We were discussing this post ride last week and it seems I’m not alone . Certain mags do long term tests on bikes, but why do they end up bearing no resemblance to what you can buy in the shop ? For example a Kona Process is being used as a test rig , about £4k but this month they have have replaced the transmission! Wheels ! Tyres and dropper post .All told almost £3k 🙄 Surely we need to know how the stock bike fares after months of use ???

I thought they were pointless for another reason – that by the time you read it the model year will have moved on…

And then their “updates” each month consist of “I’ve been too busy doing X to ride it” or “Rock Shox have hooked me up with a new thingummyjig which I’m looking forward to riding”.

They are total bollocks. Bike review approaches peaked with the style of reviews MBUK used in about 1988. No need for long-term this or that. The swapping of parts really annoys too!

I don’t agree. You’re going to swap parts out on your own bike.

All that matters are the essentials: the frame. We have reviews of brakes, forks, wheels, drivetrains seperately.

Is the geometry comfortable and stable now that you have ridden a race season on it? How long did it take before the bearings needed to be replaced. How has the rear shock held up – did it require retuning for this specific bike?

Who gives a shit if they changed to wider bars. That’s not the bike. Any bike can be changed to wider bars.

Any bike after a few weeks youll grow into it and learn its weaknesses its handling etc, most are based on a frame and wheels tyres, little else makes much diferenece after a while.

It’s a result of sorts: the experience rider on the £4k bike wants to splash another 60-70% on it.

It’s probably not the result the bike supplier had in mind, but some of us might take it that way. I feel sorry for the supplier.

To my mind it’s lack of anything in depth, like a long term review for instance, that shows how poor the cycling mags generally are. They can only do 4 basic types of article. There’s no journalism as such either. It’s all just waffle and padding. I gave up on all cycling mags 5+ years ago. I had a free copy of Singletrack earlier this year. Quick flick though revealed nothing had changed and there was little of interest. I never read more than one or two articles before binning it.

I don’t agree. You’re going to swap parts out on your own bike.

I do, you do. Not everyone does. I have a couple of friends both reasonable riders. They buy a £1k’ish hard tail and ride for 3-4 years and then buy a new one. Happily replace pads, chains, cassettes etc… but leave everything else alone. For them the bike is a tool to get out – means nothing in itself.

Who gives a shit if they changed to wider bars. That’s not the bike. Any bike can be changed to wider bars.

I do, especially for cheaper bikes where I wouldn’t change anything – like my wife or children’s bikes.

If you are given a bike to ‘test’ for a year, you should test it as provided. Will the drivetrain last a year? Will the wheels go wonky and the brakes give up the ghost? Hard to answer these questions if OE stuff is chucked in a box after a month because something shiny came along.

Some people will swap parts, some wont. Why don’t they have a proper long term (one year isn’t long is it?) bike(s) so when xxxx supply a new product the can use the mule to evaluate how they perform.

My bike is pretty much the same as trigger’s brush in only fools and horses since I bought it 😉

Don’t forget, the same mags that are fitting longer bars were telling you to saw 3 inches off each end 15 years ago.

One of the MBUK ones recently was brilliant, they said the suspension worked well with minimal fiddling. Which later in the article turned out to mean “We gave the forks to TF Tuned who tipped the entire contents into the bin and replaced absolutely everything”.

But remember, they’re not just testing the bike, they’re testing components as well- so if there’s a 10 wheelset megatest, those have all been on their test fleet, it’s kind of 2 birds with one stone.

Dont be daft, they are not “testing” bikes. They are selling advertising space in the magazine and getting you to read it.

You make bike products and fancy some “advertising”; you sell advertising space in a magazine and fancy some “editorial” – there you go. Job done.

The enduro-mtb long term test is pretty good. Don’t pay any attention to mbuk anymore, poorly written and full of drivel.

As someone who has done a bit of testing bikes, it’s pretty hard to write something meaningful if the bars, or something else, make it impossible to get settled on the bike. Same goes for wheels, I once had a test bike which I was unable to ride because of the wheels, swapped them for a set of stiffer mavics and tested the bike like that. The minimum for me is the right length stem and a decent set of tyres. I reviewed an Orbea Occam (29er 100/120mm carbon fs) and the number of complains from Americans who were “sick of downhillers testing cross country bikes”! I had only put flat pedals, a dropper post, 2.25 crossmarks and a 50mm stem on it. I’m sure that on that test I did more climbing than all of the complainers put together 🙂

Leaving aside the obsolescence of many models by the time the test is done I really don’t get the upgradeitus that goes on. There was a test of a hardtail a while back where they spent much of the test update talking about the wheels that they had upgraded at a cost close to the whole original bike. Review the wheels by all means but don’t pretend that’s a long term bike review – they are not part of the Bike that a punter will buy.

Same goes for wheels, I once had a test bike which I was unable to ride because of the wheels,

How so? I’ve never had a problem riding any bike with functional wheels. Skills lessons? 😉

Could be a good idea nick 🙂 It was a set of 29 wheels that were unbelievably flexy. I could get them to really touch the frame in corners. On the 3rd ride they flexed in a corner, a spoke broke and the wheel caught the mech. Pretty extreme example but that bike wasn’t rideable by me with those wheels. New wheels and I really loved the bike and wrote the review like that. If not it would have been a whole bike review talking only about how rubbish the wheels were!

I can see it both ways, but for a long term test I’d only like to see functional changes like Doug described along with the reasons for the change. That gives me an idea that the wheels would need changing if I got the bike. bars/saddle are a given for changing really but again you need to ride it as stock for at least the first review and then make the changes.

Putting the actual cost of the upgrades in there would be good too.

doug_basqueMTB.com – Member

Could be a good idea nick It was a set of 29 wheels that were unbelievably flexy. I could get them to really touch the frame in corners. On the 3rd ride they flexed in a corner, a spoke broke and the wheel caught the mech. Pretty extreme example but that bike wasn’t rideable by me with those wheels. New wheels and I really loved the bike and wrote the review like that. If not it would have been a whole bike review talking only about how rubbish the wheels were!

Well, that’s what happens when downhillers test xc bikes! 🙄

I’m ‘Merican, so I had to weigh in… 😉

JoeG, story of my life. Too DH for the XC guys and too XC for the DH guys 🙂

I see both points, for me something shouldn´t be changed unless there is a reason for that. I guess a lot of the long term bikes are being used as a test bed for other kit. Also a lot of the testers are just die hard bike riders like the rest of us and if they get the chance of putting some bling on a bike they´re testing… well who could say no.

Exactly Doug, they’re enthusiasts, offered expensive bits to fit and thrash!

I’m not sure I understand the point of long term tests, but then, I’m not sure I understand the point of bike magazines either.
It only takes one long ride to decide if you like the handling of a bike, so at best, a bike review is a poor substitute for a test ride.
Surely the only point of a long term test, as compared to a short term test, is to prove the durability of the components and you’re not going to achieve that by swapping them half way through.

Is the geometry comfortable and stable now that you have ridden a race season on it? How long did it take before the bearings needed to be replaced?

surely you don’t need to ride a whole season to know if its comfy? I’ll grant you more than one day with some different terrain and wet/dry might be more informative. Its also not that helpful to know how long it took for the bearings to die – it depends on how/where it is ridden, cleaned and maintained.

Who gives a shit if they changed to wider bars. That’s not the bike. Any bike can be changed to wider bars.

you can apply that logic to every component – but if people are selling bikes as packages they should expect to be judged as the package. If you stick bars on that are rubbish or not wide enough for this months trend then at the very least the audience need to know why they had to swap them.

Surely the only point of a long term test, as compared to a short term test, is to prove the durability of the components

I’d agree with that – I do think you could test for more than a single ride; but as with bearings one persons experience of durability is probably not that meaningful (whether good or bad). However surely you’ve missed the point of long term tests: the reviewer gets a free bike for the season.

It’s OK to change the stem and bars if a bike comes with silly long/narrow ones.

It’s OK to change the tyres if they’re shit and the wheels if necessary.

It’s not so useful to say “I wasn’t happy with the shock/fork so TF/Mojo gave it a custom tune” – because more than 99% of the readers won’t have access to or consider that kind of thing.

Just say clearly that the supplied shock was crap and pick a replacement one if need be.

The mags and the bike industry are just in one big circle jerk, when the mags start reporting bad practice, poor customer warranty support and badly designed failure prone products they might actually be considered journalists, at the moment they’re little more than gimp bitches for the bike industry…
😀

I’m not sure I understand the point of long term tests, but then, I’m not sure I understand the point of bike magazines either.
It only takes one long ride to decide if you like the handling of a bike, so at best, a bike review is a poor substitute for a test ride.

That’s fine, but traditionally people use magazines to have a look at what’s new and available. It gives people the starting point from where they can start looking. Pre-Internet, magazines were basically the only place you could see all the new and exotic stuff.

So if you want to take a bike on a test ride – where do you begin? Which bike etc? Unless you know what’s out there, how can you ask to have a test ride? How do you narrow your choice down, or do you test ride every bike in the hope it suits you and your type/style/way of riding?

Dont be daft, they are not “testing” bikes. They are selling advertising space in the magazine and getting you to read it.

So true. Trade magazines are there to sell shiny things. End of.

It only takes one long ride to decide if you like the handling of a bike

Maybe, but quite often a minor change can transform a bike (positively as well as negatively).

I quite like reading them, as they are mostly about riders just making the bikes better for them and/or trying new stuff on a known base.

If you stick bars on that are rubbish or not wide enough for this months trend then at the very least the audience need to know why they had to swap them.

but longer bars is the fashion
mfr can put any size bars on they like and MBR would still have to change them for ones 1cm longer.
the only thing stopping them going 1cm longer is when their chin touches the stem.

so even as a comment back to mfrs that “these are the changes we made to a good bike to make it an ace bike” are pointless too.

for me, long term test means, do the wheels last, do the tyres last, do SRAM/Shimano 11×1 cassettes that cost £250 last 10x as long as a £25 9sp XT cassette, do the shock bushings and linkage bearings (and the new fancy Yeti SB suspension thing) last, etc…
and “does the tester like it or gel with it” is 100% subjective for his riding (assuming 100% independent unbiased subjectivity).