Giant Glory

bikenweed said:

It is a sweet deal when compared to the other bikes out there, but my point is we are paying way, way too much. The industry isn't profiting hugely though, so let's figure out some designs and save some money on all this re-designing. Also, the reason for such high prices could be the tiny demand for these bikes. There's a much higher demand for dirt bikes than MTB's, so the manufacturers are producing them in much larger numbers, vastly lowering production costs. It all seems like a huge catch 22. We need to sell more bikes, but we can't because they cost too much. Let's hear some ideas on how to save some coin!

Click to expand...

Aside from buying used or getting a bro deal, I don't know how to save. I do think a big part is the companies creating newer and better designs to out perfrom their competitors. Should we just have 2 or 3 designs and have every manufacturer just make those? Where is the progress? Where is the evolution?

I see where you are comming from and I'm not trying to argue w/ you. You have very valid points. It does feel like a catch 22 Yossarian.

How many YZ250's were produced vs. how many Giant DH Teams last year? I'm going to assume (unless told otherwise) yamaha spit out a bunch more. And how many people popped full coin for those bikes new (and their not cheap)? Yeah, motos, cars, bikes can be had cheaper if intelligently bought used. My first dh bike was a screaming deal used. The guy who bought my V10 got a damn good deal off me. I don't think its a product of the bike industry, but more of just the way things are. But in a world where $1200 for a fork is a good deal, higher prices are just the price of entry for a new top end bike. Its simmilar in kayaking (and other sports), a good white water boat STARTS at around $850 - for plastic!

The giant, as well as the iron horse, specalized and some of the others are new designs w/ r+d, engineering, etc built into them and the manufacturer has to recoup this. I still use the vcr the old man bought in the 80's for around $500....and it has a wired remote. Point being, things evolve and prices work themselves out.

I, for one, have a difficult time buying used. I've seen first hand what people do to their bikes and then try and sell them as like new. So until a company makes the perfect suspension design, the perfect geometry for all, a beautiful parts spec, can make tons of them and sells it for $3200 full retail, we're going to have to consider bikes around $5k a good deal. It just seems there are just too many variables in our sport for this too happen.

Sorry for the novel and thanks for the time.

relating back to the motor cycle thing, I think it is because the buisness for a motor cycle is split between only a few main companies: honda, yamaha, suzuki, kawasaki, and ktm. kawasaki and suzuki joined forces a few years back, so its bassicly 3 or 4 companies splitting buisness about equally. So they can sell a cheap motorcycle because either way, they are gonna sell a ton of them.

In cycling you have several companies who are all trying to get the little technology advantage over one another, that it costs money to do it because it always has to change. Like the yeti 303 and that honda seem to be the best out there interms of dh. And a ton of engineering went into both of those, so they must cost alot.

There are ton of companies all with what they are trying to make the best:
specialized: fsr
Ironhorse: dw link
giant: maestro
santa cruz/intense: vpp
cannondale: their little modified single pivot on the new dh bike
GT: the it1 now and their I drive system
Mongoose: freedrive
Plus everyones trying to make everything lighter or more efficiant, it will never peak, one company will allways make something better or lighter, then another one makes it even lighter, and all this developement costs money. then to get even lighter or stronger a new material may come around and then it costs more money.

GT iDrive=Mongoose Freedrive...both pacific brands, technology gets shared.

blue said:

GT iDrive=Mongoose Freedrive...both pacific brands, technology gets shared.

Click to expand...

yes I know this considering I work at a pacific dealer. but the old i drive like the ones on dhi's is different than the freedrive,

sk8kid33 said:

yes I know this considering I work at a pacific dealer. but the old i drive like the ones on dhi's is different than the freedrive,

Click to expand...

It's the current I-Drive setup, like the IDXC and the I-Drive 5, isn't it? Buncha weird pivots instead of an eccentric BB. Same iDrive...

zmtber said:

can anyone explain the maestro sus design, they keep on using glittery words, if you know what i mean, to explain how it works, but it kindav just says three things no brake induce bob, pedal bob, and no chain slack, but they never really say how except it has to do with this vertual pivate thing?

Click to expand...

It is a vertual pivot. Giant basicly made a VPP bike got sued by SC and had to do a pre production design change, the current one is more like a DW link but still kind of like a VPP bike. Basicly it is in between the VPP and DW link, but doesnt work very well. Aperently specialized's engineers were testing the miestro link on the faith and found that the rearword pivot moves about a degree, and now there is a faith rollin around specialized with a bolt in the rear pivot instead of a bearing.

TheMontashu said:

It is a vertual pivot. Giant basicly made a VPP bike got sued by SC and had to do a pre production design change, the current one is more like a DW link but still kind of like a VPP bike. Basicly it is in between the VPP and DW link, but doesnt work very well. Aperently specialized's engineers were testing the miestro link on the faith and found that the rearword pivot moves about a degree, and now there is a faith rollin around specialized with a bolt in the rear pivot instead of a bearing.

Click to expand...

I'm not even touching this.......

TheMontashu said:

It is a vertual pivot. Giant basicly made a VPP bike got sued by SC and had to do a pre production design change, the current one is more like a DW link but still kind of like a VPP bike.

Click to expand...

they never got sued, and they had a VPP prototype/tester out before SC did (during the ATX years). You cant get sued for not ever selling a product, they can build as many clones as they want, as long as they dont get sold.

If you can't read it and understand my post it is because I am hoped up on dayquill

TheMontashu said:

If you can't read it and understand my post it is because I am hoped up on dayquill

Click to expand...

I see, I guess using that logic Specialized doesn't believe in their horst link, it barely rotates when you compress the suspension

TheMontashu,

Whatever. Show us some proof there was a lawsuit.

Giant was fiddling with some "dual link" bikes years ago with Tomac.

Set-up the shock wrong on any bike and it will ride like poo.

Specialized is a marketing machine- they are doing everything possible to protect the viability of the 10 year old (more really) technology they bought from Horst Leitner...

zmtbr,
I'm not an engineer so I can't explain it-but once you set-up one of the Maestro bikes they do what Giant says.

Flame on...

roamingoregon said:

Specialized is a marketing machine- they are doing everything possible to protect the viability of the 10 year old (more really) technology they bought from Horst Leitner...

Click to expand...

When companies use the same design year after year and refine it that is a sign of good design, not bad. And there is nothing new about these various competing four suspension designs

Short link fourbars, VPP, etc mountain bikes were cutting edge at least 10 years ago (in the early to mid nineties)...

syadasti said:

I see, I guess using that logic Specialized doesn't believe in their horst link, it barely rotates when you compress the suspension

Click to expand...

The horste link is next to the axle and servs a difrent perpos thant the second link on a VPP bike

zmtber said:

so it doesn't work, then how come everyonbe that has ridn a faith or a maestro bike says they love it?

Click to expand...

I have heard complaints from some people about the ride, you made a very broad generalization there.

TheMontashu said:

The horste link is next to the axle and servs a difrent perpos thant the second link on a VPP bike

Click to expand...

Yeah but your logic was the maestro bikes don't work well cause they only move a few degrees. That small movement makes a difference. Just like the small change the horst link makes in axle path makes the important difference in the way they work.

roamingoregon said:

TheMontashu,

Whatever. Show us some proof there was a lawsuit.

Giant was fiddling with some "dual link" bikes years ago with Tomac.

Set-up the shock wrong on any bike and it will ride like poo.

Specialized is a marketing machine- they are doing everything possible to protect the viability of the 10 year old (more really) technology they bought from Horst Leitner...

zmtbr,
I'm not an engineer so I can't explain it-but once you set-up one of the Maestro bikes they do what Giant says.

Flame on...

Click to expand...

I got this info from a LBS mechanic at a giant dealer, now if the guy at the shop says something bad about a bike he sells I think it is true, and as well neather of the other 2 people there (owner included) disputed this.

blue said:

The DHi is not being produced for 05, replaced by the IT1, which has an MSRP of $4999 with an insane part spec and gearbox. Has a 40, saint hubs, cranks, Hope M4s, Sun MTX rims, etc etc...they skimped on nothing on that bike. Show me the better deal, eh?

http://www.gtbikes.com/mountain/catalog/detail.php?id=2051&country=usa&brand=moun

Click to expand...

Not a bad spec, too bad that bike weighs a **** ton and isnt dh race geometry. Still if it fits your needs seems it like a reasonable deal. To all those that cant believe anyone would spend 5g on a bike, the fact is very few people do. I would go so far as to say that most top of the line dh bikes are not sold to people who are paying full retail. Maybe a few to rich, slow old guys but most downhill racers dont have anywhere near enough extra cash to pay 5g, and theyve also been around bikes long enough to have picked up some hook ups along the way.

syadasti said:

Yeah but your logic was the maestro bikes don't work well cause they only move a few degrees. That small movement makes a difference. Just like the small change the horst link makes in axle path makes the important difference in the way they work.

Click to expand...

From what I was told from the owner of the shop I work at he was told by an engineer at specialized that it was less than 1 degree

TheMontashu said:

From what I was told from the owner of the shop I work at he was told by an engineer at specialized that it was less than 1 degree

Click to expand...

So what? What actually matters is the end result, it doesn't matter how much a pivot rotates. One pivot tells you absolutely nothing about how a bike will behave, or about how well a design works.

TheMontashu said:

From what I was told from the owner of the shop I work at he was told by an engineer at specialized that it was less than 1 degree

Click to expand...

Most companies tune the suspension geometry depending on target usages no matter what the design. Take a look at the plot of the old V10, it only gets half of the VPP S shaped path so it can take big hits well without kick-back. All designs have compromises that need to be addressed more or less depending application.

Ok, so you heard it from a "shop mechanic." It must be all true.

The only way he'd know about lawsuits is if he was close the someone involved in legal with Giant or SC, and those lawyer types simply don't talk. They are legally bound. At the same time he must also be "tight" with the engineers at Specialized. Not likely. He would be a "shop mechanic" if he traveled in circles of lawyers and engineers...

A more likely scenario is that the shop is just into anything Specialized.

It seems detrimental to any business to buy inventory and then talk trash about it, or not understand it, or not know how to set it up. Maybe he's just trying to show off to you...

What bike do you ride? Maybe you ought to let someone set-up a Maestro bike for you.

my friend won a series on a faith, he loves it, I sell them, i love it. Faith is a food bike for the money, not jsut because the suspension design (I hate the glory) it just rides nicely,

WheelieMan said:

So what? What actually matters is the end result, it doesn't matter how much a pivot rotates. One pivot tells you absolutely nothing about how a bike will behave, or about how well a design works.

Click to expand...

If the pivot doesnt move they mite as well save some weight and make a single pivot

roamingoregon said:

Ok, so you heard it from a "shop mechanic." It must be all true.

The only way he'd know about lawsuits is if he was close the someone involved in legal with Giant or SC, and those lawyer types simply don't talk. They are legally bound. At the same time he must also be "tight" with the engineers at Specialized. Not likely. He would be a "shop mechanic" if he traveled in circles of lawyers and engineers...

A more likely scenario is that the shop is just into anything Specialized.

It seems detrimental to any business to buy inventory and then talk trash about it, or not understand it, or not know how to set it up. Maybe he's just trying to show off to you...

What bike do you ride? Maybe you ought to let someone set-up a Maestro bike for you.

Click to expand...

The shop doesn't even sell specialized, pesronely I am do not care for the way FSR rider, my bighit feels kinda like crap. The shop that I got this info has several giant full sus bike and 1 trek. If you want to bring me a glory and set it up porperly jest for me you are more than welcome. But for now I am more than happy building up my V10 frame that I know ride wes and has all top end parts and nothing cheesy on it

sk8kid33 said:

my friend won a series on a faith, he loves it, I sell them, i love it. Faith is a food bike for the money, not jsut because the suspension design (I hate the glory) it just rides nicely,

Click to expand...

Fabian barrel won the worlds on a 6.5 inch travel stab with the most insanely low BBs I have ever seen as well as a biopace chainring, Winning races has little to do with the bike.

There's a few Maestro bikes here in Welly and I've seen guys thrashing on them up and downhill. They do seem to have very little pedal bob indeed. I think they look OK too. I don't race DH so I'm not going to comment on that side of things.

A faith can definately be used succesfully for DH, my buddy races a Faith 1 with a world cup and it rides great. Feels a little on the short side to me, but would certainly be great bike for a smaller rider. Im used to bikes that are on the sleddish side as well, so Im a bit biased. Being dirt cheap doesnt hurt either.

TheInedibleHulk said:

Not a bad spec, too bad that bike weighs a **** ton and isnt dh race geometry. Still if it fits your needs seems it like a reasonable deal.

Click to expand...

This is true...At Sea Otter one of the GT reps was telling me about how they were planning on releasing a more race-oriented bike based on the gearbox later on in the year, but everyone knows how bike companies are with releasing things...How long was the IT1 delayed?

TheMontashu said:

If the pivot doesnt move they mite as well save some weight and make a single pivot

Click to expand...

what a gross misunderstanding of how suspension actually works....please stop

There was some threatened legal action by specialzed, yes, but it was over attaching the shock mount to the same tube as bottom bracket. That's why the designed changed so greatly from this summer's proto's Anyone else who says anything to the contrary has been fed PR hype.

TheMontashu said:

It is a vertual pivot. Giant basicly made a VPP bike got sued by SC and had to do a pre production design change, the current one is more like a DW link but still kind of like a VPP bike. Basicly it is in between the VPP and DW link, but doesnt work very well. Aperently specialized's engineers were testing the miestro link on the faith and found that the rearword pivot moves about a degree, and now there is a faith rollin around specialized with a bolt in the rear pivot instead of a bearing.

Click to expand...

That is ALL WRONG. It is not a virtual pivot. The pivot is considered a "floating" pivot. Giant's VPP style bike was back in like 99 when they were making ATX's. And it was never sold and SC never sued them because SC hadn't even touched the design yet.

It is not in between a DW and VPP bike. It is maestro. The same concept as a DW link bike. It uses two links rotating in the same direction attached to a rigid swingarm. It works great. It is possibly one of the best suspension designs out to date. Giant and DW knew what they were doing (giant did not steal from DW so don't put words into my mouth).

And if specialized modified a faith like that (which they most likely did not) it would perform horribly and the geometry would be facked.

You seem to know nothing about the bike at all (or suspension for that matter). You can bash all you want but it's still a great bike. And your bashing doesn't go far when the information you have is invalid.

No matter how much a link moves or not, I've been rolling around on a faith for about 2 months now and using it for both DH and trying to keep up with some of my XC buddies. It pedals awesome.

TheMontashu said:

From what I was told from the owner of the shop I work at he was told by an engineer at specialized that it was less than 1 degree

Click to expand...

The engineers at Specialized are renowned for exaggerating to anyone who will listen about how near perfectly straight their FSR axle path is particularly on the Demo - it isn't. It just does not have quite the curve exaggeration that most other bikes do in the first half of it's travel, whether they be forward or rearward arcing. If you map it out, it has both; slightly rearward in the first quarter of the travel and dramatically forward in the second three-quarters. You will find that there is a net change in its horizontal position of around 1.5" on the Demo 9 and slightly over 1" on the Demo 8" (you'll also notice that's a fairly large amount of forward motion in the last inch of the travel with respect to the first 7 or 8 inches).

I would also like to know what the alleged Specialized engineer was referring to when he said "it was less than 1 degree" - the virtual pivot of the Horst Link? Not really, it moves somewhere in the range of 25-35 degrees - same as any other long travel frame (I'm still referring to the Demo series here since we are in the DH forum). Unlike other "floating" designs like the VPP, the virtual pivot for the Demo stays slightly upwards and to the rear of the BB. Surprisingly, on the V10 the virtual pivot hovers very far forwards of the BB, about halfway to the front wheel and arcing 10-15 degrees from there and varying in position a bit more than the Demo. The axle also stays rearward for the first two thirds of its travel before arcing back. For its 10" of travel the axle only moves a little under an inch total in the horizontal direction.

Before an e-FSR catfight breaks loose, I'd like to point out that I'm not saying it is a bad design by any means (and if anything I've put out there is incorrect please bring it to my attention). The way it arcs works just fine and becomes very stable at speed while still managing to corner well. I just think that engineers in general (Specialized engineers in particular) should stay the hell away from marketing.

well what happen when you get marketing guys who think they are engineers?

OGDMFG said:

well what happen when you get marketing guys who think they are engineers?

Click to expand...

Something far far worse.

TheMontashu said:

Fabian barrel won the worlds on a 6.5 inch travel stab with the most insanely low BBs I have ever seen as well as a biopace chainring, Winning races has little to do with the bike.

Click to expand...

Fabien's Worlds bike has 9" of travel and he used an e.thierteen guide ring (non-biopace) to win.

Dave

dw said:

Fabien's Worlds bike has 9" of travel and he used an e.thierteen guide ring (non-biopace) to win.

Dave

Click to expand...

I'm not arguing with you but I was always under the impression that Fabien ran 170mm front and back?

bballe336 said:

I'm not arguing with you but I was always under the impression that Fabien ran 170mm front and back?

Click to expand...

Not at worlds, he ran a 9.5X3 shock, with modified geometry. I inspected the bike in person, on-site in Livigno.

Dave