New (to me) Zinn 29er Mountain Bike: so far so good

Well after 10 years (almost to the day!) I finally got a new mountain bike. I tried for those 10 years to beat the crap out of my 1998 GT LTS 3000 and other than the usual drivetrain and tires it survived a 300lb + trail rider. It was quite a bike!

I've been looking at lots of bikes in the last year or 2, including a Zinn 29er all mountain Gigabike. Everything priced at about 5K out the door done deal. I could buy for less, but I was looking at overbuilt bikes and components for my size. Being fat sux! (I'm working on it!)

The Zinn bike was a front runner. I liked how solid they seemed, and that they are used to bigger folks riding bikes, and that the frames use the bottom bracket area as the main pivot point, with a grease fitting on the bike to easily keep it all happy "down under."

Zinn is headed by Lennard Zinn. He really did write THE books on both mountain bike and road bike maintenance. He has a tech Q&A column on VeloNews and builds custom bikes for anybody that wants one.

So a few weeks ago they called me and said they were selling off their lightly used always maintained, all mountain Gigabike demo.

It was priced nice, a deal I couldn't refuse.

It doesn't have the latest stuff hanging off the various ends, the SRAM grip shift is a little different, but after about 15 miles of riding I'm pretty used to it. It is kind of nice being able to shift more than 3 gears at once!

The shock is a Manitou SPV 3 way air, the fork is a WB Fluid 29er. I pumped them both up with a fair amount of air to stiffen them up, and man it feels nice.

I spent most of my time on the LTS sitting deep into the shock travel, and I'm fairly sure the old elastomer forks were riding along pretty deep into the stroke too.

It is a tall bike for sure, stepover height is umm... let's say I hope I don't need much at any given time...! and it has 200 Zinn crank arms. Longer cranks are one of his things. So paired up with being a 29er it is pretty different. I can't say too much about it yet, just climbing around Chabot it is fine, but I hope to push it a little more. I thought maybe the 29er would be harder to pedal uphills, but no issues there at all. I think with the longer cranks it is easier, but not sure.

Anyway should you see a big guy on a big bike with a little black low rider dog (1/2 basset 1/2 lab) on the trails feel free to say hi.

Here's photos from Chabot @ Bort Meadow earlier today with crap iPhone camera.

Woot Woot!

PS: those disc brakes are something. I bet one day they really catch on!

:)