Technical Report Tiny shock bolt: The original shock bolt snapped within about 10 meters of riding; this was replaced by GT in Whistler. According to GT, the bikes were originally built by the factory with the wrong bolts, which should now all be replaced. However, the correct bolt lasted only a few more weeks before snapping. I replaced this with a huge bolt from the hardware shop that survived, but it did bend and was difficult to remove. The fourth bolt has survived two whole days of riding and looks good, although it's certainly something to keep an eye on. This solid steel bolt is now fitted from the factory. Given how burly everything else is on the chassis it's unfortunate that the shock bolt doesn't seem to be up to the task.
Low front end: For a large sized bike it took some work to get the handlebar height up to a usable level, largely due to the short head tube. To raise the bars, I bumped up the fork travel to 200mm from 190, swapped the flat crown (the only one on any 49 I've had) to a drop-crown, and installed a different stem. It is possible to flip the stem for more rise, but that also shortens its length from 50mm to 30mm.
Stan's Flow Wheelset: These rims took some big hits and needed replacing after a few weeks, but worse than a few dings were the spokes losing tension. There are two schools of thought here, the first is that a perfectly tensioned wheelset will stay true, the second is that some sort of thread lock compound can be used to keep the spokes at the correct tension. I prefer the latter, some don't as the thread lock can make truing difficult. After using many DT-Swiss wheelsets and their Prolock nipple system with zero issues, I'm convinced spokes shouldn't be coming loose.
Switch Kit: The Fury can be set up with 27.5" or 29" wheels using their Switch Kit, but it's not as simple as it sounds. A full switch means changing the headset cups, fork, wheels, and even the seat stay. It's not something that riders will be doing every other ride, but it does offer many options for tuning and testing with hybrid wheel setups or geometry fiddling.
Talk about phoning that bitch in.
Sorry, Tandy's
Or was it a joke?
Still, while I expect my rims to get destroyed riding (part of the game) I do not expect to be replacing shock hardware more often! Thats scary.
Is it me or did Aston seem very lukewarm on this thing. Def not his first choice.
Really curious to see the V10 review.
shock bolt issue
no thx
It saves a little bit of weight, which is why they do it on XC-bikes, but given the system weight of a DH bike there is not much point.
This is what I think happened:
He got the bike at the end of summer. Rode it that week and got some sweet photos.
Kept riding it for several months, on and off.
Wrote the review in January.
It was published today.
Yes, I was in Verbier for closing week last October, mainly to shoot photos for five reviews and spend some time on the bikes.
I have been riding 4/5/6 downhill bikes back to back every week since then in various places to give them a thorough run down. If people claim to be giving a full review of a bike days after it is launched, that is not a full review. I aim to put more than 15 days on a bike and use a couple of extra riders to give extra feedback and to test the durability of the parts.
This review has also been ready to post for a couple of weeks, but we have a long term schedule to post articles to make sure the site is balanced. If we posted five downhill bike reviews all on a Monday morning, many would get lost down the news page and people who are interested in them might not have time to read them or miss them.
Just to make it clear. I was not suggesting that there is a problem with the fact that the pictures had been taken late october. Just replying to IluvRIDING
first, I think the Norco is called the Aurum HSP .
And second, I don't think Pauls correct in calling the trek a four bar setup.... Aren't pretty much all Treks linkage actuated single pivot designs? Visually four bar yeah, but in reality single pivots?
Also, given that this is a Horst link rather than a single pivot, the IC in the first portion of travel should be roughly 2" higher than the main pivot which would put it near or higher than the pivot on a Norco or Commie, so I'm surprised this bike feels to @paulaston like it doesn't "magic carpet" as well as a higher pivot single pivot... Some insight on this would also be appreciated.
The more mass you have the stronger you need to be to support it. At the end of a 5min DH it adds up.
Have a good season.
Dude says 1500 times that it comes with an X2(air) shock, but the bike shown obviously came with a DHX2 If the bike comes with an air shock but the 'review' is with a coil, what the hell good is it?
Personally I would go with whatever felt best on any bike and whatever it is designed for and comment as this is as valuable as head angle, stack and reach information.
Bar height = (bar height from the ground) - (BB height from the ground).
Typically when you ride your feet are at BB height, not lying on the ground.
Bar height and BB height are two separate independent measurements. Yes they correlate to the handling of the bike but the bar height is the bar height and it's measured from the ground. Not the BB height. Or the sky.
BTW your pseudo could have been mine
So that's not an argument which is worth 2x of the Cube 215 pricetag.
you can get a really nice MX for that much
What’s up with the hideous track for the cable routing? And the fork bumpers with the “internal” cable routing look?
Either true internal routing or your basic down tube with tabs please. Not sure what kind of asthetics they were after with this non color matched track.
Thanks!
Who wears a backpack?
Lemme guess, kneepads are for squids and helmets are for losers right?
Also internal cable routing sucks so much
I don't care if it looks better, it's f**king annoying
GT has been done for ever
Can’t make a bike anyone wants to ride
Look a brook McDonald