"Fun" XC race bike? Ideas...

[BushwackerinPA]

By the way....Fuck anything Giant. fuck their shit.

alot of not giant bike are giants. They make 80-90 percent of the AL and carbon frames out there.

[craigstr]

Good call. Still not slack enough w/o shock mods.



Since I kind of broached the topic...my "realistic ideal" build would be:

Revelation 150 (140) 20mm or 36 or 32 @ 140
Stans ZTR Flow laced to 240 hubs (12mm rear) setup tubeless
X-9 10 speed running 1x10
Any lightish 175mm crank
Joplin 4 w/remote
Wide light carbon bar
70mm stem
Any okay lightish brakes. Hope Minis would be sick but probably wont happen. Probably Juice 3s or 5s.


Those are really my build requirements. Kind of "loose" but I feel I'll save money that way

Built up light, mine weighs 30 lbs. I've been racing it in the Northstar XC series and placing upper/mid pack in the 35-44 Sport class. I can hold my own going up but then I can just smoke everyone going down.

[creaky fossil]

Anthem would make perfect sense if it had the right angles...like I said earlier a Trance with a 66.5-67 degree he, 12.5" bb and slightly shorter chainstays would be THE bike but it doesn't exist.

Anyway, I agree with your statement of the 120 vs 140 thing but I really do like a 67 degree ht angle. I know, not the "norm" but I climb just fine with it and more than anything am "used" to slacker than normal ht angles. Some might gripe that it'll push the bars way up but with my size, I'd probably run the bars up higher than most with the 120mm fork (put a few spacers in there). Going to a 140 allows me to run 1/zero spacers and have the same bar heigh...All I'm saying is I'm not giving up bar height as a compromise of the 140mm fork. Just a bit more travel for the rougher riding out here, slightly higher BB (.25ish...bummer) and slacker HT.

The reason I like the 5 vs 575 is the 5 has a much stiffer rear shock platform, its lighter, lower and should be more laterally rigid. It's designed to use its travel in a more "efficient" way as opposed to a more "compliant" way. What does this mean? Its going to ride rougher but transfer more power to the trail. Perfect. I hated the way I blew through the 575s travel...the 5 should have this fixed for me. (this is something bigger riders seem to notice more on the 575 fyi)

Makes sense to me. I don't blow through the 575's rear travel unless I'm really aggressive when using my legs to pump the bike through a corner. Probably that's because I'm a spindly 145-150 lbs. But I agree it would be nice to have a firmer rear suspension action. I tend to leave ProPedal on during many climbs for that reason, and even have left it on during some descents for the same reason.

[alembical]

I love my Trance X-0 and have been racing it in xc races, 6 hour events, super D, etc... I have hard time thinking of what I would improve if I could only have one mountain bike. I would prefer having a dedicated xc bike and a little larger travel bike, but this does both of those quite well... surprisingly well. Mine weighs between 25.5 and 26 pounds with nothing real light on it.