Rocky Mountain Slayer 70
It’s in for Issue 66’s Winching and Plummeting test. It’s an evolution of the original Slayer that we tested years ago brought up to date with a hydroformed alloy frameset with 165mm of rear wheel travel and 160mm up front via the Fox 36 TALAS R fork. It uses a four bar style SmoothLink suspension linkage driving a custom valved Fox RP23 shock. Finishing kit is all rather shiny, with carbon Raceface SIXC cranks, Formula The ONE brakes and an X9 10spd drivetrain.
Price: £4,198.99
From: Silverfish UK
Machined rocker link…
SmoothLink aims to keep chain tension parallel to the pivot to eliminate bob – something the old, hyper active, ground hugging Slayer had a touch of…
Tapered up front with a Cane Creek Frustrum headset.
Bolt through back end…
We’re looking forward to doing some plummeting – and hopefully the winching won’t be so bad.
Giant Reign X0
This is Giant’s rather shiny long travel up and down bike. There’s 170mm of rear bounce via their multi-link Maestro system. Unlike the other bikes in the test it uses the more DH orientated Fox DHX 5.0 air shock rather than the RP. The frame is super swoopy ‘AluXX SL’ aluminium and there’s a top flight 160mm Fox TALAS FIT RLC fork in the tapered headtube.
Price: £4,645
From: Giant UK
DHX 5.0 shock has adjustable bottom out and switchable on-off Pro-pedal.
A full coverage Race Face chaindevice with Atlas cranks and twin rings.
You can see that Giant do a lot of hydroforming…
A Maestro at rest.
Rather neat looking own brand stem.
Maxle bolt through rear end…
Cielo 29er Mountain Bike
Handmade in Portland, Oregon and designed by none other than Chris King of headset and hub fame and Jay of Sycip fame, this is a rather beautifully made and finished big wheeler. The tubing is True Temper OX Platinum that doesn’t lose strength after welding and it’s got Paragon Machine Work sliding dropouts and an integrated Chris King headset.
Benji-bob Haworth is going to be testing it as a Grinder Bike for Issue 66…
Price: £1,299 for frame & headset
From: Evolution Imports
Headtube ring reinforcements are polished up a treat…
King BB – and the Chris King name on the frame…
Lovely detailing.
Sliding dropouts…
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21 years of mountain biking and my lust for CNC machined parts like that Giant stem has not diminished one iota. mmmmmm
‘every time you change gear God kills a kitten’
Good I don’t like bloody cats.
Yeah, that stem is very nice.
That Cielo bike – it’s a shame they didn’t move the logo on the seat tube up an inch or two so it’s not obscured by the front mech clamp…
Nice looking frame though…
Lovely Cielo – the first frame i’ve seen that looks ‘alright’ with Paragon sliders – in general they seem to make the seat stays sit at a funny angle, but maybe that’s just me…
mighty fine use of swear filter avoidance in the CTBM part 😉
The only swear filter we have for the front page is for the word ‘stoked’… 😉
Like that T-shirt!
I’d only ridden a road bike for a year, but I swear when I fitted a set of those Contis I noticed the difference immediately (compared to some Ultremo Rs), proper rapid and no cuts/slices in the tread yet, perfect for the weekend warrior I reckon.
Curiously mae ei feic yn crap is also the noise made by a public schoolboy asking to go to the toilet.
nice use of ‘Daily Mash’ T-shirt.
🙂
road tyres, roadie book?
when are you gonna change the name to
tarmactrackworld
Ah its all good, 2 wheels is 2 wheels.
Come on my Welsh is crap. What does the t-shirt actually say?
The Cielos are actually made by Jay Sycip – lovely things they are too.
+1 for the Giant Stem – are they going to be available to buy or are they OEM only?
The brake disc alignment tool – brilliant – where can i get one?
Has anyone EVER bought a Birzman tool?
Presumably giving ST a free set has just bumped the price up even more.
All GP4000 folding black tyres have the Black Chilli compound. Aside from the different graphics on the sidewall, the GP4000s is nothing special…
@robbo:
http://translate.google.co.uk/translate_t?hl=en&client=ubuntu&hs=j0G&channel=cs&q=mae+ei+feic+yn+crap&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sl=en&tl=cy&sa=X&ei=dtOWTYuiMsbJhAfR15HlCA&ved=0CBkQrgYwAA#
🙂
When are Giant going to move the rocker pivot mount so that you can drop the saddle properly and sort out the drive-side chain stay so that a chain device isn’t dangling so low like an accident waiting to happen?
I love my old Reign but I wish Giant would ride their bikes to get feed back on what is really annoying about their design an fix it. They’ve had 7 years to do so!
Rant over.
ace.
That public school boy comment is effin hilarious. And no doubt true.
Review the fancy smoked oysters. It’s the food of champions and cost me £3.65.
Seriously those smoked oily fellows on a (dirty) hand torn chance of fresh bread is awesome. Lob them in an omelette, best served with a big view and tied legs.
I’m a big fan of CtBM but;
every time you change gear God kills a kitten come from the internet meme c.2005 “every time you mast**bate God kills a kitten” ( http://tinyurl.com/44bgbxk ), “My drinking club has a cycling problem” is from theose nobbers the hash house harriers (a drinking club with a running problem … http://tinyurl.com/3dd4mud ) and “this bike kills fascists” is from a Gogol Bordelo T-shirt which read “this moustache kills fascists” under a picture of the singers face sporting a rather magnificent mo ( http://tinyurl.com/3kws2ev ).
just sayin, but ta for making me think of it, I’ve been trying to get one of those t-shirts for a while and now I see they’re back in stock!
I think you’ll find that “this machine kills fascists” dates back far earlier than Gogol Bordelo and other spinoffs of the motif. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woody_Guthrie.
I hope that particular sticker is still at the office when I get there on Monday, it would look great on my bike.
I stand corrected in the shadow of woody guthrie’s guitar
My ss sports a ctbm sticker aswell. More gonads than gears, although in my case it may not be true!
That slayer looks weeeeell nice! It would also appear to be sporting a link on the chainstay (are we allowed to use the ‘H’ word?).
They also forgot to remove the pie plate 🙂
freegan bikefascist…. almost but not quite right…
god kills a kitten is stolen from a “Everytime you Jump Red lights…. ” sign is Toronto.
Drinking club is stolen from Let my people go surfing… a great book… RE a fishing club.
http://www.patagonia.com/eu/enGB/product/let-my-people-go-surfing-paperback-book?p=BK501-0-000
GoGo Bordello, me, and Joe Strummer stole “This Machine…” from Woody Guthrie who had it on his guitar.
How does a “Powerlink tool-less connecting link, the Powerlock” work?
buzz, it works and is to all intents and purposes just like a powerlink, but it costs more money for less material. 😉
Charlie and I are both burglars, but I claim prior art http://www.flickr.com/photos/steverile/4676278398/
Stoked and railed.
I don’t know what I’m doing T-shirt – where from?
Andy