2020 Trance Advanced 29er

SummitFever

Eats Squid


Frame - Trance Advanced 29er (large)
Rear shock - Fox DPX2
Front shock/fork - Fox 34 FIT4 @ 130mm
Handlebars - Ritchey carbon flatbar
Stem - Syntace 109 in 60mm, ti bolts.
Headset - Stock Giant headset
Grips - Giant lockon grips
Saddle - San Marco Aspide Super Leggerra Carbon
Seatpost - Giant SL dropper with top cradle and Ti bolts from my previous carbon seatpost
Front brake - XTR M9000 race brakes
Rear brake - XTR M9000 race brakes
Cranks - Cannondale Hollowgram SiSL
Chain - KMC X11SL
Pedals - Xpedo XMF08TT
Front derailleur - N/A (for the moment)
Rear derailleur - Shimano XTR M9000 medium cage
Front shifter - N/A
Rear shifter - Shimano XTR M9000 rear shifter
Cassette - Shimano XTR 11-40
Front hub - Tune King 15mm non-boost 32h
Rear hub - Tune Kong 135mm non-boost 32h
Front rim - Stans NoTubes Crest Mk3 29er 32h
Rear rim - Stans NoTubes Crest Mk3 29er 32h
Spokes - DT Swiss Revolution
Nipples - DT Swiss 12mm
Tyres - Continental X-King 2.4 Racesport front and Racing Ralph 2.25 rear.
Tubes - Tubeless with homemade sealant
Total weight - 10.6kg

Yesterday morning this bike was a Trance 29er Advanced 1. By the evening, the frame, fork and dropper were the only thing that remained. All of the other bits came from my previous older model Trance 29er.
 
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SummitFever

Eats Squid
Wankfuckery

I'll just get the bad bits out of the way first:
  • boost;
  • trunion shock;
  • press fit bottom bracket;
  • 35mm bars;
  • 28h wheelset;
  • DUB crankset - these were a bastard to remove!
  • did I mention "boost"?
 
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born-again-biker

Is looking for a 16" bar
The gunmetal colour and overall stealthy look is very un-Giant.
And with the wagon wheels and shorter travel it's like looking at a bike that's called a "Trance"....but not as we know it.
More like an Anthem perhaps?
Have you built it to race....or just the go-to trail bike?
 

SummitFever

Eats Squid
Good bits

Handles like a dream. Rides like an xc bike on the way up and is a lot of fun on the way down. I've also got the same bike in alu and I really couldn't say that I feel any frame difference between the bikes.

Dpx2 shock: its surprisingly good straight out of the box. The dps shock on the alu bike was not bad either but the dpx2 feels like it has better small bump sensitivity and better high speed rebound. The adjustability is also good and its early days on dialing it in.

Frame finish: the paint job is impressive. Mostly a matt black/charcoal sort of colour with the top of the top tube done in amazing metallic green.
 

SummitFever

Eats Squid
The gunmetal colour and overall stealthy look is very un-Giant.
And with the wagon wheels and shorter travel it's like looking at a bike that's called a "Trance"....but not as we know it.
More like an Anthem perhaps?
Have you built it to race....or just the go-to trail bike?
The fit and finish on the latest Giants is up there with the boutique brands. It's pretty hard to find fault. I suppose it should be as the price is also getting up there.

Funny you mention the Anthem because I think this is what the Anthem should have been but then I'm no XC racer.

I'm basically dropping down to two bikes. My 26" Anthem X for bikepacking and the Trance 29er for everything else.
 
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SummitFever

Eats Squid
Ambivalent bits

FIT4 damper: alu bike has the Fox 34 with Grip damper. It's early days but the FIT4 damper hasn't blown me away with how much better it is than the Grip damper.

Carbon frame: yes, its lighter than the alu frame but I can't feel any dramatic difference in stiffness, handling or ride. This is my first carbon framed bike and I've always wanted one but I wouldn't be crying myself to bed each night if all I could ride was alu.
 

SummitFever

Eats Squid
Technical challenges

DUB crankset and bottom bracket get a special mention here.

Crankset was done up scarry tight. Nothing the big breaker bar couldn't handle but its normally used on tractor wheel nuts and not a bicycle.

I wanted to fit my Canondale Hollogram cranks. They use a 30mm spindle. @Mattyp pointed out the DUB BB uses 30mm id bearings. I had these cranks on a PF92 bike so a straight swap across should have been the go. Wrong! The DUB BB sticks out a couple of mm each side of the PF92 BB shell meaning that my 128mm hollowgram axle wasnt long enough.

No problem, just grab the longest spindle I've got and use it. Well, that longest spindle is 132mm and so when properly tightened the cranks just rub ever so slightly on the DUB BB shell.

Long story short, I've had to order a 137mm spindle. I might actually machine it down to 28.99mm so I can use the DUB bearing shields to give the puny little DUB bearings a chance at surviving winter.
 

Ackland

chats d'élevage
Surely you can get another BB that isn't dub to fit in?
Are you running boost adaptors for the hubs
 

SummitFever

Eats Squid
Yeah boost adapters. I've got a BB92 x 30mm BB kit from Real World Cycling which I've used in the past but I figured I'd use the BB that came with the bike. Pressing the bearings from the frame will probably bugger them which would be a waste and the DUB sealing arrangement is better. The RWC bearings are however much stronger than the DUB bearings.
 
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SummitFever

Eats Squid
I actually tried to remove the DUB BB but its in there so tight that I need to make a proper jig/tooling for the hydraulic press to remove them safely and I just wanted to take it for a ride rather than spend an afternoon toolmaking.
 

SummitFever

Eats Squid
Cheers. It's ended up a bit heavier than the 2014 Trance 29er it's replacing but the Fox 34 and DPX2 probably add about 0.5kg to the 120mm Reba / Monarch RT on the previous Trance. Also, the old Trance didn't have a dropper.

I think if you went all out with a Fox 34 step cast, inline rear shock, lightweight dropper and lighter wheelset then 10kg flat might be possible but that might impact on the fun factor.

I've had some 270g carbon rims sitting in the shed waiting to be built up with an Extralite front hub (70g) and 240s rear hub (230g) that should end up being a sub 1200g wheelset but really haven't had the enthusiasm to get that going as the rims might be just a little too lightweight/expensive to have fun on.

On the 29er I get about a year our of a Crest MK3 rim on the rear before it starts cracking around the spoke holes. I build all my own wheels so a $100 rim per year is not a great expense for something that's still relatively lightweight.

The bike did come with some nice looking Giant carbon wheels which I might do some riding on when my DT Swiss 360 drive ring removal tool comes in (so I can convert them to ratchet drive and use the numerous Shimano compatible DT Swiss freehubs I've got).
 

SummitFever

Eats Squid
Value for money

Giant's are definitely not the value for money bikes they used to be. The guys at Onya Bike in Belconnen looked after me with an amazing deal on the bike but even so, it's still a lot of money for something that turns up with SRAM GX drivetrain, Descendant cranks and Guide T brakes. In comparison, the alu Trance 1 I bought in Germany had pretty much a full XT build kit (brakes, shifter, derailleur, cranks). I'm not super knowledgable on the SRAM product line, but you'd expect the second best Trance that Giant sell should have the second best groupset (maybe X01?).

The suspension side of things is much better. The Performance Elite fork and DPX2 are right up there and all but identical to Fox's full factory offerings just without the Kashima coat. There was only about a $500 difference between the Pro 2 and Pro 1 models and aside from the funny root beer colour of the Pro2, it was the suspension on the Pro 1 that for me made it the better value proposition.
 

SummitFever

Eats Squid
Hollowgram cranks

Needed a 137mm spindle and some custom spacers to get clearance and chainline dialed in (got to love how you can get spindles in 5mm increments):





Spacers are not the same width either side but they fit inside the DB bottom bracket shell and pick up the sealing surfaces with minimal friction.
 

SummitFever

Eats Squid
Almost 2 years ago, I bought some LightBicycle carbon rims on special. It's taken me until now to get around to building them into a wheelset. Getting some boost hubs that I liked involved considerable procrastination. In the past, my go to hubs were those from Tune but they are a bit under-engineered for the amount of riding I do (fatigue cracks have developed in hub flanges, rotor mounts and freehub bodies).

Anyway, ended up ordering an Acros Nineteen rear hub from zee Germans and a Rotor Rvolver front hub from the Spanairds just to keep things interesting. Combined with DT Swiss Revolution spokes, the wheelset came together like a charm. It didn't quite break the 1200g barrier I was hoping, but came pretty close at 1216g and is the lightest wheelset I've ever built (previously lightest wheelset I built was a 1240g Tune hub / Podium MMX combo for my Anthem X 26er that I'm still using).





On the bike the wheels feel surprisingly good. The lighter weight certainly makes them more responsive/faster to accelerate. While almost 150g lighter than my Tune/Crest MK3 wheelset, they do feel a bit stiffer but the increased stiffness might actually translate into less traction on fast sweeping off camber corners. I'm running the exact same tyres on both sets of wheels so I can get a good back-to-back comparison (Conti X-King 2.4 in the front and Schwalbe Racing Ralph 2.35 in the rear) and the tyres on both sets are new, setup tubeless. I feel like I want to run less pressure than I do with the Crests but going below 22psi on a <300g carbon rim seems like a recipe for disaster.

It will be interesting to see how long these last. I plan to keep them on the bike until I run into issues.
 
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