The Reign was the real deal: carbon frame and wheels, and a plush Fox suspension all at a price point far below a similarly specced bike. This bike was way more than I needed, and still would be, but it was fun pointing it downhill and letting the suspension take care of the rest.
Over time, however, I ran into the same proprietary problems and wheel issues.
Two more blown freehubs, together with Giant hiding their specs better than the Ark of the Covenant, meant unnecessary time and frustration finding parts and keeping the bike running smoothly. When I broke the freehub on a bike trip the local shop could not find product details, and literally had to open a drawer of miscellaneous freehubs to physically match with my broken one.
When shopping for a new wheelset I was confronted with Giant’s Hellishly inexplicable choice to put a boost fork on a non boost frame. This meant I could not buy a matched wheelset without using spacers. The only alternative was to buy one boost and one non-boost wheel, which didn’t make much sense either.
I eventually laced a bomb-proof DT Swiss 350 hub into the rear rim to eliminate future freehub woes. But this also became an exercise in mental endurance as Giant did not publish their rim specs, which I needed to calculate spoke length. I eventually found the information buried in a long-forgotten bike forum.
The experience with this bike fueled my motivation to review bike specs and components with a fine toothed comb. Yet another reason to create hardtail.ca–to share these experiences in the hopes it saves others the same mind-numbing hassle.