What British mountain bike brand do you like?

Blazin-saddles – Member

Hope sell upwards of 50,000 hubs a year. You think they’re all failing? when you make stuff, some stuff fails, even the best designed product in the world will have a few failures if enough are produced.

My marker of a quality product/company is not if I have a problem or not, but how a company deals with it. obviously if the same problem persists over and over again then it’s an issue. I’ve never had a broken Hope part and I’ve used a hell of a lot of them.

This. The thing is, if something breaks, particularly something expensive, people are going to (quite understandably) moan to the high heavens about it. When something doesn’t break and just gets on with working, then we don’t tend to hear about it so much. The working-perfectly components made by Hope, Shimano, Volkswagen, Apple and countless many more manufacturers vastly outnumber the faulty ones, but bad news travels faster and further than good.

I have a 16 year old Karrimor gilet, from when they made decent kit , use it every winter, zips work like new.

Blazin-saddles – Member

Hope sell upwards of 50,000 hubs a year. You think they’re all failing?

Failure rate of the 12mm axle is high enough that when I phoned up for a replacement, they sent me 2 for “next time it breaks”. Which is funny, but tells you all you need to know about the component. They eventually redesigned the hub internals to fix the problem, which is good. But this all means that you’re defending a component that the manufacturer themselves accepted was ropey.

The issue was (I am told; before my time) the hub was never designed for 12mm so all they did when maxles became a thing was put a bigger hole in an axle designed to have more metal in it. That’s not bad design; it’s just not design at all, it’s a bodge that I might do in my garage. And how long were they on sale like that before they fixed it?

DT Swiss had the exact same problem, the difference is they fixed it literally years quicker and they didn’t expect people to pay for the fix.

Travers Bikes
Wildcat
Alpkit
Superstar
On One
Howies
Troutie Lights
Brooks (Cambium)

Hope
Vulpine, not MTB but great kit
Rapha and Soho Bikes – coffee
Singletrack – amazing photos and good and sometimes great words
Four4th, just for the way they thought about a light they could make and would be great

Almost forgot, I don’t own anything from Cotic but they are always totally in tune with my feelings. I was gutted when the UK manufacturing didn’t work out for them. Hopefully they have ideas about how to tackle it differently.

Carbon and titanium would be good.

I guess I use (or have used) quite a lot of British brands (as long as we have a broad definition of British): Orange, Cotic, Hope, Renthal, Exposure, Lumicycle, Middleburn, Endura, Altura, Howies, Paramo (even a Brompton a Brooks saddle and some Rapha kit if you include road). But most of it wasn’t because it was British, just that it was good kit that did the job and came from companies that wouldn’t run away if it failed.

The only one that I’m tending to move away from is Orange, but that’s really just a case of them moving away from me as they don’t really make an XC mincing bike any more. It’s all Enduro stuff. Can’t blame them for following the market though.

I’m a big pace fan, own two rc129’s and just bought a rc127, been buying there kit for over 25 years.

Same story with hope, you know if you get a problem one phone call and its sorted, must say I’ve never had that many issues, mostly it’s a call to see what I can change to get it to be what I want it to be now.

Middleburn deserve a mention for excellent cranks, lightweight and so far no problems, uno ring is spot on.

I agree that the maxle thing was a cock up and no doubt people that bought them and failed felt disappointed but I wonder what percentage of sales the maxle version accounted for. Maybe in hindsight they should have just refused to do a maxle version.

Use to like Bird, but put off following a chat with Dave at the trailhead.

+1 for what’s the story here?

USE/Exposure – Charge – Genesis – Endura – Buffalo – Hope – Fabric – Ti Bolts –

Same as everyone else I guess

Endura clothing is well fitting and hard wearing

Hope stuff is long lasting

My Whyte g150 as transformed my love for riding 10 fold ,so much so Im now torn on my next bike , either the 160 Whyte or an Alpine 160 rs from Orange

Orange and Cotic, always liked the no nonsense approach that both seem to have.

Cotic: I’ve had five over the years. Cy and Paul always were dead helpful on the phone or email. Plus Cy did the first run of green Solaris’s just for me*

Hope: brakes, wheels/hubs and headsets. Standard issue for my Cotics….

* may not be strictly 100% true….

Going a bit retro but still current we are 3 pages and not one mention for one of the first UK mtb back of the shed start up companies – Pete (and now Jamie) Tomkins, how many iconic and genuinely helpful, UK centric, simple and cheap mtb products have they come up with over the years
http://www.crudproducts.com/history/

Also X-Lite (muc-off)

Both may only produce little things we almost take for granted but that itself speaks volumes

Are we counting Chain Reaction, Merlin and Wiggle as brands, they may be shops that changed the way we buy stuff (and saved us all lots of money along the way) but they also have their own lines and brands (although like many others mentioned previously not UK manufactured) Merlin certainly with their early Merlin and Handsome Dog UK designed, overseas manufactured, direct sell frames paved the way for the likes of Cotic, On One and Ragley (not one mention for them yet) etc

Onza, used to love their bar ends and stuff, they seem to be making a come back after years specialising on trails equipment?

I mentioned Ragley!…. Cant wait for them to start doing frames again, provided they’re fun hardcore HTs again then I’m looking for a replacement for my Piglet….. If they go all niche and saddle bag wearing, bike touring, fat bike beardy **** then I’m out and Dartmoor will get my money.

Nothing bike or component wise they are so backward looking in both materials and design.

Clothing then there Rapha and DHB, opposite end of the spectrum. The bigger outdoor brands also.

apidura stuff is nice

https://www.apidura.com/

Ragley, mmm. I bloody love my Ti, it’s a proper masterpiece. Not perfect (moar top tube drop please!). But their QC was diabolical- I owned 3 Mmmbops, only 1 of them should have allowed out of the factory (one had terrible paint, one was bent), and then there was 31.7 seatposts and that… And then they just seemed to go a bit walkabout more recently.

Another shout for Hope, their stuf just works I’ve has 26,29,700c & fat bike wheel sets all bomb proof. Love all the finihing kit & the service is second to none, especially for lights, repairs no questions asked.
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Had some great Orange bikes, loved the frames. Don’town one at the moment due my love of the fat bike niche but I’m sure I’ll be back for a 5 or alpine at some point.

Love the look of Cotic bikes & I’m sure I’ll own one at some point, hopefully soon.

At the moment can’t fault my On One Fatty, most fun I’ve had riding a bike since I took my first Peugeot MTB up the local woods aged 12

Cotic…. Friendly, no nonsense approach, great frame, great ethos. My Soul is a keeper.
Hope. Again, ethos and looks…although I confess I don’t like their brakes much, but hubs, headsets and seat clamps, and now the new cranks…hmmm, lovely.
Ragley. Back in the day I had an mmmbop, plus stem and saddle. Great innovative design and again, a very British hardtail. Gutted that the full suss frames never made it to fruition.
On One. Yeah, I know it’s all cheap and cheerful, but two of my bikes have On One bars, grips, stems…great value and no nonsense. I have just bought and built up a c456 frame, and early impressions are that its gonna be great fun.
Superstar. Yeah, we all know about theFruit saga, but that aside, the pads, rotors, pedals, and wheels in blingtastic colours have their own niche in the market. Some of it’s silly, and a lot of it is rebadged tat, but the chain rings, wheel sets and pedals take some beating in terms of VFM.
Paramo. On and off the bike, cracking kit.

Cotic
Hope
Dialled
Endura
Muckynutz

Ooh, Works Components. Everyone else wants to sell you a new bike, they want to make stuff that makes old bikes as good as new bikes. Not to mention busting the lid off narrow/wide chainrings. Someone else would have done that eventually but it seems like everyone else was waiting for someone to challenge SRAM, just to see if they got lawyered to death.

moda and whyte both sport a black and white union jack on the frame.. then again so do boardmans.. does that make it a british brand?

As per marketing blurbl from whyte that their bikes were designed for the uk terrain 🙂

Hope …. enuf said 😆

Cotic. Open, honest approach. They are all (both?) riders and know what works in the UK bikewise. Love my BFe and wish I could justify the expense of a Rocket now it’s back.

Superstar. Never had an issue with them. Great VFM. Replaced my exploded Tesla rear hub two days from the end of the two year warranty period with no arguments or accusations. Nanos are my all time favourite pedal.

Orange. My Alpine isn’t a Rocket, but it’s a damn fine all rounder for UK riding (overkill for lots of stuff, but that’s outweighed by how it works when it gets into the stuff it was made for). Just like their no nonsense approach (keep thinking back to the frame alignment sequence in the Guy Martin video).

DMR. Nostalgic choice. My 2000 Trailstar was my first ‘playful’ hardtail and I loved it – still in the garage in rideable condition now.

Uberbike. Fast becoming the ‘new Superstar’. Decent products at VFM prices.

Mucky Nutz. Just for showing the little guys can still carve out a niche in the current market with the right product.

Hope. Only really use them for BBs and headsets (I think their other stuff is a tad overpriced), but these have all been faultless so far.

I own an Orange, a Stanton and a Charge all british brands and love them all, also have a fair amount of Hope parts on each!

Cotic household here.

Also Orange, Hope, Middleburn.

Cotic and Islabikes.