Canyon nerve 29er Thoughts

Is it me or is this bike just the juiciest out there in terms of price/performance ratio.

I’ve scoured the internet for a few months and nothing touches that bad boy at that price.

The one thing that strikes me about canyon is their engineering department looks like the absolute business.

I’m a few hundred shy but seriously considering getting this.

I own a Canyon, a Nerve AM and I’m not entirely impressed with their build quality. I’m on my second bike already, first one was replaced under warranty and a friend with a Nerve XC is also on his second one.

Unbeatable bikes for the money though. They do ride well and have great kit for the money. If you’re happy with fixing problems on the bike yourself or have a decent bike shop you trust then I wouldn’t worry about buying direct from them.

Just be aware that they can sometimes be difficult to get hold of should you need to.

When you refer to build quality are you referring to assembly quality or actual product defects?

From everything I have seen the manufacturing side of things looks pretty spot on.

Bit of both really. I should add that it is a great bike, I’ve just been disappointed by a couple of things.

Paint finish on the frames isn’t great. Had problems with mine and so has my friend with his XC. The suspension pivot bolts regularly come loose. The manual does say you should check them regularly but I think it’s fair to ask why they’re not threadlocked. That and both of my bikes didn’t come without problems straight out the box, brakes needing being bled, reverb post not working.

Minor things that can be easily fixed but don’t buy into any german build quality nonsense.

Just for balance, I’ve not had a single problem with my 2011 nerve Xc 9. Bearings will need servicing after this winter but no issues whatsoever since I bought it 18 months ago

I have to agree with Muly – I have a 2010 XC8. Excellent bike – just had to change the bottom bearing on the headset and the mech hanger. Not too shabby for 2 year old bike 🙂

Just like I dont buy into the ideology that British is best. Not into all that patriotic bs. If its a well engineered product at a competitive price then that’s where my bias gravitates towards.

I agree with Painey on the paint job, it’s not the best on my 2012 Nerve AM but componenets wise never had a problem from the day it arrived to today (15 months old), only replaced the Headset.

Like everyone said value for money it’s great and hopefully over the next year they will become better with regards to customer services and have a bigger dedicated team in the UK rather than 1 person which was never going to go smoothly.

I’d be very intrigued to see what the carbon Canyon bikes are like. They have a CT scanner which they use for quality control so I’d expect them to be be very well made frames. A friend works for the McLaren F1 team and in his opinion the use of something like this is pretty important for spotting defects in carbon frames. He’s said to me before that there are reservations there about the correct use of carbon on bike frames and best ways to produce them. It was widely reported that Specialized actually went to McLaren 2 or 3 years back for advice on carbon manufacturing processes. All interesting stuff but he thinks Canyon frames would be very well made as a result.

I do really like my Nerve AM even though I’ve had the odd spot of bother which, savings aside, I still don’t think you should have to put up with on a £3k bike.