Giant Glory 00 2010 first impressions.

Well, it’s arrived, after a lot of string pulling and greasing of….well, lets just say there was a lot of grease involved and leave it at that shall we?

Anyway, we have here a £3950.00, 2010 Giant Glory. Now you’ve probably seen all the press camp photo’s and the catalogue descriptions on other websites, but we here at the the all new descent-world have managed to snaffle a full production model for a thrashing. A full review will follow in a few weeks time as I think it’s fair to say that after a set up ride it would take more than a few days on the hill to get a real impression of how this bike works. For now we’ll give you a brief  lowdown on this all new platform as we see it.

With the past incarnations of the Glory being such a popular bike, Giant really did have to get it right first time here, weight was an issue of course with the last one, not to the point of detriment I should add, it gave the bike a planted feel, but the consensus was that it was a bit on the weighty side for more than a few riders. On the workshop scales at near as we could to centre (about 4″ forward of the seat tube) we fell on 38.1Ibs exactly, so well undr 40Lbs for your new Glory, a good start, seeing as the consensus for last years weight was just shy of 43Lbs for last years bike in a medium frame.
Giant seem to have abandoned the industrial look of the old Glory DH this year, as well as refining the Reign-X and re-introducing the Faith for 2010, all of which look a little more polished this year, losing the big, boxy tubes that defined them in the past. You can tell just by looking, that Giant want a bigger slice of the Trail-Freeride-Downhill market than they already have, we have neater tube junctions, colour coding and subtler graphics across this type of bike. Progress? well its in the eye of the beholder isn’t it?

Contrary to the ramblings of forum folks and “spy shots” of Rando’s race rig, the Glory does retain the Giants proprietary “Maestro” suspension system, a system that they use on short travel performance XC bikes like the Trance, right through the range to the big hitters like the Glory, the primary difference to the aesthetics of this being the absence of the “Glory hole” the pierced down-tube where the bottom shock mount was situated.
The Maestro system is well known now across the industry as a proven system that works across different disciplines, it has a linear spring curve that gives a little over two thirds of you travel a vertical wheel path and decreases chain stretch and pedal “bobbing” as well as retaining braking performance under suspension activity. I’m not going to dwell on it too much until I’ve had the chance to put this longer travel bike through it’s paces, although I have a Reign-Zero (6″) as my trail bike, so I can vouch for what is a pretty effective system, and among the best I have personally have used.

The standout difference is of course the new platform, a totally new, hydro-formed frame metaphorically butted to use more material where its needed and less where it isn’t, making for more sensible construction all round, a world away from it’s overbuilt predecessor.
The forming of the top-tube, down-tube, head-tube are was a particular crowd pleaser, gone are the massive welds and flat tube junctions of yesterday, whereas today is all about precisely cut fluid-formed tubes and finished welds leading to a 1″1/8 top and 1.5″ bottom tapered head-tube (65.5 degrees) as found on many bikes now, not least one of the Glory’s main competitors the Trek Session 88.

It Seems every tube benefits from a specific re-work, the down-tube is goose necked a-la Specialized, the (very slack: 59.7 degrees)seat-tube is round at the top and tapers to square at the bottom for stiffness and to give more surface contact area at the bottom bracket.
The rear triangle also goes out of its way too give a nod to the extensive re-work too, the piece that joins the forward yokes of the seat and chain-stays is a lighter, more sculpted affair, while the seat stays themselves are left open at the end as if to prove that everything possible has been done to shave weight off this bike. (also the rear mech cable is routed through the seat-stay for a grime free, cleaner look) It’s all a bit obvious if you ask me, (I aint’ no frame builder, granted) but then it seems to have done the trick in that this bike is genuinely flightier than the old one. There is of course a worry that it will be too light, weather this means failure, bad handling, or a lack of confidence in the bikes integrity in general is up to the rider, but I guess time will tell

The damping duties are unsurprisingly taken care of by Fox, up front we have the 2010 version of the 203mm 40-RC2 with new FIT damping system, not that the characteristics of previous 40′s were anything to sniff at, Bob saw fit to introduce a control knob rethink and some features to allow for better and more controlled rebound damping (and by all accounts a mechanically quieter fork too) but I’ll stay away from this also until I’ve had the benefit of a good fiddle on the hill.
One thing we did notice is that no advantage was taken of the direct stem mount feature that is available on the top crown, this is a personal taste thing though, Giant obviously in disagreement as they instead stuck with the Race-Face Diabolus / Atlas stem and bar combo. Each to their own.

 The rear shock is the (almost predictably specced) DHX-RC4. It’s a new 2010 model retaining high and low speed Compression and rebound damping and the Fox boost valve to handle  either end of your travel when the hits are a little bigger than you thought or indeed if you need to ramp up that first part of the stroke.

The highlights outside the new frame platform and forks are more or less as they were last year, transmission, and braking is again taken care of by the now fairly commonplace Shimano Saint group-set, with all component parts present and correct, the chain-set gets a companion this year in the guise of a custom MRP-G2 chain-guide same as last year with a taco type bash-guard protecting the teeth on your Saint cranks.
The hoops are a Saint / Mavic affair with nifty blue custom EX721′s holding your rubber on, taking of rubber, they are Michelin “hot” 2.5′s which look suspiciously similar to a favourite model of the  past with a few small tweaks. There is no real info on the wall of the tyres on our test bike, I suspect they may be an OE specced model to keep the overall production wight down. (call me a cynic)

 All in all it looks like a fairly competent package, with the Session 88 out last year, Santa Cruz going strong and Specialized’s Demo gaining ground now that Sam has took the overall again, Giant had no choice but to step up and put their best efforts on the table, as the old glory was definitely being overtaken as the privateers choice. I guess all that is left is to hit the hill and see what the New Glory has to offer?
Back soon with a ride repo!

Put you comments below, or mosey over to the all-new d-w forum.

Thanks to Dales Cycles.

Posted by Allan Doyle