My medium bike has a 436mm reach, which isn’t massive but is still longer than the Cannondale’s Scalpel SE, for a little more room to manoeuvre when out of the saddle. The bike’s geometry doesn’t look that far off what we’d expect to see on a trail bike and at the base of the shock is a flip-chip that allows you to alter the geometry, tweaking bottom bracket height by 7mm and the head angle by 0.5 degrees. Sizes range from extra-small to extra-large, so most riders should be able to find a frame size that’ll work for them. The Epic EVO is available in five different sizes, all of which sport 29in wheels.

Cables are routed internally and just behind the bottom bracket, and where the rear triangle meets the front, Specialized has plugged the gap with a thin rubber grommet to help prevent crud build up. There’s room for two bottle cages in the front triangle but no SWAT compartment to stash essentials. In a bid to save weight, flex stays are used instead of a Horst-link chainstay pivot, while a RockShox SIDLuxe Select+ rear shock with Specialized’s Rx XC tune controls the 110mm of rear travel. Travel is increased from 100mm to 110mm and, unlike the Epic, the EVO forgoes the use of the auto-adjusting Brain shock – which places a remote reservoir containing an inertia valve down by the rear drop out, connected via a hydraulic that runs through the shock yoke and down the seatstay. The Epic EVO shares the same FACT 11m front triangle as its XC sibling (only the S-Works model uses the fancier FACT 12m carbon) which allows Specialized to tune the ride feel by tweaking the carbon lay-up in a bid to keep the bike feeling the same across all frame sizes.īut it’s all change at the rear, where the EVO sports a different rear end and shock yoke.

Specialized epic 2013 carbon