Today I have been partly riding a Most Dreadful Bike

Every so often someone pops up on this bike asking whether they should
buy a £100 dual suspension mountain bike. I've seen these things often
enough and had to fix things on them, so my answer is always 'no'. But
today, visiting an relation in our beloved capital city, I was asked to
fix some things on yet another, and took the opportunity of riding it
from the bottom of Moooorrrningsaide up to the Bike Co-op and back (one
cannot visit Edinburgh without making the pilgrimage to the co-op, after
all).

The bike had been bought a couple of weeks previously, and had been
slightly misassembled. The frame was a particularly heavy variant on the
'Flying V' design, with a unified rear triangle pivoting immediately in
front of the bottom bracket. Front suspension was provided by a pair of
forks with about 35mm travel which felt like elastomer - it was more
damped than sprung. By contrast rear suspension was provided by a 'coil
over' unit in which that I could detect no evidence whatever of damping
action.

As far as I could see this was, in the words of the old Raleigh adverts,
an all-steel bicycle - the wheel rims were aluminium, but nothing else
was. The V brakes had arms stamped out of steel plate. The rear
derailleur was a pre-slant-parallelgram design, also stamped steel
plate, apparently a cheap and even nastier copy of the Shimano SIS
design. The rear dropouts were stamped out of comparatively thin steel
plate and would be very easy to bend. The whole thing easily weighed as
much as any two of my bikes.

Once I had the bike reasonably adjusted, as I say, I rode it. The action
of the shifters was light, if not at all positive. The rear derailleur
tended to upshift under load, presumably due to flex in the pivots, and
the one time I got out of the saddle to sprint this effect caused me to
sit down again extremely rapidly. Apart from shifting under load, the
rear derailleur was quite reluctant to shift up, presumably because of a
weak return spring.

Performance of the suspension was pretty much as predicted. First the
good: the limited travel of the front suspension coupled with the poor
performance of the front brake meant that there was not excessive
brake-dive. Then the bad... where to start? The suspension was not even
good enough to respond smoothly to the surface of a cobbled street. At
the same time, the undamped back end pogoed under pedalling and required
very smooth pedalling action to make any real progress.

Apart from this it was noticeable that the two pedal axles were not quite
parallel with one another, making for an interesting squirming sensation
when pedalling. Some spokes in the rear wheel were loose, suggesting it
won't remain true for long.

The steering was OK. The brakes weren't terrible. The transmission was
dodgy, but did work. Although gear changes weren't at all positive it
was generally possible to select gears. It was physically possible to
ride this bike for a couple of miles across Edinburgh, including uphill.
Nothing broke, or showed obvious signs of being likely to.

But in the course of the same visit I did some minor adjustment on a
Halfords own brand dual boing bike, of a kind which I'd usually condemn
equally strongly, and that was by comparison a revelation. The Halfords
bike was also woefully heavy and had similar general design, but the
components were (although still poor) streets ahead on quality. The V
brakes had cast alloy arms; the transmission components were all Shimano
branded - bottom of the range Shimano, admittedly, but much better than
the no-name copies on the other bike; the cranks were alloy rather than
steel.

General conclusion? £100 bikes really are throwing money down a hole.
They are so much worse than bikes costing just a little more that they
cannot be considered value for money.

--
(Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/
Just as defying the law of gravity through building aircraft requires
careful design and a lot of effort, so too does defying laws of
economics. It seems to be a deeply ingrained aspect of humanity to
forever strive to improve things, so unquestioning acceptance of a
free market system seems to me to be unnatural. ;; Charles Bryant

I have a similar dilemma; when they announced new trains on Southern
which would not carry bikes I bought an old 80's dog as a temporary
measure (can't be doing with walking across Victoria and up and down
stairs with Look cleats). Within a couple of months it was down to a
single speed as the gears slowly collapsed. The new trains have arrived
and still no bike ban; now the rear wheel has all but collapsed and I
don't have the tool to remove the rear block. Do I dig out the folder
or buy a new road bike and hope for continued detente between riders,
train crew and fellow passengers (apparently one went to the BTP at
Croydon recently to demand the illegal bikes be removed from the
trains)?

Simon Brooke wrote:
General conclusion? £100 bikes really are throwing money down a hole.
They are so much worse than bikes costing just a little more that they
cannot be considered value for money.
Have to agree. The bike station in Edinburgh have to scrap loads of
heavy rubbish bikes that end up at the council re-cycling centres. The
nasty bikes are just not worth saving.

Simon Brooke wrote:
from the bottom of Moooorrrningsaide up to the Bike Co-op and back (one
cannot visit Edinburgh without making the pilgrimage to the co-op, after
all).
Cant agree with you there. I and (other people I know) find the Co-op to
be quite an unpleasent place to visit. Grumpy staff with a know-it-all
unhelpful attitude and an unhealthy focus on recreational/sports riding.
Sloppy work and expensive when getting a bike fixed.
Worst of all - no Bromptons - I dont think they even know what they are.

stupot wrote:

Worst of all - no Bromptons - I dont think they even know what they are.

But they do know what a Birdy is, so it's not like they have No Clues
about folders at all.

Pete.
--
Peter Clinch Medical Physics IT Officer
Tel 44 1382 660111 ext. 33637 Univ. of Dundee, Ninewells Hospital
Fax 44 1382 640177 Dundee DD1 9SY Scotland UK
net http://www.dundee.ac.uk/~pjclinch/

On 19 Jul 2005 00:30:18 -0700, "MartinM" wrote:

now the rear wheel has all but collapsed and I
don't have the tool to remove the rear block.

If it's a freewheel I have such a tool. I can bring it on Saturday.



Tim

Tim Hall wrote:
On 19 Jul 2005 00:30:18 -0700, "MartinM" wrote:

now the rear wheel has all but collapsed and I
don't have the tool to remove the rear block.

If it's a freewheel I have such a tool. I can bring it on Saturday.

thanks, unknown vintage but pretty sure it's not Shimano. Miche hubs.
Dang, there goes the Saracen Tour I was eyeing up ;-(

Simon Brooke wrote:
Every so often someone pops up on this bike asking whether they should
buy a £100 dual suspension mountain bike. I've seen these things often
enough and had to fix things on them, so my answer is always 'no'.
[...]
General conclusion? £100 bikes really are throwing money down a hole.

All of them, or just the dual suspension ones? I've seen £100
non-suspension bikes that looked reasonably usable.

Peter Clinch wrote:
stupot wrote:

Worst of all - no Bromptons - I dont think they even know what they
are.

But they do know what a Birdy is, so it's not like they have No Clues
about folders at all.

They couldn't sell me a Brompton inner tube when I asked, and sent me away
with a Moulton one. Granted, I should have known what size to ask for,
but...

Having lived on the same block as EBC for 18 months and consequently quite
frequently gone in for a browse, I can definitely say it's a good bike shop,
but having been around a fair bit more, I'd say it wasn't exceptionally
good.

Recent bikeshops from which I've purchased include Avon Valley Cyclery,
Longstaff and Sideways, which between them more than cover EBC's range. Bike
Trax also comes fairly close for range in a lot of fields as well.

While waiting for the bloke at AVC to find me a bracket for the B & M light
he'd dug out of the lights box for me (strangley not on display in
midsummer), I heard a very distinct voice saying "Go on, you know your
credit card's got the space on it" about the TiPtons and Airnimals.
Particularly the offroad Airnimal. Very tasty
--
Ambrose

Simon Brooke wrote:
Every so often someone pops up on this bike asking whether they should
buy a £100 dual suspension mountain bike. I've seen these things often
enough and had to fix things on them, so my answer is always 'no'. But
today, visiting an relation in *our* beloved capital city, I was asked
to fix some things on yet another, and took the opportunity of riding
it from the bottom of Moooorrrningsaide up to the Bike Co-op and back
(one cannot visit Edinburgh without making the pilgrimage to the
co-op, after all).

Long way from Mornington Crescent to Alvanley Terrace. Do the return journey
and you're an epic audaxer. Oh, you didn't mean uk.rec.cycling's capital.

The bike had been bought a couple of weeks previously, and had been
slightly misassembled. The frame was a particularly heavy variant on
the 'Flying V' design, with a unified rear triangle pivoting
immediately in front of the bottom bracket.

ob pedant
URTs pivot behind the bottom bracket.

The Halfords bike was also woefully heavy and had similar general
design, but the components were (although still poor) streets ahead
on quality. The V brakes had cast alloy arms; the transmission
components were all Shimano branded - bottom of the range Shimano,
admittedly, but much better than the no-name copies on the other
bike; the cranks were alloy rather than steel.

Did the £100 bike have a gulp one-piece crank?

General conclusion? £100 bikes really are throwing money down a hole.
They are so much worse than bikes costing just a little more that they
cannot be considered value for money.

Now coming to the serious part of the post.

Thanks for writing up an evaluation of everything that's wrong with these
bikes. I think what we need to do next is come up with a recommendation of a
good model at £100, £125 and £150 from Halfords or a few other people (EBC
being an obvious contender.) so when someone posts one of these questions we
can come up with a straight answer.

Next time I go to Halfords I'll have a look at the CX.10 Men's at £99.99
(rigid, 700c, URL below) and see if that looks as if it works.

http://www.halfords.com/opd_product_...type=0&cat=415

I don't know where the EBC range starts nowadays (and I CBA looking it up on
dialup), but presumably that's the next step up, maybe after a Raleigh at
£120-£130ish, which should exist.

Anyway, there's a thought there.
--
Ambrose