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Carbon rims - only took second Lakeland ride to destroy - probably don't suit for my weight and (lack of) riding style... been back on the trusty EX471's for past few years now.
Not a bike bit but a whole bike.
I wanted something a bit more bouncy than my (then) current FSer and managed to get hold of a bike that I'd always like the look of but never thought I'd own, a Mondraker Dune.
Hated every second of it. although it was the perfect size for me it never felt like it fitted. Was fine going down hill although not at all exciting, but going back up, and more weirdly on the flat, it was an absolute slog, seemed to suck up any power put into the pedals and not push it out afterwards.
And then it tried to kill me at BPW so I got shot of it as quickly as I could afterwards.
I'm now riding my GT Sensor, which has about 2/3 of the travel but fits like a glove and rides like a dream.
I often ponder if my Travers single speed specific ti frame is ‘worth’ TEN TIMES the cost of the scandal it replaced…. but it IS a lovely frame!
@drp if it helps you justify it a bit more, I've found myself looking very hard at one of those over the last week. I've even added it to basket twice...
Regret buying? I think a pike u-turn fork, it was great but the spring was never quite right for me, it wasn't really what I wanted when I bought it and I never got past that I think. It ended up being sold (for a loss obviously) and replaced with the DT fork I'd been toying with at the time which had gone up £300 in the interim so the pike probably cost me about £500 to never quite be happy with it.
Nothing on the mtb as it is all seems to be useful (well the Ti rotor bolts may be the exception), or looks fab (Hope coloured trinkets on the seatpost and steerer) but on the road bike…
Carbon wheels - they are lovely and I think I g o a bit faster but not £1000 faster.
Finned rotors - maybe I get less brake fade, but I didn’t really get much fade anyway
Carbon blade pedals - maybe they are light and yes my feet do feel planted so I can “get the power down”, but I’m no Sagan
Token ninja BB - yes it is easier to fit and applies a threaded approach to press fit and the solid axle seems to make things stiffer (so again I can get the power down 💪) and it doesn’t creak (but then the last one didn’t)
Would be better to spend more time losing chub than gaining stuff.
Enough I’m off to search bike bargains
Agree with I9, i had a couple of sets over the years, completely underwhelming and noisy, have been DT ever since.
Back in the olden days, any magnesium fork that would fizz away in a UK winter, or X-Lite part that was just built to be ugly or fail early, Hope Cranksets, look great, but Hope really do try to be the apple of the bike world with toolings and standards that are not compatible with the normal tools!
The custom steel frame i had from the US that ended up getting a fatal dent in the top tube after about 8 months of ownership :o(
After 30 plus years of this caper, I've had loads of stuff not perform or last as it should but the biggest regret was probably my Intense Tracer V1 (Horst link 100mm) frame. Nothing wrong with it as such, but at the time I also had a 115mm coil spring Uzzi so the tracer was hardly ever written. Lesson learned, second bike should be very different to the first.
Some great posts, and it's clear there are a few of us that spend money somewhat silly.. haha.
Cheers for the video link to the i9 quieten your hub above. It's almost as if they are expecting people to get annoyed and want to quieten it. Mine are the hydra and even in that video it sounds annoying. Strange how I've liked it for a while, until I bought a set!
Will get some of that grease and see how long the thing stays quiet. The Torch hub sounds quite like Hope don't mind that at all.
Interesting that there are one or two comments about the higher end Sram cassettes. I don't put that in this category tbh, as I love the X01 eagle cassette on my other bike. Engineering wise, the looks and weight are very impressive and so far it is working really well.
That is more - stupid expensive but love it. 😉
I've quietened hubs with grease (DT stuff) before. Lasts a few rides before enough of the grease gets pushed out to return to normal noisiness.
many many times. 2 specific thing spring to mind.
a pair of Nukeproof carbon hubs in the early 90's. axle sheared on 1st ride. both hubs died withing 6 month.
a pair of handbuilt Pete matthews wheels. cost me about £500 in the early/mis 90's
1st descent down a mountain above courcheval, my chain jumps onto the inside of the cassette ( no plastic guard ) and buzzsawed through every spoke on the hub, causing the wheel to collapse.
my present Ti Fargo is also a thing i look at and think is it worth 10 times more than a on one frame which i have happily ridden over everything in the past.
Part of me also thinks I’d be be better off in innocence of nice bike kit, if I never tried stuff above lower to mid range, I’d never know what I was missing but now I’ve tasted that sweet nectar, it’s difficult to go back.
I bought a pair of XTR SPD pedals way back (something like 2005) and immediately regretted it, for all the normal reasons; only a bit lighter than 520, same mechanism, wouldn't be able to feel the difference, scuff them up on my shoes....al that.
Still doing sterling service on my Scandal, although a bit of me thinks 520 would have lasted just as well. 😁
Race Face carbon cranks, proper shit!
Speaking of i9 hubs...
I spunked close to two grand on a set of reserve rims on i9 hubs!
Again, probably not worth 4 times to cost of a decent alu set...but they ARE lovely and they do feel both light AND strong.....!
DrP
Carbon Fibre mudguards. They sounded like a good idea at the time. Drill your own holes, poor mounting and rattled. Since replaced with PDWs via even more broken rear SKS P35's. The PDWs are superb.
28 spoke Crests on xc3s .
Not because they were bad wheels but because.....after a couple of seasons spares were fun.
Yes pdws one expense I don't regret.
Don't even regret my Rohloff even though it's shite for the most part.
Also regret almost any tire made by continental.
Love my Hydra hubs, love the sound too. If you want to quieten them, just use a bit more grease in the freehub. I've just serviced mine and took them apart again to wipe some grease out. They were too quiet 😉
I use Dumonde Tech Freehub grease BTW
This takes some thinking and I still argue whether each purchase was a mistake:
1) Tioga Disk Drive - it was flexible, it deteriorated, it broke, it cost loads. But ooooh, the rumble...
2) Powertap Pro - 9 torque tubes in 4 years. £££££ and shitty warranty/service
3) Hope hubs- they work, but....they're not really 'trick' anymore
4) tioga high mileage road tyre - never do I want to repeat power sliding in a wet road race at Thruxton. I kid you not, the tyre lethal.
5) ritchey was seatpost - the saddle never stayed level.
That's it for now.
Kudos to Onza for the buzzsaw chain ring. I never did wear it out
Ps. If you hate loud freehubs, stay clear of Newmen hubs. Utterly brilliant hubs but louder than that a vulcan lighting up the after burners 🔥
Bullet Bros tensioner and Crud claw.
I don't especially regret it but my previous full sus was a top end YT (before they were well known). It had top spec parts all over it. Mostly everything worked fine but when anything did break or wear out it was crazy expensive to repair or replace (I couldn't face downgrading parts). It also meant upgrading was silly money. I know you can't buy an high end bike and expect cheap running costs but it was very cheap as a full build.
It says something that it's been replaced with a bike running utilitarian parts, no carbon and no bling.
DT Swiss and Shimano do a specific freehub grease, not sure exactly what the difference is from other specialist grease but they are expensive so must be good!
Not mega expensive in comparison to some on here but for me, by far the purchase i regret the most was a set of the yellow Crossmax Enduro wheels for my old 26" Alpine 160. No idea what they were thinking with the narrower rear rim and lower spoke count. I ended up having a front rim built up on an old grey crossmax rear hub to make a more acceptable matching rear (saw a few mavic sponsored EWS riders doing the same) after way too many failings with the rear wheel - on multiple occassions i had the spokes eject from the hub flange on heavy landings! The freehub slipped from new as well on the original hub and the tyres they insisted on including (and charging for) were shite as well. Put me off Mavic for life.
An intense tracer frame in 2010. Sourced from a “I’m not dodgy and these are fully warrantied chap”, to be fair there was nothing wrong with it but I couldn’t get the suspension working to my satisfaction ever, including a TfTuned shock personalisation and then a conversion to coil. It always felt horrible to ride and was a money pit.
Im thinking ahead here, the cheapskate in me wont accept that spending over £20 for Swiss Stop pads to replace the Uberbike " E Bike specific"🙄 brake pads that howl like a banshee but are half the price will be money well spent 🤔 Quieter maybe but last twice as long at twice the price? Doubt it somehow.
A set of Hope wheels.
Not for the hub or the rim. The spokes. The bike shop did me a deal on some straight pull versions they had in stock rather than the J-bend ones I was after and as I was in need of wheels fast I bought them. This was the early days of 650B so I knew that spares would be a bit harder to find, let alone straight pull, but they came with a few spare spokes so a bit of forward planning would mitigate that. Cue the fifth ride out the rear mech being pushed into the spokes and taking out 8 spokes, I had spares for 4. That rear wheel then spent a few weeks in the shop waiting for more spokes and the wheel builder to fix, where in the meantime I bought a regularly spoked rear wheel from eBay to keep me rolling. Sold the Hopes at a big loss a few months later when I got fed up of continuously snapping spokes in the rear wheel most rides, always where they entered the hub. The emergency wheel was a cheap OEM one but was absolutely solid for the whole time I had it.
Somebodies making far too much money along the way with this stuff.
£15 for a thimble full of what is probably relatively simple generic grease.
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Same old story, supply and demand I suppose.
Will have a play over the weekend and see if it quietens the hub down for more than 10 minutes.
I wouldn't spend as much on bits now probably as I have in the past, although I wouldn't say I regret that I did (although I've never been at the really spendy end of the spectrum).
The only exception is a pair of red Hope QR skewers (to match my hubs, obvs). Looked fantastic but were pretty terrible at actually, you know, holding your wheels in reliably and without fuss. They were a Bad Buy and I went back to Shimano pretty quickly.
No real regrets I don't think as most of my 'nice' stuff is 2nd hand.
However, although I really like my Enve/Chris King wheelset, I couldn't imagine paying full whack for them. I find it very hard to find any way they're significantly 'better' than a £500 pair I must say.