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A DW Turner 5spot. The previous HL 5 spot is arguably the best bike I've ever owned. After it died in a crash and replacement parts were no longer available I had a new 5Spot via insurance.
It should have been better in every way, but it wasn't.
I've been lucky enough not to have had any bikes I've REALLY hated, though I suspect if I went back to some of them now I'd realise how bad they actually were.
My first full sus was a Giant VT, in size large which was flipping massive. It really was like a gate. And I actually have quite little legs. I never gelled with it, the shock was knackered and I reckon I'd hate it now. It was free though, and felt like an upgrade at the time.
I also had a Cove G-Spot (the original with the pivot around the BB). That was rubbish too. Short, tall and steep(ish). It was probably great for hucking off cliffs, but for riding around the Peak District it was exhausting riding up and surprisingly scary going down. I bought it for an Alps trip, did one ride either side then sold it. I still have the coil Lyriks I ran on it though, doing sterling service on a 456 that I love.
Finally, the bike I hated most when I got it was (drum roll...) a Cotic Rocket. It just felt sketchy and uncomposed over anything remotely lumpy. Turns out that's what a shock with no damping whatsoever can do... Swapped that out for a shiny new CCDB Air and it was transformed, and is now probably my favourite bike. Currently building it back up and getting a little bit giddy.
Kona Explosif.
ticked all the boxes, lightweight steel, Kona (when they made decent bikes) I was hugely excited to have it. In all honesty It couldn't have ever lived up to my expectations for it. It was dull and stolid, was expecting liveliness and skip, but it was boring and lifeless. Lasted 1 ride before I replaced it with a Cove Hummer.
I sold a mk 1 Soul to fund a dialled morning glory because titanium is so much better than steel. Weighed more than my orange 5 and was deader than a dead thing. Being shameless I spread the misery and swapped it on here for another Soul, guy messaged me later and offered to buy the cotic back.
My Specialized Allez Elite road bike.
It went from old faithful commuter tgat was also surprisingly fun at the weekend (for a bike with mudguards and heavy commuter tyres) but itbis now the one bike that seems most able to provoke crippling back pain on any given ride.
There must be some weird quirk of fit or maybe even frame compliance which makes it so miserable, but I just don't ride it any more ☹ Need to try and kiss and make up, my other road bike is just impractical for riding through Scottish summer it seems!
I'd say these two:
Velo Orange Camargue - like many here, on paper the bike looked perfect in paper: a HD commuter, bikepacker and dirt tourer. In reality it was a flop, super super flexy and the fork was misaligned in almost 10mm. When confronted with the fork issue Velo Orange first denied it, then said it was within tolerance, then in the end told me not to worry as it would have no impact in my riding experience. Luckily the dealer stepped forward and offered me a replacement from a different brand.
Specialized Stumpjumper Evo - absolutely gorgeous bike, super comfortable and cornered like no other. But the very low anti-squat made it climb like a pig, the suspension kinematics are awkward to say at least and the ultra low BB was a hazard on anything but a flow trail. The worst by far was durability. After an year of riding 2x a week (not even a full year as it included the first lockdowns) it went through a couple of bent shock bolts, several dead pivot bearings and creaks everywhere. My current Bird AM9 V3 is under much heavier use (4-5 rides per week, harder riding) since July and its like new
Dialled Bikes Prince Albert was the worst I owned. Heavy, dead feeling and high bb meant it was very unstable.
The worst I rode though was my mates Klein Mantra, that full suss thing that had a single pivot mounted on the top tube. It rode like it had a hinge in the middle of the bike, because it did!
Slot dropout inbred circa 2011.
It felt dead and the wheel never sat correctly (even with chain tugs).
PX Kaffenback.
Dull, just so dull.
Heavy, slow moving, dull looking and just sucked the joy out of riding.
Snap. Replaced as a winter bike by a De Rosa Milanino Training. Lovely bike.
On one 456. A brick. Was hot pink though, that made it more bearable.
Raleigh Chipper. Absolutely pathetic for 5' drop offs.
Two spring to mind, one was just poor and the other was completely and utterly useless.
Back in my youth I bought a Saracen Rufftrax, just at the point where they were turning from decent bikes into BSO's. It was ok but very heavy and sapped all my motivation out for MTB that I moved over to road instead for a while. Never got rid of it, even after I replaced it with a much better Carrera Kraken (both bikes bought while I worked at Halfords while at college) so it sat in my parent's shed for over 20 years getting wheeled out occasionally for a ride down the local fields. That was until they got flooded last year and the insurer's gave me £200 for it!
That bike pales into insignificance compared to the the Specialized FSR XC Comp I bought in 2010, my first full suss bike. Loads of good reviews on the web and in print, rode well on the demo ride (short loop in perfect weather) and was a good discount on it too. The first few rides were great, everything worked well and it made me smile. Then it had it's first ride out in normal Welsh weather and after that it went downhill. The brakes no longer worked properly (Elixir 4's, Elixir lever with a Juicy caliper), all the pivot bearings now creaked due to non-existent sealing, the hubs were shot due to being C&C with no seals, the headset seized solid due to being loose ball and no seals (spot the trend...) and the gear cables decided to rust solid. A full strip down and rebuild later and it did the same on the next ride in just regular weather and a few miles. Never got any of it to work properly again and even the dealer just looked at me like I was an idiot at the '6 week service' they insisted on doing back then. I couldn't afford to buy a different bike so ended up throwing upgrades at it instead: Hope wheels, headset and brakes, new drivetrain and some Goodridge sealed, braided cables and outers. That got rid of most of the issues but then the X-Fusion rear shock decided to lose all damping, warranty was tried but denied and servicing only fixed it for a few rides so chucked on a second-hand Rockshox one instead. Then 10 months in the rear chainstay snapped in half at FOD as the brake cable routing meant it rubbed every time the suspension compressed. It wasn't work all the way through, just enough to remove the paint after eating through the protective tape I was having to replace every month or so, but that was enough to cause it to fail. Specialized refused warranty on that too and even tried to charge me £300 for a new one! Found one at another dealer that had been taken off a cracked frame for £100 so used that for a few weeks before that snapped in the exact same place while riding at Glyncorrwg while on the first climb! Was so fed up I lobbed the bike down the hill towards the path below, walked back down, picked it back up and went back to the car park. Chucked the bike in the back of the car and as I was kitted up hired an Orange 5 from Skyline Cycles. Had a brilliant ride on that so 6 weeks later I was at my LBS speccing up a 5! The Specialized got stripped for parts that were sold on and the frame was unceremoniously beaten up with a sledgehammer and taken to the tip. Thankfully the 5 turned out to be the best bike I have ever owned and was retired at 7 years old due to me wanting something a bit longer in the frame and standards moving on, the frame is hung up awaiting me to get a mancave to hang it up on, never selling it.
If it wasn't for that decision to rent that bike that day I would have walked away from biking due to the pile of shit Specialized and the attitude of the dealer.
Trek Fuel EX 7 (I think) from c. 2009. Exciting upgrade from my Rockhopper and as a PhD student £1600 for a full sus was a lot of money but good value. But it bobbed at the backend like anything. Always had strict rules on firm pedalling platform on any full sus since.
Halfords Raleigh rubbish aside i would say my Salsa fatbike which i still have but has been languishing in the shed for quite a while now. its probably fine for folk living in Canada but just too much effort to ride here.
Agreed. Mine was easily the least ridden bike I've ever owned. Cheap so perhaps I was expecting too much, but a bike you don't want to ride is never a bargain.
diamondback heist - initially loved it because it was my first mtb but the geometry is so wierd and makes no sence.
My Ellsworth Dare. Actually rode worse than it looked and it looked like this:
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Iron Horse 7 Point. So heavy, sooooo short, and needed the specific DW shock tune out of the box as they were supplied with a standard very dead tune.
Why didn’t I just buy a Sunday???
I too had a 456 in Shocking pink. In the end I gave the frame to one of these bike-rehab charities. I have felt guilty ever since, nobody deserves that.
Orange 5. Kept trying to kill me.
Ragley Ti, a 20” if I recall correctly. I bought it on a bit of a whim with what I thought was a silly bid late at night on ebay, hoping it would be a more modern geometry version of my 2001 Litespeed Kitsuma.
It was so stiff at the back and wooden to ride, no where near as good as the much older Litespeed.
Strangely enough I had a go on a friend’s 18” and it was a much nicer ride.
1992 Marin team issue. Thought it would help me race better. So stiff it just battered me.
Kona Hoss.
Bad geo.
Very heavy
Harsh
Shimano wheel played up constantly
Awful Dirt Jumper 3 fork.
Isis BB failed on me super quick.
Seems to be a lot of hate for 456s. I really like mine, I should probably never ride a 'nice' steel frame.
Came here to say exactly this.
PX Kaffenback.
Dull, just so dull.
Heavy, slow moving, dull looking and just sucked the joy out of riding.
A few come to mind for me. Evil Sovereign- heavy, dead feeling & probably more of a jump bike that I was using for trail riding. Transition Trans AM- weird bolt through axle and mech hanger that was a proper PITA if you got a puncture. Nicolai Helius(?) just didnt feel right for me and only rode a few times. And finally a 5-Spot- I was quite underwhelmed by it even though everyone else raved about them.
Marin Attack Trail, the one that had a quick release to adjust the rear travel.
None of us could get on with it. It didn't feel good on anything.
We were having some building work done and the builder took a liking to it after coming on a couple of rides with us. When he had finished the work he asked if he could buy it but decided to just let him take it as I wouldn't have been happy selling it to anyone.
I'm amazed no-one has mentioned Proflex. I had an XPX in the late 90s. The elastomer suspension didn't work in the cold and wasn't much better in the warm. The Magura rim brakes were hopeless. I fitted some Bombers, v-brakes and a coil spring, which kind of worked, but made the back end pogo. I sold it and bought a Giant NRS, which was infinitely better
I’ve had sone right old klankers that I never expected to be any good but got on ok with them for gravel/ATB. Raleigh Apex and Saracen Tufftrax to name two.
MTB proper? It’d have to be a toss-up between GT Avalanche 1.0 disc (dead feeling heavy lump), Genesis Core 20 (same), Rocky Mountain Thin Air (cost me an arm and a leg then broke then cracked at the dropout on a 10” dropoff) Giant XTC 2.5 (great on paper but very wrong geo IME, shite B/B which caused me to slip going into a power climb and cobbled my bonch hard on the toptube. P’ing claret and clots for three days, thanks. Resulting bladder biopsy was not fun either.
So the Giant XTC 2.5 wins MTB.
Road - Pashley PDQ. Horrific. Truly.
Hybrid - Raleigh X1. A cheap tank of a BSO with Raleigh head badge. Truly awful. Hated commuting on this more than any other hike I’ve owned.
Agree/disagree on the 2k Cannondale's. Absolutely loved my F400 w/Headshok. F900 also. But I repurchased one in recent years*, but on re-riding it I couldn’t quite see what I’d loved so much about them 14 years ago? Except for the light weight and solid tracking. Undeniable.
*By which time I must’ve been spoiled by more (not very, mind you) modern geometries...
Another vote for the 456. This time in baby blue colour. Felt like it was made of scaffolding. Happily, due to Planet-X's pricing, I sold it pretty much for what I bought it for.
Kirk Revolution, my first, second and third mountain bikes. The first was my 21st birthday present, I was very excited. Two snapped, the other spat its BB threaded insert onto the road. Hateful things. The bog standard steel frame I got as a warranty replacement from Dawes felt amazing in comparison.
Orange 5, black gold special edition no less ! Never fitted properly despite my trying Alford of cockpit combos and even a bigger frame! I never got used to its ability to lock the rear suspension solid when you pulled the rear brake. So it climbed like a fs bike and descended like a hardtail!! Definitely the worst of both worlds. Never dared but another single pivot since
Some great stories on here, making me feel better about being picky about my own bikes.
I don't want to give a full history, but some honorable mentions should be included for context...
'98 Marin B17 with RST Hi5 triple clamp fork. By objective standards from so many years later, not a great bike, but it was awesome to me. Sure it broke, and needed constant attention, but made me the biker I am today.
K2 Maintime cruiser BMX... Bought as a counterpoint to the Marin. Highlighted all the reasons why I didn't like BMXs. Even with a fat tyre on the front it killed my wrists on even moderate off-road. Might have been a fine bike, but not for me.
Sold both to but an Orange MsIlse in 18" frame as my do it all bike. Too stiff to ride XC, and too big to be fun. Sold the frame for more than enough to fund the first in a series of very enjoyable Inbreds. Until...
I bought a sliding dropout inbred, with the fatter top-tube. Nothing like the good old ones, and my last 26er.
2004 Stumpy FSR broke a couple of times, but was great when it worked.
I've owned some great and much loved bikes amongst these, but the least favorite... probably the Orange.
Holy crap that Ellsworth is a minger!
As above Marin Attack Trail, never got on with it and eventually stripped all the parts and forks off and built a Mk2 Soul with the bits. Still got the Talas forks in a box in the garage.
Absolute POS Cannondale Jekyll 27.5 bought because of a STW PSA.
Cracked the first one riding at Antur Stiniog, crap compression spiking shock that needed huge pressures and a dedicated pump. Absolute crap geometry even with 2 offset bushes fitted. Non standard 51mm 27.5 offset fork.
Crap 'engineering' - unique headset size, non replaceable threads for rear axle etc.
Took it to Morzine and hated it - sold it immediately on return and quit mountain biking after 30+ years.
Anyone who rode with me at uni may recognise this tail of misery....
A Saracen Protrax SE.
It was purple metallic, it had the first generation of the integrated chainring/spider LX cranks, LX V brakes, Ritchey finishing kit. Geometry was of its time. It should have been a bloody lovely bike for an impoverished student.
Two years I had it. By the time I was done (in) with it I think half of it had been replaced under warranty, including cranks and wheels and then the frame cracked, they lost my headset, sent me a damaged replacement frame, sent me another replacement that had no graphics and still no headset...
I even treated it to a pair of RC36s and managed to get a set with baggy seals so little bits of grit would cause it to seize solid mid ride and you'd have to take them apart half way down a hill to remove the grit.
Oh and Ritchey Alpha and Omega bite tyres. Awful.
Had some great rides on it but just a crap ownership experience.
This is much more fun than reading about dream bikes.
My least favourite would be a tie between the Croix de Fer (winning this thread so far, it seems) and a Ragley Blue Pig.
The Croix de Fer has been covered pretty well already. A huge disappointment.
The Ragley baffled me. Rave reviews from seemingly everyone but I found it awful. Heavy and painfully stiff (I had an early Aluminium Orange which was widely criticised for a harsh ride which felt smooth as butter in comparison). It also absolutely hated going round corners. I've said before that negotiating a tight bend on that thing felt like manoeuvring a ladder through a bus stop. I think I only stuck with it for a couple of months. Got rid when I realised it was making me dislike the sport entirely.
Holy crap that Ellsworth is a minger!
Good God. WTF? Did a child find some scrap metal and randomly bolt it together?
An early ragley (Alu). The geo was horrible. Floppy steering and it felt like I was sat bolt upright.
Early Gary fisher rig. An uncomfortable and unwieldy boat of a bike
quit mountain biking after 30+ years.
Quit? Completely? Cos of a [i]bike[/i]??
P-Jay
Free Member
Worst bike I ever owned was a Lapierre Spicy 516 (2011), they always got rave reviews, but the reality was a 160mm Enduro bike that was pretty unsuited to riding rough stuff quickly.I could blame the reviews, but the test bikes were a tiny bit different, they came with top of the range Fox forks, not the terrible open-bath Talas R the final bikes got, they also got proper Conti tyres (still not great) not the Conti-in-name-only OE ones that didn’t work. Ruined a good bike really, but meant they hit the price point they wanted.
I had one of those – white with blue and black graphics – I bought mine without the stock wheels or tyres, so never tried the crapy Contis. Not wrong about the fork, but I was fond of the bike as a whole, I progressed a lot on it, and I know it’s still being used, so I got one of the non-cracky ones.
I never got to properly 'sort' mine, I was so certain of it's prowess as "one of the best bike in it's sector" that I always assumed it was me, anyway some prick broke into my garage and nicked it, broke and heartbroken I found a cheap 2010 Spicy 316 on eBay. It had the older, but better Float R fork and more basic wheels than the really, really light Fulcrums the 516 had, it was miles better.
I had a Mk1 Ragley Blue Pig and a Gary Fisher Rig that I rather liked...
Genesis Equilibrium was pretty poor - never ridden a steel frame that felt so dead. Didn't help that it was probably too big for me either.
Specialized Pitch. The geometry was amazing. But:
I blew the shock twice (and apparently the new owner disassembled it on arrival and found the seal about to go again).
The Sektor forks were rubbish.
The rear wheel ate bearings. 2 cartridge bearings, one in the freehub, one in the hub shell, the rest unsupported! And as a result, had so much flex in the axle the freehub would jam.
The cranks/bb were rubbish
The stem was actually flexible despite being ~50mm, took a while to figur out why the handling was so bad.
The SRAM brakes I binned as I couldn’t in good conscience sell them even after they’d been back to fisher and failed again.
Made me realise that 10/10 in a magazine test means nothing, journos just send them back after a few days and they get a full service and sent out again, it’s not the real world where you expect a £1400 bike to at least get through a weekend without falling apart.
A handful of my friends bought those, I think there was two versions of it (not including the HT version) they managed a week in Whister BP on them without too much drama, but they were basic bikes for their type, and they were half the price of the entry level Stumpjumpers and Enduros at the time, most ended up being upgraded way past their original spec I think
After running my old Voodoo Wazoo fatbike with 29er wheels for a few years as a commuter and second bike, allowing me to run it as light as ~10.5Kg and quite fun to tackle local ramps including Dell Rd that hits ~20%, I'm finding my ~10 month old Voodoo Marasa quite weighty (~13Kg) and dull... Taking it for rides outside commutes and pop to shops, when the weather is a bit damp for me to be happy to take my road bike out, isn't appealing at all.
Recently fitted a 50mm Schwalbe Century on the rear and a 2.35" G One Speed to the front, to see if extra comfort appeals over the extra weight and increased aero drag, to get me using it more... It's never going to be whippet.
Sadly options were very thin on the ground when I needed a new commuter last summer.