First Look at the Viral Wanderer (Sea Otter 2024)

Former Niner founder and engineer Steve Domahidy has been designing bikes for a long while. After striking out on his own, he designed and released several small batches of carbon and titanium bikes under Domahidy Designs. Later, Steve launched a new brand with a much more focused vision and compelling name. Viral Bikes officially launched in 2016 with its flagship bike, the Skeptic, a titanium all-mountain hardtail designed around the Pinion Gearbox and a Gates carbon drive. Following that model, Viral later introduced the Dérive (find our review here), which was dubbed a bikepacking hardtail and had the same Pinion Gates drivetrain. This year, Steve and co. have been particularly busy. Not only did they move operations from Bend, Oregon, to Bentonville, Arkansas, but they’ve fleshed out their latest model for today’s release. Read on to learn more about the Viral Wanderer.

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The Wanderer is the brand’s first drop-bar bike and was specifically made for long off-road endeavors and bikepacking rides. It’s built around a 100mm travel mountain bike suspension fork and Boost spacing and, similar to the other two bikes in their lineup, a Pinion gear box and belt drive. More interesting, the Wanderer is built specifically around Smart.Shift, Pinion’s electronically shifted gearbox. I met up with Steve, who shed some light on this. “As soon as we had the Pinion Smart.Shift in our hands, we knew that this would be the next bike to market.” Following suit, TRP released the Hywire, a drop-bar shifter/lever combo designed around Smart.Shift that Steve claims does this drivetrain justice. “There have been a lot of workarounds to making drop bars compatible with the Pinion gearbox, but they’ve all been pretty major compromises, until now,” Steve added. For those worried about batteries, Steve mentioned that Pinion claims a full 10,000 shifts per charge, which makes it a non-issue most rides.

Similar to the Skeptic and Derive, the Viral Wanderer also pushes the boundaries of gravel/adventure geometry. It was designed with a relatively slack 67.5-degree head tube angle and long front center that extends the wheelbase and reach of the Wanderer for more stability and confidence-inspiring descending, whether loaded or not. In addition, the Viral Wander features size-specific geometry with a twist; the seat tube angle changes for each size instead of the chainstay length. “At the end of the day, we have little control over the final chainstay length of a bike. It is what it is when you tension the belt to a specified amount, and you can change that a bit with belt lengths and gear ratios, but now you’re compromising final drive ratio to accomplish a chainstay length. That’s not how we wanted to go about it,” Domahidy said.

Instead, the new Wanderer puts larger riders and smaller riders more forward on the bike. This is achieved with a steeper seat tube angle, which effectively accomplishes the same result as longer chainstays. “Shorter riders benefit from a steeper seat tube angle as it helps improve the front and center geometry, which helps keep toe overlap in check. Taller riders benefit from the same steepening of the seat tube to keep their center of balance more forward and centered over the bike. As you raise the seatpost for taller riders, this moves their center of gravity further and further back which unbalances the ride characteristics. Because we can’t really effectively control the chainstay length, we decided to control center of gravity through seat tube angle.” As you can see in the geometry chart below, Viral switched from a S-XL sizing model to V2-V5, similar to a few other bikes we’ve talked about recently.

Domahidy spent a lot of time refining the geometry of the Wanderer, and he calls the end result sublime. Part of that may be due to the wild-looking and very unique seat cluster, which decouples the top tube from the seat tube and uses a titanium spring plate welded to the seat stays to support the rider. Steve said this offers between 10-20mm of flex to the seat tube, giving the rider even more comfort on the rough stuff. He and his partner have done a bit of bikepacking with the prototype, and he said the rear end remains laterally stiff with a load. We’re super excited to experience this for ourselves.

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There are plenty of touring/bikepacking-ready features on the Viral Wanderer. It has five sets of cage mounts in and outside the triangle, including two three-packs. It also has a couple of stray bosses at the front of the triangle to add the potential for a clean bolt-on frame bag. It also has rear rack mounts on the alloy dropouts and the seat stays and internal dynamo cable routing for a rear tail light.

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Viral is also co-launching the Wanderer with Industry 9 using their new SOLiX M wheels and a brand new gravel stem. The SOLiX M Ultralite 300 Carbon wheels weigh just 1,385 grams per pair and feature a rim matched to the Wanderer’s 29 x 2.4” tire clearance. The SOLiX M’s 0.59-degree engagement angle is also a nice companion to the Pinion gearbox, adding very play little to the Pinion’s clutch mechanism.

The Wanderer frame kit comes with a frame, the Pinion C1.12i Smart.Shift gearbox, forged cranks, battery, charger, wiring, and a full TRP Hywire brakeset with 180mm rotors front and rear (either 6-bolt or centerlock). It will also come with a Gates CDX cogs and belt, the Pinion cog lock ring tool, and an oil change kit. Note that Pinion recently updated their requirements for servicing the gearbox. It’s now only necessary to change the oil every 6,000 miles, regardless of how long it takes you to get to that mileage.

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Pre-orders are available now from Viral Bikes and require a 50% deposit. Folks who order the frame kit will receive the TRP Hywire brakes and shifters for free in addition to being able to select the color anodization for their frame’s logos and stripes. In addition, Viral is offering complete bike for this pre-order special, with components from Industry 9, Crank Brothers, Fizik, and more, which will also be discounted from the normal sale price of the complete bike. Lastly, in collaboration with Tailfin, Viral customers purchasing a frame or complete bike can add any assortment of Tailfin products they might want to attach to their new bikepacking rig.

The pre-order price for the frame kit is $6,490, and the complete starts at $8,500. Learn more about the Wanderer and how to get in on the pre-order action over at Viral.bike.

Further Reading

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