BENJI’S GIANT TRANCE X 29 2

Was Benji’s Trance a rapturous ride or a bad trip?

What attracted you to the Trance X?

The Trance X is the welcome return of a much-loved cult 29er mainstream mountain bike. I was interested to see what a modern version of the Trance X would actually ride like.

Did you change anything straightaway? The key thing was ditching the KMC chain as soon as I deduced that it was the chain that was making the bike sound and feel so rough. I also swapped to a shorter 35mm stem and a higher rise 38mm bar pretty quickly too. The main thing I installed was a -2° Works Components headset after a few rides.

Was the bike easy to set up?

Yeah. Incredibly so. Some of that was due to my familiarity with the Fox 36 fork (I always remove all volume spacers) but generally the suspension is pleasingly unfussy and works in a broad parameter of settings.

How did it ride?

The stock head angle made its presence felt for the first few rides. Whilst 65.5° may sound OK for some riders, I think it’s too steep. There were numerous times when the front tyre contact patch felt unnecessarily close to my feet. At the other end, things were much better. The genuinely steep seat angle was excellent and made for a really comfortable place to be for hours on end.

The rear suspension was excellent too. No doubt some people won’t like its very active nature – especially those who are unwilling to use the rear shock’s compression lever – but that’s their loss.

The old-but-still-great

Maestro suspension combined with

Fox 36 up front can cope with anything. Sure, the ride perhaps misses out on a bit of edgy ‘dig-in’ whenever the pilot pushes down on the bars/pedals and, while it doesn’t seem to want for traction, it can make the bike feel slightly laggy to hustle. Weirdly it’s a great bike for XC riding and also gravity-fuelled screaming. It perhaps misses out on the middle ground of mountain biking, which is plain old mucking about.

Did anything break or wear out? Nope. Well, the KMC felt broken from the get-go!

If you could change one thing about your longtermer what would it be? The head angle needs to be slacker for a long reach, 150mm-forked mountain bike – 65.5° in the slackest setting doesn’t quite cut it for me. Having said that, it is solvable with an aftermarket headset.

Would you buy this bike?

I honestly don’t know. There’s no denying its capabilities at all speeds especially high speeds.

But it’s lacking in personality and style. So while my head says yes, my heart says... meh.

Shock

Wheels

Brakes

LOW SETTING Size tested Head angle Seat angle Effective SA BB height Chainstay Front centre Wheelbase Down tube Top tube Reach

JAMIE DARLOW

The internet says only old people wear watches now: JD turned 40, promptly set about testing Garmin’s new GPS smartwatch. Nuff said.