To underline that capability, the Spur comes stock with stuff that you wouldn’t usually see on a 120mm-travel bike. There are 2.4″ wide tires from Maxxis with EXO casings, long-stroke dropper posts (my size-large test bike has a 180mm OneUp dropper), and four-piston brakes on all models. Further making the Spur’s intentions obvious are the 800mm wide handlebars and 50mm stems across the three-bike range.
• Intended use: Everything?
• Wheel size: 29″
• Rear wheel travel: 120mm
• Fork travel: 120mm
• Frame material: Carbon fiber
• Threaded bottom bracket
• Flex-pivot
• SBG geometry
• Four-piston brakes, long-travel dropper posts, wide tires stock
• Weight: 24.74lb (X01 build)
• MSRP: $4,999 – $8,999 USD
• More info: www.transitionbikes.com
Suspension and Frame Design
The Spur’s suspension layout is pretty straightforward, with the SIDLuxe shock being compressed from above via a cute little rocker link that’s also carbon fiber. Like some other short-travel bikes, Transition has skipped using a pivot at the axle, with a “carbon-tuned pivot-less flex stay” doing the job instead. Engineered flex pivots always seem to get a bit of heat from people who are wary of such things, be it for a good reason or not. They’ve always been reliable in my experience, though, and I’ve owned and ridden a bunch of different bikes that use flex pivots. Remember, there are barely a few degrees of movement down at an axle pivot, especially on these short-travel bikes, and engineered flex can easily do that job.
Oh, and if 120mm is way too much suspension for you, Transition says that you can swap out the 45mm-stroke SID shock for one with 37.5mm to convert it to a 100mm-travel Spur.
There are a handful of details on the Spur worth mentioning, starting with the threaded bottom bracket shell and headtube that takes press-in cups to allow for angle-adjusting headsets. It’s almost like these Transition guys read Pinkbike comments or something… Hmmm.
On that note, there’s a ton of room for a bottle inside the front triangle, as well as a mount under the downtube for when you want to suck on a muddy nipple. There’s another set of threaded bosses on the underside of the toptube for some sort of bolt-on tool kit. Other details: Cable routing is internal and pass-through to make repairs easy, and check out the rubber chainstay protection – it sits nearly flush with the frame and sure looks classy.
Suspension travel doesn’t define geometry, but the Spur is sporting some forward-thinking numbers relative to its travel. There’s a 66-degree head angle – the slackest of the nine bikes in our upcoming cross-country Field Test video series – and my large-sized test bike has a 480mm reach. That’s 20 to 30mm longer than many other large-sized bikes that aren’t feeling so large these days.
There’s also a 75.9 – why not just call it 76? – degree seat angle that really helps to make the 480mm reach feel not so long, and the rear-end is 435mm on all sizes.
It may have just 120mm of travel, but the Spur didn’t start life as a cross-country bike like the Scalpel and Epic EVO, and that allowed Transition to take a much more aggressive approach in the geo department because they didn’t need to make a bike that was originally born as a racer.
Spur Models
There are three different versions of the Spur, all based on the same 2,500-gram carbon frame and shock, and starting with the GX build at $4,999 USD and followed by the bike I’m currently testing, the X01 version that costs $5,999. That gets you a SID Ultimate fork and SIDLuxe shock, a set of DT Swiss’ XR1700 wheels, and guess what kind of drivetrain, all of which adds up to 24.74lb. Want less weight and a wireless drivetrain? The AXS bike costs $8,999, although that does get you a set of carbon rims as well. The frame and shock cost $2,999.
I’ve been putting in a ton of miles on the all-new Spur, so stay tuned for our upcoming cross-country Field Test video review series where it’ll be covered in-depth.
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