Spent the last few days sorting out a bike for the GF as its her birthday tomorrow. She has really got into MTBing over the last few months, borrowing one of my bikes each time, so thought it was about time to sort her own bike out for her. Her parents agreed to chip in some money towards it too, as did her sisters. But total budget was not huge at £400 absolute max, so I had to shop around and find some deals, otherwise she was gonna end up on something heavy/crap.

Now, I know there’s a lot of brand snobs out there, so I apologise now, but really honestly Carrera don’t half make good bikes for the price. Generally, they let the side down with heavy wheels, tyres and components, but the frames and the kit you get for the money are ace. Found a 2nd hand immaculate Carrera Kraken in her size for not a lot, set about stripping it of all its heavy parts (the frame only weighs 4lb would you believe, get in!!!) and got busy upgrading on the cheap… Here’s the result…

OK, it’s no dream bike, but it owes me less than £400… And yes those are Fox TALAS forks (an old model, but immaculate barely used condition, thanks to the seller) and they’ve saved more than 1.5lb over the OEM Suntours! The wheels are off a Specialized FSR I believe, and only about 2 rides old, saved another 250g over the OEM wheels. Bars and stem replaced with some 2nd hand carbon bars and an answer stem, have saved about another 250g (yes really!). Then there’s the tyres, which aren’t exactly light at 750g each, but the OEM Tioga’s were almost 1100g each!!!

Long and the short of it is now it’s just over 28lb (including pedals), and all in new or as new condition. The fact it was almost 33lb before I started just goes to show how heavy some cheap components are! And it’s got 27spd SLX/SRAM mix now, Hydraulic Tektro discs (surprisingly good) and a quality suspension fork. Certainly don’t think I could have done a whole lot better for the price. And now all the parts will be worthy of putting on a new frame, when the time comes to upgrade (save for the cheapo Truvativ chainset maybe).

Here’s hoping she likes it!

Pretty impressive, well done… i suspect you will get more praise from your missus than on her, good books for you!

Maybe tell her most of its new though 😉

Nice, good job there.

Good effort.

Please post up tomorrow to tell us the eagle has landed.

Top work fella. Let’s hope you can keep up with her 😉

Cheers guys

Woody, I’ve already been having a hard time keeping ahead of her on the climbs (she can just keep going!), she’s going on one of Jedi’s skills days tomorrow (which again, she doesn’t yet know!) so she’s soon gonna be kicking my arse on the downs too…

should have bought new tires, they always make an old bike seem like new! but good job otherwise!

Thought about buying new tyres, but to get decent ones you’ve got to spend like £25 each to be fair… Besides, just got given a pile of half decent used tyres by a mate the other day… So picked the best ones out of that, saved a load of cash that I could put to better use elsewhere…

get the soap and a scrubbing brush out then and clean them up!

Good work, sooo much better than just buying some soulless lump, now this is a proper present and something she can get attached too, very cool 8)