Carrera Banshee info?

[rentedmule]

I bought this entirely for a beautiful set of Hope Mono M4's that were on it but I'm having trouble finding any information on it. Every picture I find of a Carrera Banshee looks completely different than this. Anyone???

Carrera banshee by Rented Mule, on Flickr

 

[sam_white]

The Carrera Banshee name has been used on several different bikes over the years. The first Banshee was an aluminium hardtail, which I think was followed by the version you have. At a guess this was early 2000s.
I'm pretty certain there were two versions of this design with differing rear suspension layouts, yours appears to be the 'faux-bar' layout, the other was a full four bar linkage with a chainstay pivot, aka Horst Link.

Later bikes had a conventional front triangle, with a short rocker and then from around 2007 they went to 6 inch travel and all full four bar linkages - Also sold as the updated 'Banshee X' and a sole 'Banshee XXX' models - these were really aimed as long travel freeride/dh bikes.

The latest Banshees are pitched more as XC bikes... would probably benefit a whole thread of photos.

 

[sam_white]

Forks, wheels, shock, cockpit and drivechain parts all look to have been upgraded on your model. I think the frames are pretty decent and certainly worthy of better components.

 

[rentedmule]

Great, thanks for the info! It was a heavy beast but seemed like a good quality frame. I passed it on to a friend of mine after swapping the brakes - I'll see how it holds out.

 

[W7Ford]

I think it's from around 2002/3. The slightly earlier ones had the large C logo on the sides. Originally with cable discs fitted. I worked for Halfords from about 2005 and it slightly predated this time though we got them in for repairs. I had a 2004 Carrera fury and they had dropped the shadow on the Carrera text (as in your model) by that year.

 

[rentedmule]

Interesting to see what they looked like in OEM spec. Mine clearly had a longer shock installed and it really made the geometry funky.