Specialized Comp Alloy 15

[superstu]

Have had a few full sussers over the years (I also have a hardtail for out of the door / general razzing) and recently decided it was time for a change.

So far the journey was
1. an early Bird Aeris - great intro and fun, but pedalled like a pig
2. alloy transition smuggler which was awesome - just replaced for something with a bit more rear travel
3. Hightower (Al) - a really good bike…light, efficient, great suss…but if I am honest it never really excited me as much as it should have, despite having nothing objectively bad to say about it. Just felt a bit flat?

Anyway having sold the SC complete I was looking for a 150mm all rounder for Quantocks, Dartmoor, Devon stuff and the odd trip to Wales or windhill (rare).

Ended up with this as Spec started knocking the price down - ended up costing £2,600 which I think is pretty good.

Fox 36 performance forks
Full SLX
Trp evo brakes
Specialized finishing kit

Weighs a bit as all aluminium frames will but finding it great in the first 100 miles I’ve put in. Feels solid, playful and pretty poppy. Also gets me up those short sharp climbs ahead of the fun bits on the way down.

Had a shifting issue but the guy I take to spanner my stuff said it was the cassette out from factory, but he manipulated what he needed to and now all dandy.

I like the saddle and the tyres are decent in mixed conditions, so no immediate upgrades.

Part of the attraction of the bike was the ability to adapt it. There’s a few flip chip bits to sharpen or slacken some angles, an angleset was included to take 1° of the HA, and I decided to buy the alternative rear link to adapt to mullet in the future should I wish (£100 or so, but one of those you just know will be out of stock if you go to buy it in the future). For now just enjoying as it is, but that gives me some longevity and ability to tweak later down the line.

For now I find it was easy to instantly gel with, it tracks very well and never surprises me in a negative way. The rear brain shock is meant to give the best of coil and air…not sure if that’s true (never run a coil), but it certainly seems to be working well.

[weeksy]

I like them lots..Very much what i think a bike should be about.

[Taff]

I looked very closely at the CF version last week because they were reduced from £5.5k to £3.5k ISH with a great spec sheet, I started to get a bit excited about them but the S4 was sold out everywhere that was discounting them.

Keep us updated on how it goes

[iamlegend]

Looks nice that

[superstu]

Really enjoying it, out again today.

Couple of things need addressing:

Not getting full travel on my forks, which otherwise work well. I know @weeksy recently pulled a load of tokens out of his, so my suspicion is there’s loads in there.
I need to have a look how to do this but assume it’s an easy job? I’m quite a light guy (<70kg) but on an S5 (XL) so it’s normal for me to have to take tokens out, but I normally run rock shox.

Also today my front brake was contaminated which led to horrendous squealing and a lack of power. I’ll clean the rotors and order new pads. No idea how, very annoying but hey ho. Was less impressed with my uberbike pads last time, so any recs for gorilla vs galfer?

[Numnut]

Don’t know about the forks, but with regard to pads - I’ve never had a problem with uberbike, I used to have race matrix up front and a Kevlar one at the back.

I switched to galfer pads and they are really good. The black ones do me fine (in a set of cura 4) but at the moment I have some green ones in the front which are very good!

[weeksy]

Forks, drop air. If Fox its 32mm socket. If Rockshox its a cassette tool. Its a 30s job.

Hardest part is pumping it back up