What fits my style?

aks2017

New here, and had a question for you all.

I've been contemplating a new bike for awhile now. The only problem is, I don't know what I want. I either want a 130mm travel full-sus or a 100mm ht race machine. I have a budget of ~US $3000.
I'm 6', 145 pounds, and race xc but love hitting the jumps at our local dh.

The exact bikes that I am looking at are the
a) Santa Cruz 5010al
b) Santa Cruz Highball Carbon (could be swayed toward either wheel size.)
c) Yeti ARC Carbon

I'm open to other suggestions, but I may completely ignore them and if you need more information feel free to ask.

jimothy78

aks2017 wrote:

The only problem is, I don't know what I want. I either want a 130mm travel full-sus or a 100mm ht race machine.

It seems odd that you claim to want "either" of those two extremes - you either want both or something in the middle.

What bike/s do you already have? If you can adapt something you already own to fill one of the two roles, then it makes sense to explore the other extreme for the new bike.

The Rookie

As above, either get a compromise bike (Giant Trance for example), or 'make do' with what you can for one and buy the other.

Plenty of decent used trail bikes around, so personally I'd look at getting a decent HT for the racing with the greater amount of outlay and use the rest to get a Trail bike, maybe using whatever you ride now as either a basis or a donor.

aks2017

jimothy78 wrote:

aks2017 wrote:

The only problem is, I don't know what I want. I either want a 130mm travel full-sus or a 100mm ht race machine.

It seems odd that you claim to want "either" of those two extremes - you either want both or something in the middle.

What bike/s do you already have? If you can adapt something you already own to fill one of the two roles, then it makes sense to explore the other extreme for the new bike.

Right now I'm on a Scott Spark 960. It got me in, and now I'm hooked. Yeah it works but I don't know if I want all out speed or comfy bigger hit capable.

Antm81

As above you need to work out what you want to ride, if you still want to do XC races I'd have a racier HT, if you want to ride more technical features, I'd go with the longer travel full suss.

Obviously if you want to do both, I'd keep your Scott and buy the full suss too. And finally the Trance probably wouldn't be a good compromise as it had more travel than you wanted at 140mm and from personal experience isn't suited to being anywhere near an XC race. However for more technical terrain I can highly recommend it.

rockmonkeysc

Get some test rides and see what's more fun. A couple of my mates have had xc race hardtails and found them to be hard work for anything other than riding flat out.

snowster

It's funny really if you don't know What you want how are we!

rockmonkeysc

I want a Devinci Wilson carbon. Maybe he will like one of them?

aks2017

Antm81 wrote:

Obviously if you want to do both, I'd keep your Scott and buy the full suss too.

The slight problem with that is $$$. I'm young, and don't have a full time job. So anyways, I had planned on selling one of my road bikes and my Scott just to pay for it. So if I kept the Scott, I may end up looking at a slightly lower price point, say $2400- $2500. Which would put me more into SC Bantam territory.

Antm81

If your wanting a bike to do both I'd look at something like a Giant Anthem, capable bike but the geometry should be better for XC racing. Not overly sure on pricing in the states as most here at UK based and Giant are only showing one model on their U.S. Website.