Have you been priced out of biking?

This thread is turning very much Monty Python, we’ll soon have mention of lumps of coal and being fed poison as a lad!

I don’t think it is

most of his usual discussions were about his 40k car and how he was getting modifications, remapping, etc

And this is a good reason why not….

In the last 10-15 years the number of hyper cars or even more hyper than a hyper car has increased exponentially. There are whole layers upon layers of obscene car spending available now that you couldn’t have done no matter how deep your pockets were. 15 years ago your mate’s level of performance road car would have been what, 8th division in car top trumps. Now it’s 15th division. Basically he’s driving around in a poverty spec piece of shit…….if you judge every car by the standards of the best possibly available. Not because it’s any less fun or shiny than it was but because the goals posts for ‘ultimate if money was no object’ have been kicked so far away they are almost out of sight.

Returning to bikes – previously you might have justified the 3rd best specced bike in Specialized’s range and now you can only afford the 8th – not because it’s a worse bike but because they are now punting a load of extra layers of ‘special’ previously unavailable. Get the marketing bods to mess around with the naming to make you think you have to join in in the arms race just to stand still or you will be having no fun and everyone will sneer at you in the car park and boom you have ensured people feel the need to get spendy (word used specifically to rile the poster last week who hated it!) to keep on riding a bike.

My mate who I bikepack with has just go into Enduro/DH riding. He’s picked up a 26″ wheel full suss Marin in mint condition for £300. Who cares what anyone else rides as we’re having fun which is why we do it. Ride what you have or can afford. Another mate is super rich and just spent 12k on a bike. Good luck to him he’s still on the same trails having the same fun.
Unfortunately cafes have lost our business lately as we take our own brew kit and cake in a vain attempt to offset fuel costs.

For drivetrains, after trying singlespeed I’d love to see deore level 5 speed or similar. If less gears reduce complexity to manufacture keeping price down while maintaining durability without gaining weight. Dream on.

What I want is to choose between 3 to 5 different single speeds!

I bought a top of the range santa cruz around 2009 for around £3,800 – same type of spec now is £8/£9k where wages havent increased that much in the last 12 years.

Started running and hiking instead..

Nearly four grand buys you an AMAZING bike these days. Better than anything you could buy in 2009 for all the money in the world.

@kelvin links please. In stock only.

I can only assume they have little understanding of engineering. You add 2 or 3 extra sprockets and (collectively between all the sprockets) triple the number of teeth. You by necessity increase the manufacturing tolerances to make it work and you further complicate the manufacture by machining out more material and/or switching material to stop it weighing the same as the moon. And then you are surprised how much more it costs than an old 9sd 11-32T.

I completely get the level of engineering involved and understand why they cost a lot more than an 11-32T, and I appreciate the benefits in terms of reducing complexity down to a single front chainring. On the other hand, I get more life out of chainrings than cassettes, so the costs are more finely balanced. In the past when I’ve looked at how much life people are getting out of 1x set ups before replacement vs my current set up it has usually been in favour of my current (at least in financial terms) but not by much. My next bike will probably be 1x and I’m fine with that. I was commenting on someone else stating that cassettes are on 3 figures. Not all are – even the 12sp cassettes these days.

Link please

Santa Cruz Tallboy 4 C R Mountain Bike 2021 – Ivory

Link please

Santa Cruz Tallboy 4 C R Mountain Bike 2021 – Ivory

I was being ironically flippant. 🙂 You cant possibly know what I’m looking for.

You cant possibly know what I’m looking for.

What are you looking for?

Describe your needs, give us a £3,800 budget, we’ll find you something.

Personally (and this is so biased it’s in danger of being seen as an advert) I’d get a Cotic Jeht with RockShox fork and shock and XT 11 speed groupset.

You cant possibly know what I’m looking for.

By the sounds of it something out of budget.

But the fact is there are bikes for all levels of riding at that budget.

Won’t have the most fancy shocks or electric gears but it will be a bike and function as a bike.

priced out of biking is a bit dramatic, but its certainly a factor.

I’m much more careful and considered about what I buy, I do all my own maintenance and select components at least partly on the basis on whether they are home serviceable and how durable they are.

I also keep a maintenance schedule so I can head off problems before they arise.

I’m still a princess about suspension performance though.

I bet the kids in the video on the front page aren’t worrying about whether they have a Deore Mech or not.

I’m very privileged that I one could easily afford a 10k superbike but I’m also very fortunate in not giving a toss what anyone thinks, so I ride a Boardman hardtail bought on bike to work and at a discount so must have cost me about £500. It’s not because I’m tight it’s because it was the best value tool for the job at the time.

Id rather spend money giving my family amazing holidays than being over biked for my ability and my bravery. At the time I was just riding Blues and Reds with my young kids.

Similarly most of the time you’ll see me in an Hyundai i10, again because it the right tool for the job.

This is not aimed at the OP but If your self esteem is tied up in what bike you ride, car you drive or what group set is on your bike you really need to have a word with yourself. And similarly if you judge someone by what bike they are riding or their rear mech you need to take a long hard look in the mirror.

I grew up in abject poverty, so I’m never going to waste money on what is essentially a big toy. It amazes me that people put themselves is unaffordable debt for an expensive bike. The guy that had to sell his bike to fix his car. If your finances are that marginal buy a cheaper bike/components having a shiney bike with XTR isn’t a right.

There are good value bikes like Sondor, Boardman or on-one. Deore drivetrain is fine so is Microdrive and Clark’s or Deore Brakes.

Would be helpful if the OP stated his budget and the spec he has in mind.
Without that the thread is only an opportunity for comment about personal experiences; maybe that was the intention.
How many/few riders get the most out of their bikes?
If riders, generally, matched the spec they want to their ability I suspect they would be spending less but that’s a very objective and rational approach to adopt.
Aspiration, marketing and the self justification in spending more than necessary all play into this.
The same comments generally apply to n+1; for disclosure – I have 4 bikes and a work in progress.
Not one of them completely brand new – 4 used frames, mainly new components, 1 nearly new complete bike.
Choose carefully, pick up components when/where you can.

20 years ago, everyone had a 32″ colour TV and everyone watched it happily. And the 32″ colour TVs you can buy today are much cheaper and much better and you could watch TV just fine on them. But because 55″ 4K is out there, that’s what people want and expect, and 32″ colour isn’t enough any more.

Same with bikes, we could all ride a cheap hardtail that’s miles better than the bikes of years back, but better things exist. Things like droppers, hydraulic discs, tubeless, 1x etc are all part of the minimum spec now. People aren’t being priced out, it’s that expectations have increased faster than inflation.

Priced out, no way.
The knowledge in my head is too valuable.
I know all about the various categories of bikes, how to mostly maintain them, where to buy them and spare parts, new and second hand.
But most importantly, barring theft, I’m starting from a position of having two nice bikes and a cupboard of spares.

Someone starting from new will have a worse experience.

Maybe those if us who have been riding for a long time view things differently? I’ve been riding MTBs for just over thirty years and have never spent more than a grand on a bike.

I bet it correlates with those of us who think the rider going uphill should have right of way over those going downhill.

What about backpacks and ‘getting behind the saddle’

I have always bought Specialized however with their current pricing I now have an On One Freeranger gravel bike bought for £1500 new just before Covid struck,which is about my limit for new bike purchase.Best bike I have ever owned.

Recently I bought a 2007 limited edition Orange Clockwork for £500 as my hard tail and a 2010 Specialized XC FSR for £350 as my full suspension.Both have reminded me how good these older bikes are for general mountain biking.

Secondhand the problem comes when people try to pass on bikes bought at the new stratospheric prices and expect equally high prices on resale,however for most manufacturers the frame warranty only applies to the first owner and the prospective new owner is worried about risking too much money on a bike with an unknown history.

Maybe those if us who have been riding for a long time view things differently? I’ve been riding MTBs for just over thirty years and have never spent more than a grand on a bike.

Soz bro. I’ve been mtbing for 36 years I think and it was indeed a real struggle to convince myself to buy my first £1k+ bike. Since then however it’s been all downhill and I’ve fallen completely into the no talent, no fitness, compensate with carbon fibre sad old man camp 😔

I bet it correlates with those of us who think the rider going uphill should have right of way over those going downhill.

Now you’ve confused me. Everyone thinks that, don’t they?

I bet it correlates with those of us who think the rider going uphill should have right of way over those going downhill.

Now you’ve confused me. Everyone thinks that, don’t they?

Buuuuuut 192nd place on straaaaaaaavaaaaaaaaaa

I recommend getting a job at a bike shop. Not only will you be rich beyond your wildest dreams, you’ll also great discounts on new bikes and will be able to sell them at a profit once you feel the urge to get another one.

There’s also the option to buy something ‘interesting’. I just bought an old Morewood DH bike for $660 Canadian, which translates to ‘hardly anything’. I did a load of routine work to it and swapped some parts over from my stash, and I’m ready for a season in Whistler, for the less than the price of a carbon rim. And because it fits into the ‘interesting’ category, people look at it and say “That’s sick!”, rather than turning their nose up at it because it’s 12 years old.

I just wish my pay raises (ha!) kept up with bike inflation 😉

Not priced out of MTBing, but nearly priced out of progressive geo full suss trsil5 bikes. Two and a half grand is a big spend and that’s not much more than entry level for that kind of bike. I could get cheaper but it won’t have the geo I want or it’ll be a hard tail.

Of course, these bikes are good, but my salary is in the top 10%. Who is buying all these 4-5k carbon trail bikes?

Of course, these bikes are good, but my salary is in the top 10%. Who is buying all these 4-5k carbon trail bikes?

I mean, I’m not, but not in the way you are implying.

My salary is closer to minimum wage than national average.

It’s quite a well known problem that people often judge how well they’re doing relative to others rather than in an objective sense.

this very much depends on your friends and you.  I certainly never judge on material things at all or compare what I have to others – just how much fun folk are having and no one in my group of friends does this either.

Its all about who is having the most fun not what you are riding or what you arrived in

Of course, these bikes are good, but my salary is in the top 10%. Who is buying all these 4-5k carbon trail bikes?

Those who have the money, or access to credit, just go at the weekend to FoD, BPW or the likes, go near the cafe at lunchtime and see the bikes that are around, there’s no shortage of 4k plus bikes around, quite a few with their kids on 2k bikes as well, they’re just spending money on this instead of something else.

It’s just how you spend your money, or credit, there’s no shortage of new cars on the road, or folk with new extensions, or holidays, etc, you choose what you do with your funds.

I don’t want to derail the thread but I can (sort of) tolerate the rise in prices of “bike hardware” as there’s a pay-off in terms of better functionality and reliability (though I’m not so sure about longevity) and it’s something you get a lot of use out of

However, what I do have difficulty with is the cost of trips away to go biking…it’s accommodation costs which I now find insane. The price of a nights accommodation seems to have inflated by 300% over the last couple of years. I’m not sure how much of that can be attributed to increased COVID cleaning…

The price of a nights accommodation seems to have inflated by 300% over the last couple of years.

You sure about that? Demand last year went right up obviously and because of supply and demand (and places trying to cover some of the losses of being closed for the year before) prices went up a bit/lot. But 300%?

In the next 12 months I can see it feeling really expensive though – the price of fuel to get there and the increased leccy/gas bills of where you are staying. Ouch.

Bloke today at Antur Stiniog on his orange Voodoo Bizango.

Bloke today at Antur Stiniog on his orange Voodoo Bizango.

Usually a rarity on uplift bike parks, but you do see them now and again, out enjoying themselves on whatever bike, i’ve seen someone on an older hardtail with standard seatpost doing BPW before, i doubt they were hitting many of the black trails!

Fact is if you’re used to a certain spec level, be that XT, SLX or Deore then some people are getting priced out, you can easily pay over £3k for deore spec bikes but even then you’re lumped with budget shock, fork, wheels and finishing kit, if you want a bike with lyrik or Pike ultimates for example the rest of the spec will be high end and pricey, so why can’t they put a decent fork and shock with Deore spec and adjust the price accordingly, after all these are the parts you wear out and replace so it’s up to you if you wanna upgrade to an XT mech etc or replace like for like.

I can see where the OP is coming from: I’m 50, decent job, been riding for years, and if I decided to get a new bike I wouldn’t expect it to be “entry level”. But where 2000 quid 10 years ago would have got you something close to the top of the range, these days it’s going to be fairly average. So to get the kind of bike I think I “deserve” (SLX/Ultegra level, for example) I’ll probably need to add another 1000 to my budget.

Which is not to say I need to spend that, or that I wouldn’t enjoy riding that “entry level” spec bike, or that today’s Deore isn’t better than the 2010 XT stuff I have on my current bike, it’s more that the top end has expanded beyond my budget, dragging the prices of the lower spec ranges up with it.

But where 2000 quid 10 years ago would have got you something close to the top of the range,

Frame only yeah ?

My bikes are insured for more than my car.

That’d make an interesting poll actually.

But where 2000 quid 10 years ago would have got you something close to the top of the range,

I think you’re forgetting that 10 years ago was 2012. £6k bikes were being offered by mainstream brands then.

my salary is in the top 10%. Who is buying all these 4-5k carbon trail bikes?

If your salary is in the top 10% and you can’t afford 5k on a bike then what on earth are you pissing your money away on? Priorities, people!

The last full bike I bought was a Specialized Pitch Pro full suss with Pikes and decent kit for £1050. Ok I know that was what, 10 years ago, but a similar bike now would be £2.5 – £3k? You can’t explain that price hike purely with inflation.

Really? The Spesh Camber I bought in 2011/12 cost about that much and had recon silvers/ario/Deore mech and alivio/acera, crappy Tektro brakes. I’m sure I could go to Go Outdoors tomorrow and get a better riding Polygon for similar money that inflation has in fact made cheaper.

what on earth are you pissing your money away on?

You haven’t seen his car threads, have you?

😉😘

Bloke today at Antur Stiniog on his orange Voodoo Bizango.

That was me.

(Not actually me. Or today. But the only time I went to Antur was with a 26er Boardman Team HT. I had a great time, albeit got a bit battered and stuck to the blues)