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Blur classic, felt nervous on it all the time, may well have been too small. Just wasn't for me.
Also my Cannondale M1000 felt like I'd done a few months in Shawshank after every ride, way too stiff for day rides no comfort at all.
Giant XTC SE3 from about 2003.
Was a definite Friday afternoon special, paintwork was crap, decals wonky, it weighed a ton and every corner the front end just washed out.
Truly crap
Probably my old Kona Cindercone from 1997.
Beautiful steel frame, but it was way too big for me at 18" and i stuck a set of RST forks on it so that didn't help.
Nothing wrong with the frame it was just too big and i couldn't ride it properly, sold it for a Zaskar Race 2001 model and never looked back!
My first MTB, a Raleigh 'Team MTB' which was built out of pig iron and looked like a badly made five bar gate. It was way too big for me, had plastic tyres with no grip, brakes made from particularly bendy bits of bakelite, and with what felt like an 82 degree head angle it chucked me over the bars repeatedly.
I had a ****ing brilliant time riding that bike, it was ace.
A second hand Raleigh Pioneer hybrid I bought for the winter commute - think components were made out of monkey metal
"mated to a 15" models top tube"
Fnarr fnarr!
Orange X2.
Pivots kept coming loose and suspension only worked when sat down (URT design).
Had fancy bits on it though, all migrated from my previous HT, so SXTi forks, Middleburn chaniset, hope ti hubs, USE seatpost, Flite saddle. Fortunately it got knicked from my garage, meaning I got a pay out and bought a stumpy FSR 😉
Bought the frame because I wanted to try out this new FS malarky.
Had a 2001 S-Works FSR that I really wanted to like, but it was just a bit rubbish!
An aluminium Ribble road bike in about 2000 .It felt awful was harsh and the geometry was all wrong
Titus El Guapo I bought last year, low BB handled like a barge, got a refund.
My wife has an original El Guapo and I liked that so much I thought I'd treat myself to a new one, but the geometry changes really changed the character of it and I just hated it from the first turn of the pedals.
Superfi - I remember those old Orange URT bikes. They were gash!
I never really got the whole URT thing and its good see that it's dead. There were quite a few offenders back in the day - Klein Mantra, Vodoo did some as well.
SX Trail, weird feeling rear suspension and no front end feel.
Klein Mantra. Absolutely terrifying to ride through whoops as when the suspension compressed the whole bike folded in half and the head angle went steep/shallow/steep/shallow with every whoop. Come to think of it all sweet spot bikes must have ridden like this.
Orange P7. Don't know wether it was built wrong or what but it rode like a bag of shite.
+1 on the grifter. Awful bike. Weighed a tonne and was several sizes too big for me. Was a delight to swap it for a Raleigh Arena!
Sunn revolt gt from late 90s had it till only a few years ago as a hack it just refused to die. Problem was it was constantly trying to kill me I've never fell of a bike as much as I fell off the thing, it was possessed I swear.
Having not been on my old Orange Clockwork for years I bought a 1999 GT XCR4000 to get back in to the sport and because I fancied a full suss.
It was turd, really bad. Suss didn't really do the job, it weighed more then a ship and the ride was terrible. Sold it to a mate in 2005 virtually unused.
I LOVED my SX trail. Funny old world eh 😉 Ellesworth ISIS wasn't a lot of fun. Hard to pinpoint what was wrong with it, just a bit lifeless. Put a longer fork on it in desperation and it did come to life then. As a flippy-floppy death fish thing.
Voodoo Wanga, my fault for buying a bike with a very short top tube. Not my fault all the paint fell off when you looked at it.
Airborne Lancaster(?) - the Ti hardtail. Something very not right with the geometry.
+1 on the Cannondale M1000. Brutally stiff and kinda 'dead' feeling. Probably only due to it being nicked am I still riding today.
I love my SX too....still going strong despite being old. Paints looking a little battered but its stood up well.
This, a Trek Y5. I did a Coast to Coast on it back in ooohhh let me see... 97/98 and I hit the first bump just out of St Bees and the thing didn't stop bobbing until I hit the other side of the Pennines..
PoC 😆
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Something heavy and unmentionable from Halfords way back when I knew nothing about mountain bikes and only road it a few times to the shops, tow path etc. I realised what a PoC it really was on taking it actually off road.
Got into the stuff properly with a GT I-drive (I see mentioned a few times here). Oddly also from Halfords, but wasn't "their" brand and don't think they knew what they had. Amazing value for under £1k especially in components. Actually really liked that bike. Was a 2009 model so maybe much improved. I-drive BB is weird but worked. It did however need frequent servicing on the pivots. Didn't fall apart, just creaked at lot. Took a huge amount of abuse before I replaced it with bling.
never owned a bad bike but the worst bike i've ridden is undoubtedly a gary fisher hifi, the thing was unstable to the point of being dangerous to ride even down tame gradients.
Norco XXXX from 2007. Looked good, looked like it should be brilliant, it wasn't! Horrible thing!
Close second goes to my SX Trail. Built up with all sorts of tarty/expensive stuff, looked fantastic, and didn't really do anything that wrong. However it never felt like it was anything special, it was a bit boring to be honest. Annoyed me that I had just swapped my 2006 bighit for it, which was one of the best bikes I've owned.
Its a toss up between a Mk 1 Prince Albert - very heavy and weird geometry with a very high bb and a very low front end.
Or my 29er, bought into the 29er marketing bs, and got a nice Fisher G2 frame, build it with nice light parts, but it was slow handling and slow to ride - consistently slower than my equivalent 26er and harder work. Hated riding it so it went.
Be One Karma from CRC a few years ago, pants, heavy and the old euro style geometry. Terrible bike..
Few years ago I had an old Raleigh Montage in fluro green, ok to ride but every part of the drivetrain fell to bits after a few weeks use.
Surly Karate Monkey, although I am convinced it may be down to the way I've built it. Its currently in bits waiting for the time when I have the motivation to build it up differently. Never quite seemed to get on with it despite trying different specifications; it feels very heavy and dead on the climbs and I can't see why people get so evangelical about them.
Santa Cruz Nomad. It was marketed as an all round all mountain bike but it just wasn't. Turned me off Santa Cruz.
Gary Fisher Joshua F3 - orrible - useless URT design.
Enduro 2008 I so wanted the fork to work. I got refund in the end.
Wow can't believe I opened this thread to see such brands as Intense, Santa Cruz and Orange being mentioned. Some of the finest machines to grace the MTB world.
Are you crazy? Surely it should be filled with BSO brands and pieces of sh1te like Apollo, hawk and the like.
Now they are trully horrific bikes and I am sure we have all owned them in our younger days.
Or were some of you born with a silver spoon in your mouth and the first bike you ever had was an Orange 5?
Probably my first "proper" mtb which was a rockhopper. It was actually fine with a good spec, but fit me completely wrong so I hated it!
I'm surprised at the "rode it once, hated it" posts.
Every bike is night and day from the next and it takes few rides to get to know them.
I'll be honest, I sold my chameleon and bought a 5 Spot. For weeks I thad words with myself. The Chameleon was so many smiles per miles but looking back now, that frame was a back wrecker.
So harsh.
Still, I'd have another one.
My first adult sized bike was a Raleigh Mantis - steel, rigid and plastic. It was probably horrid but it got me into riding so it must have been brilliant.
I think the big manufacturers mentioned are "should have done better" rather than "cheap crappy bike you'd expect to be rubbish".
GB
I've never had a bike I didn't like but my wife once owned a Raleigh Lizard (purchased before I met her) and it had a gravitational field all of it's own.
a 98 or 99 stumpjumper fsr, the bike and the dealer put me off spesh bikes forever. the only good thing was the avid V's.
Matlock...the Orange I had certainly wasn't my first bike, I'd had low of bikes by the time I had it but for some reason I hated it with a passion.
I saved for months to but my first proper MTB, a '97 Rockhopper, so no silver spoon.
2007 Orange 5.Terrible rear shock,awful paint,flawed geometry.
Depends on your definition of worst.
Most annoyingly poor workmanship award would go to the 2008 Trek Top Fuel 9.8 that had the shock mount on the downtube de-bond after 35 miles from new. It was a write-off as was the frame it replaced (2006 top fuel 110) and the one that replaced it (2008 top fuel 9.9ssl). top marks for Trek's warranty, nul points for longevity
The bike that was the most disappointing was the Ragley Ti, to be fair it was a good bike but the rear end was harsh compared to my Litespeed Kitsuma and I never bonded with it. I guess it was that my expectations were so high that when they were not met.....
My worst built was undoubtedly a custom built 853 cross bike. It was miss aligned, floppy and didn't even handle well. My results were always better with my MTB. I was very glad when I got taken out by a dozey driver who paid for a nice kinesis as a replacement.
Raleigh activator circa 1993 thought it was amazing at the time, how things change !
Well both of my current mountain bikes are mentioned above.
Surly Karate Monkey and Nicolai Helius CC. For me they are both fantastic and I reckon they'll both be with me for some years to come.
Worst bike? I haven't had any true lemons ride-wise but my Mongoose Teocali kept working loose at the pivot bolts no matter what I did to it so, it would have to be that. I actually thought it rode okay though.
I had a go on my mate's 06 Norco A-line the other day 😯
Gary Fisher Big Sur from 2003 or 2004
utter pile of poo
the horrible rockshox duke u-turn fork
and the frame was utter gash and mis-aligned
and the old hayes "six" hydraulic brakes - arghh
Anyone who frequented Ghyllside Cycles in Ambleside in the early 90s might remember the bluey green XTR-equipped Dave Yates Diabolo that lived in there for a couple of years, with the asking price constantly dropping to the point that my dad could resist it no longer, and bought it 'for your mother'.
Due to snapping her wrists a few years ago, and on account of her being 70, mam is no longer emulating Josh Bender and so the bike has a pair of road-going tyres on it, to suit her canal path ways. So, rigid steel bike, full (albeit old) XTR and skinny tyres. You'd expect it to be reasonably light, right? That thing has its own gravitational pull. The other bikes in their shed revolve around it, and the type of riding you do depends on what bike is floating past at the time you go in.
From a personal point of view, I've never owned a bad bike, although it took me nearly two years of riding my first (and only) FS to realise that when I felt funny things happening with the back wheel, I'd not got a puncture, it was the suspension working.
Last time I was in the market for a new bike, in 2005, I demo'd an Orange Five. Unmitigated shite. I'm willing to concede that suspension technology back then was wildly different to its current state, but I genuinely cannot look at a Five now without thinking that they are horrible bikes to ride.