2016 Intense Spider

The sport of Mtb Enduro is evolving daily and it has gotten to the point that you need to have a quiver of bikes to really be competitive on the West Coast. Some may argue with this but it is the truth. If you are racing a Big Mountain event like Mammoth or Northstar you would be most confident on a 160mm travel bike. These races usually have some more rowdy rock gardens steeper drops and not a ton of flat pedaling. In Southern California there isn’t many Enduro races that have a huge amount of decent. With that being said most Enduro’s are a staged slight downhill XC races so you want to have a bike that can be stable on a few rowdy sections but most of all your bike better be fast as hell on the pedaly sections.

With all that being said I have added a Intense Carbon Spider 27.5to my quiver of bikes. I do have a allow Spider but I just couldn’t get the bike to feel as fast as I wanted to on the courses and the weight and flex might have been the issue, but the 1st day on the carbon spider 27.5 I knew this was the bike for me for a small mountain not rowdy trail weapon. I really like to put long miles in on trail bikes and this bike pedals uphill so much better then the alloy spider and tracer. I think a lot of this is the stiffness and weight of the bike. For how good this bike pedals uphill the descents are not compromised.

I chose to build this bike from the frame up. Sometimes this is good, sometimes this bad. On this particular bike I feel I made a few changes to this bike that were a little better then the standard builds that come in production. For the Suspension I went to a 140mm FOX 34 fork instead of a 130mm travel fork, but stayed with the FOX factory float in the rear at 140mm. I also used the Cane Creek angle set at one degree making the head angle now 66 degrees from it’s standard 67. I went this direction for better balance and stability when descending. I was pleasantly surprised that it didn’t affect the pedaling aspect at all. I’m using the Renthal Fat Bar Lite Carbon bars with a Renthal 40mm Duo stem. I chose the longer 40mm stem so I wasn’t cramped when I climb because the bike isn’t just a small DH bike.

For my wheels I chose to go with a local San Diego brand UXA. UXA offers a variety of Carbon wheels and I chose the 35mm Carbon hoop with polished Profile elite hubs. The 35mm wide carbon hoop it helps me so much with traction and not having the tires rolling on the rim. As far as the Profile hubs it’s hard not to love them. The engagement is so good and the positive feed back when you want to throw down power is right there.

I am very picky about brakes and I heard nothing but good things about the Magura MT8 brakes so I threw on some of these and have to say the brakes are awesome. The feel is good, but bleeding this and keeping them consistent is not so good. I do wish I could get them to always feel the same because when they feel good they are my favorite feeling brakes.

Drive train is easy I went with the Sram XX1 11 speed with a 32 front chain ring. Hard to find any complaints about the Sram 11 speed I just love the performance and versatility of the 11 speed.

Other pieces I chose were the Rock Shox reverb seat post, crank brothers Mallot enduro pedal. Intense seat and ODI single side lock on grips.

After spending a month on this bike I’m going to say this is the most versatile bike that I have ever ridden for local trail bike riding areas. It accelerates fast, it’s stable descending, and its just plain fun to ride. The bottom line is the Spider 275c is all you need if you like spend a few hours in the saddle on the weekend,  but want to be able to shred some good descents here and there.