Gary Fisher Wahoo?

plasticflower

I'm a bit of a newbie and am really loving the off roading I've been doing. I love cycling in general and so far have been just doing cycle tracks, fire roads etc. My current bike is a GT Arrowhead which is a few years old, perfectly good but fully rigid. I do love it but think I need a bit of suspension if I'm going to tackle the local trails like Afan and Cwmcarn!

SO, big question obviously is which bike with suspension do I go for. I'm pretty sure it'll be a hard tail but with suspension forks. Like a lot of beginners i don't want to spend too much initially.

Have been to two local bike shops - one guy recommended a Commencal at £599 cos that's what he rode. Another one recommended the Gary Fisher Wahoo at £375.

The Wahoo is more within my price range - I was hoping to get some sale stock at around that price to find most of it has gone already most places.

Anybody got any views on the Wahoo? I know the review on this site is pretty good. Another option I could take is from, er, Raleigh - shhhh! I get a whopping 35% discount through my employer so have looked at the Mtrax HT 1.0.

Any advice at all gratefully received!! I'm only 5' so any bike would need to be very ickle!!

Cheers!

counterculture

i have a 2005 wahoo, i found it to be great, it was the best i could afford at the time and my mate who worked in the shop said it was a good buy.

the bike itself lasted up until last november but then i cracked the frame, the seat tube and down tube are different widths, not sure if the newer versions have the same issue, and nearly 4 years of my fat ass sitting on it caused enough movement for it to finally give way, although the bike had taken a pounding upto that point.

a good bike although the design flaw with the seat tube and down tube is something worth looking at and mentioning when in the shop

supersonic

Quite a lot of bikes have downtubes and seat tubes differnt widths! Though I do recall a fault with that year frame.

The Wahoo seems OK for the money, but there are better bikes around at this price, especially in the fork area. Have a look at the What Hardtail sticky for more ideas on popular choices.

The new Mtrax bikes were well recieved recently in WMB.

counterculture

i wish id known about this fault before i had the crack welded, any warranty will be void now

supersonic

Not a 5 year warranty then? Some are!

counterculture

i dont think it was, plus id just got a new bike when it cracked, so i figured a weld would be enough for me to continue to use it for the work commute, i was wrong, but the weld will void the warranty.

stupidity in its purest form!!