Hey Everybody, we will be closed on Wednesday, 12/26. We will return to work on Thursday at 10am for normal hours.
Thanks!
Sram XX1 Crankset on Shimano 10spd Drivetrain
Oh dang. I went and got a new bike. Here is a lousy picture of it..
You may recognize it from the wall of our shop. It is the Giant XTC Composite (carpet fiber 29er) that we've had for about a year. After hesitantly selling my Trance frame, I "needed" something to replace it and put to use all the good parts that were now lying around.
So, since the XTC wasn't selling, and I've never had a carpet fiber 29er hardtail with gears, this one became mine.
But the real story is the cranks. If you look closely at the picture above you will see that my bike weighed 22lb 15oz, and that was with an XTR triple crankset, an XT front derailleur, and an XT front shifter.
In the next picture, you will see my same bike, in another bad photo...
In this photo the bike is built with Sram's brand spanky new XX1 single ring crankset, that uses voodoo to allow use of a 1x10 (or 1x9 or 1x11) drivetrain without using a chainguide up front. (In case you never learned the hard way, you really couldn't get away with this previously, as the chain would inevitably come off the chainring.)
The other part of the story is the weight savings. With an XT shifter, XT front derailleur, and XTR crank traded out for the XX1 crankset the bike lost exactly 1 pound. This was much more than I was anticipating.
The other other part of the story is that I did not use the entire XX1 group. With an XTR Shadow plus rear derailleur, and a KMC 10spd chain, this setup has worked flawlessly so far. Now I have only ridden it a couple of times, but I would suspect that if this wasn't going to work well, I would have found out just a few minutes into the first ride.
So, that's an easy pound of weight savings for $285 (MSRP on the XX1 cranks). That's assuming that you don't mind loosing some gear ratio, and that you can get your hands on a set of these cranks (I hear bike shop rats have been buying them all up for themselves). If you are already running a single ring setup with a chain guide of some sort, this is a sweet upgrade that can save some weight and eliminate your noisy, inefficient chain guide.
And lastly, in case you are wondering, the bike is a blast. Under 22 pounds with sealant (no pedals), it's almost enough to make me feel like I have some fitness because going up hills just got a lot easier than it has been in a while.
So there you have it, and incredibly dorked out post that may get a few very big bike nerds of a certain type excited, and will likely be absolute nonsense to most everybody else in the world. Thanks for reading!
You may recognize it from the wall of our shop. It is the Giant XTC Composite (carpet fiber 29er) that we've had for about a year. After hesitantly selling my Trance frame, I "needed" something to replace it and put to use all the good parts that were now lying around.
So, since the XTC wasn't selling, and I've never had a carpet fiber 29er hardtail with gears, this one became mine.
But the real story is the cranks. If you look closely at the picture above you will see that my bike weighed 22lb 15oz, and that was with an XTR triple crankset, an XT front derailleur, and an XT front shifter.
In the next picture, you will see my same bike, in another bad photo...
In this photo the bike is built with Sram's brand spanky new XX1 single ring crankset, that uses voodoo to allow use of a 1x10 (or 1x9 or 1x11) drivetrain without using a chainguide up front. (In case you never learned the hard way, you really couldn't get away with this previously, as the chain would inevitably come off the chainring.)
The other part of the story is the weight savings. With an XT shifter, XT front derailleur, and XTR crank traded out for the XX1 crankset the bike lost exactly 1 pound. This was much more than I was anticipating.
The other other part of the story is that I did not use the entire XX1 group. With an XTR Shadow plus rear derailleur, and a KMC 10spd chain, this setup has worked flawlessly so far. Now I have only ridden it a couple of times, but I would suspect that if this wasn't going to work well, I would have found out just a few minutes into the first ride.
So, that's an easy pound of weight savings for $285 (MSRP on the XX1 cranks). That's assuming that you don't mind loosing some gear ratio, and that you can get your hands on a set of these cranks (I hear bike shop rats have been buying them all up for themselves). If you are already running a single ring setup with a chain guide of some sort, this is a sweet upgrade that can save some weight and eliminate your noisy, inefficient chain guide.
And lastly, in case you are wondering, the bike is a blast. Under 22 pounds with sealant (no pedals), it's almost enough to make me feel like I have some fitness because going up hills just got a lot easier than it has been in a while.
So there you have it, and incredibly dorked out post that may get a few very big bike nerds of a certain type excited, and will likely be absolute nonsense to most everybody else in the world. Thanks for reading!
2013 Trance X 29 Demo bikes have arrived!
We finally received our long awaited 2013 Giant Trance X 29 demo bikes! We originally had been waiting for the "1" model, which sells for a very reasonable $2775...
But those were taking a while to show up, and we noticed that the "0" version was available last week, and of course we are suckers for Shimano XT (including brakes and rotors!), and tubeless wheels / DT Swiss hubs. So we switched our order, and our bad ass new $4250 demo bikes showed up this week.
As usual with Giant, the bike is better looking in person than on the website. Lots of nice design details, as well as a cool paint scheme and some very good color matching. The entire build kit is well thought out, you can't go wrong with a full XT group. They choose the reasonable 24/36 tooth double chainring combination, the bike comes stock with their no-frills but tough as nails dropper post. The hubs have DT Swiss internals, the rims are tubeless (it basically seems like a DT wheelset with Giant written on it) and the Schwalbe Nobby Nics are tubeless ready. They even include valve stems, all you need to do is pull the tubes, slap on the valves, pour in some Stans and you are ready to go.
One nice design feature is the optional internal cable routing. The bike is shipped with the front and rear brake cables routed internally, while the rear brake hose is routed using bolt on clips down the downtube. However, there is an internal routing option for the rear brake, as well as the dropper post cables. Of course we had to use the internal options, and although it took some doing, it was worth the effort as the bike looks so clean and now the rear hose is well protected. We threw some low profile rotor bolts into the bolt holes along the down tube that were no longer being used, but Giant includes little plastic plugs that serve that purpose.
Converted to tubeless with generous servings of Stans, and test ride pedals, our completely stock build medium demo bike weighs 28 lbs. We think that's a pretty impressive weight for an aluminum 5" travel 29er with a dropper post. (We have weighed the frame only, and it comes in just over 6lbs in a large.)
So far we have a small and a medium demo bike, and we should have a large arriving soon. We currently are charging $60 a day for our demo bikes, with that money going towards any bike purchase that you make in the future. As our demo fleet grows, we may be offering a multiple bike / multiple day demo package that will allow you to check out all the bikes we offer for a lower price. Stay tuned, and give a ring if you'd like to schedule a ride on the new Trance X 29 0!
Lastly, we are stocking these framesets in all sizes, incase you are particular on your build kit or already have all the parts you need. The frameset sells for $1550, and comes with the top of the line Fox CTD with Kashima coating. Also the framesets have a unique paintjob that isn't offered on any of the completes, so you will see far fewer bikes just like yours out on the trails. Give us a call or shoot an email for a custom build quote (we are very competitive with our complete bike custom build pricing)!
Thanks for reading!
As usual with Giant, the bike is better looking in person than on the website. Lots of nice design details, as well as a cool paint scheme and some very good color matching. The entire build kit is well thought out, you can't go wrong with a full XT group. They choose the reasonable 24/36 tooth double chainring combination, the bike comes stock with their no-frills but tough as nails dropper post. The hubs have DT Swiss internals, the rims are tubeless (it basically seems like a DT wheelset with Giant written on it) and the Schwalbe Nobby Nics are tubeless ready. They even include valve stems, all you need to do is pull the tubes, slap on the valves, pour in some Stans and you are ready to go.
One nice design feature is the optional internal cable routing. The bike is shipped with the front and rear brake cables routed internally, while the rear brake hose is routed using bolt on clips down the downtube. However, there is an internal routing option for the rear brake, as well as the dropper post cables. Of course we had to use the internal options, and although it took some doing, it was worth the effort as the bike looks so clean and now the rear hose is well protected. We threw some low profile rotor bolts into the bolt holes along the down tube that were no longer being used, but Giant includes little plastic plugs that serve that purpose.
Converted to tubeless with generous servings of Stans, and test ride pedals, our completely stock build medium demo bike weighs 28 lbs. We think that's a pretty impressive weight for an aluminum 5" travel 29er with a dropper post. (We have weighed the frame only, and it comes in just over 6lbs in a large.)
So far we have a small and a medium demo bike, and we should have a large arriving soon. We currently are charging $60 a day for our demo bikes, with that money going towards any bike purchase that you make in the future. As our demo fleet grows, we may be offering a multiple bike / multiple day demo package that will allow you to check out all the bikes we offer for a lower price. Stay tuned, and give a ring if you'd like to schedule a ride on the new Trance X 29 0!
Lastly, we are stocking these framesets in all sizes, incase you are particular on your build kit or already have all the parts you need. The frameset sells for $1550, and comes with the top of the line Fox CTD with Kashima coating. Also the framesets have a unique paintjob that isn't offered on any of the completes, so you will see far fewer bikes just like yours out on the trails. Give us a call or shoot an email for a custom build quote (we are very competitive with our complete bike custom build pricing)!
I will leave you with a photo of my boy Julian, doing his best to test the gear we sell and ensure that it is up to snuff for you, our loyal customers.
