Helmets, tyres, rapha, assos

Waterproof jackets, decent ones are extortionate.
But if you’re going to ride when the weather is foal, you just have to shell out, no matter how much you bridle at the price.

Aldi and decathlon stuff is a shoe in, but can fall at the last hurdle when it comes to ultimate quality.

I’d rather not handicap myself with really cheap stuff, but it usually does the job.

In the mane, I reckon you can’ter beat the cheaper stuff for value.

Loosely related to biking, but I read somewhere RedBull is not that profitable – their marketing expenses are huge, to keep up with the ‘brand image’ of being involved in extreme sports.

Wonder how much the sky jump would have cost? Sponsoring F1 team? Redbull Rampage?

mind you, tyres? – i just bought a pair of ‘smorgasboards’ for £30 – they’re ace.

helmets? – i just bought a new giro skidlid for £30 – bargain.

Aren’t Rapha/Assos supposed to do free repairs for the lifetime of the product? Anyone tried testing that on kit they’ve used mountain biking?

Rapha repaired my 6yr old softshell jacket FOC a few months ago. Only used it MTBing a couple of times but it’s done thousands of miles on the road bike in all weathers. And it’s still going strong now.

Also, I need a facepalm pic for that post that northcountryboy wrote…
Ah, here we go.

brakes’ comment shows that it’s only particular models, not types of products that you can say are overpriced.

the price of baggy shorts galls me. £50-60 for the fashion brands (Fox, Sombrio, Royal, Troy Lee, etc.) and they’re not really made to last the rigours of mountain biking – zips break, pockets get holes in them, bum wears through, stitching unravels. I have a pair of Scott shorts that were £30 that are about 6 years old and worn a lot and they’ve outlasted other shorts which might last a year and have cost £50.

The Scott shorts are great VFM, the Fox/Sombrio etc aren’t.
So the good stuff is out there. As somebody else said on the previous page people often confuse ‘cost’ and ‘value’ too.

kit that lasts, fits well and makes riding more enjoyable is worth paying for.

I also have a lot of cheap stuff, i sometimes use it to commute in.

Mavic Stratos baggies. £80 odd for a pair of lightweight unlined shorts with fa in the way of ‘features’ or usable pockets. Snap fasteners which rip out of the material after a few uses, and have to be replaced with buttons. £50ish for the matching liner/chamois which looks like a fetishists dream.

Unfortunately the nicest cut and material in a summer short I’ve used, but c’mon -£130 at retail???

the price of baggy shorts galls me. £50-60 for the fashion brands (Fox, Sombrio, Royal, Troy Lee, etc.)

2 Pairs of Sombreo shorts – 6 years Old going Strong
1 Pair of Race face 7 years old going strong

what have we seen ‘developed’ in the last 10 years?
1 more gear – pointless.
15mm axles – pointless.

1 More gear quite good really gets rid of the need for 3 f’in chain rings when the big one only gets smashed
15mm great for lighter riders QR is a heap of S**** flexy and crap, 20mm is overkill for lighter riders hence an XC grade bolt through.

Win Win in my book.

People whinge on about this sort of stuff but in the most it’s rather good.

Following on from Mikewsmith:

what have we seen ‘developed’ in the last 10 years?

a new-looking specialized enduro every 5 minutes – pointless.
Nobody’s forcing you to buy one

tapered head tubes – pointless.

Not sure I agree with this. It allows riders to run bigger forks (160mm+) without them having to tolerate massive flex, or use stupidly big stems and stupid looking frames

re-styled cranks/brake levers from shimano every 5 minutes – pointless.

Again, I disagree. Every generation, they get lighter and stiffer. Some may dispute this, but again, nobody’s forcing you to buy them!

post-mount forks/frames – pointless.

This is a stupid statement. IS mounts are such a pain in the tits. Yes you can use adapters for I.S. to Post, which is fine, but many people (myself included) like the idea of just bolting a caliper straight on, and it taking virtually no time to set up.

It wasn’t all that long ago that people were saying 9-speed was a stupid idea…

And so it goes, people understand the price of everything and the value of nothing.

For example: You can purchase a cheap down gillet (that is not that cheap really) or you can pay a bit more and purchase a british one from PHD with a lifetime guarantee, support British manufacturing and own a better quality product.

Unfortunately people buy on price mostly … and look what its done to the world.

Marketing doesn’t help, however, one tip: take some trouble to seek out companies without massive marketing spend and you just might find a gem: USE,Exposure,Hope,Turner,Middleburn,PHD,Chris King,Osprey, Finisterre, Meindl… None of these companies are particularly “cheap” but all make products where you know they’re worth the money. And not by coincidence all have good support too.

Crazylegs cheers for double face palm genuine LOL for that! 🙂

I agree that some of the new things introduced are a genuine improvment.
15mm through axle, yes better than a 9mm open drop out designed for a road bike in 1922.

Post mount callipers, yes please, but arnt most frames still IS mount with a horrible bolt on adaptor?

This is most of my original basis for my wee rant. The suppliers are doing a lot of development, brakes, forks, extra chain rings on the steel cassette to remove an alloy granny ring I was not convinced about. Rapid rise rear mechs? Flippy floppy combined brake & shifters aghhh!

But thats not the bike companys, its all bought in from suppliers competing with one another for buisness.

To rone. I agree in buying quality, have a couple of decent (expensive) bikes, but when I bought them I considered them to be good value compared to what else was offered.

There is good stuff available for less money, but its a very fine line between cheap and cheerfull and cheap and nasty.

pinetree – Member

Nobody’s forcing you to buy one

no, but specialized still have to cover the cost, pushing up the cost/price of ALL their products.

It (tapered headtubes) allows riders to run bigger forks (160mm+) without them having to tolerate massive flex, or use stupidly big stems and stupid looking frames

so it’s nothing more than a cosmetic improvement over 1.5″ – which looks fine anyway? (1.5 stems on big forks don’t look out of place) and is as old as the hills?

Every generation, they (shimano cranks/brake levers) get lighter and stiffer. Some may dispute this, but again, nobody’s forcing you to buy them!

but they are forcing me to pay for them, with the increased cost-base for every shimano product.

IS mounts are such a pain in the tits

no, they’re ace – you can take a caliper off, and bolt it back on again with everything in the same position, you only have to adjust it once.

Yes you can use adapters for I.S. to Post, which is fine, but many people (myself included) like the idea of just bolting a caliper straight on, and it taking virtually no time to set up.

and potentially knackering the thread in your fork/frame rather than a cheap adapter? – a lower leg fork service isn’t hard to do, but it’s a lot easier if you take the caliper off. regularly tightening/loosening an aluminium/magnesium thread is a very good way to end up with a small, sad, pile of stripped threads.

post-mount offers an arguable improvement (i see none), for a potentially very awkward drawback.

It wasn’t all that long ago that people were saying 9-speed was a stupid idea…

it is – every extra gear that gets squeezed in makes the system harder to to index, and more sensitive to dirt and friction.

perhaps i haven’t made myself quite clear, there have been many, excellent, welcome, engineering advances made in the world of mountain bikes. Years ago, there were real problems to fix; like brakes that didn’t work, suspension that used bit of rubber, geometry not out of place on a road bike. Aluminium tubes that were too skinny, so flexed and cracked.

etc. – early mountain bikes were rubbish.

there’s also a lot of pointlessness – seemingly dreamt up by worried designers/engineers who have a mortgage to pay.

i suggest that all the big problems have been fixed, and that most-if-not-all changes i see are largely/entirely cosmetic.

there are also some proper bargains to be had. excellent products that somehow manage to work perfectly, without the latest ‘developments’…

the overreliance on %age margin rather than actual margin

Pair of shorts, costs £10 to make
add 50% to allow for factory margin
double it to allow for manufacturer margin and costs
double it again to allow for retailer (shop) margin and costs

£10 shorts now cost £60 retail, manufacturer makes, say, a fiver, retailer makes a tenner.

so, if a slightly better short costs just £15 to make, the %age margin multiplier has a disordinate effect, the retail price is now 90 quid, costs are not much higher, but the actual margin has shot through the roof

I still don’t see what’s wrong with square-taper bottom brackets and 8-speed, though I have embraced 140mm forks and disc brakes (albeit BB7s).

Before I fitted Magura Thors to it, my main bike cost me less to put together than my car is worth. That’s saying something given that the car is a Y-reg Fiesta with 111,000 miles on the clock…

OK kids, here’s one for ya.

What should things cost?

Actually, the only thing I don’t seem to be able to get at a price I’m happy to pay is durable 110mm BCD middle chainrings.

Everything else I keep low-tech and buy on eBay, from Germany or lightly used… whatever’s cheapest.

Threads like these always bring out the cheaper = better crowd, don’t they? Has anyone actually tried making a pair of shorts, or a set of gloves? Like, from scratch? I’d happily pay lots of money not to have to do it…

The question shouldn’t be “what items of clothing are overpriced” but “what items of bike clothing are generally not available at lower prices?”

I’m drawing a blank to be honest. Capes? Spatterdashes? SPD brogues?

@ahwiles – your posts above make for refreshing and realistic reading , its nice to see some people are not clones who buy what they are told they “need” but i doubt your opinions are widely shared on here unfortunately !

…early mountain bikes were rubbish

I guess it’s a whole different discussion, but it depends how ‘early’ you mean. The ’94-95 FSR platform that JMC used to ride is still a viable XC platform for 80-90% of UK riding.

For my money, the single biggest thing to improve over the last 20 years is braking, first with V-brakes then disc brakes. Much else has become unnecessarily complex for the vast majority of riders, and many things have become less reliable.

Yes, of course there’s also been a suspension revolution in the same timeframe, but again, it’s arguable that so much suspension is overkill for the sort of riding that many people do. And no, I’m not talking about trail centres.