[Closed] Is it me or is mountain biking

It's cheaper than golf.............and 100 times more fun, too. 😀

It's as cheap or expensive as you want it to be.

Sites like this and mags would have you believe that you couldn't possibly have any fun unless you spend X amount, but it's just going out and enjoying what you have.

B0ll0x to the purple, 650b, narrow wide, carbon lite, 1x10 29ers...

Yup prices of some things has just gone silly.

I'm just a magpie who likes shiny things.

I agree and it's why I never buy anything substantial new, always 2nd hand! Only things I pay new prices for (and am still not too happy about) are tyres, grips and brake pads.

Even just standard stuff costs a load. I've overdrawn every month and it's down purely to buying bike bits. Thing is I'd go mad if I couldn't get out to cycle 2/3 times a week, can't go back now, so meh what can you do. You're a long time dead..... lets ride!

Simple economic...

Agree everything is over priced now, for example used to be able to get an XT rear mech for about £37, 5 years ago, now witll cost you about £60. Prices do go up for raw materials and what not but as demand increase you may expect these factors to level each other out.

I have started using ebay and buying second hand stuff as a result.

It's the punters fault though, they pay what the the suppliers charge and then grumble amongst themselves* that they are being ripped off. If demand declined then prices would come down too.

*or on here

Spokes! Why have spokes become so bloody expensive?

Its very easy to get carried away isn't it. When i was a nipper, i went everywhere on a £50 bmx. Then a £100 Apollo. Cheap but a huge amount of fun. In 1998 after lots of begging my dad bought me a secondhand P7. It cost a lot for a used rigid but it is still good and rideable now so good value for money.

I get annoyed when you pay good money and the product just doesn't last.

I just buy the low end cheapy stuff now. E.g. Used to get top spec Revelations, SLX minimum etc. Now I'm on Sektors with Deore.

Works just as well TBH, doesn't look as good though.

So you have bought one brake and nothing else in the last 5 years? How can that be too expensive?

It is if you have to have the latest 'innovations' and kit but otherwise I reckon it's pretty reasonable. Bikes have been decent for a while so you can always pick up stuff that's a couple of years old or second hand for very reasonable prices.

It's really as expensive as you make it.

there are lots of opportunities to buy expensive shiny bits, it was ever thus.

bikes are cheap.

this:

[img] [/img]

is £1500 (including 29er tax)

if you chuck it the bin after 3 years it's still cheaper than gym membership.

bargain.

Its a capitalist marketplace, the vendors prices will expand into the market.
You can blame the rest of us for paying too much..

When was it cheaper?

The gap has widened. You can get a wheelset that is probably lighter, stronger and better quality than many high-end wheelsets of fifteen years ago for a hundred and fifty quid. Or you can spend four hundred quid on a rear hub and a thousand on a carbon rim.

Deore kit is fantastic. Superstar, CRC, and loads of other places sell parts cheaply, and folks like On-One/Dialled etc do frames at brilliant prices. You can buy cheaply, and get a more than decent bike for your money

But it's definitely got harder to be satisfied with a bike that's five or six notches down the ladder from the ones in the mags and the adverts. There's a powerful mix of progress and marketing that's marking you feel that way. I know I've been totally suckered by it.

I try and keep the spares bin topped up whenever I see good deals on kit online (chains, cassettes etc). If you shop around then keen prices are still available.

not really, I rather ride a modern £1k bike than a 15 year old £1k bike.

(Both New Obviously)

mid 2007 you got 240-250 yen to the pound, now you get 160. Have a think about what that does to the cost of imported goods.

No better if you look at Dollars, Euros etc

Yes you can get cheap stuff, you always could, just cheap now is list a few years back.

I'm very happy with my bike at the moment. If I had just bought everything I have from scratch rather than getting to the final spec via different parts/gears/wheels etc it would actually have been relatively cheap, but I like trying out different kit/setups/shiny new things. There's always bargains to be had both in some of the on-line shops and 2nd hand on here. I was starting to think I'd never buy a complete brand-new bike again but then I look at the Canyon bikes. Well-specced bikes at pretty damn good prices. I think it's just the pro/high-earner level stuff that has gone mad price-wise. For Average joes like me there's great "cheap" kit around.

It is if you have to have the latest 'innovations' and kit but otherwise I reckon it's pretty reasonable. Bikes have been decent for a while so you can always pick up stuff that's a couple of years old or second hand for very reasonable prices.

It's really as expensive as you make it.

Yep. Kinda what happens when you import everything and you devalue your currency.

Kit i not really more expenive now relative to income it is ut that incomes are squeezed by other things.

Spoke can be cheap. Sapim Race in silver are £0.45 in places I do them for that so it not just me. Alpina spokes are even cheaper. DT Swiss are expensive and if you have factory wheel then buy those next time as spokes for those are silly money.

I ride a variety of old MTB's with 7 or 8 speed drivetrains this keeps the costs down. KMC Z82 chains are cheap as are HG41 cassettes. You can put together a very capable MTB for under £500 buy buying a older frame and kitt it out with older parts. My favourite are XT M730/M735 parts from the early to mid ninties. If you are willing to build the wheels yourself then total build costs can be small. I mean the parts for XM317 rims 64 Sapim Race spokes and XT T780 rim brake hubs is about £140 and that is all new parts All you have to do is build the wheels and they will be very good ones.

If you want the latest tech as I do for another bike then you have to pay, that bike has cost me a fortune even at trade prices (which sometimes are no beter than online pricing).

I think mountain biking is relatively expensive but on balance worth it. I walk the same hills which is free and generally more social as it's easier to talk and you can also officially access places where the bike is forbidden, but biking I can cover more ground and it's more of a buzz.

You can't complain about cost if you're buying a hope brake 😉

As others have said, there's some very decent stuff that can be had for comparatively little. Wonder if someone who's been in the game a long time (20-30yrs) wouldn't mind inflation adjusting what they spent on kit back then vs now...

"Hope/too expensive"- well, durr.

We're all half-daft on here, we make mountain biking expensive but you can get a phenomenal bike today for the cost of a dismal one 20 years ago (even leaving aside inflation).

Agree everything is over priced now, for example used to be able to get an XT rear mech for about £37, 5 years ago, now witll cost you about £60.

You can have an SLX for £35 which is almost certainly better than the XT one from 5 years ago.

And CRC are doing an XT rear mech for £42 - which barely an inflationary rise on your £37 5 years ago.

I think the marketing has just got better, so people feel compelled to buy expensive stuff just for the label, when the reality is that the new low end stuff is better and cheaper than the old high end kit.

OP
If it makes you so unhappy,find a cheaper hobby and stop whining

Oh, and you may be confusing things you want ,with things you need.

HTH 🙂

1300 quid
[img] [/img]

Buy secondhand, and be happy with last year's technology.

i reckon the new replacement cost of my main mtb is probably around £4000, yet it cost me about £1500 spread over a matter of years by replacing parts as and when required.
Similarly for my other mtb and my road bike.

One of the hallmarks of late capitalism (the name for economic period we are in now) is the notion of perpetual technological evolution / planned redundancy.

To keep us buying / consuming / spending, corporations need to keep bringing out 'innovations' and we are cultured from birth by the advertising industry into thinking that we need the newest (i.e. most expensive) kit or we simply aren't as good as our mates.

My grandparents used to cycle all over the North Yorks moors in the 40's and 50's on heavy steel bikes with 3 gears. They had a great time.

How many dentists / solicitors on here have spanked £4k plus on a 170mm travel, Kashmina-coated trail munching machine to do the same?

+1 for Deore kit by the way. Long-lasting and reasonably priced.

I am the opposite,

I have hardly any disposable income, I should be saving for various life events, however I just can't help buying lots of mountain bike things.

Help!!

stop whining

I think this is the truth of the matter

Thanks fasthaggis

I've overdrawn every month and it's down purely to buying bike bits.

😯

I think this thread is a brilliant example of the issue,

Two people have posted £1000+ plus bikes as "great value". One at 1300, t'other at 1500.

To the average person, spending over £1k on a BIKE is absolutely [b]mental[/b].

To us it seems like good value as it's a capable bike compared to a £5k + frame/bike.

However that doesn't mean [b]it's good value[/b].

Whether you like to admit it or not, it's still a £1300/1500 BIKE. A lot of peoples CARS don't cost that.

It's the same in a lot of sports, someone already mentioned golf.

A friend wanted to buy her partner a bike for his birthday, and asked for my help. I asked what her budget was, she said "max, MAX - £200".

Just gives perspective on it all, doesn't it?

My bike is my main hobby, just like some golfers I know. As it's my only real vice I don't mind paying for the bits want/need. I like fiddling with the bike, trying different things but I won't spend more than I can comfortably afford.
I've been wheeling and dealing on second hand stuff for years now. I brought a bike back from Australia in 2001 and have been swapping parts/frames etc ever since. That bike cost me £500 s/h and the one I'm riding now has probably come in at around £1500 so it's cost me about £1000 in 12 years..pretty happy with that considering the bike I now have compared to the one I brought back with me.

With the right scouting on the internet and older stock in your lbs, you can get amazing deals, but it will take up more of your time. A friend built up a decent 29er hardtail (full xt brakes and transmission, xtr hubs, mavic rims thomson stem/seatpost, reba forks) by patiently buying sstuff brand new from ebay or sale items from german bike online stores, and he did it for £700 in total. It just took a bit longer and time to look, but very much worth it in the end.

Also accept that a late 2000's 9-speed mtb isn't very far away at all from a brand new bike in terms of performance, but costs comparatively little to upgrade/maintain - and enjoy!

I seem to be surrounded by people buying buying carbon mtbs...Scalpels, Flashes, Santa Cruz bouncy 29er thingys etc. Someone I know put a £150 cassette on his 'hack bike' (or so I am told).

I'm getting left behind on a 1st gen Swift and a Sir9. Neither of these are bad bikes and the Niner was the recipient of (for me) a big spend but I am quite happy to run s/h on the Swift and 9 speed stuff on the Niner.

It is easy to get sucked into the trap that you have to spend money because everyone else is. I'd like to but tbh....let's say I was once a roadie and old habits die hard!

Inflation adjusted, I don't think cost has changed much over the last decade but quality certainly has...for the better.

Yep, to those on a very tight budget, to post up links to £1k-plus bikes is a joke. My car cost £2000 and is into its second year. My MTB cost me £120 on ebay (Carerra Vulcan) and I've had to make do with it, despite heavy wheels and finishing kit, because I'm just waiting for the right deal (funnily enough, I posted yesterday in the Wanted section, specifying a £200 max budget, hoping someone might have something better than a Carrera Vulcan going spare).

I still have fun on the Vulcan, even did the Beast on it, much to the surprise of a father/son duo who expressed surprise at the bottom that I did it on a HT. Truth be told, I'd lost the path of the Dragon's Back and had to join a route - black it was. It's glorious, though, to overtake people on multi-thousand pound bikes on my jaunts in the Peaks.

I also have to run a commuter/baby wagon and a road bike. Again, these were £60 and £200 respectively, second-hand from mates. I get my kit from Aldi and Decathlon. If I had the disposable income I'd spend more, especially on a lighter MTB, but every outgoing is money not going in to the household, for which I feel very guilty. Yet if I didn't have my bikes I couldn't get around, have fun or stay sane, so it's a cost the house has to bear.

More fool the spendthrifts who splurge thousands on bikes despite their lack of competence on a bike! I suppose it's money that otherwise might have gone on cars or golf, so maybe it's a good thing. Yet it seems to me that some of that sense of ready cash in the new customer base is driving prices up across the board.

To the average person, spending over £1k on a BIKE is absolutely mental.

Yes, but the average person doesn't ride as a hobby!

Just gives perspective on it all, doesn't it?

Not really. The OP was asking if biking is too expensive [i]now[/i], vs back in the day. You get a more capable bike for less money these days, hence the answer is no.

Stuff is expensive and rubbish. I get one ride out of a chain then it's goosed according to the park tool. Brake pads can last one ride if it's wet. I could go on...

brake pads last one ride, how long are your rides? a week?

brake pads last one ride
I had this happen too in the peaks in winter with formula brakes..........sold the brakes