I have a Tallboy with 65.5 hta. It is definitely more point and shoot than agile and can feel a bit long on tight turns techy turns (compared to the blur) but man that thing just eats up the downhill. It climbs way better than it feels (it’s heavier so can feel sluggish compared to the blur but when you get home and look at the stats you were actually not much slower). Over-all it is my favorite bike and the one I ride most often.
Is the HTA revolutionary compared to the the blur XC? Kinda. I definitely recommend getting your hands on a trail bike and see for yourself if you can.
There are outliers like Tahoe Trail & Leadville where you could be on the brakes for a long time. I’m doing both of those and that’s why I bumped to a 180 out back and will have XT discs, and a new set of finned pads going into those races. Steel & aluminum sandwich does a good job of throwing heat off when modulating. When I was doing Motorcycle road racing there was some aluminum/ceramic tech that looked amazing but got kyboshed by governing bodies due to cost. “No let’s just stick with carbon/carbon for GP and Steel for SBK”
For whatever reason, my local XC series likes to do one big lap for each race, with a huge climb at the start and huge descent at the end… usually spending 10+ minutes descending.
I’m happy I switched to 4-pot on the front (I’m also over 200lbs/92kg fully kitted, not including the bike).
I swapped from the stock Lefty Ocho (100mm travel) to the Lefty Ocho Carbon (120mm) on my Scalpel. the extra 20mm made for a longer fork overall and did slightly impact the twitchiness, it’s not AS fast, but still super nimble handling. The place where it made the biggest impact is when it’s pointed downhill. It defiantly doesn’t feel as nervous as it did with the 100. Combining that with a 2.35 (from a 2.25 on the front) made a VERY noticeable difference in feel and my personal confidence in the handling capabilities of the bike.
@Jolyzara The place where it’s night/day difference out at Fort Ord is the Trail 44 downhill. Combo of the next level fork, plus a little bit more slack is so much more fun rather than feeling almost out of control on the 100.
My current Oiz is 120/120, I have the TR version. So I have a ~25lb full sus XC bike that can fit 2 bottles in the main triangle and checks all the major boxes for me. For me to get a new bike that is noticeably better I’d have to spend probably 8-10K (or more).
The only major drive I have to upgrade at this point is more progressive geo and as much as I’d love a new bike, I’m not sure 3 degrees slacker is worth 10 grand USD.
Yeah it’s definitely meant to be a bit tongue in cheek. Their Insta post says “So fast all that’s seen is a blur” Then the description says “The reincarnated ASR is a lot 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 nothing else.”
They have to know what they’re doing with that.
The only way it would be more obvious is if it also said “An epic evolution of XC bikes”
Racing in CO primarily, I switched from Level Ultimates (2 piston) to G2 Ultimates (4 piston) sticking with 180mm/160mm. Difference is ~40g total and the adjustability, power, and lever feel is absolutely worth the few added grams.
I mean YMMV (although a pair of G2 Ultimates is a good amount more than 40g more than my Hope XCRs) but my honest feeling is that people just like new brakes because they are bled well and have new pads (and maybe even new rotors) rather than anything that’s magically changed from gaining a tiny increase in pressure distribution over a pad that is maybe only 11% bigger.
I bet if you gave me a brand-new set of XTR’s from the packet I’d tell you they were the best brakes I’d used so far. Or even better, some of the pads that come with Trickstuff brakes would probably make a bigger difference than a tiny amount of mechanical advantage.
Didn‘t fully remove all the packaging. Headset and cover are missing, seatpost collar is missing, and there is a dummy rear axle installed. The paint shows a couple little blemishes on the rear triangle but. Curious what Specialized is going to offer or if it’s within tolerance. Looking forward to building this one up soon! Will report back with final weights once I have the complete bike if anyone is curious.
Completely agree, Hopes are definitely a great, light option. Trickstuff as well. In the US, I’d prefer to have SRAM and Shimano as parts for them are more readily available when traveling so I am only considering those two as options. I’m certainly not saying that they are the end all, be all, but I can assure you the overall experience with G2’s is significantly better than with well bled, properly setup, bedded etc Levels, using the same rotors. (I do all my own work so the bleeding and setup was the same between each.
To be clear, I’m not saying that in any one single instance it stops worlds better, but on a long, steep, rough descent, the additional force (and associated reduced input force) is a welcome benefit.
Edit: I’d add the additional caveat - this is because my race bike is also my training bike and what I ride 90%+ of the time on trails. If I were building an ultralight, race only, all out bike - I’d be willing to compromise on ease of access to spare parts and some comfort in favor of saving a weight.
Yeah that point about spares is entirely fair. I live 20 mins up the road from the hope factory and they give out hope vouchers at my local xc race series .
Here is the 2023 Epic Evo S-works medium. Same config of headset and cover are missing, seatpost collar is missing, and there is a dummy rear axle installed. The spec weight is 1750g so spot on, we both came up with the same cardboard packaging solution to set it on the scale.
Speaking of building a bike from the frame, I think people have been sleeping on the Cervelo ZFS-5. They offer it in a “120” version (120 fork, 115 shock) that actually has good geo. The criticism was that it’s just a Cervelo blur, but it’s quite a bit lighter:
Frame+Shock weights From Flow:
2023 Specialized S-Works Epic EVO – 1,659g
Specialized S-Works Epic World Cup – 1,712g
Cervelo ZFS-5 – 1,718g
Giant Anthem Advanced Pro– 1,735g
Orbea Oiz OMX– 1,798g
Scott Spark HMX SL– 1,870g
Canyon Lux World Cup CFR – 1,894g
Cannondale Scalpel Hi-Mod– 1,910g
Trek Supercaliber– 1,933g
Santa Cruz Blur 4– 1,933g
Merida Ninety-Six RC– 2,064g
Pivot Mach 4 SL– 2,087g
Reason I mention it is because you can find the ZFS-5 35% off in some builds right now, including the frameset for $2.5K USD if you can find your size. I’m crunching the numbers and it’s looking like I could build a full XX SL Transmission & Flight Attendant build somewhere in the 7-9k USD range based on some other things like wheel choice.
I think that’d actually be a killer bike for 50-60% the cost of some of the new complete builds straight from Spec, Yeti, Etc.
yeah, the non S-works Epic 8 got a little porkier. The damper on the new EVO might be a bit beefier compared to the older Evo S-Works. White paint is supposed to be heavier as well (up to 200g I’ve read). But clearly the new EVO is quite a bit heavier than your previous Evo. I crunched the numbers and my build should come out to about 10.5kg (<24lbs) all in with pedals, garmin mount, cages, tubeless milk and so on. As a 90kg rider I personally don’t care about those 500g and appreciate the new routing ports and downtube storage. But a light bike sure rides nice. I’m looking forward to seeing images of yours built up in this thread here or in the TR user’s bike thread. Happy weekend
I believe those weights are the claimed weights, I don’t have real weights for all of those but some of them I know are at least 100-200g more than claimed. I believe the ordering of lightest to heaviest might shift around a decent amount with the real weights. Unfortunately there are a lot of components associated with the frame weight that a manufacturer can choose to exclude to get their claimed number.
Still your conclusion is valid, for sure the Cervelo is in the mix, just wanted to mention this.
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