Reviews of Shit you Can’t Buy: Carbon Chameleon

Editor’s note: This is the first in what will be an ongoing series. Most reviews you read are suspect. Mostly because it is obvious that the person doing the review is being paid. There is little honesty and often times a full sweep of positivity that reeks of bull shit. My reviews are the opposite. I don’t get paid and to even further the lack of motivation to hide something from all of you, you can’t even buy what I plan to review. So why would anyone even think about paying me? Exactly.

Let’s start with the worst part

The Carbon Chameleon was launched by pretty much making it impossible to ride without getting this song stuck in your head. Full stop. Sure it’s catchy, but when Santa Cruz made the connection between the name of their bike and this song, they destined every owner to have to deal with not knowing any of the words past the chorus and having the stupid thing stuck in their head on almost every ride. I guess that could be seen as a great marketing piece, but who likes marketing, give me the good stuff, not some song you didn’t write.

Or maybe that’s just me.

First Impressions

It was a beautiful spring morning in SoTah. The weather was just crisp enough that it felt cool, but the sun was blazing and it was clear that it would be warming up faster than I would like. I thought about and then did nothing to address the slight bit of chill in the air knowing full well that I would warm up within a couple of blocks of the house. The Chameleon looked good. It’s blocky, relatively small frame was a contrast to the small titanium tubes I was coming off of. I was a little heartbroken about losing those smaller tubes as they were ripped out from under me as my 130-pound ass somehow destroyed the junction of the head tube and top and bottom tubes. My forever frame lasted 6 months, both times.

I almost always test new bike stuff on City Creek. It’s a quick pedal from my house and includes everything I think should be included in a good bike test. It’s got some of the chunkiest riding in town, ripper descents, crazy stupid steep climbs and two very precise big moves. It’s also my go-to which means I know it and know if something is performing well on the first lap.

As predicted, the chill accompanies me for the first couple of blocks and then is forgotten as my body warms up and I start to climb up to the red cliffs. Right out of the gate, we’ve got problems. The rear tire is rubbing. Santa Cruz only claimed this thing would fit a 2.8, but it wasn’t rubbing with the 3″ tire I had installed until I was standing and cranking. The flex in the frame was allowing the tire to hit the chain stays, back and forth, back and forth. Other than the rubbing, the Chameleon climbed like a champ, the grin was starting to grow on my face.

I finish out the pavement section of my test circuit and lift the bike through the stepover to finally be on dirt. I’m not expecting much, but even in the first downhill section, I can tell something is good. I climb the steep little up to where I like to let things rip. It’s a chunky, steep ripper that usually gives me the first indication of how things are going to play out. I stop. Take in the views inspecting the rubbing happening on the chain stays. After adjusting my gloves and helmet, I do a quick brake check and push off.

The line down this section is like a poem I have memorized. There isn’t anything that is going to surprise me. I know where to put my front tire, how to pop off that one rock to gap over that section and transition into the bottom. It’s all there committed to memory. Nothing is a surprise, but like a poem that I have spent the time to memorize, it’s always good.

That inkling of good I had on the first short descent comes back immediately. The bike just goes where I want it to. It floats as expected, turns when I nuance it around something and pops much easier than my previous few hardtails. I’m giggling as I rip around the first corner and let my momentum continue to carry me through the trail.

It’s really the two precise moves that drive home what it is I’m loving about the bike.

The Chute is a move that most riders won’t touch. It’s sketchy. You’ve got a notch that has what could be a handlebar grabber on the left where the crack wants to pull you. The right is a blind two-ish foot drop that, by itself, would not even merit mention, but it sits on top of a 30-foot runout that is chunky and steep as fuck. If you mess up that roll, there’s no saving it. It’s a precision move. Put your tire in just the right spot and you will roll out no problem. Screw up the top and the consequences have the potential to be disastrous.

I roll up blind hoping that the thousands of times I’ve ridden this without incident doesn’t have an asterisk added on this day. I place my front tire and roll over the lip. The Chameleon drops fast careening down the runout and I’m spit out the bottom ripping out like normal. The piece that was different, no flex.

With a giant smile on my face, I finish out the killer descent and then turn onto Brooks Nature Trail. This short section of trail is steep, exposed, chunky and requires precision. I’m feeling ecstatic and confident on my new ride. Dropping in, I make all the moves without any issues. The last move is the 2nd precision move on this loop that most people won’t touch. Honestly, most of the time I don’t even want to try it, but on this day, I’m feeling good and the bike is feeling awesome.

With the newfound precision of my steering, I skid up to the small gap between two giant red sandstone boulders, get everything lined up like I feel it should and let go of the brakes. My front tire rolls down and is right where I feel it should be until my right pedal catches. I’m now air born somersaulting toward the boulders at the bottom well before I even know what happened. As my face and upper body smash against the ground, I can hear my new bike doing the same on the rocks behind me.

After a quick physical assessment, I realize I am not broken, a bit embarrassed, but not broken. I turn my attention to my brand new, first ride, Carbon Chameleon. It has come down hard right on the non-driveside chainstay. A quick assessment turns into a more thorough one as I am sure I have broken it, but no, she’s fine, just sustained a small scratch.

A little sore, but with a grin as wide as my face allows it to be, I coast down the pavement to finish out the circuit back to the Lounge. Other than finding some smaller tires, I am stoked on this bike and can’t wait to put it through the ringer.

What Santa Cruz could have done better.

Let’s start with my biggest gripe. And this goes for pretty much the entire bike industry, stop making hardtails with tiny front triangles. Nobody needs a 150 mm dropper or even worse the 170 mm ones. You can get down and back just fine with a 100 and 125 is more than enough. I’ll take an inch shorter dropper way before I want to lose frame space. Santa Cruz even touted the Carbon Chameleon as a bikepacking rig, one that could do it all, and then gave us a tiny front triangle. Stop. Just stop already. Give us normal sized triangles so we can fill them with the stuff we want to carry.

Plus they just look stupid. Luckily, the Chameleon’s triangle isn’t as small as some.

Next gripe, cable routing. My bikes tend to end up with handlebar bags hung from the front of the bike on a regular basis. This does weird shit to the cables coming off the controls. The Chameleon’s routing is pretty good for normal use, but throw anything that will push and flatten those cables and the sharp exit from the frame will kink, mame and otherwise destroy your cables and housing. I’ve never had to replace brake hose from cable routing until I got this bike. I’ve now done it three times. For the rare times when this bike has gears, I install GX AXS for the ease of install and the fact that I don’t have to worry about the cables getting kinked.

Lastly, the dropouts. I love this bike because it has sliding dropouts that make it easy to turn it into a singlespeed or run it geared. Like most sliding dropouts that I have run, these ones aren’t perfect. They pop, creak and have slid forward on a few occasions. These noises have worsened as the bike has settled into its age and aren’t that big of a deal, but certainly warranted being mentioned.

What Santa Cruz nailed.

I was pretty pissed when they released this bike. I had literally just gone outside of the ecosystem of the shop that I manage to find a bike that would fit my needs spending more than I wanted on a titanium frame I really didn’t want because Santa Cruz only made an aluminum Chameleon. The alloy version was a rad bike, I had one for a year or so, but the damn thing was heavy. Like crazy heavy. Heavy enough that it should have been a full suspension bike with both fork and rear shock attached. It rode great, but who wants to pedal a pig.

So I buy a bike because I can’t get what I really want and then, three months later, Santa Cruz dumps that song on everyone and gives the world the bike I wanted. I swore I would never buy one just because their timing sucked so bad, but then I started braking frames. I’m glad I did now because the Chameleon is pretty rad. Despite the items listed above, the bike is an overall dream to ride.

As I described, right out of the gate, I loved this thing. Having ridden cheap aluminum and then titanium hardtails for a few years, I had almost forgotten how rad a well-built carbon frame could ride. Sure aluminum can feel good in the acceleration department and titanium feels good in the flexy department, but only carbon does both just the way you want. The steering is dialed, there’s no strange, flexy sensation during a downhill hard turn nor the jarring, what the hell is that, stuttering that you will feel on aluminum. It’s the opposite of both of those things.

I like Calculus but hate Geometry. I don’t get into numbers cuz let’s be honest, a half of a degree isn’t going to make that much of a difference. I don’t care what you say. The numbers are way less important than just jumping on and riding and seeing if it works or not. Leave over-analyzing Geometry to those who need a reason to buy something that is slightly different and possibly slightly better than what they have because a chart on the internet said it might be. With that said, I have no idea what the numbers are on the Chameleon, but they are dialed. It does what I want it to when it should. It goes uphill great and rallies on the way back down. No strange attributes that would throw me off my game, just a solid, uber fun bike that they stopped making for some stupid reason no one will ever understand.

Long Term Impressions

I’ve had this bike for about four years. Shortly after I purchased it, I sold my double squishy thing in the middle of the pandemic and never got another one. This has been my bike. I typically have it set up singlespeed and it rallies Zen just fine and then turns around to do a 50-mile death march with the same ease. It’s done the Ultraknuckle, Oaxaca and plenty of midweek overnighters. It truly has been the do-it-all machine that the Chameleon has always been touted as. It feels equally at home on a shred session as it does on long, loaded rides.

The only thing that this bike doesn’t have is a replacement. I could worry about that, but it’s outside of my control unless somehow I catch Santa Cruz’s ear and they realize they fucked up by discontinuing this beauty. As it sits right now, I’ll keep riding this bike until the wheels fall off and be grinning the whole time.

Embrace Chaos. Seek Discomfort.