RAAW YALLA! REVIEW

99 PROBLEMS BUT STILL DAMN FUN

Words by Robert Johnston  |  Photos by Micky Francis

February 18, 2025

The Yalla! is RAAW’s first entry to the downhill market, developed with racers to be a highly adjustable and ultra-capable downhill machine. It wasn’t smooth sailing, but we managed to log a solid handful of rides on the Yalla! to share our impressions on the character and performance of this alloy DH machine.

ABOUT THE RAAW YALLA!

For the Yalla!, RAAW wanted to develop a downhill bike that would satisfy their personal needs, confident that a bike developed to offer the confidence to attack some of Europe’s rowdiest trails would likely work well for a wide range of riders. They designed the Yalla! with their typical attention to detail and no-nonsense construction, with a ton of adjustability to tailor the handling to the liking of most downhillers. It features a 198mm rear end with a 203mm fork, and a pair of 29” wheels only, with sizes medium to XL on offer to span rider heights.

FRAME AND FEATURES | The Yalla! is in many ways a downhill version of their excellent Madonna enduro machine. It’s built with a 6066-T6 aluminum alloy frame and equipped with huge double-sealed bearings throughout to stand up to relentless abuse ride after ride.

The Yalla! is built with RAAW’s toolbox concept. In essence, RAAW wanted to make the frame as adjustable as possible. To do so, they offer different headset cups, dropouts and lower shock mounts to allow for the geometry and suspension characteristics to be tuned to the preference of the rider.

RAAW focused on the frame protection to make the Yalla nice and quiet, with a 5mm thick rubber downtube protector; a custom chainstay protector and an optional shuttle guard.

Up at the headtube, there are bolt-on fork bumpers which double as cable guides to protect the frame and keep the cables in check. The cables then run externally along the top of the downtube, making for easy service, and use bolt-on guides to prevent any rattling.

They also fitted some bosses for a tool mount, letting you carry a multi tool or tube strap to keep you covered. Being a downhill bike, there’s no dedicated mount to carry one, but we think there’s enough space inside the L and XL front triangles to squeeze one in with a DIY solution if desired. The Yalla! comes with a two-year warranty for the first and second owners, giving some peace of mind should any manufacturing defects present themselves earlier on in its life.

SUSPENSION | For the Yalla!, RAAW used the same Four Bar suspension arrangement as found on their Madonna and Jibb, but with kinematics tuned specifically for the 198mm rear travel.

As standard there’s 25% leverage ratio progression, but this can be decreased to 22% or increased to 28% with a different lower shock mount.

The Anti Squat goes from around 120% in the smallest cog up to 160% in the largest cog of a compact downhill cassette at sag and drops through the travel to limit chain interaction on the biggest hits.

Finally, there’s a consistently low Anti Rise throughout the travel, sitting at around 50%. This should keep the rear end quite active under braking, at the expense of reduced frame geometry preservation when braking on steeper terrain.

GEOMETRY | The RAAW Yalla! has a wide range of adjustability in the geometry thanks to the different headset cups, shock mounts and dropouts.

The stock geometry is designed to give a good balance all round, with a 63 degree head tube angle and 26.5mm bottom bracket drop. The Medium to XL size range spans a 455mm to 505mm Reach length, with the large tested coming in at 480mm. This is paired with a 640mm Stack height across the size range.

The chainstays are size-specific, with a 5mm increase per size from 445mm on the medium to 455mm on the XL. These lengths can be adjusted plus or minus 5mm with different dropouts and axle, available separately or as part of the RAAW toolbox kit.

The head tube angle can be modified by a degree in either direction with the headset cups, and the bottom bracket can be raised or lowered by 3mm.

BUILD SPECS | RAAW doesn’t currently offer the Yalla! In full builds, instead offering frames with the choice of Ohlins or Fox suspension. The frame only retails for $2,838 / £2,163 / €2,990, and frame, shock and fork kits start from $5,211 / £3,971 / €5,490.

For this review, RAAW provided us with a sensibly spec’d full bike, featuring a Fox DHX2 coil shock and the Fox 40 Factory fork.

It was equipped with a SRAM XO DH 7-speed drivetrain, and Shimano XT brakes with 203mm rotors.

A set of Newmen wheels was wrapped in a Maxxis tire combination as standard, but these were exchanged for a set of the newly updated WTB Verdict and Judge tires with the burly new SG1 Tough casing.

It was definitely a sensible build for a downhill bike, but as we’ll talk about next, it wasn’t all plain sailing once I hit the trail.

THE DIRT

I collected the Yalla! from RAAW’s German HQ on my way down to the Alps and couldn’t have been more excited to begin testing. Following good times on their Madonna V2.2 and Jibb, I had been extremely impressed by their shorter travel offerings’ ability to punch above their travel class, and I couldn’t wait to see exactly how hard I could push their DH machine.

SETUP | RAAW provided the Yalla! to me with the appropriate spring rate to deliver my 100kg (220lbs) mass with a “regular” 25% sag. This is notably little sag compared with many downhill bikes, and feeds into RAAW’s philosophy about how the Yalla! should handle. RAAW suggests that the geometry should provide most of the stability, while the suspension should be supportive to restore the dynamic nature to their DH machine. I set the Fox 40 similarly stiff – but not excessively – to obtain a good balance of spring rates on each end and set about testing with RAAW’s excellently documented recommended damper settings on each end.

Problematic Testing On The RAAW Yalla! | It took just a single lap before I encountered my first serious issue onboard the RAAW Yalla!, and this sadly set the theme for the remainder of my testing period of this downhill mountain bike. The Fox DHX2 trunnion shock performed the first of two instances of unthreading the head from the body, which quickly spelt the end of the damper functionality. Having discussed with other riders, this is not an issue exclusive to the Yalla!, but a problem that may be experienced across multiple trunnion mount frames with this particular shock, likely caused by the high twisting forces produced by the coil spring during compression. It may be worth adding a Delrin spacer or something similar between the coil and collar on one end of the shock to prevent this from occurring.

Once I managed to source a replacement shock, testing resumed, and I got a whole seven laps following RAAW engineer Dan Roberts on his home trails of Morgins, Switzerland. Or trying to follow him, at least. Dan is an exceptional rider, so I had my work cut out, but in trying to keep up with him I quickly had to get the Yalla! dialed in to help my chances. This expedited setup session with the aid of Dan’s input was invaluable. It was evident that the Yalla! was a hyper-capable machine, based on both Dan pulling away on his in front of me, and me almost keeping up.

However, the second issue happened on lap eight. I followed Dan into a sizable pull and had the misfortune of placing my chainring directly onto the single exposed rock on the blind landing, instantly obliterating it. The lack of bash guard on the test bike was a shame, and it’s possible that one could have saved the ring, though the impact was so severe that I wouldn’t have been surprised if even a bash guard was destroyed. Issue three was sustained two rides later, when a loose rock took out my rear derailleur on a fire road at the beginning of the ride. Then finally issue four sealed my limited testing time on what should have been the penultimate ride, when the replacement DHX2 shock suffered the same fate.

Utimately, these issues sustained imparted a sour taste to the test and limited my trail time on board the Yalla!. However, the frame itself could not have been more trouble free, without any issues or noises throughout testing.

How Did The RAAW Yalla! Perform? | Over eight attempts to test the RAAW Yalla!, my four and a half successes allowed me to find a good baseline setup and get a good feeling for its character in its stock configuration: neutral headset; bb height; chainstay, and 25% progression. Sadly though, with every ride upsetting my ability to get comfortable with the setup, I wasn’t comfortable to then begin playing with the various adjustments, so never got to feel the extremes of the potential setup on each end.

In its neutral setting and “regular” 25% sag setup, the Yalla! was a machine that begged to be pushed hard and instilled more confidence the harder the trail was attacked. On less committed runs, the fairly hard setup yielded reasonable support to pump through rolling terrain, but the Yalla! was less comfortable and terrain muting than the best of them. As soon as the big boy pants were put on and full commitment was applied though, it all began to make sense. The Yalla! was a certified rocket ship when ridden to the edge of my limits and really came alive the more I let off the brakes and the faster the trail got.

The geometry RAAW selected for the Yalla! was less pointed than the geometry table might suggest. While a 450mm rear end reads long, and 28mm BB drop on a DH bike is notable, the lower sag approach and high levels of support reinstated some agility to this downhill machine, making it much more well-rounded than expected. That’s not to say it loves the low speed and tighter trails, but it certainly performed better on high-speed flow trails than I was expecting, and I didn’t find myself desperate to try the shorter chainstay setting as I had anticipated.

The stock configuration as tested would not be my first choice to put in a record attempt for the number of bike park laps in a day, as I simply would not be able to hold on. However, over a race weekend where fatigue is less of an issue, the Yalla!’s sheer desire to go fast as f**k would likely suit racers well. And for riders looking to hit the park and do a half day of flat out sending, RAAW’s DH machine is undeniably going to provide a good time. Of course, you then have adjustability to dial a little more comfort back in, such as the increased progression setting for the rear end which could allow for a higher sag level to be used.

FINISH AND VALUE

RAAW bikes have some of the best finish quality in the industry, and the Yalla! was no exception. Frame hardware is excellent, and the details are very well covered to make for a quiet ride with minimal maintenance required.

The value proposition is not exceptional, however the RAAW sits in line with other high-end alloy downhill bike frames and may just stick its head out above the rest when it comes to the overall user experience. A two-year warranty will be disappointing to see for riders looking to run the Yalla! for many seasons to come, however its build quality suggests it will far outlast this relatively short period of coverage, and I’d be inclined to say they’d do their best to sort you out in some way should you ever have an issue.

The Wolf’s Last Word

Beautifully supportive yet calm under pressure, the RAAW Yalla! is a highly adjustable downhill bike that inspired flat out charging. Though numerous issues were sustained throughout the test with the components, the RAAW frame performed flawlessly and provided the usual no-nonsense RAAW quality and performance that makes these bikes so desirable and pleasant to test.

Price: Starting at $2,838 / £2,163 / €2,990
Website: raawmtb.com

ABOUT THE WOLF

Robert’s habitat is the Tweed Valley, Scotland, which is renowned for its root-littered enduro mountain bike trails. Robert has been developing his bike handling skills for the last 16 years. Since he was a pup, he’s been riding everything from BMX through to enduro and downhill bikes. Combining a playful style with occasional speed-focused aggression, he favors supportive bikes, and does his best to push them hard.

Rank: European Tech Editor
Size: 6’2” / 189cm | 220lbs / 100kg
Social: @robert_johnston

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