Advanced footwear technology designed for racing and training in all conditions. 3D-woven Powerweave upper, Speedlace closure system, Padded tongue, DWR treatment.
Fox 36 Factory Live Valve Fork with FIT4 Damper Smooth, supportive, with meaningful damping adjustments readily available.
Liv custom-tuned Fox Factory Live Valve Shock Delivers a lightly-damped tune which proved excellent for this light rider, with a broad range of adjustment readily available.
TranzX Travel-Adjustable Dropper Seat Post Super easy to adjust drop length without the use of any tools whatsoever. The post was smooth, and performed flawlessly throughout the test period.
SRAM XX1 Eagle AXS Drivetrain Shifting was flawless out-of-the-box. The rear derailleur clutch is sufficient, and I have no dropped chain incidents to report.
Zipp 3Zero Moto Carbon Wheelset The wheels performed flawlessly. Theyre both light and quiet, and the ZM2 hub delivers quick engagement thanks to its 132 POEs. And, the rims did not manage to pinch any holes into the relatively lightweight EXO casing tires.
Giant Contact SL Stem50mm Stem No real qualms, though I wonder whether the speed of front-end handling may have benefited from a slightly shorter option.
Giant Contact SLR TR35 Carbon Bar No qualms.
Liv Tactal Pro Single Lock-On Grips Nice short length (110mm on XS & S), appropriate for smaller hands. Rubber is quite hard though, and I found the heavily textured pattern made me squeeze the grips tighter than was strictly necessary.
Shimano XTR Four-Piston Brakes Great to have tool-free adjustment of reach, with bite-point adjustment available with use of a screw driver. Brakes were powerful enough for the intended use, and did not require any bleeding over the course of the test period.
Front Tire 29″ x 2.5″ Maxxis Minion DHF, MaxxTerra, EXO Casing Strikes a good balance between grip and rolling resistance. A higher grip option would be the MaxxGrip equivalent, coming at the expense of rolling resistance. That said, I found that grip was always plentiful.
Rear Tire 27.5″ x 2.4″ Maxxis Dissector, MaxxTerra, EXO Casing Offered very little rolling resistance, but also lacked braking traction with a tendency to lock up and skid quite easily. For enduro, I feel the bike would benefit from an upgrade to the Maxxis Minion DHRII tire of the DoubleDown casing variety. That said, I am happy to report zero punctures.
MRP AMg V2 chainguide: I have no dropped chains to report. The bash guard portion took a few knocks, but is still in great condition.
Weekend Warrior Wireless, Race Wireless and Ultimate all with wireless shifting only.
The Weekend Warrior Wireless gets SRAM Rival AXS and DT Swiss E 1800 SPLINE wheels and the Race Wireless comes with SRAM Force AXS and Zipp 303S wheels.
Lauf Uthald
Obsidian Black, Rubus Red, Borealis and Thingvellir Sky.
