Expensive stuff is Expensive Shocker!!!

Sorry OP but there is no law saying you have to buy the expensive items on sale.
Yes you Can buy a mech for a £150 or Tires for £50 each but you can also buy a mech for £25-30 and tires for £20-25 normally from the same shops I think the assumption you are making is that the cheaper option is always the inferior one, this isn’t actually very often the case IMO.
For instance the Deore Mech you can go and buy today in a shop is probably about on par with the XT you’d have bought a decade ago finish and function wise…

and a Fat IT manager will probably not notice the difference in grip between the £50 version and £25 version of his racing ralphs cos he’ll pump both up to 50psi and skitter about the same trails whichever one he buys…

Surely the cheap reasonably priced kit and 2nd hand stuff that people are talking about has also gone up in price?

In what way does a 2002 Deore rear mech worked any differently to a 2012 one?

Ridiculous isn’t it. A top end bmx can be had for about £500 if that, and usually they don’t break as often or have niggly problems. Granted there’s less technology in it an parts are smaller so probably stronger but still.

As for pedals, I’ve been using a couple of pairs of Wellgo V8 copies on bmxes and various mtbs over the past 5-6 years and still haven’t broken a pair.

Definitely think that (some) bike gear is getting beyond a joke. £2700 for a frame is taking the P@SS, forks have gone up loads in the last few years. Even BMXs, bikes that used to be cheapish, are now a lot.

I bought my son a WTP arcade about 18 months ago (£250) now retail is over £100 more. 40% increase in a year and a half cannot be explained away by Vat and inflation.

_tom_ – Member
Ridiculous isn’t it. A top end bmx can be had for about £500 if that

Mine was £800+ when it was new, and is a long way from the top end (it’s stil got eastern hubs!). £500 would buy you a complete bike, hopefully with CrMo tubes, or a frame only from one of the more expensive brands with more upmarket tubing. BMX parts are pretty comparable to MTB bits, a basic 4130 frame is 456 frame money, Cr-Mo forks £60-£100, cranks, hubs, headsets, and evrything else is MTB money.

In the last 4 years the pound has devalued by about 30%, most of that in 2009 IIRC, hence imported goods are about 30% more when priced in GBP. It’s not just bling, look at petrol, food, anything that we import – and the UK is a net importer.

Currency wars!

Mine was £800+ when it was new, and is a long way from the top end (it’s stil got eastern hubs!). £500 would buy you a complete bike, hopefully with CrMo tubes, or a frame only from one of the more expensive brands with more upmarket tubing. BMX parts are pretty comparable to MTB bits, a basic 4130 frame is 456 frame money, Cr-Mo forks £60-£100, cranks, hubs, headsets, and evrything else is MTB money.

I guess, I haven’t bmx’ed for a few years but last time I had one it cost £200 and had a ridiculous spec for that money – G-Sport/Odyssey wheels, primo cranks, sunday frame, odyssey dirt forks etc. You’d never get a mtb, even 2nd hand with that quality for that kind of money.

…£2700 for a frame is taking the P@SS

then don’t buy it, get a titus el guapo, they’re ace. and they’re £900.

…forks have gone up loads in the last few years…

only if you’ve been convinced that you need them. i just bought some forks for £160.

I think Shimano stuff is a good basis for seeing if prices have changed.

Prices I remember Shimano XT cranks + BB

2000 CRC price – £100 cranks £BB about £30ish
2007/2008 CRC price – £80 Cranks + BB
2012 CRC – £150 Cranks + BB

Basically there was a slow drop in price from 2000 to 2008.
Then a massive jump now things have stabilised again.

Oh look the complete inverse to this.

Yen v Pound

I think there have been some massive price increases as the pound has dropped in value. Looks like shimano have actually managed to keep the XT crankset at exactly the same price in Yen for a good 10 years.

Dont know what inflation has been in that time in Japan mind.

brianblessed – HOW MUCH ? !!!!

just me hearing the man himself saying this everytime the thread pops back up to the top of the page?

I bought my built-up 2007 cotic for what I considered a good s/h price, and have been updating components on it for three years – with a mixture of old and new.

Between the forums here, pinkbike, LBS and ebay, there’s very little that can’t be found at a lower price, nor much that isn’t 95% as good but half the price when it’s a year old – I just got my new Revs for 400 , nearly half what they’d have been when first released.

Maybe I’m not much of a rider, but it’s very rare the ride when, full flow, speeding through the trees, I think ‘I wish I’d spent twice as much on my pedals’. The gear’s important, but only in as much as it enhances the experience, IMO.

The best rider I know has a Spesh hardrock that’s ten years old, suntour forks and a healthy disregard for the fashions and fads of MTB. DOn’t let the market take the piss, I say.

top end is more expensive now for sure, but it’s ‘better’, or at least more technically advanced, harder to make, etc. But low end price points are better value because of that development at the top end. Bonus. unless you have to have the newest stuff – but you’ll always pay for that in whatever you’re buying – washing machines, cars, trainers – everything. There’s a bigger gap between entry level and top-end – that’s all. In general, it’s actually better VFM at the mass consumer price points than ever before.

Particular things have risen disproportionately though – tyres being one of them – rubber prices have tripled in less than 2 years, transport cost quadrupled from the far east in less than a year, and workers now have more rights, minimum wages etc – yet you’ve not seen tyres quadruple in price. sure, big price rises, but way less margin being made by the companies in the supply chain.

You’re all actually seeing the nice, softly padded end of a very pointy stick for people further up the supply chain…

oddly this seems to happen in any past times where lots of middle aged blokes with too much spare money get involved (I include myself in this bracket).

Same thing happened with fishing in the 80’s (I’m told)
and motorcycles in the later 90’s.
Supply Vs Demand?

the only good news I can take from this is that as wider interest wains, the 2nd hand market will be flooded with cheaper bits and as a few shitter LBS go to the wall there will be some cheap unused old stock too.

Bikes and components are dear but only if you fail to shop around. If you are led by the nose and feel your experience of mtbing will be blighted unless you spend 3k plus on the latest mag promotion blingfest then yes,it will be expensive. A bit of nouse and research online can net some real bargains. Folk want to spend money, and occasionally a bit of conspicuous consumerism does us all good. If the above mentioned fat IT manager wants to upgrade to XO then let him, coz I’ll be able to get his old xt cranks for dead right money.

I’ve just spent three months putting a 140 build together. 2×10 xt, slx brakes, Pro 2 on Arch ex nobby Nic snakeskins , carbon bars, wtb, thompson for the princely sum of £1200. All parts bar chain and front mech used or “NEW OTHER”

Research,research,research!

As Peter Poddy demonstrates it need not be expensive.I recently bought a nice Anthem X for £750,with XT groupset.

Last week I got a set of as new still in the original box Roval Control wheels for £180. via ebay.

Sometimes the expensive component is functionally no better,and as pointed out mid range these days is so good,XT brakes for instance have pretty ineffective free stroke and reach adjust,the SLX versions are every bit as good.Its often the same with forks,you pay a lot more for dual air,travel adjust,poplocs etc,but you pay a lot for these feaures which are seldom used.

I`m also using ebay more and more for new purchases,instead of Merlin,Wiggle,CRC and the like.

I`ve got some good deals via the likes of Koo bikes,High on bikes and Absolute cycles ebay shops of late.

Its amazing how much you can save by doing your own servicing too.

And avoid buying Shimano service items/consumables.Eg: instead of genuine Shimano mineral oil Hlafords do it for £5.Superstar for brake pads at £5 per end instead of £15.

…XT brakes for instance have pretty ineffective free stroke and reach adjust,the SLX deore versions are every bit as good.Its often the same with forks,you pay a lot more for dual air,travel adjust,poplocs etc,but you pay a lot for these feaures which are seldom used.

agreed.

Happy to be proven wrong but, for the majority of riders, is the level of technological development of bikes more a marketing ploy than providing any seriously discernible performance improvement to the rider?

top end is only expensive if you pay full RRP. Loads of high end frames (Turner, Ibis, Yeti, Orange to name a few) been available new-old stock for half price or less. Same goes for forks (Marz recently, see Rose fork deals thread), tyres (schwalbes half price at On One), Thomson and Easton stuff at Merlin recently on sale for used prices, groupsets from German mail order houses. Just about built you a nice new bike for half price…