Buying first bike

[Alan O]

Buy cheap, buy twice.

Unlike most people here - buy good, buy N+1 times

 

[Reynard]

Unlike most people here - buy good, buy N+1 times

Ah, but that's a completely different kettle of fish

 

[SkipdiverJohn]

BTW, Muddy Fox also make el-cheapo road bikes - and they're just as ghastly as the MTBs. There's one turned up at my local tip / recycling centre and it's been sitting in their sales area for weeks. Looks like it's barely been ridden at that. Funny though, the full susser mountain bikes with components made of cheese tend to sell really quickly. Go figure...

Cheap used suspension bikes are bought by the same sort of people who buy cheap new suspension bikes - those who want the max features for their money rather than the max simplicity and reliability for their money. I'm more than happy for idiots to snap up these sort of BSO's - it just means the better secondhand bikes without suspension have less buyers chasing them so it keeps the used prices down. I like being unfashionable in my bike preferences

 

[Reynard]

Cheap used suspension bikes are bought by the same sort of people who buy cheap new suspension bikes - those who want the max features for their money rather than the max simplicity and reliability for their money. I'm more than happy for idiots to snap up these sort of BSO's - it just means the better secondhand bikes without suspension have less buyers chasing them so it keeps the used prices down. I like being unfashionable in my bike preferences

I'm a mechanical engineer by training, so know a bit about these things. Something that's that complicated and that cheap, well go figure, something's got to give - in this case it's weight, build quality and, as a consequence, reliability. A reasonably-specced full susser MTB that will actually *DO* the job it's designed for will cost a factor of ten more than the cheap BSO.

For some folk it's all about show rather than go. (And then you wonder why they give up on cycling so easily.)

Cheap full susser MTBs are the Hyacinth Bucket of bikes.

 

[SkipdiverJohn]

For some folk it's all about show rather than go. (And then you wonder why they give up on cycling so easily.)
Cheap full susser MTBs are the Hyacinth Bucket of bikes.

Nail hit squarely on head!

If muppets want to buy this junk, it's fine by me. When they inevitably give up on them and chuck them in the skip, the wheels & mechanicals are always handy as freebie spare parts. The full-sus frames always go back in the skip though.