Bike hire/demo for Afan

wesdev

A few of my mates are interested in doing weekend at Afan but they dont have bikes? Last year i researched this and found a few bike shops that had some wicked bikes for hire but this year i cant find any that do 'decent' bikes?

Last year someone was leasing Specialized and Giant etc..

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Stu T

Skyline on site do Konas

hoochylala

Yeah Skyline cycles is a good bet. According to their website they hire out the Konas as stated, but if your looking demo wise, then its £50 for 3 hours - thats quickly becoming a very expensive weekend! Anyhow, the appear to demo out the following brands;

Cove, Kona, Nicolai, Orange, Santa Cruz in various flavours. Should be something there to take your mates fancy

http://www.skylinecycles.co.uk/id51.html

matt748

Try your LBS?
Mine lets you take a demo bike for a max of 48 hrs at a time for £10.

aarondown

Skyline LOOK like they have great bikes for sale but look a bit closer and they've skimped on the spec.

I've just returned from a weekend at Afan where I hired a Kona Cadabra for 2 days, at a cost of £72. This isn't cheap but I though, "hey, this is £2000 worth of bike, it's gonna be great!"

However............ rode W2 on the first day (in pouring rain!) with loads of play in the front brake which developed into squeeling and then grinding on both front and back discs. Got the final zigzag descent and had no brakes! Having to push down some pretty fast singletrack whilst others are cycling down it is pretty dangerous, but that's what I had to do. At some point in the day I also lost ability to shift into the top ring.

Got it back to Skyline Cycles and they had a look and the pads were completely worn down! Apparently this bike had only been out twice before! They said they would sort it our overnight and when I tried to get some money back they blamed Kona/their boss/the cheap shimano brakes. They genuinely tried to argue that it was perfectly normal for a set of pads to wear out in one day when it was raining.

Came back the next day and new pads had been fitted and the front derailleur supposedly sorted. Threw it in the truck to drive down to the other centre to do Skyline. Got there only to find that I could no longer get into the bottom ring! Had to adjust the low limit screw and tinker for a while.

My problem with the guys at Skyline is that they knew;
a) I was hiring it for 2 days - the pads should've been capable of that
b) that it was raining and thus a lot of grit and mud on the trails
c)exactly what trails we were going to ride.

Apparently, their boss went to Kona and negotiated a load of OEM parts on the Cadabra to get them down to a price he wanted to pay. The whole bike suffered. Regardless, this is not MY problem. The bike could be fantastic but I will now never buy a Kona nor will I hire from Skyline.

I hope this saves someone from a similar mistake.

Stu T

aarondown wrote:

Skyline LOOK like they have great bikes for sale but look a bit closer and they've skimped on the spec.

I've just returned from a weekend at Afan where I hired a Kona Cadabra for 2 days, at a cost of £72. This isn't cheap but I though, "hey, this is £2000 worth of bike, it's gonna be great!"

However............ rode W2 on the first day (in pouring rain!) with loads of play in the front brake which developed into squeeling and then grinding on both front and back discs. Got the final zigzag descent and had no brakes! Having to push down some pretty fast singletrack whilst others are cycling down it is pretty dangerous, but that's what I had to do. At some point in the day I also lost ability to shift into the top ring.

Got it back to Skyline Cycles and they had a look and the pads were completely worn down! Apparently this bike had only been out twice before! They said they would sort it our overnight and when I tried to get some money back they blamed Kona/their boss/the cheap shimano brakes. They genuinely tried to argue that it was perfectly normal for a set of pads to wear out in one day when it was raining.

Came back the next day and new pads had been fitted and the front derailleur supposedly sorted. Threw it in the truck to drive down to the other centre to do Skyline. Got there only to find that I could no longer get into the bottom ring! Had to adjust the low limit screw and tinker for a while.

My problem with the guys at Skyline is that they knew;
a) I was hiring it for 2 days - the pads should've been capable of that
b) that it was raining and thus a lot of grit and mud on the trails
c)exactly what trails we were going to ride.

Apparently, their boss went to Kona and negotiated a load of OEM parts on the Cadabra to get them down to a price he wanted to pay. The whole bike suffered. Regardless, this is not MY problem. The bike could be fantastic but I will now never buy a Kona nor will I hire from Skyline.

I hope this saves someone from a similar mistake.

Actually thinking about it when I took my mate out for his first ride a couple of years ago. He hired a Koana from the forest centre Skyline shop nd the quick realease on the wheel hadn't been set correctly.