Anyone (MTB)putting their good bike away for winter ?

As despite my best efforts the bike I rode through the last three winters has in that time needed a new fork (albeit because I couldn’t get hold of the parts to service the original), two new hubs, a new bottom bracket (and a nice man at the LBS with a scaffolding pole to remove the old one), a new rear derailleur, two chains, one cassette, one rim, a crankset, one set of headset bearings and a complete headset (when I realised that the first really wasn’t very well sealed) as well as brake pads and a couple of sets of cables, then yes I do tend to look at the weather and the state of the ground and decide which bike to leave at home. This year’s winter bike is going to be a Rooster running 1×10 which should at least cut down the number of parts to replace.

stevedoc – Member

the bombproof Five that sits in the study

Ah, I was waiting for someone to do the “I have a Five so it only has”… Wait, hang on, what the?

..single bearing goodness

You want to get that fixed

Serious though, what’s the meaningful difference between a five and a multi pivot bike, like, £30 per full service every once in a blue moon? On a bike that costs thousands of quid? Don’t get excited because you slightly reduced the smallest part of the service costs that aren’t, when it comes down to it, that big a deal anyway when considered as part of the whole cradle-to-grave thing. Your shock and suspension, drivetrain, even the bloomin tyres are a higher cost than bearing replacement.

And everyone else! Why, if you don’t like washing your bikes, are you so obsessed with washing them? You don’t need to! Do the chain, clean the sliding parts, done. Mind you this is why my white hemlock was permanently stained brown but still

washing your bikes… You don’t need to!

Tsk! Get out!

😉

Rule #4

Winter = hard tail permanently set up with lights, so the FS (the “good bike”) is ridden in daylight.

Both get cleaned post ride. I don’t understand the issue.

As despite my best efforts the bike I rode through the last three winters has in that time needed a new fork (albeit because I couldn’t get hold of the parts to service the original),

So not servicing might have been the main problem?

two new hubs, a new bottom bracket (and a nice man at the LBS with a scaffolding pole to remove the old one),

What failed so drastically on the hubs?
Did you not put some anti seize on the BB?

a new rear derailleur, two chains, one cassette, one rim, a crankset,

OK so some drivetrain wear over 3 winters, not that bad but exactly how did winter kill the cranks? And on that what died on the rear mech? Did the frost bend the cage?

one set of headset bearings and a complete headset (when I realised that the first really wasn’t very well sealed)

So false economy of buying a crap/cheap headset then?

It seems like somethings would be good normal wear and tear for 3 winters of solid riding. Some stuff seems like it’s just false economy and other failures could have been at any time but your just blaming winter!

I reckon it was just a sh@t bike to start with..
If your going to replace that amount of parts, just buy another bike and save yourself the hassle 😀

I have a brown rigid singlespeed.. It’s my only mtb
problem solved

yunki

I have a brown rigid singlespeed.. It’s my only mtb
problem solved

On any other forum you would have won over both sides if Im honest. Well, mine anyway.

This being STW however, you’ve probably (unknowingly) taken out a contract on your soul. 😀

I have two rigid singlespeeds.

A summer one and a winter one. Not sure which is which.

Josh that is just showing off now

For those who’s rides are through endless slop why? Ever thought your in the wrong place? Forget the bike and think of the trail.

There are these magic places called trail centres, these are generally all weather and fun to ride in the depth of winter.

I ride most days, that happens because i have plenty to ride from the front door. The most fun stuff is generally the worst in terms of slop, i avoid it to prevent as much trashing as possible, this leaves fireroads and some select trails which are also still saturated with surface water, where i live, if i want to regularly ride, i have to ride slop.

I have a local trail centre (swinley), some more fun stuff stays pretty dry, happy riding it on the hack bike, the actual trail centre trails hammer the bike, avoid those and ride the more natural trails, it’s only bimbling anyway.

I have multiple bikes, i ride the bike for the job, during winter it becomes much more XC, so i start using my XC (or hack) bike.

As others above, it’s fine to have different outlooks, like i struggle with MTBers insisting they need 6″ gnarpoon weapons for the simplest of riding and trail centres, those same people then proceed to find the climbs too much hard work, ride less, get more unfit, find the climbs even harder word, ride even less, get even more unfit etc etc etc.

A lot of my rides are 60-80mins local stuff.

driving to a lovely nicely drained trailcentre takes 2 hours… so obviously isn’t viable.

I’m off to Afan a week on Friday so the Gnarpoon (Spearfish) will be still coming out for that… but for the local stuff it will sleeping with the fishes.

just get new drivetrain in the spring?

Wow I’m seeing a lot of hate again for a Five owner , I’m off to find that hate thread and order an Audi ,

Pointless rant

jaffejoffer – Member

just get new drivetrain in the spring?

It’s drivetrain and new bearings though, which is not only £50-100 all in, but it’s an afternoon swapping them.

I have a brown rigid singlespeed.. It’s my only mtb

Me too. (Mine isn’t brown though, that sounds horrible 🙂 )

What is all this winter/summer bike stuff. I just change the chain now and again.

£100 and an afternoon tinkering but you get to ride your fave ace bike all year! also cheaper than a winter hack if you havent already got one…

jaffejoffer – Member

£100 and an afternoon tinkering but you get to ride your fave ace bike all year! also cheaper than a winter hack if you havent already got one…

I have got one though and it’s pretty decent 🙂 I’ve actually ridden the HT a fair bit this year anyway as my riding buddy has been having some Zesty issues so every time we’ve been out together I’ve been on the HT and he’s been on my Spearfish. It’s set up pretty damn well and is a lovely HT.

Got one bike Yeti ARC5c, it will get used all through winter, and will be washed and lubed at the end of every ride, as it lives inside, and I rent. It takes 20 minutes at the end of the ride, and It’s done and ready for the next go.

I have 1 bike and 1 bike only … I ride the spesh enduro all weathers any weathers .. all these folk talking bout how many bikes they have and what they use and when 😐 …. really !? a bike is there to be ridden

I have a similar strategy to McNulty up there ^^. My Five is my main bike, unless I’m away for a big epic in the hills, but now that we’re getting into the real dark nights, I’ll be resurrecting my P7. The Five will still get used on most drier weekend day rides, but the P7 will take over for night riding duties and wetter day rides. It’s simpler to clean, has a slightly lower spec….so the inevitable trashed kit after a night ride impact won’t hurt my wallet so much…and in all honesty, it’s easier to pedal when the going gets a bit soft. Oh, and it’s got the hipflask holder on it….very important on a cold winter’s night. 😉

If you have the storage space, what’s the problem with having more than one bike? If you have more than one bike, what’s the problem with choosing to ride one over the other as the seasons change?

Chill out dudes.

C. 🙄

I would consider all my bikes as “good” but the single speed will be mostly in service during the winter months 🙂

and a nice man at the LBS with a scaffolding pole to remove the old one

A scaffolding pole eh? Not seen many of those about in a long while, everyone uses tubes these days 😛 (sorry – used to be a scaff)

It’s drivetrain and new bearings though,

Except I used to get through more than a winter on a set of bearings in all of my bikes. More like 2 years… Unless you have a chap bike with crappie bearings

I went out for a short ride last Friday afternoon, on my way to Builth, around a local beauty/nature spot scattered with bridleways, fire roads and marked paths (perhaps intended for walking……..). I’m glad I went, the trails weren’t too muddy as such, but man was it hard going, we’ve not had that much rain but everything was just so boggy and seemed to require so much effort, my average speed was under 4mph, and I was blowing and sweating like a carthorse. Bike just didn’t want to roll.

Most of my local routes/woods will be like this from now on, and I’m not sure I fancy it much to be honest. I need to keep riding to build and maintain fitness and make sure I don’t put weight back on (1.5 stone lost since March).

I only have hardtails, so full sus maintenance not an issue, but scraping loads of mud, pine needles and crap off my freshly built up Soul on the weekend was somewhat demoralising.

I’m thinking the off road mountain biking will be almost exclusively weekends at more surfaced trail centres until we have some decent frosts and the ground firms up, but I want to ride mid week too, so contemplating a rigid fork on my Scandal 29er for more road-based rides, or getting a bargain basement road bike to use……….

Except I used to get through more than a winter on a set of bearings in all of my bikes. More like 2 years… Unless you have a chap bike with crappie bearings

You have one experience, another person has another, doesn’t make you right and him wrong, it makes you both right but different!

FWIW, In a single race I’ve managed to kill a brand new (as in fitted the day before) Shimano UN72 BB, and lower bearing in headset (Cane Creek), and bearings in rear hub (White Industries, standard sealed cartridge and extra grease sealing) which were only ~3 months old. Also put significant wear on the drivetrain too, and had to junk the cables (standard Shimano SP41 inner and outer). Fortunately it was a rigid bike, hate to think what state any shocks would have been in 😯

Conditions vary, just like experiences 😉

stevedoc – Member

Wow I’m seeing a lot of hate again for a Five owner

Where?

+ 1 here with a couple of rigid singlespeeds.

I built up one and enjoyed it so much I bought a nicer one.

It was a bit of an n+1 excuse but it’s become a real pleasure to ride round the muddy trails on them in the winter.

There is an element of saving the nicer bikes from the mud but in reality it’s to save the washing as I’m not motivated to clean when I get back wet, cold and muddy.

It depends where you are really. Here in the Dales most (but certainly not all) bridleways are pretty weather proof, they might be wet in places and you are going to get muddy but you aren’t battling through 6 inches of clart. However there are some BWs where your bike seems to double in weight during the course of a ride.

You just need to know what conditions are like and plan a route accordingly. After a while you get a set of “indicators” that let you know what the tracks are like plus you tend to know which routes get muddy first.

£100 for a new transmission?

Hmmm. Where do you buy your kit from?

I reckon I’ve saved enough to buy another couple of best bikes by not running the best bikes through the winter over the last 9 or 10 years.

£100 for a new transmission?

Hmmm. Where do you buy your kit from?

I reckon I’ve saved enough to buy another couple of best bikes by not running the best bikes through the winter over the last 9 or 10 years.

Depends what stuff you use, but for a bog standard 2x (or 3x) drivechain,

Chainrings: £40
Chain: £15
Cassette: £30
Jockey wheels: £10
=£95, and lets round up to cover some cables?

Horses for courses (and budgets) though. I’ve known people who buy £300 hardtails from Halfords for the winter, do the bare minimum of maintenance, and junk it in the spring (or more likely, jet wash the hell out of it so it looks clean and sell it to some poor sod on ebay).

10 years ago my best and only bike was a £300 hardtail form halfords, I replaced the drivechain each April and ran it into the ground over the winter.

These days I buy bikes based on reliability and low running costs, so they’re a rigid SS and a rigid fat bike (with 1×10). Partly because I’m tight, partly because I like the idea of going for a ride somewhere nice and it costing me nothing, rather than getting to the top of a long muddy climb and thinking “this view just cost me £15 in XO1 cassette”.

The decision as to what to ride is easy as the muddiest trails round here don’t require gears, and the ones that do are chalky mud rather than gritty/grinding paste mud.

As Whitestone says…My winter riding involves thinking of the trails i’m going to ride based on conditions, and I know the areas that deteriorate easily and can judge that pretty well. Riding through hours of slop is no fun for me, and it’s bad for the trail too. It does mean that in a wet winter the trail options are very poor, and what’s left will still be slow and pretty much non-technical. This means that i’ll ride a rigid geared bike mostly, because the best bike isn’t as much fun going slow in mud. I’ll still ride the ‘best’ bike (a HT) when I want, but the key point is that the winter riding is not based on any maintenance equation. For me it’s about keeping riding in bad conditions, but with respect to the trails and whilst still trying to have fun. Maintenance will cost what it does and happen whenever needed throughout the year, but winter will have less of a toll because i’ll generally avoid multiple clag-fests.

Serious though, what’s the meaningful difference between a five and a multi pivot bike, like, £30 per full service every once in a blue moon?

Having moved from a Five to a multi-pivot Smuggler it’s not the cost that concerns me so much as the ease. Bearing changes on a Five were so simple that I’d often pop a new set in just in case and on more than one occasion I was surprised to find that bearings I thought were OK were actually pretty rough once I got them out. Am I going to bother doing that with all those fiddly little pivots? I don’t know is the simple answer. Maybe it will be a trivial matter once I’ve got the hang of it, but the Five did make a pretty fantastic winter bike. In fact I’m thinking of building it back up with budget components for a bit of fun. Even if I don’t keep it (based on this thread) I reckon somebody might fancy a cheap Five for the winter.

That’s a fair point actually, some bikes are a bollocks to change bearings on.

Don’t say that. You were supposed to tell me it wasn’t going to be an issue 🙂

i’ll be swapping/changing bikes for winter, yes.

i like the ‘freshness’ of changing from hardtail to full-suspension every 6ish months.

it means my bikes get stripped/rebuilt every 6months.

winter/summer is just the excuse.

(well, that and the hope of keeping road-salt away from pivot hardware)

Chainrings: £40
Chain: £15
Cassette: £30
Jockey wheels: £10

Best bike?

Can pretty much double everything on there.

Best bike?

is SLX/XT not good enough for you?

Despite what the mags and a few on here might tell you the vast majority don’t spend thousands on a frame (and forks and wheels), and then hang XTR off it.

I know, but I do. Most of the guys I race/train/ride with do as well.

The kit all wears out at some point so riding in mud (a UK factor) isn’t really going to save the wallet as all the bits will need replaced at some point – most at the same point.
Having more bikes just adds to this cost.
The fact a full bounce needs more attention is part and parcel of running a full bounce bike…
I’m still unclear to the why (or the why not to riding it all year round), but I’m not saying it is right or wrong…I just can’t fathom the logic as it seems to suggest more cost to me as you have more kit needing replaced due to more bikes.