Hi,

Friend of mine is looking for a new bike and has his eye on one of these.
Does anyone know how good they are? Is it good value for money?

Felt Virtue

Any comments welcome.

Ta.

It’ll be heavy…

This might be useful…

http://www.pinkbike.com/news/felt-virtue-sport-tested-2012.html

Col

I like the look of it, dont know much about the bike itself but i really like felt bikes. I’ve got a felt trailshot and a felt z70 road bike.

looks like it’s got a decent frame to build around and upgrade parts over time.
what about the price? he’s found it for £1,200 – is this the kind of money you have to pay for bikes like this these days?

If your friend is buying online he could get more for his money from Canyon, this is a similar bike for the same price but much better spec

http://www.canyon.com/_en/mountainbikes/bike.html?b=2555

also maybe check out offerings from Ghost and Cube.

cheers Bazz, I’ve told him about Canyon bikes

This is better for a grand (or so?) I reckon…

http://www.boardmanbikes.com/mtb/fs_team.html

I had a felt compulsion which rode ok – but was highly unreliable. The shock bolt attached to the rocker link snapped about 3 times in the space of a year. If you look at the size of it compared to my current bike its not surprising. I would avoid.

I had a friend who had one of the first versions, which I think were a bit lighter in the frame. He really liked it but had problems when it came to stripping it down to replace bearings and stripped a thread in the frame. He thought it was not exactly the best engineering practice to thread bolts directly into the frame, and bought something else the next time.

They do have a lot of pivots for a bike to be used in UK conditions. 10 tiny bearings in total maybe?

As per other posts, Boardman, Canyon have better deals. Also Chainreaction are selling similar spec Ghost full susser’s for sub £1000 with money off, and there is also Paulscycles which sell Giant, Cannondale, Mongoose full sussers for bargain prices.

I had a 2007 virtue 2 that did suffer the linkage issues described above and wasn’t the best design; bolts loosening, snapping, and threaded into the frame… I did realy like it though. But then the frame cracked. Saddleback (importer) had been very helpful with the suspension issues and they came up trumps with an 09 Virtue frame which has been absolutely faultless. Big change in pivot bolts and sealing; I can only assume this has been further refined since then.