MORE COMPLETE BUILD PICS AT VERY BOTTOM
pretty clever little laminated sag card Trek includes. Has pressure table on the back.
GIANT?! Right on the box. Honestly, I was NOT very impressed with some of the carbon finishing compared to recent builds of Parlee, Scott, and Specialized frames. I expected more from Giant (and Trek). Especially at this pricepoint. O well. The frame IS very stiff and very beefy. The newer Spesh mtbs seem to be on the flexier side.
a lot of dry fibers inside the bb shell. Not enough resin. And the edges of the bb interface are VERY rough.
backside of the toptube is pretty interesting though. Very thick obviously.
total frame weight. ~2100g. size large. Too much for 60mm of travel. Like I said, does look pretty durable and stiff though. We will see.
this is the weight of the FRONT triangle. More than an ENTIRE Epic HT frame LOL.
weight of the REAR triangle WITH shock assembly.
TOTAL shock weight
weight of the strut itself
weight of the damper assembly that goes into the strut. Its nice to see it’s really not that proprietary. Should be plenty reliable. This is NOT a light shock however lol, but very well supported. There are two MASSIVE fork bushings inside of the rear frame strut housing. That said, one was VERY tight. Poor tolerances from Fox. I had to spend a lot of time trying to burnish the bushing in to remove stiction. I really need a burnishing tool, but don’t have one.
gratuitous exploded view of shock. Unfortunately, it looks like the damper assemblies themselves are NOT available separate from the strut housing.
closeup shot of the damper
I tried to remove the lockout assembly, since this is a “push to lock” shock. However, what I didn’t realize is that even at rest in stock state, the dial shaft is under spring load, keeping the cam on the shaft down, depressing the shaft that operates the compression piston lockout. There’s a physical “stop” on the lockout pulley bracket that keeps the pulley under tension even before the remote lockout lever is pushed to lock out the shock. Long story short, after removing the bracket to save weight and trying to set my sag I thought something was wrong with the damper because it was wayyy stiff. I finally realized I had to go back and re-install the cable-stop bracket. Problem solved. Damper open.
Went through the Sid ultimate SL fork when I got it just for good measure. It was pretty well lubed, which is good to see (unlike Trek’s frame hardware). I noticed theres a hefty bumper on the air shaft. My Lyrik doesn’t have one.
RANDOM PARTS
Really trick BBInfinite Bottom Bracket. Comes with proprietary 40x30x10 bearings for good support of 29mm dub cranks in this tiny BB92 shell. By the way TREKS BB TOLERANCES $%^$%^ SUCK. 40.8mm ID shell on a spec of 41. Trek CS told me it was “in spec”. Turns out, its really not. This thing fit REALLY tight and I’d wished I would have honed the shell myself (I usually do), but didn’t this time against my better judgement. I’m going to have to use a hacksaw to remove this bottom bracket. FIX YOUR TOLERANCES TREK/GIANT!
LightBicycle XC925 rims. It is my opinion that LB now makes some of the best rims in the world. These are with the standard, non-Flyweight layup.
DT180 EXP hub weights
Front wheel weight. Rear is just 100g more. 28h on Aerolite.
Frame bag. PLENTY of room for two bottles and the same framebag I use on my Ripmo. Very cool.
Gratuitous pic of Ti bolt collection
Wolftooth low-profile Ti bottle cage bolts
Ti countersunk bolts for Knockblock chip and cable bosses
Hi-grade shock mount hardware from Pro-Bolt
Heavy ass stock seatpost clamp
Replacement from R2-Bike. It’s dead on at 36.4mm and Trek’s paint around the seattube is THICCC. Seat tube measured at 36.6. THANKS TREK. Sooo the included bolt didn’t work. I have to take a longer one and cut it down. When I have time, I’m going to have to Dremel around the seattube collar to remove some of the paint.
Knockblock stem adapter. Barely works. Have to cinch it down WAY past the spec’d 2NM to keep it from slipping. I also took a file and honed the ID of the clamp for a bit more bite. Garbage.
REALLY trick TrickStuff in-line +20mm post-mount brake adapters for the front.
Cutting brake pads…I wanted to run these Swiss Stop pads intended to fit the direct mount road calipers and a couple of the heatsink fins hit the hose port soooo….
Decided to not use the control freak cable guides and just run all three cables/hose on one side of the bike…
