Submitted by
b d
a
from laguna niguel, ca,usa Date Reviewed: September 12, 2005
Duration Product Used:
1 Year
Purchased At:
dropnzone.com
Strengths:
awesomely strong can be relatively light dead sexy horizontal stays huge headtube (diameter and length)
Weaknesses:
the oversized headtube means it's kinda a pain in the rear to get headset parts for and you've got to have a whole lot of steertube (forks whose steertubes were long on my other bikes barely peek out of this one) the 14mm rear end limits you on hub choice if you choose not to use the supplied 10mm->14mm adapters (you need to use a bolt on hub no matter what, I went with a hadley 10 and got the 14mm kit for it, originally i had an atom labs and it was mediocre at best) the bike has no way of precisely aligning the hub in the dropouts or stopping it from sliding foreward/backward.
Similar Products Used:
identity dr jekyl, identity 666, specialized stuff, kona scrap/shred/cowan
Bike Setup:
ive had it set up several ways: 26/26 and 26/24 sherman slider+ 26/24 marzocchi 66rc 26/24 and 24/24 sherman breakout 26/26 and 26/24 sherman flick 24/24 funn stiffy always single speed
Bottom Line:
My favorite bike, period. This bike is incrediby versatile. I actually got it by means of a fedex screwup. I had originally ordered the normal imperial and when it shipped, fedex somehow managed to bust up the bottom bracket, how, i don't know. After a bunch of waiting they agreed to replace it and since Evil was out of stock on the Imperial FedEx bought me the SL instead, which is great since I love SSing. This bike has been both one of the lightest and heaviest I've owned. When I first got it I had a Sherman Flick on it with a Mavic on the front and an Aircorp on the back. I hadn't ridden anything so flickable. As stated above though I've also put my big fork on it and thrown some big rubbers on a set of Trailpimps I had when I wanted to go be stupid. It was awesome, the bike didn't complain at all. My largest tire is a 2.75 Arrow Prime Bite that had no clearance issues with the frame whatsoever. One downside of the frame not mentioned above are that because of the dual toptube design some of the people that have ridden it around have complained of hitting their knees on it. I havent had this problem, though I have noticed that my kneeguads do scuff it a bit. In the end, I highly recommend one of these, or the standard, Imperial frames. I set the value rating at 5 chillies because despite its cost, I couldnt be happier and I'd buy another if I ever needed to.
Value Rating:Overall Rating:
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