Pole S-Onni (Sonni)

[tooFATtoRIDE]

 

[Onetime]

Here is the written review. Can't believe it lost to the Norco for the downhill rig. Had to have been demoted because of the bankruptcy.

Yeah, the one guy on the right especially, rating it as if they were rating trail bikes. It’s not a trail bike bro! I think it was the best climbing and descending bike there, hands down. Also best looking.

 

[slickrock]

OK. Solved the bottle mount challenge with the Sonni.

One of the design tradeoffs with the Sonni was not having a suitable bottle cage mount: no room for one inside the frame and Bosch not allowing mounts on downtube plate cover for the battery. The only relegated place for the mount is on the top tube next to the seat - this may work for those with ample inseams and otherwise for level and lazy bike jaunts, but is basically unworkable for EMTB rides for which this bike is designed, unless you stay in your seat and have a deep dropper (170mm+) to lower the seat every time you come to a stop (which is what I've been doing thus far).

So with Pole in limbo and possibly throwing warranty issues into the wind, and with little bit of ingenuity, I was able to craft a Fidlock mount on the downtube near the motor. I'm basically tapped the cover, using short M3 bolts instead of typical M5 bolts and they are shallow enough as to not hit the underlying battery. They are setup in a way that if bottle gets slammed during riding, the mount will break off before the 7075AL cover would deform. The good news is the bottle is well mostly out of harm's way and I can easily move the bottle to the top tube for long uphills where the bottle is far more accessible than any internal triangle-mounted bottle would.

 

[Plummet]

OK. Solved the bottle mount challenge with the Sonni.

View attachment 144202

One of the design tradeoffs with the Sonni was not having a suitable bottle cage mount: no room for one inside the frame and Bosch not allowing mounts on downtube plate cover for the battery. The only relegated place for the mount is on the top tube next to the seat - this may work for those with ample inseams and otherwise for level and lazy bike jaunts, but is basically unworkable for EMTB rides for which this bike is designed, unless you stay in your seat and have a deep dropper (170mm+) to lower the seat every time you come to a stop (which is what I've been doing thus far).

So with Pole in limbo and possibly throwing warranty issues into the wind, and with little bit of ingenuity, I was able to craft a Fidlock mount on the downtube near the motor. I'm basically tapped the cover, using short M3 bolts instead of typical M5 bolts and they are shallow enough as to into hit the underlying battery. They are setup in a way that if bottle gets slammed during riding, the mount will break off before the 7075AL cover would deform. The good news is the bottle is well mostly out of harm's way and I can easily move the bottle to the top tube for long uphills where the bottle is far more accessible than any internal triangle-mounted bottle would.

View attachment 144201

You must have dry clean trails. I would shower that bottle in shit.
Here's my down tube from last night's "town" ride avoiding the mud.....

 

[slickrock]

You must have dry clean trails. I would shower that bottle in shit.
Here's my down tube from last night's "town" ride avoiding the mud.....

Luckily I use the the bigger Fidlock bottle with mud cap, shown here, which hasn't been too much of a problem so far.

 

[Dado]

Best looking frame! Shame they are gone.

I am still wondering, how people have problems with bottles on enduro/fr bikes.

 

[Rewind]

I am having trouble making sense of comments like Sonni being better than Voima when I simulate Sonni in Linkage and get numbers like these:
Anti-squat with a 34T front chainring and using the 10T cog on the cassette, like you would when going the fastest you can downhill, where you want the suspension to be as active as possible, the anti-squat hovers around 145-155%. This is pretty far from the norm, and it looks like a mistake. Hopefully my mistake, since it can be difficult to find the correct pivot points from a 2D image.

I found the anti-rise to be around 63%, and that looks very low to me, although this is popular on many bike brands. It would make the Sonni more divey than the Voima when braking.

 

[slickrock]

I am having trouble making sense of comments like Sonni being better than Voima when I simulate Sonni in Linkage and get numbers like these:
Anti-squat with a 34T front chainring and using the 10T cog on the cassette, like you would when going the fastest you can downhill, where you want the suspension to be as active as possible, the anti-squat hovers around 145-155%. This is pretty far from the norm, and it looks like a mistake. Hopefully my mistake, since it can be difficult to find the correct pivot points from a 2D image.
I found the anti-rise to be around 63%, and that looks very low to me, although this is popular on many bike brands. It would make the Sonni more divey than the Voima when braking.

It has been difficult to get a deeper functional and design assessment of the Sonni, since its life was cut short just when it was getting started with the dissolution of Pole. Leo said the suspension design was Sansei, but I didn’t find any material describing characteristics/graphs of similarity even though the pivot locations are indeed different, but at least all the bars are rotating in the same direction. About the closest I’ve got to this is a comparison between the Vikkela and Omni, as in the motor-off versions of the bikes in question, and I would mostly agree with these graphs based my experience owning the motor-on versions. The Onni has downward sloping anti-squat and at a level higher than Vikkela.

You are correct about the lower anti-rise, but I have to admit I prefer it on the Sonni to the Voima. For three decades now, I’ve ridden Horst Link bikes (I still have my Amp Research bike made by Horst himself) and have enjoyed lower “brake-squat”, which is what anti-rise used to called way back then. You are braking most of the time downhill, and on braking bumps especially, suspension can pack up with high anti-rise numbers. Voima was my first bike with high anti-rise and was concerned about this, but then found a clear advantage in that the bike basically keeps its geometry and fore-aft COG more consistent during varying riding conditions. This was especially important because my (small) K1 Voima frame on full 29’s really exaggerated the high BB, stack, and rider COG aspect of the bike - anything that would have hampered the excellent stability of the bike would have been disastrous.

But along comes the Sonni, with a different 4-bar, higher progression, shorter chainstays, lower BB, and graduated front-center, with more realistic sizing, and seems to have been designed with mixed wheels in mind. Somehow - and I’m still trying to work this out - the Sonni pulls off a both an very stable platform along with a more active suspension and livelier ride. Maybe it’s the additional travel offsetting the lower BB, or perhaps the mixed wheel setup framing my stance on the bike, or perhaps the higher progression ramp with the voluminous Vivid seemingly built for it, or the newer Zen Ultimate damper, etc. The Sonni is kind of Horst Link-ish Voima - For me it’s getting my cake and eating too.