Will my current bike cut it?

RockingDad

HI all, after a break of several years i'm getting back into biking. I'm planning on using my exisiting mountain bike which although some years old now is still like the day it was bought (i like to look after stuff).

I have a Townsend Maximum which in the day was £350 (about 13 years ago) and a good bike when Townsend used to make good hand built bikes and not the £100 catalogue jobbies they seem to now (i've read some horrendous reviews!). It's a hard tail with no front shocks but I personally prefer this type pf bike. It's had a couple of upgrades along the way as things wore such as pedals.

I generally bike through forests / bridleways (roads too but the tyres are too knobbly for it to be comfortable) but with there now being a lot of purpose built technical trails with drops and jumps I'd like to move into this.

Are there others with my type of bike who do this and have done with succes or is it the case that i'd have to change forks to shock types to ensure the bike isn't destroyed?

Is it hard to swap front forks for shock types? I wouldn't want a full suspension bike, I tried my brothers and I preferred to know what was going on under the bike

Cheers

RockingDad

MrChuck

Your bike might be old enough that it has a threaded headset, which means problems for you if you wanted to swap the fork for a newer one. There are probably ways around it but probably none as cheap/simple as getting a new bike!

That said you do still see people riding fully rigid bikes around the trails so you can get by without suspension- up to a point, obviously!

Banned!

you can still buy some suspension forks with a threaded headset. theyre not the best but they are available, but a decent rigid fork might be better.

the main problem you'll have is that as the sport has progressed the technology has progressed alongside it, so trails are built for modern bikes. remember way back in the day when mtb was still new and people were pushing the boundaries and snapping bikes? well, thats what will happen to you if you try riding a modern purpose built trail; the bike simply isnt designed to cope with the stresses of trail riding these days.

you can get a good hardtail for around £300 that will work as well off road as on it, I suggest you have a look around and pick one that suits your type of riding. the choice is bewildering, so have a look at the beginners threads that deal with these issues.

good luck.

Tom Barton

As my chuck said - there are still people pushing hardtail bikes around some fairly knarly terrain. Difference is however, this is a new generation of hardtail/rigid bike. The build of the frame and forks is much better and the quality of other componants that will suffer without suspension such as wheels, tyres and drivetrain has improved too. (More often than not - this may just be my experiance, most fully rigid mtbs i see that arnt for jumping/trials seem to come in singlespeed versions)

As the guys said, your bike will almost certainly get you round these new trails (look at this months mbuk for what is possible!!) but it will start to need things replacing and fairly soon and there may be compatibiliy issues.

Plus the cost of all theze upgrades over time could buy you a far superior new rigid machine.

stumpyjon

Replacement and upgrade parts is going to become an issue. TIme for a new steed .

.blitz

RockingDad wrote:

I have a Townsend Maximum which in the day was £350 (about 13 years ago) and a good bike when Townsend used to make good hand built bikes

They were all right eh but I never knew they were handbuilt - mine appeared to be made out of recycled saucepans =]

IIRC I replaced pretty much everything on it - Mavic 217 rims on Hope hubs, XT drivetrain, Pace rings (takes you back eh), Manitou forks and Syncros bar/stem/seatpost. It handled everything from long days in the hills to thrashing round the local country lanes and then I gave it to my bro-in-law who still uses it for knocking about on.

The problem you'd have now is finding forks that are compatible with the Townsend's 90s retro-throwback geometry and wheels/brakes, although there are adaptors for rear discs. I say go for it - when was the last time you broke a saucepan ?

shin0r

Go for it, if the bike snaps you have the perfect excuse to buy a new one