Are the Nukeproof DH rigs overpriced & over-heavy?

felix.london

I am by no means an expert on DH bikes (in fact I'm a complete noob) but I am in the market for one.

These new Nukeproof complete bikes look good but seem expensive & heavy compared to the competition (especially the 'PRO' model) or am I missing something?

http://www.bikeradar.com/mtb/news/article/2012-nuke-proof-complete-bikes-first-look-32991

Cheers.

P-Jay

They seem pretty reasonably priced compared to most of the stuff out there to me.

They could probably do with a model between the two.

Anonymous

Don't seem that expensive for what they are.

Always check the component list add up the value of that. Looking at those specs for the £3k+ DH Pro rig, expensive forks and roughly X0 groupset (nearly £1k in the groupset there, especially considering the brakes are £400 alone!) and with the stem, headset and bars you've got £2k already before the wheels. Frame and rear shock would be fairly normal price then.

Component prices are the main part of the value for money in a bike. The rest is whether the frame is good enough quality for the job and the right ride for you.

The weight - 39lbs for the DH Pro. Heavy for an AM bike, not for DH I guess, but you're not looking to be pedalling this thing up hills.

Thing is though, that's the RRP. No one (in their right mind) pays the RRP on bikes now. Discounted, get them a year old, ex-demo, second hand, etc.

felix.london

Yeah - right fair enough but I'm really comparing the 'Comp' model to the Rose Beefcake DH 2 and the Canyon Torque FRX 6.0 Speedzone

http://www.rosebikes.co.uk/article/rose-beef-cake-dh-2-524526/aid:524537

http://www.canyon.com/_uk/mountainbikes/bike.html?b=2579

Take the Scalp DH Comp compared to the Canyon; The Scalp has a lighter fork but still manages to be 2kg heavier. I won't be cycling uphill but that's a lot of weight in anyone's language. And not forgetting the fact it's £800 dearer too

styxd

These are all claimed weights though, they may not be entirely true. Also, what tyres are they all specced with? I imagine the Nukeproof will come with dual plys, but what about the other two?

The pricing seems ok to me, the downhill pro is surely alot cheaper than most companies top end downhill bikes. Its also a frame thats been ridden/developed on the world cup circuit - can the same be said of Canyon and Rose? (genuine question)

felix.london

Same tyres (as the Canyon). The Rose is ridden on the World Cup circuit I think.

You can get a Specialized Demo 8 for the price of the Scalp Comp which again sheds 2kgs of the weight (but with a cheaper & heavier fork) Point taken about weights not being 'real world' though

Obviously the best thing to do is get out and ride them and see how they feel but 19kg just 'sounds' too heavy for a modern DH bike (even an entry level one)

I can understand paying a premium for a Spesh when they have dealers all over the world and shops you can actually go into and bikes you can test and I can understand companies like Rose and Canyon selling directly off the web and passing savings onto customers but these Nukeproof bikes seem only to be available from CRC or Hotlines but with 'premium' prices.

rockmonkeysc

The pricing seems ok to me, the downhill pro is surely alot cheaper than most companies top end downhill bikes. Its also a frame thats been ridden/developed on the world cup circuit - can the same be said of Canyon and Rose? (genuine question)

Rose run a world cup DH team with Katy Curd riding for them. They also have freeride, dirt jump & xc teams. All their teams do extremely well. Their dirt/freeride rider has just got fourth in Whitestyle, beating Sam Pilgrim.

styxd

Never knew that!

What about Canyon? Do they have an mtb team?

felix.london

They've gotta new team for this year Rose Vaujany. So looks like they've teamed up with the French resort - which is my nearest Rose test centre. Although they don't open til June and I'm looking to buy next month

MountainMonster

You can onl y find nukeproof through crc because that is their own brand. As far.as pricing, not too sure, but i have been under the impression.that their products are all very.good value. To..give you.an.idea, a buddy of mine just spent about 6k building a 16.5kg downhill rig, and that was using his employee discounts from the lbs. DH rigs are rather heavy compared to othr bikes.

benpinnick

You could buy a 17.5kg YT with a decent spec for around 1800. If you don't like the ride, strip the bike, flog the frame for a few hundred and buy another.

phil_pompey

MountainMonster wrote:

You can onl y find nukeproof through crc because that is their own brand. As far.as pricing, not too sure, but i have been under the impression.that their products are all very.good value. To..give you.an.idea, a buddy of mine just spent about 6k building a 16.5kg downhill rig, and that was using his employee discounts from the lbs. DH rigs are rather heavy compared to othr bikes.

Thats not true if this is to be believed!
http://plushhillcycles.co.uk/bike-brand ... bikes.html

Also Winstanleybikes is a nukeproof dealer. Not sure if its just components though.

felix.london

Hadn't considered YT. Good call. Could be worth a look. The benefit of getting a Rose is that you can configure the bike before you buy it. With Canyon (& YT) your stuck with the components as listed unless like you say, you swap em out afterwards

http://www.yt-industries.com/en/bikes-2012/tues/

The entry level YT is interesting, although the Rose still comes out lighter even though it has a heavier fork and the Rose you get a full XT drive train with XT shifter (Don't dig SRAM shifters at all) and it's €100 less

What I'm after is the Rose as listed but with the Boxxer R2C2 fork which would get it down to about the same weight as the Canyon at slightly over 17kg

Cheers.

ilovedirt

The frame-only deals on the nukeproof bikes are very good, £1300 for the scalp frame only. That's cheaper than a Canyon. £800 for a nukeproof mega (these are if you shop around). Insanely cheap! Not too sure about the full builds, however they seem fairly competitive.

MountainMonster

YT bikes are very good, their based down in Either Tirol or Voralberg (don't know what you guys call the states in English), and everyone there is sound. Met them at one of the bike parks here before, and the bike seems quite decent!

felix.london

ilovedirt wrote:

The frame-only deals on the nukeproof bikes are very good, £1300 for the scalp frame only. That's cheaper than a Canyon. £800 for a nukeproof mega (these are if you shop around). Insanely cheap! Not too sure about the full builds, however they seem fairly competitive.

That Nukeproof frameset price is without shock. The Canyon frameset is £1480 with Cane Creek Double Barrel Shock. The Nukeprook with the same shock is £1800. And you're getting a frame (inc. shock) that's over 2kg heavier than Canyon

See what I mean? Overpriced and over-heavy.

Anonymous

If we assume all frames are identical performance, handling and quality, sure. But they're not.

ilovedirt

felix.london wrote:

ilovedirt wrote:

The frame-only deals on the nukeproof bikes are very good, £1300 for the scalp frame only. That's cheaper than a Canyon. £800 for a nukeproof mega (these are if you shop around). Insanely cheap! Not too sure about the full builds, however they seem fairly competitive.

That Nukeproof frameset price is without shock. The Canyon frameset is £1480 with Cane Creek Double Barrel Shock. The Nukeprook with the same shock is £1800. And you're getting a frame (inc. shock) that's over 2kg heavier than Canyon

See what I mean? Overpriced and over-heavy.

Well that canyon frame isn't a DH race frame for starters, it's a freeride frame. Nor is it race-proven and nor has it (i'm making assumptions here) had as much time/money invested in it's development. Also as deadkenny said, how do you know what the geo is like or how it handles? Yes, the Canyon is good value, but when you consider how much santa cruz etc are charging for their top end DH race frames (3 grand for a v10 carbon with RC4), then the scalp suddenly becomes an unbelievable bargain.

Also, descent gear have the scalp for £1620 inc CCDB. I'd much rather fork over my money to the guys there than some faceless german company. Granted the scalp is about 1kg heavier (i'm assuming the claimed weight for the canyon is without shock also...)

felix.london

ilovedirt - they are good points you make. Especially the Torque not being a specific DH frame. Makes me swing more towards the (race proven) Rose Beefcake!

You can get the Scalp from descent-gear with the Vivid shock for £1350 chuck on a Boxxer R2C2 and an XT groupset and it starts to look like a bit of a bargain

Cheers

supersonic

Until you ride them, who knows how they perform? Value wise they are average. The Canyon may blow away all of them. The other Canyon models are highly reviewed, not just for value, but decent frames and suspension. This maybe the same, maybe not, but we are speculating a little here.

felix.london

Indeed. Think I've got more chance of finding rocking horse crap in the woods than finding a Scalp to test over here. 19kg still sounds a lot for a DH bike these days but like you say it might handle like a dream.

This is from the BR review last Sept of the Spesh Status 2;

"A few years back, 42.35lb (19.21kg) would have been a good weight for a downhill bike. Now, with sub-35lb bikes appearing on the World Cup circuit, it seems heavy, especially considering the last generation Big Hit was several pounds lighter.."

ilovedirt

You're more likely to find one to test than a rose beefcake

Though yeah, 40lbs is a little on the weighty side for a dh race bike. But then, it's not a 3 grand carbon frame, is it?

Northwind

Depends on the build though... My DH bike is 37lbs, but there are parts on it that I wouldn't expect to last year-in year-out in constant hard use under some riders. I don't have experience of all the parts on the Scalp but those I know of, like the Sun rims, are bombproof rather than lightweight. My spec's fine for me but if Nukeproof were to roll out a bike with my wheels on it, there'd be a spate of "My Nukeproof wheels collapsed, not strong enough" by the end of hte year, guaranteed.

There's the question of development... And tbh, we don't know how much that really means. The CRC riders have been getting great results, Alastair Maclennan too, but are they on production frames, team only frames? How much of that race experience has gone back into the production frame? Who knows. No idea who designed the Rose and Canyon frames but Brant Richards doesn't have much of a dh pedigree in terms of design (his 2nd ever ground-up production full suss, I think?)

rockmonkeysc

"A few years back, 42.35lb (19.21kg) would have been a good weight for a downhill bike. Now, with sub-35lb bikes appearing on the World Cup circuit, it seems heavy, especially considering the last generation Big Hit was several pounds lighter.."

What a sh1t review. The big hit was shorter travel & had single crown forks which explains why that was lighter. The Status is a BUDGET downhill bike which is why it's heavier than a high spec downhill bike.
You can test a Beefcake in the UK. The importer takes a demo bike to a lot of races.

felix.london

I beg to differ my fine man...I have a Rose test centre (Vajauny) about an hour away. Although they don't open til June and I'm looking to purchase next month :?

rockmonkeysc

Well then move to the UK. Simple innit :-P

ilovedirt

felix.london wrote:

I beg to differ my fine man...I have a Rose test centre (Vajauny) about an hour away. Although they don't open til June and I'm looking to purchase next month :?

Ahhh, didn't realise you were in the alps. Yeah, you don't see many rose bikes over here in the UK, then again you probably don't see that many nukeproofs over there in france.

felix.london

Lapierre & Specialized seem to be the order of the day over here. My LBS is a Spesh dealer but he says he can't give me any discount on the retail prices :x and then he's gonna complain when I roll into the shop in the summer with a Rose/Canyon/YT..(add other manufactures as you please)

"Monsieur faylix, why you don't buy from moi?"

ilovedirt

I'd suck it up and buy a demo II personally, if you're gonna drop that amount of cash. They have a lifetime warranty, race proven geo/linkage/build and are generally shithot. That warranty alone is worth the extra few hundred quid over a canyon/rose etc IMO.

felix.london

I'm hearing ya! And have a dealer 5mins away that will happily give me a test bike if/when mines in for service/repair. Even DH Spesh frames have the lifetime warranty? That is definitely food for thought!

Cheers

ilovedirt

Yep, though obviously it's non-transferrable. I seem to remember about a year ago, a guy posting a thread on SDH who had owned one of the shaun palmer FSR models from 1999 (i think), original owner and all that, and it had recently cracked. Spesh sent him a brand new demo frame.