I see that Sherpa appear to be selling this frame as the Olympus and some build options use a coil shock. Looking at the linkage plots in the first post I would have thought that this frame wouldn't suit a coil shock as the leverage ratio drops pretty linearly throughout the travel, wouldn't a frame designed for a coil shock have a progressively increasing leverage ratio throughout the travel? I suppose you could use a progressive spring on the coil shock, but I have no idea how well these work?

EDIT: Also I'm ~170cm tall and currently riding a medium giant with 435 mm reach and it feels ok but on the larger end (I'm generally right between small and medium frame sizes). The FM1003 geo shows reach for the small frame is 432 mm and the medium is 455 mm, which seems really long! Based on that would I be better off on the small FM1003 frame? The small looks larger in every dimension than my current medium-frame trail bike.

Building a bike for descending. And the performance of the dropper post is not important to you? Curious.

Maybe re-read what I've written and see if at any point I said that I didn't care about the dropper post??

Just measured my medium Trance and it has a 120mm dropper, which as I mentioned seems adequate but could be longer as I still hit it when descending sometimes. With the frame geo and my height I could probably squeeze a 150mm into the trance, but I'd have to carefully check any potential future frames as I'm on the border between 'small' and 'medium' so it depends on the specific frame as to how much seatpost I could fit in with my leg length.

It seems like some people have received these frames and are riding them around, surely they could take some photos of the pivot bearing mounting arrangement for the thread? I'm somebody who is looking at frames trying to decide what I want to do now, and I might buy this frame if I can see that the bearing mounting solution is adequate, but unless I see that I have my doubts and I might buy something else... Seems like Eddy or somebody else should just post some pictures and then people like me will be able to buy with confidence!

Hi all, I've been riding a 2019 Giant Trance 27.5 for a few years as my first MTB and it's been a great bike, probably still more bike than I need even now to be honest. I am however considering building up my own mtb, I built my first road bike from a direct-from-factory Chinese carbon frame ~10 years ago and I really enjoyed it and the bike is still going strong (hong-fu FM-039 frame).

If I were going to build up a bike I'd be keeping my Trance for general trail riding and I'd probably have the new bike be more of a specific bike park/shuttle bike. So I'm thinking a longer wheel-base, slacker head tube and more suspension travel than the Trance. I've also put this in the 29er forum but I'm also open to 27.5 for both wheels or a 29 front 27.5 real mullet set-up.

Any frame suggestions?

I've looked at the Ican P9 which people seem to like, but it doesn't seem that different in terms of geometry to the Trance so I'm not sure what the point would be. I'd get a bit more suspension travel and a slightly slacker head angle, but potentially not to the degree that I'd even notice. I suppose that if I fitted a longer travel fork (170mm) and went to a mullet wheel setup I'd effectively slacken the head angle a bit more and increase the wheel base, which might make it more noticeably stable at higher speeds in a straight line...