Hello evening crowd, just a thought thats been niggling me about bike setup at the mo. It's recommended you try and get your setup as *cough* 'dialled' as possible to maximised comfort/fun. However unless you pay the money or have found your ideal setup surely its a question of trial and error buying new bars, stems, (frames?) until you've found it... surely this is quite expensive? Even if you manage to sell on the parts you dont use.
I personally just got used to my first mtb position, then switched to wider bars/shorter stem as someone on here was selling them cheap and found it much better and i'd saved up. Now i'm thinking i should experiment and try a couple of things as my rides are heading into the 10hrs for a day trip - but the decent kit (buy once n all that 😀 ) would mean selling bodily parts on the black market to fund what would be a black hole for cash for minimal/no gain.
How much of you just got 'used' to what your bike came with? and for those looking for their ideal setup how are you doing it?
You need to be 2 clicks to the left. 🙂
Speak to Hora, he knows about this sort of thing...
Never ride a bike that's better than yours! Instant end of happiness.
I do a lot of tweaking, just because it's a part of the hobby for me, I like thinking about what the bike does and how it changes, and the whole buying/selling... Over time you can get a pretty good feel for it, it took me one run on the last bike to figure out that it wanted higher bars frinstance, that would have taken ages when I was building my first bike.
You've basically got to either embrace "perfectly good" or "Endless improvement", there's not really any middle ground 😉 Nothing is ever perfect.
haha, all fair comments! Northwind my questions is how do you afford to do the very tweaking you do though? I know that i'd like a slightly longer stem/flat bars at the moment but they cost! (lowly student ya see)
The same question applies to frames... on STW theres much talk about personal preference concerning angles/lengths etc. How do you experiment so much?! 😕
Taken me nearly a year but I've got me covert spot on, just need to put my old grips back on as I was getting really bad arm pump
If you're normal height/weight/proportions then I imagine it's easy. If you're built like an orangutan then getting your setup right matters quite a lot.
I think after a while when you get a new bike you can feel what changes you want to make to suit you best. This is definitely what I felt with my El Guapo.
Without wishing to sound trite, experience is gained with time. I define wisdom as 'applied knowledge'. Which kinda relates to one of your questions as to: how do you know?
As far as affording goes, given your student status, I guess it's going to be tricky for you to acquire the really nice stuff at the mo, unless you sacrifice some of your study time with part time work? Summer holidays are here for you students, so hopefully your desire for improving your bike is giving you the motivation to earn some bike funds.
Northwind mentioned that he likes to buy and sell stuff which in turn enables him to try out different bits. this is possibly a good way for you to go.
This is going through my mind at the moment too ! I've been trying to make a cove hummer suit me as I was getting a bad back and aching wrists which I nearly cured with higher stem and riser bars. I've just got a soveriegn which straight away doesn't give me wrist ache but I'm unsure as to the differences between the two frames. As its been said above its all trial and error with a little experience thrown in , and the collective hive knowledge. Parts can be very cheap on here second hand and I'm sure you will gain enough expertise to know one way or another about set ups.
Thanks all, thats very useful! Indeed i do 'feel' things are out of place i was wondering whether people 'knew' what to change or whether it was trial and error. My current plan is to trade/buy cheap on hear then use part time to get the nice stuff once i've dialled my position in.
Do the same answers apply to bike frames as well? presumably you'll 'feel' your best position is in different places on different geometry frames?