I want to treat myself to a brand new long ish travel trail bike because I've been riding MTB for 27 years but not actually bought many brand new bikes.
Trail mainly, nothing too slack because I like playful riding, not just plowing through/down/over stuff etc And I like to be able to wheelie and manual everywhere, the heavy bikes are hard enough to pull up in to a manual anyway and extra slack just makes it extra hard.
Budget is £5000, £5500 at a push if something perfect comes up (I know it's not a massive amount in the eMTB world but that's I can justify right now).
27.5" front & rear - I like this setup, I don't need 29" because I'm not good enough to notice the difference, I look ridiculous on a 29" front & rear bike and my OCD won't let me have different sized wheels on the same bike.
Bosch 750wh - I'm familer with the Bosch system and my mates have 750wh too so handy to have the same capacity
170mm Front & 160mm Rear - This also seems to suit me as that's what I have on my current bike
So is the '23 Cube Stereo 160 the only bike on the market that actually fits that critera? (The SLX model linked below is £4999 in my local shop and available in Medium and black in May ish). I currently have the '20 Cube Stereo 160 SL 625wh and I can't really fault it, it suits me fairly well, bit short in the reach but the '22 & '23 models have very slightly increased reach so not too much of an issue.
www.cube.eu
The Cube's are fairly well specced for the price so the only thing stopping me going and putting a deposit on the '23 Cube Stereo SLX tomorrow is I can't seem to get on that well with the knock block in the headset, riding around on my mates '22 model I hit the knock block all the time and I don't like it, also his seems to move about a bit if you force it (maybe carbin gripper paste will sort that?) and he's certain he could break it/force it past the internal stop if he wanted to (or in the event of a crash) which just doesn't sit well with me becuase the forks will smash into the frame. I can't really see a way to remove it becuase the cables could get all buggered up and also on the Medium size bike if the knock block wasn't there the very top of the fork crown would hit the frame anyway. Maybe at a push I could machine up a 5mm aluminium spacer/bottom headset cup of some sort to push the forks out of the headtube just enough so they clear the frame but then I'm still left with the cable routing issue as it's all been designed to feed into the headset spacers and not through openings on the side of the frame like on normal bikes.
If there aren't any other bikes on the market that fit my criteria then my options are:
Option 1 - Stick with my '20 bike and see what Cube and other manufacturers do in '24 (this could bite me though because Cube might also start sticking 29" wheels all over the place in '24) and obviously the resale value of my current bike would have gone down a fair bit by then.
Option 2 - Buy the '23 model and just have to deal with the annoyances of the knock block getting in the way and then see what bikes are available in '24
Ideally i'd like to find another make and model of bike that just fit what I want but from what I can see so far I don't think one exists?
Trail mainly, nothing too slack because I like playful riding, not just plowing through/down/over stuff etc And I like to be able to wheelie and manual everywhere, the heavy bikes are hard enough to pull up in to a manual anyway and extra slack just makes it extra hard.
Budget is £5000, £5500 at a push if something perfect comes up (I know it's not a massive amount in the eMTB world but that's I can justify right now).
27.5" front & rear - I like this setup, I don't need 29" because I'm not good enough to notice the difference, I look ridiculous on a 29" front & rear bike and my OCD won't let me have different sized wheels on the same bike.
Bosch 750wh - I'm familer with the Bosch system and my mates have 750wh too so handy to have the same capacity
170mm Front & 160mm Rear - This also seems to suit me as that's what I have on my current bike
So is the '23 Cube Stereo 160 the only bike on the market that actually fits that critera? (The SLX model linked below is £4999 in my local shop and available in Medium and black in May ish). I currently have the '20 Cube Stereo 160 SL 625wh and I can't really fault it, it suits me fairly well, bit short in the reach but the '22 & '23 models have very slightly increased reach so not too much of an issue.
Cube Stereo Hybrid 160 HPC SLX 750 27.5 carbon´n´reflex
Cinématique CUBE et technologie carbone au service de la puissance Bosch pour un potentiel enduro conquérant
The Cube's are fairly well specced for the price so the only thing stopping me going and putting a deposit on the '23 Cube Stereo SLX tomorrow is I can't seem to get on that well with the knock block in the headset, riding around on my mates '22 model I hit the knock block all the time and I don't like it, also his seems to move about a bit if you force it (maybe carbin gripper paste will sort that?) and he's certain he could break it/force it past the internal stop if he wanted to (or in the event of a crash) which just doesn't sit well with me becuase the forks will smash into the frame. I can't really see a way to remove it becuase the cables could get all buggered up and also on the Medium size bike if the knock block wasn't there the very top of the fork crown would hit the frame anyway. Maybe at a push I could machine up a 5mm aluminium spacer/bottom headset cup of some sort to push the forks out of the headtube just enough so they clear the frame but then I'm still left with the cable routing issue as it's all been designed to feed into the headset spacers and not through openings on the side of the frame like on normal bikes.
If there aren't any other bikes on the market that fit my criteria then my options are:
Option 1 - Stick with my '20 bike and see what Cube and other manufacturers do in '24 (this could bite me though because Cube might also start sticking 29" wheels all over the place in '24) and obviously the resale value of my current bike would have gone down a fair bit by then.
Option 2 - Buy the '23 model and just have to deal with the annoyances of the knock block getting in the way and then see what bikes are available in '24
Ideally i'd like to find another make and model of bike that just fit what I want but from what I can see so far I don't think one exists?
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