New to Mountain Biking - Saying "Hi"

Shin-Ra

Hey Guys,

Where to begin...?? I'm both new to mountain biking and the forum, just thought I would create a thread to say "Hi" to everyone and introduce myself.

My names Steve, I'm 30 something y/o from the NE of England (Wear Valley/Durham/Teesside) and I recently decided to take up mountain biking as a way to improve my fitness but also give me something to enjoy socially on evenings and weekends.

I've actually already done the "hard part" and took the plunge in purchasing a bike, I don't really know much about bikes so I hope I haven't bought a lemon.... I've ended up buying a Canyon Nerve AL 6.0 which seems like a reasonable first bike that shouldn't be beyond my ability and will give me something to get out and get riding on.

No doubt I'll have a million and one questions over the coming days/weeks/months and look forward to being part of the community

cooldad

Good start, welcome.

larkim

Good start, my son has a Nerve AL 6.0 and loves it (though of course dreams of something 5x the price!) - was yours brand new (thought they stopped the Nerve in 2016?) or "nearly" new?

I'm sure you'll enjoy the bike, and now's not the time to be making suggestions for spending money on changing parts, but at least one of the reviews we read before purchasing it suggested flipping the stem to drop the bars a little lower - a freebie change / improvement which might be worth looking at after you've spent some time with the bike, at least if you hate the change you can put it back and its not cost you anything! And also, get familiar with the peculiar way that the rear wheel disengages on that frame. It's something of a hybrid of a Quick Release (QR), but it screws in and out like a "Maxl". Once its removed, you need to gently prise both sides of the rear triangle apart a little to get the wheel to drop out, confused the hell out of us when we first had to sort a puncture as we'd always had wheels which simply dropped out of the rear dropouts when the QR was removed in the past.

Shin-Ra

Hey

The Nerve was from the Canyon Factory Outlet so I got a reasonable deal on it I guess, I didn't realise that they no longer made that model though.... maybe I've been had lol!

I'll try flipping the stem to see what I think of the change and thanks for the heads up on the rear wheel, will save me looking silly in the future I'm sure haha!

larkim

So long as you got a good price on it (we paid £1199 in Jan 2015 for it) it's a great bike which keeps my son (nearly 18, a very competent rider as far as I can tell) very happy indeed. Doesn't stop him wanting a £4000 DH monster of course...

He added a stealth dropper post to it about a year after owning it, and he loves that. We managed to convert the stock rims to tubeless too without difficulty (though he uses Maxxis Beaver tyres in the winter / mud and now has some OnOne Smorgasbord tyres for summer months as he got beyond the stock tyres).

Also added some "bottomless tokens" to the forks for a cheap tuning change.

But all of these things after he'd had the bike for a year and learned where he wanted to get some improvements, or at least find out if something different = something better. Generally these have been money well spent.