Hi Folks,

I brought a new mountain bike a few months ago to replace my old Orange 5. It’s the top model and cost me £4k (which is more than I’ve ever spent on a bike before). It’s from a reputable shop in North Wales and so far I’ve ridden it 6 or 7 times.

On the first ride at Marin the RS Monarch shock failed about half way round. I immediately took it back to the shop and they whipped a replacement on straight away, taking a new shock from one of the display bikes (Big thumbs up on customer service). All was well for a couple of rides before a very loud creak developed. I booked it in for it’s first service and after collecting it rode Llandegla where the creak was significantly worse than before. 2/3rd’s of the way around Llandegla the shock failed again and started making a loud wheezing noise every time it hit a bump.

I took it back to the shop who stated the shock needed to be sent off and a warranty replacement would be required. They stated they would look at the creak again but advised that the bike has a lot of moving parts and creaks develop. They’ve had the bike for a good few weeks now and the shock isn’t due in until the middle of this month and then another few days to fit etc.

I’m now concerned that the bike is going to continue having problems given the issues over it’s relatively short life.

Has anyone had previous dealings with bikes that have kept failing and where would I stand with asking for my money back? Would it have to be a catastrophic failure for that to happen?

Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks.

Seems the main issue is with Rockshox. Could you get them to swap the shock for another brand? I’ve been using various Fox shocks for years without any problem.

As for the creak, could be any number of things. I had one recently that turned out to be the bolt on my old Race Face crank that kept working loose.

Since you’ve had issues with it since the first ride and the shop has attempted unsuccessfully to resolve it I’d think you’re within your rights to give it back.

Is it an issue with the actual shock, rather than frame alignment?
What frame is it?

Not sure what the exact problem with the shock is. I just know that I’ve now gone through 2 of them. My old 5 had a Fox RP23 and was faultless for the best part of 8 years. It’s a Lapierre frame. New Zesty AM.

Perhaps it’s just a bad batch of shocks, see what the warranty replacement is like

Creaks I wouldn’t worry about. The shop did the right thing by you in replacing the first one but there should not be excessive delay in getting a second replacement – its up to the shop not the importer to replace it again.

I wouldn’t reject the bike for this especially as the shop were helpful.

Edit – but I would ( if it were my bike) strip it and rebuild it again to stop the creaks – it will be either a dry interface or a loose interface somewhere more than likely – I don’t trust anyone but me to work on my bikes