If you were looking for a used full sus bike mostly for cross country and trail centres, which bikes would you be looking at? 2 or 3 years old is fine. Budget 1k +. Along the lines of spec camber, whyte 129 etc. 120-140 travel. Bouncy into to full sus from hardtail… Wheel size unimportant.

Thanks

Not 2nd hand but brand new, but I reckon this needs mentioning more often: Vitus Escarpe 29er hell of a lot of bike (was £1700 for ages), though more of a head-on bruiser than lightweight XC

You could do far worse than this I reckon

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/large-2012-giant-trance-x2

giant anthem large x2 model/magura durin forks 120 to 80mm 2011 model less than 200miles/bontrager racelite wheels true and nice tubeless ready if you get the valves/hayes prime disc front and rear never used.

if you are intrested 8)

thats for the links all

was the giant anthem the bike with frame problems?

no problems with mine and to my best knowledge none with anthems, highly regarded and exceptionally capable

Thanks wilko1999. Saves me plugging my own advert 🙂

Basic story on the Giants is that the Anthem is a fast XC bike that does surprisingly well on trails where the Trance is a trail bike than can handle anything from XC to surprising techy stuff. So, chances are that you’ll be able to ride more technical stuff with a Trance but be faster on an Anthem.

there is only one choice – Ibis Mojo, mind you i am biased
Lester

Santa Cruz heckler if you can find one. Low maintained very capable and a good all round trail bike.

+1 for a well specced Giant Trance. Very quick and very capable.

At the risk of plugging my own Trance advert (again) here are few more thoughts on a good first full suss for “cross country and trail centres”.

I think the ~120mm travel, ~69 degree head angle, 26″ bike is a great place to start. It’s manoeuvrable enough for XC and will easily cope with anything you’ll find at a trail centre. If you find that you want more speed and can cope with any descent that you’d want to ride easily enough then you can go shorter, steeper and probably with a bigger wheel (100/70; Anthem, M109 etc). If you find yourself pulled more towards faster steeper and more technical descents and don’t mind taking a bit longer on the climbs and sacrificing some low speed manoeuvrability then you can go a bit longer and slacker (140/67; Five, Heckler etc). But the 120/69 package is a good place to start.

That doesn’t just mean the Trance of course as loads of bikes are built around that geometry e.g. older Trek Fuel and at the cheaper end things like the Boardman FS and some of the Rockrider bikes I think.

I think you probably do have to consider wheel size, if only because this is probably a bike that you’d sell on again in a few years as your riding becomes more specialized. We can rule out 650b as we are looking at second hand and I’d be a bit wary of 29ers. Not because there is anything wrong with them, but because they seem to have had their day in the sun and fashion is moving back to smaller wheels, which may make them harder to sell in a few years. It’s all just guesswork though.

Trek Fuel EX.

Giants are OK but a bit steady eddie, the Fuel EX just feels sharper IME.

Thanks for all the advice and offers

How would would a stuntjumper elite fsr and a giant trance compare, both 2011?

Another shameless plug

http://www.pinkbike.com/buysell/1373755/

Also when do the 2013 bikes get reduced to make way for 2014?

If you can be bothered to build your bike from classifieds (STW/Pinkbike/RideIO)/ebay rather than buy a complete there’s a lot of options, especially if you have a few bits you can swap from your current bike and upgrade later.

I’ve recently rebuilt my bike and for under £1K sourced an immaculate 09 Turner 5 Spot (with an angleset included), 2010 RS Revs Dual Air forks, brand new 2×10 SLX group with brakes (Merlin). Wheels, saddle, post, pedals, bars and stem off my old bike, but shop around and there are some great deals for these parts too (these include used parts I’ve bought excellent condition Sun Rims on Pro 2’s for c£120, Hope stem £40, HiLo dropper £85 etc plus hunted around for good deals on bars, saddle etc).