The Ideal Galbraith Mt. Bike?
Intense 5.5 EVP
 
This is Doug Salisbury's personal Intense 5.5 EVP, which he tricked out with a Marzocchi Z1 Bomber, Manitou Swinger 4-way shock, Chris King No-thread head set, Hayes HFX-9 hydraulic disc brakes, Race Face Next Low Rise XC carbon fiber handlebar, Race Face forged crank and Kenda Kinetics Stick-E 2.35 tires.
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| Model: |
Intense 5.5 EVP |
| Category: |
All Mountain |
| Suspension: |
5 inches front; 5.5 inches rear. |
| Ideal for: |
The 5.5 EVP makes riding Galbraith a mountain of fun. We especially enjoyed it on demanding trails which combine technical challenges on both the up and down, like the Chicken, Cedar Dust and Bob's. |
| Over all performance: |
This is a marvelous All Mountain bike which absolutely sings under power. We found it actually inspired us to make stuff we had only tried in a half-hearted way before, like the root wall punch up near the bottom of Ewoch Village. If the bike doesn't give up on you, you can't give up on the bike -- and the 5.5 EVP never gives up! |
| Front end: |
The Marzocchi Z1 Bomber is one of the premier five inch travel forks on the market, and has been for half a decade. It features the super-smooth coil and oil bath feel that Marzocchi is famous for, along with Marzocchi's ECC adjustable travel / head tube angle feature, which you activate by flicking a lever on the top of the left fork leg and coming out of the saddle and bouncing once. |
| Rear end: |
Readers of GalbraithMt.com know we have long been ardent devotees of the Horst-link four-bar rear suspension, which has been the best rear end on the market for nearly a decade. Well, we gotta break the news to you -- the virtual pivot point (VPP) suspensions we've tested recently on the Giant Reign and Intense 5.5 EVP are better from a pure performance standpoint. They're more supple, responsive, and transparent to trail conditions, so that suspension-induced pedal resistance is "virtually" eliminated. And the Intense 5.5 EVP climbs better than any 32 pound bike we've ever tested. The King is dead -- long live the King! |
| Brakes: |
The Hayes HFX-9 hydraulic disc brakes are excellent self-adjusting dual piston stoppers. |
| (The devil is in the) Details: |
Like all the VPP bikes we've tested (except the Rocky Mountain ETS), the 5.5 EVP tends to collect a lot of muck in the read suspension pivot area. |
| Durability: |
Although this is a new design from Intense, we expect that Intense's experience with the Uzzi SL (which the 5.5 EVP replaces) means it will hold up to the kind of pounding that Galbraith can dish out. |
| Geometry and sizing: |
With a XC-style 70 degree head tube angle and shortish 16.8 inch chain stays, it's easy to see why the 5.5 EVP jumps under power, yet is a little more stable than the Titus Switchblade (which has the same travel with a lighter frame and quarter degree steeper head tube). Interestingly, the 5.5 EVP's 13 1/4 inch high bottom bracket is 1/4 inch lower than the Intense Tracer, which is a bit of a step backwards in Galbraith's rock gardens. |
| Weight: |
32 pounds as pictured. |
| Reviewed: |
February 2005 |
| Steve Hindman samples one of the pleasures of the upper Chicken on the Intense 5.5 EVP. |
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