The folks at Transition are totally down with the 29er, and with 120mm or rear wheel travel paired to 140mm forks, their Smuggler makes for fun bike for technical trail riding. To quote Transition “let the Internet trolls rejoice”, because they’ve now unleashed a new carbon Smuggler.
Transition Smuggler Carbon 29er trail mountain bike
Several years in the making, the carbon Smuggler is a direct evolution of the trail bike that has become the in-house favorite bike over at Transition. Balancing 120/140mm of travel, they see the bike as the best balance of efficient suspension that can serve as your everyday trail bike, but under deft hands can take on gnarly terrain as well.
The newest version of the Smuggler gets full carbon construction, including front & rear triangles, plus a carbon rocker. The suspension design is the same grin-inducing Giddy Up 2.0H of their other bikes.
It also gets the same Speed Balanced Geometry of the alloy Smuggler, which basically means long, low & slack so it is agile at slow speeds with good traction on the front wheel, yet still stable at speed for thrashing descents.
Tech details
The frame features a Boost spaced rear end, metric shock sizing, and sealed Enduro Max bearings throughout its Horst link 4-bar design. It even fits a full size water bottle inside the main triangle.
The carbon bike gets new internal shift routing for the 1x specific frame with new anti-rattle cable clamps, stealth dropper routing, and molds in rubber downtube & chainstay protectors. Routing for the post mount 180mm rear brake stays outside to keep setup easy, and the frame sticks with a standard threaded bottom bracket.
Frame weight with the Fox Float DPS shock is claimed at 2.95kg/6.5lb with all of the hardware. And it’ll clear up to a 29 x 2.3″ tire.
Availability
The new Smuggler Carbon is slated for Spring 2018 availability, in either bone grey (white) and gunsmoke blue. It will be sold as a $3000 frameset, a $5000 complete bike with a SRAM GX build, and a premium $6000 complete bike with an X01 groupset.
