£3.6k on a 2011 Orange 5 Pro. Was a late 30th present to myself, still ride it regularly now although I gave it a near-complete rebuild two years ago that cost over £1500 😯 It's in near-constant use and gets a proper beating despite me being nowhere as good as it can do. The only original parts are the frame, swingarm, the rear Maxle and the top half of the shock! Thinking of retiring it soon but everything I look at for a replacement would be the same price or more to get a similar spec. Don't regret a penny I've spent on it though 8)
I'm currently weighing up whether to change my car but every time I see that it'll cost me £8k to do so I think about what bike I could buy for half that amount and what holidays I could have with it too.
For some the gear side of things, buying, tweaking, etc is as much a part of the hobby as doing the hobby itself.
I enjoy the spannering as much as the riding, all part of the whole experience.
1994: £120 Raleigh Nitro
1995: £375 Kona Fire Mountain
1996: £475 Kona Koa (later added £250 RST Mozo Pro 3.5 forks)
1998: £1,100 Marin Rift Zone
1999: £1,800 Cannondale F900 SX (Lefty)
2004: £2,200 Orange 5 Pro
Since that time, I've not bought a factory MTB and instead upgraded as my fancy takes me - going from a Pace 305 (2008) to a Soul (2010) to a Stooge (2014) to my current Soul 275 (2015). All with DT / Fox Factory forks, XT, Hope and Thomson-level components...
Taking the sale of old parts into account, I've probably spent less since 2004 than I did before.
However, I'm not getting any younger and am considering an imminent and possibly big splurge on a factory-built skills compensator with all the latest standards. The thing that is stopping me at the moment is how expensive an equivalent to, say, my old 'Dale or Orange would be today.
(Commuter / touring / road bikes excluded, but similar approach to MTB rolling upgrades).
£2650 on a 2014 merida
On a 0% credit card. Paid it off quick but that was pre children!
7k+ on a custom Demo 8. Never again. Second hand from now on. It's up for sale here for [b]not[/b] 7k+:
http://www.pinkbike.com/buysell/2125279/
Last two have been £1200 one road one mtb.
I've then had a spend a few hundred on new wheels as they come supplied with rubbish no matter what you spend.
The limiting factor of both bikes is the rider so no need to spend more.
HK$50,000. About GBP4,800 at the time. Terrible waste.
4000 odd on a full rigid ti and carbon bike - with rohloff and singlespeed set ups + the light weight stuff & jones bars
15 years ago I spent £1249 on an Orange E6. Since then I've bought frames and built my own bikes. I've still got an XT shifter from that Orange. I may well buy a complete bike at some point in the future due to my current bikes having the old standards but generally I like swapping bits around, hopefully I can keep my current bike going for a few years yet.
Last year I bought a Colnago C60 road bike for my 40th. I went all in with Dura Ace Di2, Carbon everything and Reynolds 46 Aero wheels. add my power meter to that and I reckon it was circa £9000 rrp. I am lucky enough to have trade contacts but even so I reckon it was £5000. Worth every penny.
crazy money being discussed on this thread. I could never justify it to myself, never mind the wife!
mines still my favorite bike after 7 years .... its not like im chopping them out every few years- i see it as a good value for money bike.
Most I've spent in I've go was in 2008, Specialized Pitch at £1280.
Although my main bike has been a steady evolution of upgrades over the years, I'd not like to guess how much it's cost in the long run.
some of the amounts spent make me feel better about the cash I have spunked away over the years............ 😆
Spent a small fortune on my current mtb, circa £4-5k,in the three years I've had it it has had parts upgraded, forks, bars, sadddle etc.
Will say it's a lot of money but I tend to keep my bikes for a long time and they give me so much back in enjoyment, health and general well being.
Can't think of a better investment really...
Me too Ton^. I must have spent over 30k in the last 25 years, but loved every minute on every bike - except my Mongoose Teocali..it was a dog!!!
...they give me so much back in enjoyment, health and general well being.Can't think of a better investment really...
That's the thing, I've used my bike pretty much every day since I got it but I still struggle to justify the expense (to myself) even though the stuff that went to pay for it wasn't even being used! Gaaaaaagh! I'm currently at an average of £35 per ride (or £5.10/mile) and dropping... 😆
In relative terms it was about £800 on a 1995 GT Karakorum with additional Marzocchi Zokes when I was at uni. I got a student loan to pay for it 'cos nightshift stacking shelves in Sainsburys wasn't going to cover it!
And £1300 on a Cove HJ with Rebas and full 3x10 SLX in 2011 but I'm all grown up and have a job nowadays.
Not entirely sure why I'm fessing up to this; possibly to purge my soul... but in the spirit of openness...
– S-Works Epic WC 2015 (S Build) circa £7k
– Open O-1.0 circa £5k
– Moots RSL (Zipp 303s / Enve / Di2) circa £6k
Plus various other bikes (commuter etc)
About £1200 on my road bike about 10 years ago. In theory I'd probably be prepared to pay up to £2k but after that (in my mind at least) diminishing returns start to seriously kick.
I did about 10 grand, but to be fair it was a tandem so really split between 2. Hard to be sure of the total price, frame and parts all bought piecemeal over a period of time, but it was in that ballpark.
I think I bought most of a heckler* in 03 for around £2000, the frame is still in fairly regular use so worth it. Just bought my first new mtb** in ages for a similar sum, hopefully it will be worth it, still not bloody ridden it yet.
If it wasn't for the proliferation of new standards I'd probably still be scouting the classifieds for 2nd hand. I'm now bang upto date with the devil's own wheel size, boost, tapered, bolt thru, pf, 1x, blah blah, we'll see whether I can run it for a good few years or whether it's all deprecated in under 3.
*I supplied cranks and finishing kit
**I [i]had[/i] promised myself a posh bike, like around the £3k mark, but when it came to it I struggled to justify it, could have gone for same specced carbon frame for another £600 but just thought....why? At about £1 per gram weight saving it's actually not bad vfm in the "adding lightness" scale, but like I said couldn't justify it.
majority of my bikes have been self builds. the most i've spent on one was about £3.5k which was my Haro DHR downhill bike 12 years ago.
the most i've spent on a complete bike is £3.8k which was for the Giant Reign Advanced i bought at the weekend