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Making sense of the ‘19 GT Sensor 29

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#22 ·
I'm waiting on a local shop to get one in, but they are currently on BO with no clear date on when one is showing up. The sensor caught my eye as a great budget FS bike that could grow with a rider. Getting the base model and upgrading parts as you outgrow/break them would make getting into the sport a lot easier for most folks.

Also, GT was my first bike. So i have a soft spot for them.
 
#24 ·
LBS has a Sensor Elite in. Had a quick look today.

Looks real good in the flesh. Plenty of room out back around the 2.35 NN tyre. 2.6 clearance I would guess. Semi matte black and the decals are more or less aqua blue. The Groove Tube is neat.

Certainly not a light bike, felt typical trail bike weight, I'd guess around 30lbs for the large just by hefting it.

This is the only one they have and it's for sale not demo or I'd have taken it out briefly, even tho it's too big.

A very neat, no bullshit looking bike.
 
Discussion starter · #26 · (Edited)
Yea I got it. Haven't been able to put enough time in to dial the suspension and get a true emic perspective. First off this is a burly trail bike, definitely not a light mellow trail ripper. Holy hell the frame is stiff. Pushing hard with my hands against a carbon wheel I could barely get the seat tube to flex. It's like 5x stiffer than my Wreckoning. The ride is fun and confident. Despite having 5% more sag than recommended in the front and rear it felt firm and rode high. I'll have to ride something chunkier to see if it's harsh, but it felt good on the flow trail behind my house. I felt confident to hit a few good sized doubles on the first ride. I think the handle bar to pedal height aka stack is a bit short. I had a semi odd semi perched feeling when pedaling on the first ride. It comes with 175 mm cranks, which were not as comfortable for me as the 170s I've been running. Even though the seated climbing position felt a bit odd I think the geo is really good for this type of bike. In the low setting with the saddle slammed forward the STA felt just about perfect. The seat tube is superlong, my 32" inseam just barley fits with the 150 lev slammed on the large size.

It was basically fully assembled out of the box, but the lines and cables were not trimmed at all and look laughably long. The derailleur was not adjusted, the clutch seems super weak, oddly the cage bolt was half way out and there's still a lot of play I haven't been able to sort out. There's a rubber protector on the down tube and a few small pieces of clear bra on the seatstays and chainstays. The paint quality is really nice. There's a few disappointing quality control things. The worst is the through hole on the frame for the rear axle is not concentric with the threads on the hanger, so you really have push hard on the axle to thread it all the way from the start. Really feels like cross threading it every time. The ugly is a the paint filed off in the lower shock mounting standoffs, quarter sized. And the annoying is the head tube ornament is off center by a cm. The stem is 40mm on the large, not 60 like the specs say. The rear hub has 18 poe. The wheels with tape but no valves weight 2259g. They're set up with tubes, which are 290g each. Tires are 720g. They're LiteSkin casing which are laughably thin for a burly trail bike. This was a major let down, no way they'd last one ride without tubes and ridiculous pressure. I put my enduro wheelset and xt brakes on before I rode it.
Image
 
#31 · (Edited)
So, I haven't done the reveal video yet, but for my part-time YT channel I picked up a large Sensor Sport after selling my Yeti SB5+. I figure it's unlikely I'll spoil the surprise talking about it here, but man I'm excited to show what the bike can do!

I want to put a focus on this as a budget bike because I feel new riders are getting a bad impression that you need to dump no less than $3k to even try and ride out on the trails. Just so not true! Over the next year, I'll be slowly upgrading the bike to help new riders know where to spend their money and how it will help the bike preform better. I know that it's best to just spend a little extra and get the next trim package, but I think a lot of people will want to get the Sport to start and then upgrade after 6mo-1yr. $1,800 + pedals to get out on the trail is hard to beat for a new rider!

My impressions of the Sensor Sport so far:
  • #1 upgrade will be a dropper. Man I miss having one!
  • The stack height is stupid short for such an aggressive trail bike. It doesn't help they only give you 15mm of spacers to play with. The next model needs some stack added to it to help balance the bike a bit better.
  • The shocks are basic, but good enough for some hard trail riding if you pump them up. Plenty for a beginner to learn the basics of suspension tuning and smashing through rough single track.
  • There is some pedal bob when you stand up on the bike, but I think it's more the shock than the linkage. I will be interested to hear from others with higher trim.
  • The brakes are surprisingly good. Not sure how they will hold up long term, but for now they keep me from flying off the trail!
  • The bike tips the scales at 36lbs+... I'm going to be striping down the bike to figure out what parts are adding the most mass so people can figure out what is the best $/lbs upgrade.
  • The stock wheels have a bit of heft for sure. Likely one of the best places to shave weight and make the bike preform better.
  • The WTB Ranger tires are great XC rubber, but does have problems in lose trails here in CO. They don't list the compound used in the tires so I'm going to assume whatever was cheapest.
  • Even with all that heft, the bike climbs like a freaking goat, and loves to carve up the flow. I can't wait to get this bike out on some sump lines and see how it gets on!

As a side note, the GT Sensor has a ton of tire clearance! I put my custom Ibis 938 wheelset in with 29x2.5 Aggressor and have over 8mm of side clearance and 11mm on top. You can also run 27+ on this bike, though I'd flip the chip to high mode just to get some extra BB clearance.

I did slap a 150mm fork on it for the lulz, but would not recommend this. Besides putting a lot of stress on the headtube, it really brings the front up and back, making it a bit of a handful on steep climbs. That said, I think 140mm on this bike would make it an epic bike to carve up the ST!

Here's a photo of it all decked out with 27+ tires and a 150mm fork.
 
#33 ·
Sideknob said:
Neat. But 36lbs.....jeez.
Click to expand...
No doubt it's a heavy bike. The good part is it climbs super well so if anything I only really notice the heft when I lift the bike off the ground. less weight = more better, so I'll be interested to see what's adding all the dang weight!

It's interesting to go on Fanatikbike.com and using their bike builder to see the weight on the carbon frame. A large GT Sensor Carbon frame is 6.51lbs (without shock). For $1,899.00, not that bad when you look at $/lbs. I'm interested to see how much the alloy frame is when I strip it down.
 
#34 ·
Trail Features said:
I did slap a 150mm fork on it for the lulz, but would not recommend this. Besides putting a lot of stress on the headtube, it really brings the front up and back, making it a bit of a handful on steep climbs. That said, I think 140mm on this bike would make it an epic bike to carve up the ST!

Here's a photo of it all decked out with 27+ tires and a 150mm fork.
View attachment 1219964
Click to expand...
You should get an angle set so you can keep the 150 fork without increasing the BB height so much. (though it's odd you called out the low stack height, but then say it was harder to climb with a higher front end?)
 
#35 ·
stiingya said:
You should get an angle set so you can keep the 150 fork without increasing the BB height so much. (though it's odd you called out the low stack height, but then say it was harder to climb with a higher front end?)
Click to expand...
I thought about that also... May just be getting used to the bike as a whole and need to try it again with the 150mm fork. When the weather clears up I'll try it again and see if I'm talking out my butt.
 
Discussion starter · #38 ·
You’re totally right there isn’t much difference climbing, especially with the same enduro tires and cushcore. I hope with a lighter wheel set and tires it’ll climb mo’better. I’ve only had two short rides but I think after the two hour mark the shorter travel and steeper steep tube will be enough to make me want to keep going, usually that’s when I get over pedaling the wreck. The travel is a lot more noticeable going down and less is just more fun on mellower trails.
 
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