Ugly modern bikes

Theres so much to add to this - Its not about the bike - if you are fat, unfit and 40, 10 years of Audi driving and a fat bank balance isnt going to make that £8,000 trail centre bike go any better.

As for brakes - so many bikes with disconnected brakes because the owner cannot be bothered to get them serviced or learn how to do it themselves.

Discs? Ha! So many badly set up in the first place. One overspray of oil an they're fooked. One stuck Avid plastic piston, sorry, composite and they're fooked.

Broken frames, cracked frames, blown seals, tubless that refuse to seal due to a manufacturing fault. The lists go on and anyone from 20 years ago would say the same thing then.

Things were different 20 -25 years ago. Cycling was in the doldrums and all terrain bikes were genuinely new, exciting, frowned upon, feared and frightening all at the same time. It was a brave new world and these ugly fat tyred bikes embedded themselves into the subconscious.

Today, there is so little that is a genuinely new idea. Its just tweeks and revisions. 2009 bikes suddenly become unacceptable and ugly while 2013 off the holy grail of cycling to all.

Just ride what you ride - you'll be overtaken by somebody on something very old, or very cheap or very new. I'll overtake you or you'll overtake me. Just be aware that if you overtake me, I wont be muttering 'gosh, I must need a new bicycle to go like that' because I wont, I'll just need to eat less pies and ride more.

Suspension is joke and 99 procent argument reminds me of that thread with old article where guy was arguing that Mountain Bike is joke and that he can ride everything on his road bike

CAPIN":1le6epuf said:

Suspension is joke and 99 procent argument reminds me of that thread with old article where guy was arguing that Mountain Bike is joke and that he can ride everything on his road bike

Click to expand...

I'd have to agree with him even though the original article was from many years ago. The trails havent suddenly changed in such a way that we all need to ride differently. If anything the trails are more benign (excluding man made down hill - a category of 'cycling' all to itself, along with base jumping and naked skydiving).

Its true that trails haven't changed. Now with "modern" bikes we just ride them twice as fast with LESS fear that crank will fall of.
That dark picture you painted above is still objectively pretty nice in comparison to 80-90ties when nothing worked at all.
All the standards, diameters and dimensions taken from road bikes and guys in their garages cranking out machined stuff that we tested for the first time

CAPIN":115wssxa said:

Suspension is joke

Click to expand...

Sure thing, I mean better braking, cornering, descending, climbing, less fatigue (on bike and rider) all pointless really...


Lots of bendy tubes on my modern bike, big circus style wheels, bars only 20mm narrower than those on an MX bike, a few ugly logos on the tyres, front and rear suspension, brakes with lots of pistons, huge cassette, chunky chain device.
It does have quite minimal graphics and stickers, comparatively my '94 Shogun has the brand name written in expired steak green over electric blue in no less than 14 places.




If anyone was wondering the main reason for the downtube kinks nowadays is fork dial/cap clearance with zero stack headsets, while maintaining the highest amount of weld area on the headtube.

The trails may not have changed but there are places I ride now on my modern hardtail that simply aren't passable on a retro. And the others I can just do twice as fast!

Not saying that that's necessarily more fun of course

Sure thing, I mean better braking, cornering, descending, climbing, less fatigue (on bike and rider) all pointless really...

Click to expand...

Yes, of course - theres the 1% that always have point out how great everything is until you blow a seal or a pivot point decides to let go or the brakes get contaminated. Which happens quite a lot.

That bike has nothing for me - a tyre size I cant go and pick up in a shop just on the off-chance. If something oily does pop, its a long and uncomfortable walk or ride home.

It would also simply seize and die on a wet UK ride.

Dont go thinking I'm some Luddite either - just because I gripe and moan about it all. Doesnt mean a thing. I enjoy cycling and have done so since the early days of the 'all terrain bicycle'. I have watched things come and go, followed developments with my wallet and have been burned and excited by it all. These days I have found my comfortable niche quite late on and am now happy in it.

Ride what you like but dont expect to turn up at a classic car event in a brand new Audi extolling the virtues of said brand new car and expect universal praise on said purchase.

legrandefromage":1oc4dpw4 said:

Work in a bike shop as a mechanic for just 6 months. That will give you a better idea of what is going on in the cycling world.

MTB has shrunk while general cycling has ballooned. Repairs and servicing are getting expensive. Forks and bushings are more complicated creating a more stressful relationship between the owner, bike itself and the retailer. Full suspension is a joke. 99% of the time you dont actually need it and can ride just as well without it but the magazines say otherwise. The whole MTB business would fail if we all just got on with cycling rather than hung up on what fashion tells us we need.

Click to expand...

While I agree with most of these, I believe that only a person who is stubborn enough not to try new stuff would say that ALL new bikes are crap. If so, why limit yourself to the nineties when you can ride an awesome klunker with a drum brake in rear and that's it? Who needs better stuff? In the end, it's still a bicycle...

I am not a mechanic, though I am eating MTB day in day out. You don't need a mechanic to understand certain things or to have an opinion that you can sustain. The industry needs the hype to survive it's own growth and the media is biased and there once in a while there is am oasis of honesty, but that doesn't mean bikes are not good or decent. Try telling me that last year's 150 mm Enduro is actually worse than some 1990 Stumpy with rigid fork, 135 mm stem and M730 cantis and I'll know that is bullsh_t, because I've ridden them both.

This is all retro-bullsh_t and most arguments are about looks and style, let's be honest. It's okay to cherish the old, I do too, but why build gratuitous shrines for anything old and falsely claim it's better when it's obvious it's not? Let's keep a balance! There good stuff on both sides; why not have the best of both worlds? While saying that I have a blast regardless if I'm riding my 2011 Commencal V.3. my 2002 Cannondale Jekyll or my 1993 Karakoram; they're all good bikes. Actually, if we stick our heads out of our arses we'll notice that ANY bike is good, as a matter of fact, as long as it works and you can ride it.

Ride and stay happy!
Mx

legrandefromage":xhr3gfgb said:

If anything the trails are more benign (excluding man made down hill - a category of 'cycling' all to itself, along with base jumping and naked skydiving).

Click to expand...

Oh, now I get it. Downhill is the devil. )

If a road bike suits all our purposes, then try to bunnyhop one over a 5 m rock section on a full natural trail not touched by man. I'll take the pictures and edit the web video. Please excuse me, but this is how riding goes for some of us these days and I must reckon it's a bit easier on the new bike than on the Karakoram. Such a retro blasphemy - may I burn in MTB hell all along with BioPace, Slingshot and Euclid! And Dual Control and Titanal and cracking colored CNC bits and and and...

Mx