Well, bike arrived and have to say I'm amazed.

For some reason, I can't embed imgurs so here are links...

http://imgur.com/Fq4GgFA

http://imgur.com/5XQQ8Ex


It arrived really well packed and a really thorough inspection later and I couldn't find a single mark or manufacturing defect anywhere. The bike was assembled really well - I went round everything to tighten but it was all done perfectly and well lubed. Even the tyres were pumped up to usable pressure! It took all of 20mins to get it roadworthy.

Only done a quick city ride but it feels really tight and snappy. The only place I feel small negative is the fork; it's an Suntour XCM which is a bit heavy, and with the incredibly light back end, it makes the bike front heavy. I had to dial in a lot of pre load (and I'm not a heavy guy) and that really helped tighten up the front end.

I can't quite figure out what frame design it is; the down tube is almost hexagonal but the rear end looks like a Scott scale? The only other gripe are the decals - I don't mind the color scheme but it has random "lost in translation" english words on it, like "Deckard" and "superdeck". Not too much bothered and I may see if there's a way to get them cleanly off the frame so it's just the color stripes and no decal words.

It's clearly from China, not the philippines - the box was shipped from there and the contact info was all in China. I think SAVA as a "brand" might be philipino, but from a manufacturing point of view it's a Chiner.

Regardless, I'm super happy with my SAVA - I don't know how they put XT and Deore parts, with Suntour Forks on what looks to be a well made Carbon bike for $800 delivered.

Happy to have joined the Carbon club! Will report back once I give it a thrashing.

Hi All, I've been looking at a couple of bikes called SAVA - they do both 26" and 27.5" and what look to be the IP-136 frames, although the rear dropouts/chainstays are marginally different. They seem to be from the Philippines but then there's some other info that they're just Chinese bikes.

Does anyone know what these are about? The deals are really good and the builds in terms of parts are worth more that the buy price.

Thanks Carbon dude!

I know nothing about 27.5+ - A brief google suggests that it's a stopgap between the fat tire bikes and a normal 27.5. The bit that worries me is that I HATED the feeling of a 29er and it looks like (correct me if I'm wrong) but the 27.5+ would make the wheels virtually the same size in terms of height, and thus the loss in agility and turning circle as mentioned in my first post would be a deal breaker.

I suppose I could always get a 27.5+ frame and run normal 27.5 wheels on it as long as the geometry wasted drastically affected, but honestly, I think I'll be happy with a standard 27.5er. unless you can convince me otherwise I really don't expect to do much offroading so I'm not sure the extra grip would make a difference. In my day *puts grandad hat on and lights pipe* Klein deathgrips at 2.4" wide were the biggest you could run on a 26" MTB and most of us just ran Velociraptor's or Smoke/Dart combos at 1.9" back and 2.2" front and that felt big - I can't imagine running 3" tires but then again, designs change for a reason so i'm open to it. The bit I like is that the wider rims would mean stiffer wheels but not sure if that's actually true by the time you put the clown tires on :p

I've heard about Peter on this forum and others and was hoping to reach out to him. How do I get in touch? Can you PM me or have him PM me? I'd be happy with a UD frame, no paint. I just want light and strong, and I'm definitely going BSA on the BB. I know there's really only 4 or 5 factories putting these out so would like to know who really cares about build and who stands by their warranties etc?

I'm basically building this on a shoestring until I can figure out if I'm really back in the game for real - so any advice on bits to buy would be a great help. I was a total MTB geek when i worked in the trade but that was 15/20 years ago. I could reel off the weights of virtually every high end part on the market, even the difference between production years of the same parts - they used to make me do it in the bike shop as a party trick - have clients come in and try to stump me. Then it all went downhill (literally speaking) and weights didn't matter so much anymore.

 I think I've figured out I want Avid Exir brakes as they seem cheap and really good but beyond that, I have no idea. For forks, I'm thinking something like as-new Fox's from pinkbike but again, don't have a scooby about what's good these days. Nothing really long travel - my forks back in the day were RS Judy XC's which had 2.5" travel. 4" seems the norm now and more than enough for me so have no clue as to what would fit the bill. I do want stiff though - I remember being offered the incredibly rare RS FSX Judy's for my Ibis and although they were light as hell, they were like a wet noodle when it came to steering in tight singletrack.

My main concern was to get a superb frame and go from there so any advice you or others can give me about parts would be great!
Thanks again