Ice wine... have you guys ever tried ice wine?
I'm not a big fan of it but that's all I could think of when I see this box.
Fortunately this is a dropper post produced by a small company in Germany, BikeYoke.
The divine 185 is what i'm gonna be looking at today.
185 mm is the longest version of this dropper post, and the diameter of it is listed here
on the only label that you're gonna find, You see the 31.6 / 185.
Something came out, okay, so here's the dropper post, BikeYoke
that's a little Divine logo I guess, and right from the get-go this feels good
it's pretty minimalistic when it comes to graphics, you have bike yoke and divine that I showed you,
and aside from that you have the minimum insertion point.
Minimum insertion point which is quite a bit,
let me measure this because this is probably longer than other droppers.
16 centimeters with the actuator so it's quite long compared to others.
The actuator looks unique and you have this graphic here showing you how to install the cable.
That is because the cable is terminated here at the dropper, but more about that when we get to the installation.
Just like many other droppers you have the Schrader valve here under the seat
and this allows you to adjust the pressure.
250 to 350 psi is what this takes and you would do that
to adjust the speed at which the dropper extends.
And what dropped out of the box, you have these little spacers, you get 4 of them in 5 mm increments.
You can install those here underneath the actuator to reduce the travel of this dropper.
Installing the spacers is not as easy as it is with other dropper posts
but it's not that overly complicated, very well documented on their site as well.
And to finish with the contents of the box
the user manual, you get a full cable inner and outer
in here you have that cable barrel just to terminate the cable at the dropper end.
These are the other parts of that saddle rail and you get this really good looking sticker.
Interestingly this is listed as 565g on their website, it is 545 g on my scale.
Adding the cable that makes it 610 g and you can use this dropper with any universal lever that has at least 10 millimeters of pull.
In this case is the BikeYoke Triggy, their own universal remote,
and that makes it to 655 g which is pretty much standard for most droppers out there.
When it comes to features that they're bragging about the most important is what's called self reset.
Every time you lower the seat, if there's any air here mixing with the oil
it's going to get burped at the bottom so that's quite innovative and definitely a welcome feature.
You have the travel adjust done with the spacers but you have to open the dropper at the bottom
and you would open it from the bottom when doing service
and they do have parts and oils and everything on their site.
I already mentioned the schematic telling you how to terminate the cable at the dropper end.
I'm gonna try to do it differently today when we get to install it but before we do that,
how does this look like next to a dropper that's half the price,
the PNW Loam, the lifetime warranty that I reviewed on my channel not too long ago.
BikeYoke feels premium, PNW not as much,
2year warranty versus lifetime warranty,
this is super simple to service you just remove this top collar you can adjust travel that way,
and you can take the cartridge out and pretty much lube and clean the insides
BikeYoke it's a bit more involved when it comes to service
but they do have some good videos describing how to do it also
they are supposed to work a lot smoother or nicer than other droppers,
but that's something that I will only be able to talk about once i get it installed.
And for that I'm gonna get the dropper ready first check the pressure in it
and the dropper comes to 300 psi so I'm gonna just leave it there right in the middle of the range.
Grab that cable barrel and put some Loctite on the grub screw,
I'm gonna put a little bit of grease on the saddle rail bolts and install that.
By the way you can get these made out of titanium and save 10 grams.
They mentioned that there's only one way to assemble the head of the dropper
but there's no arrows on these parts so pay attention to this schematic.
Here it is, stack height it's nothing out of the ordinary it is a bit over 2 cm
And I don't plan to use this inner cable provided with the dropper.
I'm gonna try to use this specific dropper post cable from Jagwire.
What's special about this cable is the diameter, 0.8mm versus Shimano, SRAM that are 1.1 and 1.2 mm.
And this is supposed to reduce the friction in the system.
The Jagwire Pro inner cables are polished stainless steel which feels really really smooth
but because I have to attach that barrel at the end of it I'm gonna just cut to this cable end.
There you go, push that through and tighten the grub screw with a 2mm Allen key.
You can tighten this properly by using a 3mm Allen here at the end of the barrel.
The lucky winner of the Divine it's gonna be my new work in progress Yeti ARC
that I looked at not too long ago
and the first step it's going to be to install the remote.
Here it is, then run the dropper cable through the frame all the way
and make sure you know exactly the saddle height that you're interested in.
This is a very important measurement.
I have my inner cable ready to be terminated at the lever,
I'm gonna use some carbon paste on the dropper itself because this only takes 5 Nm of torque.
and I'm ready to put this on.
And I got to tell you, 185 it's a lot of dropper posts guys!
Anyway, when you get to adjusting your saddle tilt,
this uses T25 Torx, 7 Nm is the max torque
and here it is the longest dropper that I've ever installed on my bikes!
So how does this work?
First of all, I installed this with the short lever as opposed to the longer one recommended by BikeYoke,
and I can tell you that the dropper works just fine
you could hear that positive stop at the end of the travel.
It's actually fairly easy to actuate,
I don't know if the cable, the Jagwire cable that I've used has anything to do with that.
Overall, I would say it feels similar to the FOX Transfer
but when it comes to lowering the seat,
this probably feels more like a PNW Loam or OneUp versus FOX.
It sounds as if the fluid is being pushed down into the lowers which it is.
Or maybe has something to do with that self reset which is an awesome feature to have.
That was introduced by the Revive, the more expensive version of this dropper
and is done automatically which is awesome.
Overall I would say that the Divine feels somewhere between FOX and something like PNW that is half the price of it.
So is the Divine worth the price tag?
Is this a worthy investment in your bike?
It was for me, I wanted to try something new,
I trust the German engineering and overall I like the quality from what I can see right now.
Really hope that this is going to work forever without major maintenance.
So what about you folks?
Are you going these days for something like PNW or OneUp dropper posts?
Are you going for the fancier BikeYoke, FOX, or God forbid, the wireless AXS from SRAM?
Let me know what you think in the comments below .
If you found this useful don't forget to like, subscribe, keep an eye on social,
and until next time hope to see you folks on the trails
using whatever dropper you love.
Cheers guys, cheers!