Eye to Eye Shock Lengths

[landrew04]

Will my conversion work?

I have an old 2014 Giant Trance 1. It is a small frame. It is just a backup bike. It is still fun to ride and works well when a friend is or family member is visiting and bikeless.

I hate sending things to the land fill or not being able to keep them repaired and running. I already replaced the fork a couple of years ago.

I already found some parts and converted to a through axle in the rear. To give myself better wheel and hub maintenance options.

All of this is to give options and flexibility for finding maintenance parts in the future as this thing gets older and older.

The rear shock is end of life. I want to experiment with what I can use and get some more "wrenching" experience.

I am not looking to go crazy with a super expensive new shock. I found a good new 210 x 55 piggy back shock for the right price.

The bike came with 200 x 50 no piggy back. I am thinking I could use M8 x 22.2 and M8 x 19.0 offset bushings, volume spacers, and an angled headset to use the shock even though it is too long. Bushings to get a closer effective eye to eye length, volume spacers to compensate for longer travel and prevent bottom out, angled headset to compensate for change in bottom bracket position to keep effective head tube angle slacker.

I think I can get a pretty good franken bike setup and mostly maintain the original kinematics. I think it will give a much better shock with nice progression and ramp up and adjustment flexibility.

Has anyone ever tried this approach? How did it go? Any strategy for approximating fit without the new shock in hand

[GirishH]

Hello @landrew04, I love your sentiment and the idea of keeping this beautiful Giant out of the landfill.

While bikepacking here in Nepal, I rode with two adventurous cyclists. One was a motorcycle mechanic who had fallen in love with fat bikes. As we navigated an elephant-infested forest trail, he showed me a photo of his custom build: he’d actually added a motorcycle shock to it!

He mentioned he loved riding it on the trails, though it eventually became too heavy and he sold it.
   

It's the guys on the left in this picture..

The moral of the story: Go for it. Follow your "crazy" idea. Even if it doesn’t work out, you’ll have a great time during the transformation! ;-)

(04-18-2026, 02:30 PM)landrew04 Wrote:  Will my conversion work?

I have an old 2014 Giant Trance 1. It is a small frame. It is just a backup bike. It is still fun to ride and works well when a friend is or family member is visiting and bikeless.

I hate sending things to the land fill or not being able to keep them repaired and running. I already replaced the fork a couple of years ago.

I already found some parts and converted to a through axle in the rear. To give myself better wheel and hub maintenance options.

All of this is to give options and flexibility for finding maintenance parts in the future as this thing gets older and older.

The rear shock is end of life. I want to experiment with what I can use and get some more "wrenching" experience.

I am not looking to go crazy with a super expensive new shock. I found a good new 210 x 55 piggy back shock for the right price.

The bike came with 200 x 50 no piggy back. I am thinking I could use M8 x 22.2 and M8 x 19.0 offset bushings, volume spacers, and an angled headset to use the shock even though it is too long. Bushings to get a closer effective eye to eye length, volume spacers to compensate for longer travel and prevent bottom out, angled headset to compensate for change in bottom bracket position to keep effective head tube angle slacker.

I think I can get a pretty good franken bike setup and mostly maintain the original kinematics. I think it will give a much better shock with nice progression and ramp up and adjustment flexibility.

Has anyone ever tried this approach? How did it go? Any strategy for approximating fit without the new shock in hand

[ReapThaWhirlwind]

My experience with bike says not to attempt this.

Precision is precision.

Even a 0.8 spacer on the bb cups will throw your indexing off.

I'd suggest you get the size you need, and don't try to hotfix it.