Bike part 2

There has been an ongoing saga with my bike.

I was all setup to enter the Kooralbyn 24hr race last month. Two weeks before the event, I take my bike in for a service only to receive a phone call from my LBS mechanic that the frame was cracked. This was a dilemma as that is the only bike I own. He informed me that my bike had a lifetime frame warranty so if I had my original receipt they would replace it.

I managed to get hold of my receipt and the bike was inspected by the Trek dealer (Trek own Gary Fisher) and they say I can get a new one on warranty. This will however take 2-6 weeks... So I am now 2 weeks out from a race with hotels booked and a race entered and no bike.

I run through my options: get a second hand bike just for the race, buy a second hand frame, buy a second hand dual suspension.

As luck would have it, my LBS mechanic was selling a near new Giant Trance 1, a bike I had been looking at as an option. Giant make good quality bikes, and are generally the best spec'd out bikes for the price. They sometimes are disparaged because of their Taiwanese heritage, but as far as I have seen, they are great bikes.

So I purchased the bike, which was in great condition and only 6 month old. This is the bike I raced in the 24hr. What a difference the dualy makes. By the end of the race, by back and butt were fine, which are usually the weakest points after such a long ride.

During the race however, I did find that the front crankset was seemingly wobbly. It turned out that the screws holding the crankset in place came loose. These were tightened and by the mechanics onsite. A week later however, they came loose again, and when I took it into the bike shop, my LBS mechanic said it was still under warranty and he would get the rep to look at it. The rep replaced it immediately. I did a bit of a search on it afterwards and it turns out that the Race Face Evolve XC has had a few problems like this. I now owned two bikes and both of them were in the shop under warranty.

I got the Giant back within a week and a half with a new Crank. It has run smoothly ever since.
The Fisher was still being delivered from the US. (In a interesting twist, Phil then took up the job of the Australian Trek warranty rep, so he kept me informed as to the state of my claim and where it was in transit.) Fisher upgraded the frame from a Tassajara to a Big Sur. This is more of a racing frame, so it apparently should handle a lot better on the trails. Pity it's going to be relegated to a commuting bike. I'm going to have to take it out on a trail, just to see how the new frame is.

One thing I haven't managed to sort out is fitting my new bike. I cannot for the life of me get is setup so that my knees don't hurt. I must have just fluked the setup for the Tass as it has always been good to me. I'm going to see someone about this tomorrow, so hopefully it should be fixed then.