What bikes would you like us to do long-term tests of?

pete higham

+1 again

i have not long been in this sport really and my bike is around the £500 and i would be interested what parts a person "in the know" would change to when certain parts break, i would love a bike that costs upwards of 1.5k but in the near future that isnt going to happen

as it is i will still be blatting about on my cape wrath thinking it is the dogs danglies with a crap fork (will be upgraded to a tora within the next 6 months)

supersonic

I completely agree on the 500 pound front and Jesus' comments.

The average amount spent on a bike in the UK is way less than the 1-2k band, and the most common questions on this forum are what 3-500 quid bike to buy. This would have a lot of relevance for the majority of readers here. The whole point is that you try and find the weak spots, if any.

Many forks at this level are getting better - RS Toras are creeping in and they are certainly not flexy! Some of the budget Suntours are suprisingly good too.

Avalanches, Furys and Hardrocks are amongst the best selling bikes in the UK. Why not test them and see how they last?

kevinharley

+1 for Jesus' sentiments; we want / need to know the long-term reliability, durability etc of the bikes that most MTB riders actually own, rather than the bikes we aspire to own. I would love to be looking in the £1200 - £1500 market, but I just know that this isn't going to happen for a VERY long time, if ever. Its not that I'm poor or tight, but for me and my family (partner and I both have a MTB and a road bike @ £400-£500 each; my two lads have an MTB @ £350 - £400 which they will need to replace in a couple of years as they outgrow their current ones) its just never going to be realistic (or fair) for me to break open the family piggy-bank and splash out £1500 on a bike for me!

My 'compromise' suggestion would be to test 4 bikes:

1 hardtail @ £400/£500 - to look at where the budget components will be 'found out' over the course of a year's hard riding, and explore a realistic / sensible upgrade path ...

1 hardtail @ £800 - to see whether the intial extra outlay actually buys you better durability over the course of a year's hard testing than a cheaper bike + upgrades

1 hardtail + 1 FS @ £1200 - £1500 - to see what provides the best value for money / quality equation on bikes that the average MTB rider aspires to own (and which some of you already do!)

Don't think its worth testing 3 or 4 bikes of the same type / price range for the purposes of comparing which make / model is better ... because that is covered in the group tests, and there will always be loads of bikes you have to leave out in any given price bracket.

Sorted ...

scottgeniusltd2005

my scott 2005 sell it to you cheap £5k..lol

clarkson

+1 agin for jesus!! 500 quid bikes need to be tested. if the forks break a few months in of the drivetrain is mashed after a few months thats good, cos people need ot know wheret he weak spots are to make a choice!!

also think than 1-2k AM bikes should be tested. for instance a pitch against an enduro/ransom/remedy.

jamieh5463

Bikes that cost a little less than a grand
eg Trek 6700, Scott Scale 50, specialized rockhopper pro, Focus Black Forest Expert
sort of XC/Race bikes.

supersonic

You know, on the reliabilty and wear front, I actually think that some cheaper bikes might outperform ones costing several times more! For example Octalink has been shunted down the pecking order - yet it lasts far longer than the majority of external bottom brackets. See more steel middle rings - they last longer too. As do the generally heavier cassettes, while 8 speed an be better in the mud.

Also quite often the headsets are very similar, and you still see 1500 quid bikes with deore hubs.

While they maybe weightier, and I do like light weight, cheaper heavier parts can have one big advantage - strength.

Mattmanic

Most people that buy a £500 bike will upgrade it within a year. I think you should do the same. After 4/6 month you should allocate £250 or so for new/second hand upgrade parts. Or you could upgrade to a budget as you feel you need to, upgrading in the sections that are lacking/wearing the most.

In november I got a £360 Scott Aspect 45. I've spent £140 on it so far adding RS Recon 351s and 9 speed drivetrain (now actually working ) and it was good enough to start with now for me it's just perfect.


The people have spoken! £500 bikes please

ride_whenever

to be fair, there are fairly regular cheap bike roundups. I'd like to see more reviews of things that are recommended on the forums as often these are absolute gems, like wellgo MG1 pedals (which i know have been done recently)

cullen_bay

please please please get some £1500 ( xc racer budget) carbon hardtails, or at least fast hardtails. you have the Cube elite HPC k18 for £1600, the cube reaction R1 mag £1450, the Beone Black/blue for £1600 and you have spesh stumpjumper expert £1700

plenty of bikes to choose from and an area you never really seem to test.

Banned!

ride_whenever wrote:

to be fair, there are fairly regular cheap bike roundups. I'd like to see more reviews of things that are recommended on the forums as often these are absolute gems, like wellgo MG1 pedals (which i know have been done recently)

this isnt a round up, this is a long term test, and, as most of the bikes that are being bought seem to be around the £500 mark it makes sense for the mag to focus a little on this market and what it has to offer.

oh, and £500 isnt cheap. it might not be a lot of cash in mtb land, but its a lot of money to a lot of people.

ride_whenever

JC, sorry how that came across, but £500 bikes are the cheap end of the wedge, like a cheap car is still a lot of money.

At the end of the day i know £500 is a lot of cash, I'm a student, and I know how long it is possible to live on that amount 8)



Equally a long term test would only really be interesting if they follow an upgrade path that could potentially be followed as has been mentioned, say £200 month. (Obviously this isn't reasonable for anyone to do every month, but would be useful as a sort of routemap idea of where you could put money and what you'd see as an improvement. That would actually be quite a good feature, if each journo has an entry mtb and gets a budget every month for changes.

Banned!

£200 a month is far too much.

maybe a one off upgrade of £200 after a few months riding and a budget of maybe £50 a month after that.

supersonic

I don't think £500 bikes are cheap - £150 maybe, but £500 buys a lot of bike, many that don't need these 'instant upgrades' which we seem to be obsessed with.

Banned!

supersonic wrote:

I don't think £500 bikes are cheap - £150 maybe, but £500 buys a lot of bike, many that don't need these 'instant upgrades' which we seem to be obsessed with.

which bring us back nicely to my original point.

a £500 bike is generally a perfectly good bike. its the things we see in the mags that bring out the avaricious monster in us and make us feel that we need the newest brakes/forks/BB's etc even though the ones we have are doing the job they were designed for.

if you can buy a bike for £500 then upgrade it straight away, why didnt you just buy the more expensive bike in the first place?

Mattmanic

£200 a month for a year = £2400 with that you may as well just throw away the £500 bike at the end of the year and but your self a nice carbon full susser. I think a one off £200 for forks/wheels and then £30-50 a month for cheaper parts like tyres and drivetrain bits.

Banned!

you stole my idea!!

supersonic

Jesus_Christ wrote:

supersonic wrote:

I don't think £500 bikes are cheap - £150 maybe, but £500 buys a lot of bike, many that don't need these 'instant upgrades' which we seem to be obsessed with.

which bring us back nicely to my original point.

a £500 bike is generally a perfectly good bike. its the things we see in the mags that bring out the avaricious monster in us and make us feel that we need the newest brakes/forks/BB's etc even though the ones we have are doing the job they were designed for.

if you can buy a bike for £500 then upgrade it straight away, why didnt you just buy the more expensive bike in the first place?

Exactly what I said in my WMB column this month lol.

Banned!

really?

ive never read it, it always looked a bit too serious and catalougue-ish for my tastes. i prefer the hooligan element that live in mbuk towers.

Mattmanic

Jesus_Christ wrote:

you stole my idea!!

:oops:

I wouldn't say I stole it... More developed and expanded it.

I'm sorry for semi-stealing your intellectual property.

cullen_bay

ohh good point with the instant upgrades. we get people in the shop that say " il have to upgrade these forks though, to fox or sumthing" when the forks that are on the bike are reba race's! honestly, people upgrade to rebas! and another thing....

ride_whenever

My point wasn't that £200 is reasonable of feasable to spend every month for people, and i'd agree that people who do that should have just bought a more expensive bike. But it'd be useful to see where the journos would put the money into it, so people who've had the bikes 6 months and then come onto the forum and say, i've saved a bit of money and want to upgrade, what should i put x-amount into would see where to go. Perhaps showing something like a 'hopper would be better with a set of coil u-turn toras and burlier wheels as a final project whereas a scale is better suited to whippety race wheels and an air fork to bring out the racer in you.

But i honestly don't see them being terribly interesting. Something along the lines of, it works fine, i've taken it out when the latest superbike was in the stand, it hasn't needed any maintanence. I'd much prefer bikes that are a bit unusual, like the Morewoods, where the long term durablity is an unkown to most people. Or the on-one bikes where they'd have highlighted the fact that you'll get rust under the gussets so perhaps some sort of waxyol would be good to prevent it.

It'd also be useful to get and idea of how regularly you end up maintaining things, so people can see that you have to tweak your xt hubs more often, but they ultimately last longer than hopes (an example, i'm not sure how true it'd be in actual life as I haven't touched either) or that the suntour forks that work really nicely need more tlc to keep there than a set of toras, and disc brakes etc. etc. That'd be a great aspect that I think you don't currently get from the long term test bike pages.

oswald

How about the orange ST4- i've heard good things about it but the only review i've found is in dirt magazine.You could test 4,5 and 6" travel bikes so people could see what was best for uk trail centres.

stumpymark

Test some long forked Hardtails especially steel which seems to be making a comeback. There's some great ones around the £1000-£1500 mark. Orange, Genesis, Voodoo, On One etc..

GT Destroyer

I read your column Sonic - As I was reading this thread I wondered if it would get a mention!

So the £500 bikes debate. I started out on a £500 bike, I cracked the frame and the crank kept on falling off, and the fork wasn't too clever when I came to sell it. The problem was my style of riding, I soon discovered that I needed something bigger and burlier to handle the abuse I threw at it, enter the Crush.

My point is - Do we need to be clear on which bikes we think are specific to which styles of riding? I know that if I had known this I'd have saved the original £500 and spent it on buying the Crush, and had some money to put towards it.

Would the £500 bikes really last around the places like Llandegla, Dalby and over the likes of the moors around Lancashire/Yorkshire? I'm not sure if they would, and for that reason I'm not sure if the team will use them for long-term test bikes. Imagine writing in the mag, "this month the forks broke" or "this month the wheels buckled" etc... Hardly a good advert for the bike manufacturer and not really going to inspire anyone to go out and buy said £500 bike.

Having said all that - If the £500 long term test bike did make it through a full year without having to change major parts on it, then it would be a different story altogether.

I just can't see the mag doing it with £500 test bikes.

supersonic

But you are a larger than average rider, and the Crush is a slightly sturdier machine. Some 500 quid bikes are heavy and strong and can take a beating. Saying that the Zen is a decent budget do it all hardtail.

But yes, does depend on what you want the bike for. My 300 quid ruckus was as hard as nails!

I would say a 200 quid bike would last round Dalby, and 500 quid more than adequate for most riders around the other places you suggest.

For example, if we did look at the 09 crush:

http://www.tredz.co.uk/.Orange-Crush-Mo ... _21372.htm

The Vanilla 140 is not as stiff or tough as a Tora, and the crank not as stiff or tough as a budget Deore HT2. Deore hubs. It is only the rims and frame that mark it out as been a bit tougher really, and then the build is paramount.

GT Destroyer

I suppose I am, and politely put too! I guess my experience isn't the norm and therefore wouldn't be worth testing/writing about, thats cool, me being a behemoth gets in the way again!

supersonic

No, thats good! But it needs to be put into perspective with some more expensive bikes ie would you still destroy a 1500 quid XC bike? I know I can!

jam1e

+1 for the £500 bikes.

The idea of spending £500, with a budget of £20 a month and a one off £200 over the course of a year would be the most useful for the majority of people and the people buying in this range are mostly newcomers who will need the advice the most.

People who are buying £2k bikes will normally be on their 2nd or 3rd bike - if they don't know what they're looking for by now then a normal review should be enough. The £500 newbies are the ones who need their hands holding a bit more.

Let's see if a £500 bike will fall apart if it rains or goes down a small drop off like some seem to believe. (Funny how the £300 Kona I had in 1994 never died no matter how many times it went over Garburn Pass etc...) Personally even as someone who won't be buying a £500 bike (ever again hopefully!) I'd still read the updates, which is more than I can say about the usual "Look at what expensive bits we've put on our dream bikes this month" tat that normally masquerades as a long term "test".

Oh, your new stem, saddle and tires are all coming out of your monthly £20 as well by the way - just like in real life!

Mrs Toast

I think you should do long term tests of women specific bikes. If none of the chaps on the team fancy it, I'll volunteer my testing services!