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2010 glory

monkeyfcuker

Monkey
May 26, 2008
912
8
UK, Carlisle
There is no way to do this properly with the Glory headset set-up.


BTW, wtf is up with K9 ind. They claim to be super high tech/data aquisition type guys, but they have had a frame (very home made and cobbled together looking IMO) 'almost ready' for over two years.

They announced their headset cups a full year ago (anyone actually seen a production pair??) yet got beat to market by several months and over $100...

Does anyone actually take them seriously? Are they as much of a joke in the UK as they appear here?


ps $185 for headset cups..:rofl::rofl::rofl:
Haha yep it's crossed my mind a few times, to be fair tho I do enjoy the owner of K9's articles in Dirt it just seems to be getting forever to get that bike out with nothing but excuses about why it aint ready yet!
 

Inclag

Turbo Monkey
Sep 9, 2001
2,750
439
MA
There is no way to do this properly with the Glory headset set-up.


BTW, wtf is up with K9 ind. They claim to be super high tech/data aquisition type guys, but they have had a frame (very home made and cobbled together looking IMO) 'almost ready' for over two years.

They announced their headset cups a full year ago (anyone actually seen a production pair??) yet got beat to market by several months and over $100...

Does anyone actually take them seriously? Are they as much of a joke in the UK as they appear here?


ps $185 for headset cups..:rofl::rofl::rofl:
Well based on the articles in Dirt, I don't take them, or at least their engineers too seriously. Then again, I don't take many things in the bike industry seriously.
 

Viv92

Monkey
Jan 31, 2009
204
0
Australia
This whole slackness thing isn't getting a bit carried away is it?

I have my bike set up in the mid BB height and mid HA setting. :eek: It feels good on fast stuff but a bit unbalanced towards the back of the bike in tight bermed stuff. I don't think the shock helps, and I'll run my bike slack/low when I put my harder spring on, but I don't see the need to go any slacker than that. I have tried it on the slack setting with the current spring and it feels unbalanced and a bit sluggish.

I'd happily ride a 65.5 bike...
 

toodles

ridiculously corgi proportioned
Aug 24, 2004
5,479
4,719
Australia
Slaaack.... Gooood....

Much like wide bars, I think it takes a few runs of a slacker bike to really appreciate the sometimes subtle benefits. If you don't have a problem with a 65.5º HA then congratulations - Giant makes your new bike. We all know no other manufacturer will come close to offering a spec as good in that price range.

Myself, well 64º is more my thing. I could ride the Giant and eventually feel comfortable on it, but I'd rather change frames to something immediately slacker than 65.5
 

norbar

KESSLER PROBLEM. Just cause
Jun 7, 2007
11,346
1,587
Warsaw :/
I just read on the NSMB forums that the static BB height is 14.6... That and a 65.5 head angle? On paper it sounds like a freeride bike...

Pass...
So what's the geo on the Faith? Looks veery much like the geo they'd choose for the faith. Maybe there is a mixup as 14.6'' bb and 65.5HA is imo worse than the current glory. Take away the bombproof idiotproof factor and the bike really looses all it's apeal.
 

frango

Turbo Monkey
Jun 13, 2007
1,454
5
No, no, no...
Geometry chart I've got says 2010 Glory has -24mm BB drop, which is -4 comparing to current desing (Glory DH).
IMO, it can't be worse.
 

yuroshek

Turbo Monkey
Jun 26, 2007
2,438
0
Arizona!
no i have not measured the trek HA, no need the chart on their website says its 65degrees so it must be right.

im going to the giant reps house on sunday and im gonna check out the geo and see whats really going on with the glory.
 

WhiteRavenKS

Turbo Monkey
Aug 8, 2003
1,270
0
neither here nor there
ok mr smarty pants. Since you were at the 2010 Giant bike launch and got a chance to ride it, why don't you give us your opinion?
Okay.

The bike does have a steeper than most head angle on paper these days but I honestly didn't notice it being twitchy. There's plenty of high speed stuff at Keystone and I never felt like the bike was getting squirrely. There isn't a whole lot of steep stuff at Keystone though, at least nothing that I would really want a super slack head angle for so I can't judge that but I imagine that the 40 let you get away with plenty there based on past experience with the fork and knowing that the 09/10 damper does a significantly better job staying up in the travel.

The bike handled small and medium chatter like a champ. I was really damn impressed with how the bike handled that stuff. This is coming off my Turner and a V10.

I was less impressed with how the bike ate up single, larger high speed hits. I have a feeling this could be adjusted for in the shock tuning and it's not exactly like I had time to do that. The RC4 seems like a plenty capable shock if you take the time to really set it up and get all the featured dialed to where you want them. I would guess that may take more than a half day of tinkering to really get the finer points down.

The components were overall very good on the bike, though the bars and stem left much to be desired. The bars felt high and narrow and while this is personal preference for a lot of people, they needed to be lowered for my taste at the very least. Saint stuff seemed great, the brakes were very impressive. The spec'ed grips were trash for me. I know I have small hands but I don't know anyone who really likes the combination of "fat" and "squishy" for grips regardless of hand size. Pretty minor issue though, grips are personal taste on any bike and cheap to swap out.

The MRP chainguide kept the chain on and I gave it a few good smacks. By the end of the day I noticed that little gravel and rocks were sticking in the guide and not clearing out from the lower bashgaurd and making for some pretty awful sounds. Nothing of major concern, everything still worked, it just didn't sound good pedaling it through the parking lot at the end of the day.

The bike is very light indeed. I didn't have a scale but the bike does ride quite light and nimble. I'm not a huge fan of virtual/floating/imaginary/whatever pivot bikes because I think they take ages to get used to. The V10 had a very amorphous back end that I never really knew where it was under me. It was something I got used to but didn't necessarily like that aspect of the bike. The Giant was probably the most predictable and "normal" feeling of any of the wizard pivot bikes that I have tried. I think the combination of that and the light weight is what made the bike very fun to ride by which I mean that it was easy to punch into corners and loft over crap on the trail.

The longer medium top tube is a very welcome change to the Glory though I personally wanted it even longer. I was tempted to ride a large but didn't have time. I like for a bike to have a roomy cockpit and the medium was sized probably the way it should be to suit the majority of medium riders out there. I just would have liked it to be even longer.



dapeach- thanks for partying.

jcl- i do live right near a small bridge, maybe you could come over some time and we could make out and have little troll babies? ;)
 

yuroshek

Turbo Monkey
Jun 26, 2007
2,438
0
Arizona!
about 5'7"... low end of average I guess. I have a long torso and short legs though. Probably because I'm a troll apparently.
hmm. im 5'10 i rode an 08 glory, size large and it was just to big for me. sold it and got the 09 med glory and its perfect and really like it much better than the large... i wonder if the sizes are basically the same from 09 to '10. im sure ill get a med. again tho.

thanks white!
 

big-ted

Danced with A, attacked by C, fired by D.
Sep 27, 2005
1,400
47
Vancouver, BC
Not sure why everyone's taking all this so personally. I ride a bike with a 64 degree head angle. I like it. I rode the Giant with a 65.5 degree head angle. It felt too steep and I didn't like it. End of story. Again, plenty of people like this kind of setup. I don't. What's to debate here?

White, interesting that you are also coming off a Turner. Any chance it's a square-tubed model with the 65 head angle? Because the Glory was a lot steeper than my 2007 DHR, and rode accordingly, no doubt about it. Your comment about big hits is interesting too. I never really took any and hence couldn't comment, but a buddy of mine just parted with his 2009 Glory. One of his major complaints was that it wasn't sufficiently progressive.

Don't get me wrong, I want to like this bike. I think Giant are an awesome company and the spec is a killer deal, but there's no way I would ever be as comfortable on it as I am on my current bike.
 

WhiteRavenKS

Turbo Monkey
Aug 8, 2003
1,270
0
neither here nor there
i rode a square tubed turner for a few years with the swingarm drilled out. it was still a little steeper than many of my friends' bikes. i currently am on an 08/09 round tubed dhr and it's significantly slacker than the advertised 65. going to the giant which I can only assume would be an actual 65ish based on their numbers- i have to admit it did feel steeper but not so much that it was a poorly riding bike. i enjoyed it quite a bit in the woods and i honestly didn't notice it being any worse than what i'm used to in the fast open stuff.

i think comparing my round tubed turner to the new giant- if the giant had a longer top tube it would be complimented by a slacker head angle. the turner i am on is long and slack and does it's thing very well. the giant is shorter feeling and slightly steeper and it feels great in its own way too. long+steep or short+slack and combos that i'm not a fan of personally.

as for the big sharp hit compliance- i didn't play much with the shock at all. i slowed the rebound a bunch and that helped reduce the bucking kick from those hits. i imagine taking the time to tune both high and low speed compression and bottom out controls would help the bike dull out those sharp single hits.
 

Kanye West

220# bag of hacktastic
Aug 31, 2006
3,740
470
The '07-08 DHR was advertised as a 65* HA. It measured out to 63.5 with a 888 and 64 with a Boxxer, 2.5" tires, static.
 

toodles

ridiculously corgi proportioned
Aug 24, 2004
5,479
4,719
Australia
well of course, its called sag.
You don't say...

Either way, the quoted HA is steeper than what the bike actually runs and the slackness is something I prefer. Regardless of this, everyone has a different opinion on which HA they prefer, it's just interesting to see Giant is at the steep end of the current trend in DH bike angles.
 

WhiteRavenKS

Turbo Monkey
Aug 8, 2003
1,270
0
neither here nor there
just to be a further troll, I'd like to toss this out there-
consider the fact that most people do not haul nuts. Without the speed or the terrain, a really slacked out head angle is going to ride like crap and flop from side to side. for most people out there, 65 is plenty slack enough. giant does not cater to the same people in the market that some one like intense, turner, evil, whatever- that all sell more bikes to forum following trend pushers which I'd say are slightly more likely to properly utilize a slack head angle (or at least get a stronger placebo effect since everyone they associate with told them it would kick ass). Giant is a huge company and they have to walk the fine line between selling the most bikes possible (to most people who are not very good riders) and fulfilling their responsibility to provide a viable product within the industry (not make a turd and claim it's awesome).

The Glory has established itself as a dominant privateer race bike over the last few years from what I have seen around the races. Privateers have to make all kinds of sacrifices through out their season just to make things work. Significant sacrifices like working a job or two they hate but which allows them the time to attend races, missing certain events due to budget restrictions, sleeping in their cars. Stuff like that. Stuff that's a bigger deal than a head tube angle. If that degree or so of head angle is a sacrifice akin to killing off your first born child, then maybe you're not the rider Giant is targeting with the Glory.
 

Myles

Chimp
Jun 20, 2002
32
0
Montréal , Canada
Privateers have to make all kinds of sacrifices through out their season just to make things work. Significant sacrifices like working a job or two they hate but which allows them the time to attend races, missing certain events due to budget restrictions, sleeping in their cars. Stuff like that. Stuff that's a bigger deal than a head tube angle. If that degree or so of head angle is a sacrifice akin to killing off your first born child, then maybe you're not the rider Giant is targeting with the Glory.
AMEN:thumb:
 

JCL

Monkey
Aug 31, 2008
696
0
And all those privateers will now be on Demo's as opposed to Glory's IMO.
 

Uncle Cliffy

Turbo Monkey
Jan 28, 2008
4,490
42
Southern Oregon
And all those privateers will now be on Demo's as opposed to Glory's IMO.
This is an interesting point considering Special-ed is arguably Giants biggest competition. The new Demo 8 is reported to have a mid-13 inch static BB height and a slacker head tube. Specialized has to sell lots of bikes like Giant, but they're clearly following more current geometry trends...
 

JCL

Monkey
Aug 31, 2008
696
0
The difference is the Specialized product guys are riding Garbo laps on Demo's while the Giant guys are down in the village chatting to dealers about electric hybrids.
 

eknomf

Monkey
Apr 23, 2004
211
0
Nanaimo, BC
I demoed one of these today at crankworx and wasn't overly impressed with it as a race bike. Rode Una moss-original sin-goats gully-in deep-fatcrobat-too tight-upper whistler dh-canadian open-heart of darkness. It was wet and muddy - pretty much my favorite conditions to ride in and there was a bit of everything on the trails I rode. I currently ride a shocker and have ridden quite a few other current dh bikes. I usually adjust to new bikes pretty quickly

The first thing I noticed was many of the parts on the demo bike were pretty terrible. The 2010 boxxer team and tires(new version of the comp 24 it appeared - I run older comp 24s with higher pressure and they grip far better in the wet than these did) gave me a bad first impression. I did my best to ignore that and focus on the frame.

The good:
The bike jumped, pedaled and climbed really well. The suspension also felt good on the chundery sections(not quite as good as the shocker, but my bike is obviously setup better for my preferences than a demo) and it felt nimble and liked to pop off roots and rocks etc. This bike is not a plow machine that always sticks to the ground. The bike had significantly more pop than my shocker and was really easy to throw around in the air. Jumping definitely was its strongest point. It was also light and the frame sounded significantly less tin can-like than a trek. There were no dents in my demo yet and it looked like it had seen some abuse.

The bad:
The biggest issue with the glory in my opinion is the downtube at the headtube junction is really wide. Combined with the 2010 boxxer it had a terrible turning radius. Something like 30 degrees in each direction. There were about 5 spots(most on goats gully and canadian open) on the run I did where I could not turn the bike sharply enough to make a corner and I wasn't even cutting them tight. Obviously this could be solved with a wider fork or a single crown, but it was definitely a deal breaker for me.

Next issue is the headangle, I don't even like super slack bikes but the glory was way too steep in my opinion. The stanchions were as low as they would go and it still felt way too twitchy. I could maybe understand the angles if you had a decent turning radius as the steeper angles would be nice for slower more technical riding, but the combination of the two issues makes the bike perform poorly in both high speed and slow technical situations.

Those were the two big issues, other things I noticed and disliked was that the upper linkage kept almost sucking my shorts in. It also did not corner well, the highish bb and the fork in its tallest setting were the issue here. The tubing on the seatstays are open on one end and not the other(pretty sure, forgot to look closely) so once these get full of mud and dirt it will be hard to get it out.

Overall impression: I was pretty disappointed, I want a new dh bike soon and was fairly excited about the glory as many aspects of the design seem well thought out. I could only see owning one of these as a freeride bike with a single crown on it. If the smaller models ride like at all like the glory they would be fun bike park bikes, there are just too many issues with the glory itself that make it a poor choice for a full on dh bike.
 
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Patan-DH

Monkey
Jun 9, 2007
458
0
Patagonia
This is an interesting point considering Special-ed is arguably Giants biggest competition. The new Demo 8 is reported to have a mid-13 inch static BB height and a slacker head tube. Specialized has to sell lots of bikes like Giant, but they're clearly following more current geometry trends...
ya all shut up, specialized fsr pedals like crap compared to any virtual pivot.
It's a design made by thinking about isolating braking forces back in the seatstays brakes era... period.
 

Patan-DH

Monkey
Jun 9, 2007
458
0
Patagonia
From 66 to 64,5 is just fine, slacker is for pussies that are afraid to go fast, if you concentrate you can ride a 67 or 68 ha bike at full blown mamooth kamikasi speeds.

and a 67 corners and helps you to change lines in techy setions like a dream. Is flickable and manoubrable as hell.

BTW. do not trust in giant official measurements my faith says 67 by catalog and the real is 65
 

Bicyclist

Turbo Monkey
Apr 4, 2004
10,152
2
SB
From 66 to 64,5 is just fine, slacker is for pussies that are afraid to go fast, if you concentrate you can ride a 67 or 68 ha bike at full blown mamooth kamikasi speeds.
Alright, tell that to every successful modern WC racer then, seeing as they're such "pussies."
 

Kanye West

220# bag of hacktastic
Aug 31, 2006
3,740
470
Yeah all those guys who like slack bikes are total weenies and ride slow. Every last one of them.
 

JCL

Monkey
Aug 31, 2008
696
0
ya all shut up, specialized fsr pedals like crap compared to any virtual pivot.
It's a design made by thinking about isolating braking forces back in the seatstays brakes era... period.
Errrr the Giant is a 4 bar just like the Specialized. Oh and brakes are still mounted on the seatstays.

LOL !
 

Uncle Cliffy

Turbo Monkey
Jan 28, 2008
4,490
42
Southern Oregon
ya all shut up, specialized fsr pedals like crap compared to any virtual pivot.
It's a design made by thinking about isolating braking forces back in the seatstays brakes era... period.
It may pedal crappy, or really well depending on rider opinion. I think Maestro is a better riding design. BUT... I WAS TALKING ABOUT GEOMETRY!!!


Sorry about that... It must be medication time.