a short travel bike in the Whistler Bike Park. You can peek at the first look HERE. Fast forward to late fall / early winter and the baby blue (Ice Baby), GX build, size Medium, 2030 arrived in a box from the Swiss Company.

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Short travel bike, long pants rider.. Photo : Cooper Quinn

The Build

The center of the build is a 120mm rear travel, dual-link driven and surprisingly stout, Enduro Category 4 certified frame. 120mm of sporty suspension is controlled by a 47.5mm stroke 185mm trunnion RockShox Deluxe Ultimate RCT shock. The shock goes through a tunnel in the seat tube. This means on a size medium you can insert 230mms of post into the frame. In comparison the Canyon Spectral I recently reviewed has 265mm and my Orbea Rallon 350mm insertion. The medium 2030 comes with a 160mm BikeYoke Devine. Size S 125mm | M 160mm | M/L, L, XL 185mm travel Bike Yoke Devines respectively. A very unfortunate side effect of the rather aesthetically pleasing shock through seatpost design, is the limitation of the droppers one can use. I found the 160mm drop to be insufficient for how low slung the top tube is. We'll talk about this further down the line.

scor 2030 geometry (2024)

Some number to put the rest of the review into perspective

scor 2030 shock compatibility

Before you swap out the shock, check this list and all the clearances first.

I really like the Scor's numbers. The 457mm reach on the medium with a 610mm stack works really well for this heavenly body. The head tube angle can be adjusted +-1° between 64.5-65.5 and was left in the slacker of the two for the entire test period. My next article may very well be; All bikes should come with 64° HA and Tim Coleman would surely disagree, but for the riding I do, 64 this the magical number. The rear center is 429mm. This number is the same for sizes S, M and M/L while the L is 432mm and XL is 434mm. These short rear centres keep the 2030 feeling snappy.

The cockpit and the controls are familiar in all aspects. A Carbon 800mm bar with 20mm rise and a 31.8 clamp is held in place securely by a 35mm Burgtec Enduro MK3 stem. The Scor's in house bar is understated and has a nice glossy finish. I cut mine down to 780mm, as I do on all my rides but I had a hard time tightening the brake levers onto them. I never tighten levers down completely. Being a Shimano brake lover on my personal bikes, I have come to expect damage to my lever blades during a crash. If I don't choke the bars down with the brake levers, crashing forces will allow them to spin before the lever blade breaks. The Code RSCs with a matchmaker to accommodate the bikeyoke dropper lever required a lot more than 5Nm of force to stop them from rotating on the bars. This is partly due to the surface finish of the bars and partly due to the cable routing for the dropper creating extra friction and requiring more force at the lever end to actuate. Every time I pushed the dropper lever, they would rotate around the bar.

PXL_20240227_005418509 deniz merdano scor 2030 dropperrouting

The double bend of the dropper housing creates unwanted friction

There is tube in tube routing throughout the frame for cable and hoses. As the dropper cable enters from the right side of the headtube, it travels down the frame and exits at a sharp angle from the right side of the shock tunnel. It then crosses to the left side underneath the shock externally and follows the left side of the tunnel at a sharp angle to proceed upwards toward the bottom of the dropper. I am confused by this decision to route the housing this way as the corrosion inside the steel housing makes the quality of dropper actuation degrade quickly. I would much prefer a routing where the housing stays on the same side of the frame it enters from at the headtube. It feels like it would simplify the road it takes and reduce friction. There is the rear shock to navigate around, but there seems to be enough room to do so. I don't understand this decision, but I am also not an engineer unlike all the other people on the internet. I am mostly frustrated with the dropper on the Scor because I wanted a bigger drop from it. The frustrations compound when you are dealing with a piece of equipment you use often on a ride. I started using it less on the Scor.

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Never a bad day to ride a bike. Especially one that's Ice blue

The Rockshox Pike Ultimate at 140mm travel, Charger 3 damper and Buttercups is a wicked piece of equipment. It works and it works well.

For my test period, I settled on;

  • 80psi
  • HSC 0
  • LSC 0
  • Rebound 10 clicks out

Deluxe Ultimate RCT

  • 165psi for 30% sag
  • LSC -1
  • Rebound 4 clicks out

The Scor 2030 can use a longer shock if you'd like it to. The 5mm increase in shock stroke gives you 10mm more in rear wheel travel for 130mm in total. I did not have a trunnion shock with a 52.5mm stroke in hand to test the bike in longer travel mode but I also never felt much need for more.

7P8A9130 deniz merdano scor 2030 hailey elise

It is extremely easy to lift the Scor 2030 off the ground. Photo: Hailey Elise

80% of the ride

If you measure your rides in time around here, there is a significant discrepancy between the time spent climbing and descending. The climbs are civilized enough on the North Shore but start venturing into the Sea 2 Sky corridor and ascents get steeper quickly. Even the common IMBY climb on Eagle Mountain can test the willpower of a fairly fit individual. Luckily, Scor has a great seated pedalling position. In the Slack setting, the little bike has a 77.6-degree seat tube angle that puts you in a great upright stance for all day pedalling comfort. The bike is designed for this stuff. It is a bike for the people who have all the time in the world to extend the weekend ride to 7-8 hours and explore all the trails in the vicinity. Being winter, I used the 2030 in an opposite way. Whenever I had a very small window of opportunity to get out between weather systems and pound out an hour of power ride I would pick the spritely Scor over the bigger bikes in the stable. The Scor also became the official night ride bike with an Outbound Light mount permanently fixed to the bars.

The urgency the 2030 pedals with is exhilarating. With the rather simplistic and utilitarian GX cable drivetrain taking on the shifting duties, there is a 30t chainring upfront. Out of the box, the 2030 comes with a Maxxis Dissector Dual Compound EXO tire in the front and a Maxxis Rekon Dual Compound EXO tire in the back. Step on the pedals, and this fast rolling, lightweight setup takes off like a whippet. There is no winding up or turbo lag to be felt, just direct power to the ground on demand. That is if your riding surface allows for this combination rubber compound and casing. While the Dissector / Rekon tire combo is not out of place for certain times of the year for certain rides, it is not the best combination for the kind of trails the little blue rocketship wants to be ridden on.

PXL_20231205_221838410.NIGHT deniz merdano scor 2030

Night rides on the 2030 was super fun

For my general dental safety and peace of mind, I switched things up a little on the 2030. The Dissector became the rear tire with a Tannus Insert and up front, I got a Maxxis DHF MaxxTerra in EXO first and a Maxxgrip in DD later on for other testing purposes. (you'll have to wait a short while for that article) 20psi for the front and 24psi for the rear pressures was set to keep settings in line with the rest of my bikes. With more appropriate tires for the suspension performance and geometry at hand, The 2030 came alive.

The DT Swiss XM 1700 wheels with their straight pull spokes and 350 hubs, the Scor rolls in near silence. The only sound is the air punching the insides of my lungs. But the 2030 really wants me to pedal hard. I am significantly less tired at the top of the climbs than any other bike at my disposal. This thing is fun. But this kind of uphill prowess can't be good for the downs right? Wrong.

7P8A8842 deniz merdano scor 2030 hailey elise

Riding short travel bikes on the North Shore will make you a better rider. Photo: Hailey Elise

While most of the North Shore is still slow and janky with crazy tech moves that kill the flow ever meter, there are some newer builds and rebuilds that allow for some wind to pass through your neck. The builders of the Dark and the janitors of the jank have altered their style to allow for lower angled, higher speed trails that are super fun to ride solo, any day of the week. You don't need to scare yourself to have fun anymore and I appreciate that. The Scor jumps to service at the sight of these high speed blues and dark blues / light blacks. The highly progressive nature of the Scor allows for a supple top 30% of travel and a quick ramp up for the rest of the tiny shock stroke. While the O-ring on the shock shows me that I have used all that is available to me after each ride, my legs never feel a harsh bottom out from the frame.

The suspension feels calm and composed all throught the travel. Running faster rebound also helps with the recovery and making the 2030 feel extremely playful. Too much play does come at a price of stability at high speeds so pick your poison accordingly. A plush feeling bike that can plow and erase all the trail chatter or a bouncy ride that can double or triple everything in sight. The Tannus insert I have inside the Dissector in the back helps with the last little bit of the travel and calms the bike down. I no longer default to tire inserts thanks to the Continental DH casing tires I have been using, but the natural speed of Scor helps with the increased rolling resistance with the insert in the tire. With the air volume inside the tire taken up by the Tannus, the rolling resistance increases compared to the tire at the same air pressures with no inserts.

7P8A8913 deniz merdano scor 2030 hailey elise

Flow or Tech, the slack head angle and progressive suspension dealt with all situations honourably. Photo: Hailey Elise

Scor designed the 2030 to have either 120 or 130mms of travel from the rear wheel with the switch of a shock stroke. The stock shock is short stroked internally to provide 120mm of travel. You can take the Deluxe Ultimate to your service center and get it extended to 52.5mm to give you 130mm travel. If this is the road you want to embark on, I would also take the Pike to 150mm (may need to move to a Lyrik for this ) to really open things up on this bike. This brings me to the intentions of the 2030. I did not find the 120mm travel to be a weak point of the frame. Adding more millimetres may help with the overall composure of the bike but if it comes at the expense of how excited it is to hammer the pedals, I am not for it. This is the main reason I reach for the Scor. It is the bike that contributed to weening me off the dependencies of the E-bike. The easier it is to get the bike to the top, the more likely I am to take it along for the ride. There are a few bikes in the category the Scor lives in. The Rocky Mountain Element, Pivot Trail 429, Yeti SB120, Trek Top Fuel , Yeti SB135. But how do they compare?

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Short chainstays on the Scor make going around corners an organ slushing event. Photo: Cooper Quinn

Our resident rock expert Cooper Quinn is fast on a bicycle, especially the Rocky Mountain Element. He doesn't mind a tough uphill battle and definitely can open up the pipes for the downs. He is arguably faster on the downs than I am and while he is on his RM Element, I was able to stay on his back wheel a little easier than I anticipated aboard the Scor 2030. The Element has the closest geometry numbers on paper to the Scor among all its peers but it's built a little more for the XC crowd that occasionally likes to get rowdy. A complete GX build Element will top the scale around 28lbs while the Score 2030 is 32lbs as it sits on my floor with a DHF and Dissector.

The Pivot and the Yeti SB120 are close but neither have the slack sub 65° head tube angles to easily deal with the steeps of the North Shore trails you will eventually end up on. The SB135 I reviewed feels the most similar to the Scor in how burly it feels. Yeti has more travel front and the rear but with 27'5 wheels on either end has a different aura overall, however, It is amazing how similar the overall riding experience is on top of both bikes.

It is almost impossible to categorize the 2030 other than it's a trail bike made for riding trails. From how well it pedals to how comfortably it descends, there is no place it would feel out of place. It even does a formidable job riding the trails at the Whistler Bike Park.

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I just couldn't keep the 2030 on the ground for most of my rides. Photo: Cooper Quinn

If short travel and even shorter chainstay bikes are your thing, there is a place for the Scor 2030 to exist in your world. Leave the stock tires on and tour across the Praries if you want. Toss a burly set of grippy tires and race a local enduro event if you need to. I got conned into signing up for the Whistler Back Forty race this year and I am hoping the Scor will accompany me to the race for a more pleasant experience. It is an XC race in Whistler which will present heart exploding climbs and proper sketchy descents that you can bring a big bike on. I think the capable 2030 will be a good bike for this and will not be the weakest link in the equation for a healthy finish for this 40+ year-old mountain biker.

I will have to figure out better ways to route or free up the friction in the dropper housing but there is very little else I would change. The bearings are still running smooth and none of the bolts required attention in the past few months of hard riding.

If I was forced to own one bike for whatever reason, the Scor 2030 with a couple of sets of wheels with different tires would be right on top of the list. It is a stiff yet compliant short travel bike that can go anywhere and not be an introvert. Slack, short travel bikes may be the solution to problems created by the lack of ride time and access to big terrain. It is exhilarating having a blast on the blue trails while not being out gunned on the darker shades.

You can get the Scor locally and exercise your 3-year Warranty through the dealer. While the prices are not what I would call a bargain, the unique ride quality on offer will be worth the price to some discerning riders.

GX build coming in at 6,499 EUR / 9,550 CAD / 7,000 USD surely will be cheaper if your local shop has one in stock.

Scor 2030

denomerdano
Deniz Merdano

5'8"

162lbs

Playful, lively riding style

Photographer and Story Teller

Lenticular Aesthetician

www.blackbirdworks.ca

Tags: Scor 2030, scor, 2030
Posted in: Bikes - Trail, Features, Gear

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Comments

Jotegir
+4 Allen Lloyd Deniz Merdano Dan Hardlylikely

First and foremost, anytime it's a Deniz/Cooper article (regardless of who is riding and who is behind the lens), you know you're in for a treat in the photos. The cover shot is great too, Hailey. 

I agree wholeheartedly with your head angle assessment. I came to that same realization around sometime last year when I found I was riding a 160mm steel enduro bike, a 120mm top fuel, and a 200mm downhill bike all modified (or left stock, as the case may be) to bring the head angle to within half a degree of that magic 64 degree number.  This year I don't think I'm bucking that trend, either.

I'm not sure about this bike. To me, it seems like it has a lot of bespoke features and fitment for the sake of... well, having bespoke features and fitment. They certainly add to the price point of the bike. There's a handful a rider like myself (who certainly can appreciate the finer things, no doubt) that I actively might not want in a bike. I guess for those who pick this thing up, the looks are what make up for it?

With many brands moving to a long warranty, particularly in anything less than 'enduro race' and 'downhill/freeride' categories, 3 years on a premium 120mm bike leaves something to be desired.

On the other hand, it does sound like a joy to ride if you can get around some of the above or find one at a nice price.

Reply

rigidjunkie
+2 Jotegir Velocipedestrian

"To me, it seems like it has a lot of bespoke features and fitment for the sake of... well, having bespoke features and fitment"

I had the same thought but couldn't find these words!  My issue is it feels over designed and under engineered.  The dropper post issue feels like a designer wanting a look and the engineers and mechanics not being heard.

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denomerdano
+1 Jotegir

Thanks dude, Hailey is a treat to work with. As a photographer, it matters who is behind the lens and how keen they are one "One more" Thanks Hailey!

You pretty much nailed it. If you are in BC, the RM Element makes the most sense. Tons of support and a great bike overall. If I lived in EU or somewhere the brand identity made sense. I would reach for the Scor. It is probably one of the toughest 120mm bikes out there. Just the sheer amount of abuse it can handle is great..

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UMichael
+3 Deniz Merdano thaaad Dan

The climb up [IMBY -> Physiotherapy -> Shock Therapy -> Psychotherapy] is a sort of friendly nemesis of mine. I have yet to clean it, after all these years of riding primarily Eagle Mountain.

Reply

T-mack
+1 thaaad

IYKYK

Reply

denomerdano
+1 thaaad

It's a great climb with lots of entertainment. Best done with friends with similar fitness or alone with occasional throw up from effort. The downhill trails are horrible though, don't go to Eagle.

Reply

mhaager2
+2 Deniz Merdano Chris D

These are the kind of bikes that excite me most; the elusive single quiver bike. As a plus my favourite LBS sells SCOR. The thing I love most about my Druid V1 is how versatile it is. Since you spent a lot if time on the Druid, how would you compare and contrast these two bikes?

Reply

Jotegir
+3 Hbar Hardlylikely Chris D

I think "Someone asked Deniz to compare whatever bike he's currently talking about to the V1 Druid" deserves a spot on the NSMB bingo card.

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denomerdano
+1 Hbar

The Druid was my break out bike. I loved that thing. The comparison is straight forward but I am a different rider now. I ride with more energy and body language these days. The Scor is a better pedaling, less chain lube requiring, and a slacker bike. The rear end of the Druid was something else though. Never felt like it had a bottom. Dirt Merchant jumps and drops were just casual affairs on it. It was horrible under heavy braking but that also made it a faster bike on the downs. 

The Scor is ultimately way easier bike to live with, If you can sort the dropper post length out. I'd like 200mm atleast. The BB is alittle higher too on the Scor making tech climbs easier affair.

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sbh071
0

Thanks for a great review, and great photos. This confirms that this should be my next bike, though frame only, not sure of their component choices! Looking at the design of the frame though I have two concerns - the press fit bottom bracket and the trunnion mount shock.  Any issues with either? Thanks…

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denomerdano
0

No issues with either, I did have my reservations though. The PF92 BB options are better now with Wheel Man. and Kogel making great options. They press into an aluminum shell which should help with creaking issues. My test sample (which was previously abused) has stayed creak free!

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JVP
0

"the natural speed of Scor helps with the increased rolling resistance with the insert in the tire. With the air volume inside the tire taken up by the Tannus, the rolling resistance increases compared to the tire at the same air pressures with no inserts."

Please tell us more!  I'm hoping you're coming out with an article testing this assertion. I've run Tannus rear for a few years and don't notice it overly slow. Always wondered about the decision to run inserts vs heavier tires.

Reply

LoamtoHome
+1 luke_sky
denomerdano
0

I'm really not sure how they are testing their rolling resistance change. What I can interpolate from working with tires on all kinds of bikes in general, A low volume tires will need more air pressure to retain sidewall structure. The rolling resistance on pavement or hardpacked jump trails are higher  with inserts if the air pressure is has not changed. If I run 24psi in my rear tires, they roll slower with inserts than without. This is on paved and hardpack surfaces. On technical singletrack, the difference is negligible (lets call it 3%)

I need to increase tire pressures to around 26-27 psi if I am running inserts to retain similar rolling resistance to no inserts. Again, only evident on fast, smooth surfaces. The traction does not suffer that noticeable amounts unless we are on wet, slimy roots or rocks. Generally on surfaces where tire needs to conform to the surface, I leave them on lower pressures.

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orenperets
0

How would the Scor compare to the Tallboy 4/5?

sounds like its the same philosophy for a frame - burly and capable; not sure regarding the "energetic pedaling" part though...

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DogVet
0

Or even the 5010, albeit  Mx?

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denomerdano
+1 orenperets

The 5010 is a low antisquat bike. It pedals far worse than the Scor but is a bit more capable descender. The big wheel up front helps alot!

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denomerdano
+1 orenperets

I don't have any time on the Tallboys but I have a feeling they will have a similar characters. Efficient pedaling and playful but stable descending

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MTB_THETOWN
0

One way to help with the dropper cable friction is to throw in an xtr coated shift cable. They make a noticeable difference shifting so the should help withe a dropper too.

Seems like a nice bike, but bad dropper routing is a deal killer. I can run a 190mm one up dropper (210mm shimmed down) on my medium alloy element, and even there I wish I had more. I have 230mm on my medium scout. This bike also seems to split the difference between those two, interestingly enough.

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denomerdano
0

I'll do you one better:

Bontrager 1.1 mm shifter cable is lightyears better than anything from Shimano with its 1.2mm thickness.

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06hokie
0

Am I the only one lamenting the lack of two lower ISCG tabs to run a bash? Its cool that it has an integrated chain guide, but I push little bikes hard and love “creative” lines… I live in Colorado and often ride in rocky AZ, NM, UT where it’s not uncommon for your chainring to kiss a rock

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