Hey everyone, how's it going?
Have you ever considered buying an Intense bike?
They are currently available in Canada they've been for a couple of years,
and one of my buddys just bought an Intensive Spider.
If you can still find them out there I think they are great value,
but why don't we taking a closer look and see what this is about.
This is a 27.5 or 650b bike that's considered to be trail oriented,
67° head angle, a pretty good for climbing 75.5 seat tube angle.
Top tube (TT) for Medium is just shy of 600 mm which is not that long,
but this is full carbon, both front and rear triangle are carbon,
something that a lot of us are considering these days.
This was considered to be an entry level trim for the bike,
but it's fully equipped with a SRAM Eagle NX groupset,
back in the days when an NX was considered entry level and not SX.
And the rest of the components,
actually most of the components otherwise are Intense branded.
If we start here with the handlebars, you see their grips are Intense.
You're gonna see the 50 mm stem is Intense,
and also the 760 mm handlebar is Intense branded as well.
Headset, the tapered headset, 1-1/8 to 1-1/2 inch is Intense branded as well.
Also if you look down there, hubs are Intense branded also.
Here you're going to see the more entry-level brakes which are the Shimano MT500,
MT501 is the lever, MT500 is going to be the caliper.
These are two piston calipers
that have smaller pads that something like Deore, SLX XT and XTR
These are Deore level RT56 discs that only take resin pads.
180 mm front and 160 mm rear.
And because we're here, why don't we look at the wheels.
Wheels are Boosted, so Boost 148 mm in the back.
Wheels are built with Intense hubs like I mentioned,
and if you look at the rims, these are 25 mm ID rims
but they're offset rims with t3 mm offser which I love to use usually.
They are Race Face AR 25 offset rims.
Tires - front and back are 27.5 x 2.35 Maxxis Forekaster,
a good trail tire with a decent volume so no complaints about that.
Also looking here you can see the Revelation, the Rockshox Revelation fork.
New for 2018 was the 25 mm stanchions,
These are the same used by the Rockshox PIKE.
So a very capable fork,
the only downside to this would be the Motion Control damper
which is not as sophisticated but should work equally fine.
The air spring is the new DebonAir
which should give you a nice, plush movement off of the top.
And in usual fashion, this provides a 110 mm thru axle
and a rebound control with 13 or 14 clicks of adjustment.
Fork is 140 mm travel, RC model, DebonAir air spring like I mentioned,
Offset is 44 mm and you see the Boost spacing
and the 27.5 wheels.
140 millimeters up front is paired with 130 millimeters maximum in the back
And this is a RockShox monarch RL.
You only have two positions here,
open and this is a climbing or a locked position.
The travel in the rear is adjustable and you see this extra bolt here
that allows you to reduce travel to 115 mm as opposed to 130
to make it more of a cross-country rocket as opposed to a trail bike.
The carbon frame provides internal routing and you see
some extra ports over here for additional cables or hoses.
You have the provision for a water bottle,
you cannot really fit the big 750 ml bottle here but a smaller one will do.
This is based in California
Intense is based in California and that's what you see, a logo and sticker.
Surprisingly for 2019-2020, this frame accepts a front derailleur
even though the bike is not set up as a 2x or 3x, God forbid!
The linkage here is made out of aluminum on this particular model.
What's also interesting down here is that the lower pivots and the bottom bracket
have grease zerks so you can maintain the frame without taking everything apart,
something that's definitely appreciated.
The carbon on the down tube is protected here at the bottom,
and you can see the shifter cable and the brake hose coming out of the front triangle.
The shifter cable goes back into the rear triangle and it comes out right here.
The the brake hose is routed underneath that chainstay.
Chainstays that are 419 mm, not the shortest, not the longest,
but they are nicely protected here
with this Spider branded rubber boots both the top and the bottom.
Saddle is a WTB Silverado,
and that's on top of a dropper post.
This is a replacement Crank Brothers 100 mm dropper post
that came with the associated remote.
This is a good old funky looking style Crank Brothers that works very well.
Originally bike came with, I think it was a Race Face branded dropper post
that was an absolute disaster, that the seller had to replace.
And that takes me to the drivetrain which is 100% SRAM Eagle NX.
NX uses the same technology with the other Eagle components
but they're made out of cheaper materials.
You can see the plasticky paddles here.
But this actually works quite well, very similar to Eagle GX, no complaints there.
The cranks are 175 millimeters long,
they use a 32 tooth X-sync 2 chainring,
DUB bottom bracket which uses press fit bottom bracket for this frame
and you can see the ISCG tabs over there .
If you want to put a bash guard or something like that on it.
Chain is NX branded and if you get a bike with it
I would just replace it right away.
This was already broken once and you can see the extra quick link here,
but look at this one of the external plates is already cracked
so be wary of these NX chains, they seem to be very very weak.
Otherwise the derailleur is very similar to the Eagle GX
in shape and form and actual functionality.
And going to the back this is where the other compromise is,
the big 11-50t cassette, 12 speed,
that actually uses the good old Shimano HG freehub
and that is why you start only at 11t.
But otherwise the drivetrain works very well
and the shifting is quite smooth surprisingly.
I mentioned earlier that this is just a hair over 30 pounds with the pedals.
Pedals are probably a pound themselves.
But the bike can be lightened up, this is using tubes right now.
You have that over 600 grams cassette in the back
but just for trail riding this is actually a joy.
I rode it a couple of times and no questions asked,
if you want a 27.5 carbon bike
and if you can find one of these,
I would highly recommend the Intense Spider.
This model run between 2016 and 2019
and I think with the introduction of the Sniper, with the many many variants of the Sniper
this Spider was killed off just to make room for that and the Intense Primer,
which is considered to be their 27.5 bike today.
And that's the end of my short review guys.
I hope you found is useful,
if you have any questions let me know below.
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And until next time, hope to see you folks on the trails,
why not riding an Intense bike?
Cheers guys, Cheers!