With all the fuss over 650b wheels being the next big thing, it took me a while to get going with this big-wheeled French trail bike – but a few tweaks on, I’m loving it. As you might expect of a sturdy full-suspension 29er for just over two grand, there’s a fair amount of metal mass here. The big, smooth-rolling Spank wheels set up tubeless with WTB’s chunky Vigilante front and slick-but-quick Nine Line rear tyres mean I only ever really notice the weight when I have to heave it over something or drag it out of the car.
Even on recent rides that have yo-yoed up and down the brutally steep but fantastically fun trails around Sutton Bank like some mad re-enactment of the Grand Old Duke of (North) York (Moors), it’s been happy tapping out a climbing tempo that’s made lighter, smaller-wheeled bikes suffer. With gravity on its side or flowing rollercoaster singletrack ahead, that easy rolling becomes an addictive call to add more speed at every opportunity. As a result I’ve had to get used to serious burning smells from the resin pads on the basic Avid brakes and I’ll probably have to replace them with a sintered set soon.
Grinding the climbs through variable weather has taken a toll on the transmission too, so I’ve swapped the original SRAM double crankset for a Blackspire narrow-wide chainring. That’s made the transmission feel much less jumpy as well as letting me stick the front mech and shifter in the ‘back to Hotlines’ box with the original tyres. The rear shifter/cable is starting to stick though so I should probably get that cleaned or changed before it gives up entirely.
Apart from replacing worn bits, the big news is that I’ve stuck MRP’s new Stage fork in up front. Initial riding impressions of this highly adjustable 140mm (5.5in) travel piece are good enough to make it look like a potential RockShox Pike challenger. With the Zesty proving no slouch at wearing things out, we’ll have to see whether the claimed 200-hour service interval schedule proves realistic in Yorkshire as well as Colorado, where the fork is hand built.
PRICE 3120$
Lapierre Zesty TR 329 2014 (video)
