Hardtail XC mtb, frame material etc....

salty seadog

Morning all,

Pondering a new mtb as I have been doing a few trails recently and my mtb is a bit of a tank. What would you choose as your frame material and why? pros and cons.....

What should I be looking at as necessary features?

Will be mostly riding trails with a few drop offs, some jumps and twists and turns, both uphill and down but within the xc area I guess. Pretty flexible with budget but sub £1500, maybe the £1000 mark, all suggestions welcome.

All advice appreciated.

TIA.

poah

what bike do you currently have and are you looking to buy a whole bike or just the frame. From your description is sounds like a bog standard trail bike you are after.

If I was wanting a hard tail trail bike I would rebuild my dartmoor hornet with 140mm forks. If my current bike was 650b I'd look for a 120-140mm FS frame to build up.

Alu because its good and its cheap.

JGTR

Sub £1500 is realistically going to limit you to alloy bikes, - carbon bike in you price range, if you can find one, will have low spec components. Halfords do a good value line in Boardman and VooDoo, Go-Outdoors have the Calibre bikes and also look at Giant.....although the Orange Crush is my current want!!

The Rookie

There are some decent carbon frames coming in at that price point, inevitably the rest of the specification suffers a bit so you want to make sure any compromise makes sense.
http://www.planetx.co.uk/i/q/CBOOMCGX1/ ... ntain-bike
You can just about match the spec for £500 less with an aluminium frame
http://www.decathlon.co.uk/rockrider-92 ... 66869.html


Or even TI at just over budget
http://www.planetx.co.uk/i/q/CBTIFLGX1/ ... ntain-bike
Or for a bit more a really nice light steel frame
https://www.cotic.co.uk/product/soul#bike