And a Marzocchi fork isn’t that expensive and probably has much larger manufacturing scale.
Than a generic carbon road fork? I'd hazard they're produced about 1000:1 vs the marz.
Try and buy an aftermarket carbon fork and a set of Z2’s and the price is comparable
But that's the point, aftermarket road kit is expensive compared to mtb kit. See also road clothes vs the mtb equivalent.
But that’s the point, aftermarket road kit is expensive compared to mtb kit.
Not sure it really is for the things that you can directly compare - cranks, brakes, cassettes, mechs, stems, bars, frames etc,. For example an Ultegra chainset is pretty much same price as XT chainset
Comparing a carbon road fork with an MTB suspension fork is not a true comparison is it.
The bike accounts for what, 10% of the total aero drag? I imagine anyone with a Pinarello has a similar open wallet approach to clothing and helmets.
My old CAAD is now retro with it’s big round tubes and boxy rims. It’s noticeable that even the lightweights and ladies can pull ahead on descents now despite my gravitational advantage!
I was coasting past some road cyclists on a (straight) road descent the other day with my 29 x 2.6" rubber, 120mm forks, Stooge riser bars, and internal gear hub
The difference is a dropper and low top tube that allows you to really tuck in
My feeling with road bikes is that the price point at which gains become very marginal is much, much lower than with an MTB
I mean, put a TDF rider on a basic shop-brand alloy bike with Tiagra, I bet they don't get much slower
But if you put a World Cup XC or DH rider on an entry-level MTB, I'd expect it to make a lot more difference
Well... May be my example isn't perfect
Perhaps instead, I'd argue that, beyond about £3000, there's a negligible performance difference in road bikes, but with MTB that's not the case
I am a tight arse and my bike cost me under £1,000 to put together and weighs 6.6kg so you don’t actually need to spend that much to get a fairly light bike.
Don't you ride singlespeed/fixed with no brakes?
Comparing a carbon road fork with an MTB suspension fork is not a true comparison is it.
Unless I'm missing the plot (quite plausible, it's sunny outside for what seems the first time in living memory) that's sort of the point of the thread though.
105 kitted road bike about the same price or more than a deore kitted mtb, which has suspension - potentially front and rear, possibly a dropper post etc.
Even then - deore shifter ~£40 rrp, disc brake, ~£120rrp = £160 ish
105 hydraulic brifter, £280rrp
What makes me laugh is that motor bikes are MUCH better value than mountain bikes. Right now you can buy a brand new 2023 Beta Evo 250cc trials bike (that you could go and ride 90% of UK trials on out of the box) for £5,500 inc. VAT. Or a 2023 GasGas 2 stroke enduro bike for a shade over £7k inc. VAT.
And at the same time you could pay £15k for a road bicycle with 8 or 9 bearings, that barely ever need replacing or an electric assisted mountain bike?
Each to their own, we all decide how much of our own income we're prepared to spend on our hobbies and passions, but a £15k road bike isn't going to get 99% of us to our destination any faster, or in any more style than a £2k road bike.
My feeling with road bikes is that the price point at which gains become very marginal is much, much lower than with an MTB
I mostly agree.
Sadly a £3k MTB nowadays will only have mid-range suspension, so going to "Ultimate" level in RS or a top-end shock like an EXT could make a big difference in feel and control on the trail.
I'm less convinced of the benefits of going much beyond Deore/SLX on transmission and brakes. And £500-ish is all you need to spend on some nice alu wheels for MTB.
Whereas wheels are the one road upgrade that can actually buy you a significant performance boost, as I understand it - and carbon makes a lot more sense.
What makes me laugh is that motor bikes are MUCH better value than mountain bikes
Part of that is market size, which again, I'd suspect is orders of magnitude bigger for a road bike than a mtb.
The other thing is you're not comparing apples with apples. A 12k road bike is, pretty much, the same home being ridden by pros to professional success.
How many professional level enduro bikes that were ridden to of the podium of the x games or whatever the equivalent is can you buy for 12k?
Part of the reason bikes "are expensive" is that by and large people here have a massively out of whack idea of what a bike is. A mtb is about £200 from sports direct, it doesn't have xtr, or even acera kit on it. "Series" level finishing kit is the pointy end of mtb (and road) and very often people forget that when moaning about prices because actually it's pretty cheap compared with a lot of stuff for very very high end kit.
Sadly a £3k MTB nowadays will only have mid-range suspension,
And whilst I'm writing that, exactly my point, mid range suspension is rst or suntour kit. Rockshox, fox, marz et al don't make (least ways under their own name) mid range kit, it's all high end.
Things haven't become expensive, we've just lost perspective.
mid range suspension is rst or suntour kit. Rockshox, fox, marz et al don’t make (least ways under their own name) mid range kit, it’s all high end.
Sorry mate, that's just wrong.
Entry level suspension = Suntour, RST
Mid-range = RS lower tier stuff, Fox Rhythm
Top-end = RS Select+ & Ultimate, Fox Perf Elite & Factory, Ohlins etc.
I think it’s a good point about road parts lasting longer, you see a lot more old ‘proper’ road bikes about than you do MTBs. I had my Canyon road bike for 10 years and think I only changed tyres and chain, my wears out faster due to mud and tends to get broken quite quickly. Suspension and disc brakes also need more attention than cable brakes and rigid forks.
Mines on it's 2nd full rebuild and 7th drivechain refresh 😬
Just need to swap the frame for the full triggers broom.
I think there's a bit of an inclination to buy nice road kit as it does last longer without crashes mud wearing it out. There's no way I'd buy XTR/XX1 but Dura ace, at least second hand doesn't seem half as bad as it'll last a decade or more.
chakaping
Sorry mate, that’s just wrong.
Entry level suspension = Suntour
Just five grand for this Olympic ewinning entry level Suntour setup
Just five grand for this Olympic ewinning entry level Suntour setup
You know full well which products I mean
😛
Road bikes are an absolute rip off. I’m lucky enough to have an sworks sl7 with etap and I can comfortably say it’s absolutely no faster than the canyon I bought in 2015 costing a quarter of the price. And it’s heavier as well as it has disks.
The bottom of the range sl8 is 6k ffs. About 5 years ago it was half that price.
The other thing I find odd is that when you buy a top end road bike you seem to pay more than you would if you bought the frame and exactly the same components at RRP. Specialized for example seem to charge about a grand more than the sum of the parts simply to stick the thing together
You know full well which products I mean
Epicons maybe? There's a whole world of stuff under those.
Mid level kit is the sort of stuff a non cyclist would generally get on a (sensibly priced) bike they thought was expensive, it's not stuff which costs what a non cyclist would expect to get a whole bike for.
See deore as an example, it's the third teir of shimano kit yet we tend to think of it as work horse, how many levels of shimano mtb kit are there below deore?
How many drive trains are there from others before shimano even [still] produce a competitor product?
What's the mtb equivalent of claris? On a road bike there's still stuff under that you're actually likely to find on a bike in a bike shop (eg a shop for cyclists) not just decathlon and the like.
Don’t you ride singlespeed/fixed with no brakes?
Not for almost a year now. On a road bike now as into going faster at the moment.
The bottom of the range sl8 is 6k ffs. About 5 years ago it was half that price.
Yep, a quick check and in 2019 the SL6 comp (with Ultegra) was £2,900. Something has gone wrong somewhere...
The other thing I find odd is that when you buy a top end road bike you seem to pay more than you would if you bought the frame and exactly the same components at RRP. Specialized for example seem to charge about a grand more than the sum of the parts simply to stick the thing together
Even Specialized must hate dealing with integrated cables.
@dangeourbrain has covered it up there but
What makes me laugh is that motor bikes are MUCH better value than mountain bikes. Right now you can buy a brand new 2023 Beta Evo 250cc trials bike (that you could go and ride 90% of UK trials on out of the box) for £5,500 inc. VAT.
I also dont think this is quite the case. It does seem initially that way, and its mad you can buy a fully road legal powered motorcycle for three grand, but the counter to your argument is that you could quite easily ride 90% (100% really!?) of UK MTB trails on a £399 'out the box' Carrera
Perhaps instead, I’d argue that, beyond about £3000, there’s a negligible performance difference in road bikes, but with MTB that’s not the case
The marketing tells you that, but I'm not convinced.
I like a twiddled dial as much as the next person, and nice suspension does feel nicer. But I'm not convinced it's proportionally faster in real world.
The sharp end of the WCDH/EWS might eek out a second over 5 minutes on their factory spec 40's that have been tinkered by experts. They might make a few seconds on the 40's Vs the Marzocchi version or lower tier Boxxers.
But to average Joe, are we either good enough to exploit that difference, or do we even care?
Remember years ago Dirt tried to be more scientific in their testing and started a sort of Top-Gear power laps style system and gave up after a few months when every bike they tested was within about 5 seconds of their WC spec Intense. Two in particular, Spesh Enduro (the one with the low mounted shock) which they couldn't praise enough and dripping in the best Fox could supply at the time, the other a Giant Faith they slated and IIRC had base spec Manitou. One was 4 seconds off, the other 6 seconds.
The margin between a £1500 bike and a £15,000 bike are very slim IMO even off-road unless one has a motor).
Part of the price increases is just the crappy pound though, no?
In the USA, a bike that cost $5000 ten years ago, adjusted for inflation, would now cost about $6500. About 31% increase.
But throw in the decline of the pound, and that Trek or Specialized has gone from £3,000, to £5,250. A 73% rise, but only for Brits. If the pound was still at 2013 levels, it would be more like £4k...
The bolloxology cycle turns more slowly for road, so it’s a less frequent purchase.
It's felt pretty fast recently!
It’s felt pretty fast recently!
Do you mean genuinely or for a sport which gets remarkably upset when you deviate a bit far from the turn of the last century.
You'll want pneumatic tyres soon.
the cost of high-end things for any sport is based purely on the disposable income of those who take part.
BMX? everyones a poor teenager, a fully bling bike is under a grand
Road? Fully of middle-age-middle-managers with large wodges of disposable. Lets charge £15k
Golf? Hifi speaker cable? all super expensive. Nintendo switch? Super cheap.
BMX? everyones a poor teenager, a fully bling bike is under a grand
I was rather surprised how much you could spend on an entry level bmx by the recommendations on that other thread
the cost of high-end things for any sport is based purely on the disposable income of those who take part.
Absolutely this... the manufacturers and marketers will milk us for as much as they can. No idea what their actual margins are but I would guess pretty high.
I stand by my point about trials and enduro motorbikes, there really isn't anything you can do to trials bikes other than change springs and add some blingy titanium bits for looks. You could genuinely buy a £6k 300cc trials bike today, fettle suspension for maybe £200 and ride the Scottish Six Days trial on it next April (skill permitting). Enduro bikes, sure, you'd want mousses and suspension tuning, but for sub £10k you could have a very competitive bike at national level.
and ride the Scottish Six Days trial on it next April (skill permitting)
Sure, but skill permitting, I could ride val di sole DH on a £150 BSO.
Where as for "10k" I could ride it on "the same" bike that the world cup winner rode it on a week earlier.
Heck I could drive round monza or Silverstone perfectly adequately in a £500 bangernomics bargain, skill permitting I could possibly put in respectable time too. Otoh I couldn't buy an F1 car even if I had the cash.
What would it cost to buy this year's podium topping enduro/trials bike?
Enduro bikes, sure, you’d want mousses and suspension tuning, but for sub £10k you could have a very competitive bike at national level.
For a few k you could buy a road bike or mountain bike that would be competitive at national level (for 10 you could buy a road bike you actually can't ride in stock because it's too light).
You don't have to spend 10 to 20k to buy a competition level push bike, sure if you're chasing 10ths or 100ths that 30k track bike is possibly going to find them for you but it's proper halo level stuff at that point.
It’s felt pretty fast recently!
Not really, Di2 has taken 20 years to become mainstream (or 30 if you include Mavic Zap/Browning and all the other evolutionary dead ends) discs have taken 10+ to be accepted, maybe more, or ~40 if you include the early shimano discs. Tubeless has been around 20 odd years offroad, and i was experimenting with it on CX in the early 00s, and i wasn't the only one. Think the "official" launch was 05 or 06.
Same with carbon, bigger tyres being faster unless the surface is smooth as glass, integrated bar/stem, concealed cables. They've all been around or about in one form or another for a couple of decades, or more.
They've just got really expensive recently.
discs have taken 10+ to be accepted, maybe more
Are they accepted? I thought they were still more devisive for roadies than ebikes are for [s] grumpy curmudgeonly old men with nothing better to do than get upset about than other people having fun [/s] mtbers.
I totally agree with what core is saying.
There will be very little difference to the bikes Bou, Raga, Busto are riding and winning World Trials on to a bike you can walk into a shop and buy for a lot less than a top end road bike.
I raced British and World Enduros on a bike that was pretty much stock. Again cheaper than a lot of eebers.
If I wanted to get back in to it I could buy a new Enduro bike throw a Rekluse clutch in it and a couple of mousses and it'd still be me that was the limiting factor not the bike. All of that would still be a hell of a lot cheaper than an S Works eeber.
My mates that still do Trials and Enduros think it hilarious how much people are paying for pushbikes.
The expense in Enduro is keeping the things running...
I think that for a lot of people who buy high end bikes, they're a status symbol.
I could buy a new Enduro bike throw a Rekluse clutch in it and a couple of mousses and it’d still be me that was the limiting factor not the bike.
To be honest, I could spend £50 on a BSO from Facebook and try racing it and I'd still be the limiting factor 😂
Are they accepted?
They're mainstream. 90% of pro racers across the board are on them.
I mean, i like my rim braked bikes, but discs are now here and not going anywhere. My latest road bike is Di2, Disc and clearance for 33mm tyres...
clearance for 33mm tyres…
Ahhh, a gravel bike then 😉
Ahhh, a gravel bike then 😉
Nah, for some reason gravel needs 2".
Won't even take UCI CX tyres comfortably.
Nah, for some reason gravel needs 2″.
So you've got a good reason to spend 9k on a 1998 hardtail but redesigned* with a through axle and a decent rigid fork instead of just wearing spd sandals and using a tourer?
Do you mean genuinely or for a sport
Genuinely, mostly about the various new BB and axle standards
So you’ve got a good reason to spend 9k on a 1998 hardtail but redesigned* with a through axle and a decent rigid fork instead of just wearing spd sandals and using a tourer?
Already got a 1996 hardtail and a 1998 one (in pieces), and a 2002 one with a rigid fork. And a tourer.
No SPD sandals though, not anymore.
You don’t have to spend 10 to 20k to buy a competition level push bike, sure if you’re chasing 10ths or 100ths that 30k track bike is possibly going to find them for you but it’s proper halo level stuff at that point.
Yeh this! Look at Josh Tarling. He was on a bog standard giant TCR road bike, ripping the UK national scene apart as a junior - and got signed directly to Ineos. I can't see at £9,000 pinarello having made any difference to his performance.
I also agree with all the people saying lightweight is what actually FEELS great. (Road) bikes have gotten SO bloated. Sub 7kg was the measure of a £2500 bike ~7-10 years ago. The past 5 years, you could barely buy a sub 7kg bike for ANY price (under 10 grand). Absolutely absurd! All these choppers buying 'fast bikes' when they do one wobbly ride a week haha.
Bikes are just silly expensive now. Sat there looking at the queue in Morzine and thinking how many €£s worth of bikes were lined up.
Same goes for the roadies you pass.... Lots of mullah for two wheels!
People seem to forget the ‘engine’ is the rider ! No £15k superbike is going to make you faster than someone fitter on a £1,500 bike ! By all means get a nice bike, I’ve got some too, it’s their money. But splurging an arm and a leg on the latest part, to make the bike 500g less, won’t improve your speed up a hill, that’s down to you, and where the hard work starts. Shed a few kg of blubber and you’ll fly.
Always enjoy hanging on to roadie on a climb. Was riding a col the other day and the roadie couple were surprised to see me sitting on their wheel...
Always enjoy hanging on to roadie on a climb. Was riding a col the other day and the roadie couple were surprised to see me sitting on their wheel…
Where's the enjoyment? You are clearly fitter than them if you are on a less suited bike but just as fast (unless they are not trying as much as you of course).
I am faster than many on the road and go past them like they are not moving when going uphill but likewise get passed by other road riders who are faster than me. Only really matters if you are in a race and you are interested in winning.
the cost of high-end things for any sport is based purely on the disposable income of those who take part.
Absolutely this… the manufacturers and marketers will milk us for as much as they can. No idea what their actual margins are but I would guess pretty high.
The thing is there is still some degree of market forces going on that push prices/profit down, particularly with a luxury good like a performance bike
So I'd guess with road cycling something weird happeneds were unecessary amounts of money are poored into marketing and marginal technological developments, rather than the prices just coming down (given road bikes' relative simplicity)
It's an interesting question, because I can look at my (then) £1000 Trek Superfly hardtail and compare it to my (then) £1750 aluminium road bike, and it is quite blatantly better value from a function/materials/R&D perspective i.e. suspension forks instead of rigid carbon, bigger/chunkier/heavily treaded tyres instead of skinny smooth tyres, hydraulic disc brakes instead of rim brakes* etc. Any yet, marketing has obviously done it's job as I still look at the road bike and think it's great value!
BUUUUUUT is that because the road bike feels so fast (because it's light?) and smooth (because expensive smooth supply tyres and compliant frame) and quiet (because high end, well adjusted gears and high end, well adjusted rim brakes that never rub or squeal)? That's worth a lot to me, even if it didn't actually cost the manufacturers anything to 'build in' to the bike.
For what it's worth, good road bikes don't need to be expensive, I've replaced the (£1750 6 years ago) aluminium road bike with a somewhat boutique carbon Italian equivalent, total build cost (Ultegra, rim, 1550g shallow Fulcrum wheels, 7.6kg with pedals cages and computer mount) of £2700 but it's lighter, stiffer, prettier and more aero (and yes, handbuilt carbon from Italy instead of triple butted aluminium from Taiwan, if that matters). I doubt it gives anything away to a £6k disc braked and e-geared super bike other than I guess the advantages of deeper carbon wheels and the very rider specific advantages (if applicable) of discs and e-gears.
*actually I still think hydraulic disc brakes on road bikes are shockingly poor value given how cheap and how function e.g. a set of Deores on an MTB can be.
So I’d guess with road cycling something weird happeneds were unecessary amounts of money are poured into marketing and marginal technological developments, rather than the prices just coming down (given road bikes’ relative simplicity)
^ Sort of what he said actually
There's some road great bikes on eBay around £500 mark if you are happy with rim brakes. My old used Isaac Kelvin was £400 a few years ago, if I spent some money on a lighter set of wheels or some deeper rims it would be a real weapon. As it is I can go for a group ride with folks on Aethos', or Propels or fancy Cervelo's and not be held back.
