brakes and wheels and upgrades and stuff

simon2names

Evening all,

Having just been bought a couple of days mountain biking in lancashire by my girlfriend for my birthday and a coast to coast bike ride with my brother to look forward to later in the summer, i'm looking at getting a few upgrades for my fairly basic Trek 4300.
i want to start with a reasonable set of hydraulic disc brakes, which also means a new set of wheels, i know it's all about budgets, but where do i even begin?

I've been reading a bunch of mags in order to get a starter, seems that i'm going to have to pay approx £100 give or take for each brake and then another £80 or so for each wheel, does this seem right?

thought i would come for a bit of advice here before i enter the wonderful world of bikes salesmen!

Thanks in advance,

Simon

GibboGT

Not too sure but I would have said £360 all in would be quite a lot for wheels and disc brakes.

for example http://www.merlincycles.co.uk/?fn=category&categoryId=112

simon2names

is this for real? seems really cheap compared to what i've been quoted. Spoke to a fella at cycle surgery yesterday. also having looked in 'what mountain bike' and seeing it's 125pounds (don't know what's happened to the pound sign!) for one set of Hayes stroker, let alone 2.
Thanks for the link gibbogt

kegs

Those are definitely for real, and they are all pretty good deals.
The Avid carbon and crossride set looks an especially good deal, while the hope monos on hope pro 2/mavic717 hubs gets you extremely good brakes and wheels, but are a bit overbudget I guess

simon2names

i've been reading some reviews of mavics and there have been some pretty scathing ones, saying how thy're too basic and need 'truing' every so often? any knowledge or experience of these? or are these ones in the link posted by gibbogt of a decent standard?

simon2names

http://www.mtbr.com/cat/tires-and-wheel ... 57crx.aspx

this is where i've read the reviews, anyone here use these wheels?

Bleedproof

I don't ride that particular model but do ride a set of basic Mavic 117 Discs. There basically an OEM wheel and I've done lots of XC, commuting and fairly heavy trail centre/ single track stuff on them in the past 6 months and they've held up very well under my 6'7 frame and 16 stone.

They're true and the spokes are still tight.

The more expensive wheels would be no exception.

Stu

kegs

xm117s are just a rim, rather than a wheelset, and mavic do make very good rims

The mavic wheelsets do generally have a good rep though, and the crossrides should be fine for xc type stuff. You just need to remember to get them retensioned after they have bedded in a bit, but that is true of all new wheels.

The Spiderman

Crossrides normally get very good reviews in WMB.Alternatively get Merlin to build you some wheels on whichever Mavic rims and Shimano hubs you can afford.

supersonic

new fork will make the biggest difference to this bike. Have to weigh all this up against a new bike.