Meet the "Goodbye Gary" Trek signature Hifi. A vanilla 29er it is not.
Out of the box you could tell this bike was interesting - It had retarded wheels that had to go, beach cruiser handlebars, a cramped cockpit, really crappy disc brakes and the shortest lived tires I've ever used in my life.
First to go was the 17* sweep, woodchipper handlebars, replaced with a far narrower set crank brothers cobalt carbon fibre bars. The bontrager whatever seatpost (rythem perhaps) was swapped out for a Thompson setback, the Bontrager wheels were replaced with a sturdier and lighter set of SunRingle wheels that were converted tubeless.
After a bit of a break-in period to get the feel for the handling this bike became nearly bliss to ride. It goes down-hill well though not quite as well as the Fuel EX 8 that it replaced however it flies up. It also carves up the singletrack which is what is really important to a midwest singletrack rider.
I still have some quibbles about the handling - mostly when I run into trees as it can understeer a bit, however that is clearly mostly me.
The replacements for the Racing Ralphs were a Bontrager XDX in the back and a Maxxis Aspen in the front. This combination worked extremely well on the bike and I was very very happy. After wearing out the XDX's sidewalls and the edge tread on the Aspens I replaced the rear with a Maxxis Ikon and the front with a Schwalbe Racing Ralph - both tires have sidewall protection as opposed to the featherweight racing editions and are set up tubeless. I like this set up slightly less than the XDX/Aspen setup but noticed that they handled decents on loose over hardpack better and also performed well in sand.
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