Santa Cruz Blur, it was too tall and too short. The medium felt like a 19″ seat tube mated to a 15″ models top tube. It needed someone with longer legs than me I think.

had a 96 marin eldridge grade which was a beautiful bike and i loved it dearly…then some thieving git nicked it….having spent all my hard earned on the marin i had nothing left to show for it as the insurance refused to pay up….also at the time i was a hard up student so i had to start again from the bottom of the range….
i bought a gt palomar…..oh how i hated that bike….truly horrendous ride, handling and spec….i did what i could re upgrading parts that i could but it was still horrible….got rid of it about 9 months later…for a diamond back frame and forks….was a way much better bike to ride….since then all the other bikes i’ve had have been good…
also had a raleigh shaftivator….too embarrassed to say how bad it was… 😳

Dawes. Edge. Pro. Dull, dull, dull. Did everything sort of ok, but did nothing well. Horrible, boring, fugly thing.I was glad when it fell off my bike rack and died.

Falcon Sierra “ATB” from Halfords about 1986.

Heavy steel frame, wheel rims made of soft cheese, running gear made of cardboard. Had lots of fun on that. And lots of trips ot the bike shop for repairs.

Worst ownership experience though was a (Decathlon) Rockrider – lovely bike but woeful after-sales support, pretty critical for an “own brand” where you’re tied to them for parts (e.g. mech hangers).

Easy. An off-the-peg Cannondale F600.

Beautiful paintjob/frame finishing, but nasty 80mm headshok and poor geometry. Rode horribly.

I’ve built pub-bikes-of-doom from spares in the shed that have ridden better.

Blur classic, felt nervous on it all the time, may well have been too small. Just wasn’t for me.

Also my Cannondale M1000 felt like I’d done a few months in Shawshank after every ride, way too stiff for day rides no comfort at all.

Giant XTC SE3 from about 2003.

Was a definite Friday afternoon special, paintwork was crap, decals wonky, it weighed a ton and every corner the front end just washed out.

Truly crap

Probably my old Kona Cindercone from 1997.
Beautiful steel frame, but it was way too big for me at 18″ and i stuck a set of RST forks on it so that didn’t help.

Nothing wrong with the frame it was just too big and i couldn’t ride it properly, sold it for a Zaskar Race 2001 model and never looked back!

My first MTB, a Raleigh ‘Team MTB’ which was built out of pig iron and looked like a badly made five bar gate. It was way too big for me, had plastic tyres with no grip, brakes made from particularly bendy bits of bakelite, and with what felt like an 82 degree head angle it chucked me over the bars repeatedly.

I had a **** brilliant time riding that bike, it was ace.

A second hand Raleigh Pioneer hybrid I bought for the winter commute – think components were made out of monkey metal

“mated to a 15″ models top tube”

Fnarr fnarr!

Orange X2.
Pivots kept coming loose and suspension only worked when sat down (URT design).
Had fancy bits on it though, all migrated from my previous HT, so SXTi forks, Middleburn chaniset, hope ti hubs, USE seatpost, Flite saddle. Fortunately it got knicked from my garage, meaning I got a pay out and bought a stumpy FSR 😉

Bought the frame because I wanted to try out this new FS malarky.

Had a 2001 S-Works FSR that I really wanted to like, but it was just a bit rubbish!

An aluminium Ribble road bike in about 2000 .It felt awful was harsh and the geometry was all wrong

Titus El Guapo I bought last year, low BB handled like a barge, got a refund.

My wife has an original El Guapo and I liked that so much I thought I’d treat myself to a new one, but the geometry changes really changed the character of it and I just hated it from the first turn of the pedals.

Superfi – I remember those old Orange URT bikes. They were gash!

I never really got the whole URT thing and its good see that it’s dead. There were quite a few offenders back in the day – Klein Mantra, Vodoo did some as well.

SX Trail, weird feeling rear suspension and no front end feel.

Klein Mantra. Absolutely terrifying to ride through whoops as when the suspension compressed the whole bike folded in half and the head angle went steep/shallow/steep/shallow with every whoop. Come to think of it all sweet spot bikes must have ridden like this.

Orange P7. Don’t know wether it was built wrong or what but it rode like a bag of shite.

+1 on the grifter. Awful bike. Weighed a tonne and was several sizes too big for me. Was a delight to swap it for a Raleigh Arena!

Sunn revolt gt from late 90s had it till only a few years ago as a hack it just refused to die. Problem was it was constantly trying to kill me I’ve never fell of a bike as much as I fell off the thing, it was possessed I swear.

Having not been on my old Orange Clockwork for years I bought a 1999 GT XCR4000 to get back in to the sport and because I fancied a full suss.

It was turd, really bad. Suss didn’t really do the job, it weighed more then a ship and the ride was terrible. Sold it to a mate in 2005 virtually unused.

I LOVED my SX trail. Funny old world eh 😉 Ellesworth ISIS wasn’t a lot of fun. Hard to pinpoint what was wrong with it, just a bit lifeless. Put a longer fork on it in desperation and it did come to life then. As a flippy-floppy death fish thing.

Voodoo Wanga, my fault for buying a bike with a very short top tube. Not my fault all the paint fell off when you looked at it.

Airborne Lancaster(?) – the Ti hardtail. Something very not right with the geometry.

+1 on the Cannondale M1000. Brutally stiff and kinda ‘dead’ feeling. Probably only due to it being nicked am I still riding today.

I love my SX too….still going strong despite being old. Paints looking a little battered but its stood up well.

This, a Trek Y5. I did a Coast to Coast on it back in ooohhh let me see… 97/98 and I hit the first bump just out of St Bees and the thing didn’t stop bobbing until I hit the other side of the Pennines..

PoC 😆

[/url] image by bikebouy, on Flickr[/img]

Something heavy and unmentionable from Halfords way back when I knew nothing about mountain bikes and only road it a few times to the shops, tow path etc. I realised what a PoC it really was on taking it actually off road.

Got into the stuff properly with a GT I-drive (I see mentioned a few times here). Oddly also from Halfords, but wasn’t “their” brand and don’t think they knew what they had. Amazing value for under £1k especially in components. Actually really liked that bike. Was a 2009 model so maybe much improved. I-drive BB is weird but worked. It did however need frequent servicing on the pivots. Didn’t fall apart, just creaked at lot. Took a huge amount of abuse before I replaced it with bling.

never owned a bad bike but the worst bike i’ve ridden is undoubtedly a gary fisher hifi, the thing was unstable to the point of being dangerous to ride even down tame gradients.

Norco XXXX from 2007. Looked good, looked like it should be brilliant, it wasn’t! Horrible thing!

Close second goes to my SX Trail. Built up with all sorts of tarty/expensive stuff, looked fantastic, and didn’t really do anything that wrong. However it never felt like it was anything special, it was a bit boring to be honest. Annoyed me that I had just swapped my 2006 bighit for it, which was one of the best bikes I’ve owned.

Its a toss up between a Mk 1 Prince Albert – very heavy and weird geometry with a very high bb and a very low front end.

Or my 29er, bought into the 29er marketing bs, and got a nice Fisher G2 frame, build it with nice light parts, but it was slow handling and slow to ride – consistently slower than my equivalent 26er and harder work. Hated riding it so it went.

Be One Karma from CRC a few years ago, pants, heavy and the old euro style geometry. Terrible bike..
Few years ago I had an old Raleigh Montage in fluro green, ok to ride but every part of the drivetrain fell to bits after a few weeks use.

Surly Karate Monkey, although I am convinced it may be down to the way I’ve built it. Its currently in bits waiting for the time when I have the motivation to build it up differently. Never quite seemed to get on with it despite trying different specifications; it feels very heavy and dead on the climbs and I can’t see why people get so evangelical about them.

Santa Cruz Nomad. It was marketed as an all round all mountain bike but it just wasn’t. Turned me off Santa Cruz.

Gary Fisher Joshua F3 – orrible – useless URT design.

Enduro 2008 I so wanted the fork to work. I got refund in the end.

Wow can’t believe I opened this thread to see such brands as Intense, Santa Cruz and Orange being mentioned. Some of the finest machines to grace the MTB world.

Are you crazy? Surely it should be filled with BSO brands and pieces of sh1te like Apollo, hawk and the like.
Now they are trully horrific bikes and I am sure we have all owned them in our younger days.

Or were some of you born with a silver spoon in your mouth and the first bike you ever had was an Orange 5?

Probably my first “proper” mtb which was a rockhopper. It was actually fine with a good spec, but fit me completely wrong so I hated it!

I’m surprised at the “rode it once, hated it” posts.

Every bike is night and day from the next and it takes few rides to get to know them.

I’ll be honest, I sold my chameleon and bought a 5 Spot. For weeks I thad words with myself. The Chameleon was so many smiles per miles but looking back now, that frame was a back wrecker.

So harsh.

Still, I’d have another one.

My first adult sized bike was a Raleigh Mantis – steel, rigid and plastic. It was probably horrid but it got me into riding so it must have been brilliant.

I think the big manufacturers mentioned are “should have done better” rather than “cheap crappy bike you’d expect to be rubbish”.

GB

I’ve never had a bike I didn’t like but my wife once owned a Raleigh Lizard (purchased before I met her) and it had a gravitational field all of it’s own.