Why are full sus frames so expensive?

I would be interested to know why they are over twice the cost of their hard tail brethren. Obviously lots of design to consider and im not against them, i own one, Santa cruz vpp is way more than single pivot etc, what gives, it cant just be marketing etc, what is the manufacturing cost that is responsible for the hike. No hate please, techy answers prefered 🙂

Shocks contribute a lot to the extra cost surely?

Price of a shock plus bearings plus time machining and welding extra parts plus bolts and bearings and assembly time.

Simples.

Design
Tooling
Pivots
Shock

shock £300
hard tail frame £350, probably double the work involved so £700

= £1000

Because (edit)some people "need" suspension? 😉

Theres always one

For a sus frame with 2 or 3 pieces you need 2 or 3 jigs made up for welding. For each pivot point you need the alignment to be correct as additive errors could lead to massively binding suspension. Add the price of a shock (fairly little in reality, wholesale), add the extra design time, possibly a bit of simulation and modelling (not sure if anyone really does this on all but the top end frames/manufacturers) and you more than cover the cost of a quick modification of a single solid frame based on time honoured designs and with no moving parts and limited datum points/jigs to set up.

Thanks chaps, coffee king your the winner, it still sucks though, bikes are pricey, still well worth the money – fiesta or ferrari take your pick. Cheers.

Why are mtb's so cheap????

Road bike frames at the top end cost £2500-£3500 for a carbon frame with no suspension, pivots etc. made in the far east

MTB frames cost only £1500-£2000 for a made in US/UK etc alluminium frame, quite cost effective when you think of the comparison.

From a design point of view, a full suss is so easy to get very wrong. Probably a lot more R&D time…

Also factor in the idea that price is often not related to cost, think womens shoes, or 'designer' T-shirts…

Mountain bikes of all kinds, and full sussers especially are being sold as aspirational pieces of pseudo-sports equipment; you're buying into a dream, not getting from A to B.

From a design point of view, a full suss is so easy to get very wrong. Probably a lot more R&D time…

Not any more though, surely? Seems like concensus has been reached on where to put a shock on a bike (by trial and error or design I don't know). When was the last time any manufacturer made a FS that plain did not work?

Not any more though, surely? Seems like concensus has been reached on where to put a shock on a bike (by trial and error or design I don't know).

By that logic, isn't making a hardtail just welding some pipes together in a bike shape?

When was the last time any manufacturer made a FS that plain did not work?

A testament to the amount of R&D going in?

By that logic, isn't making a hardtail just welding some pipes together in a bike shape?

Shouldn't the question be….why are hardtails so expensive? 😉

I'm probably going off point here but I'd argue that all decent quality bikes/components are expensive and arguably overpriced. You could get a brand new moped for sub £2k (not that you'd actually want one) – and surely that has more component parts and is more complicated/expensive to design and build than any full suss bike?
Decent Mountain bikes/road bikes are essentially play things for grown ups and are priced as such. I guess someone somewhere is making a lot of money.

Now all I need to do is find a couple of grand so I can get that new 5 I want…

By that logic, isn't making a hardtail just welding some pipes together in a bike shape?

Yes, it is. Because these engineering principles are now well understood, I could start **GarryLager Racing** tomorrow and contract out HT and FS frame manufacture to the far East. The success or failure of my venture would then basically depend on how good a marketing guy I could afford to hire. If there were any real, substantial engineering challenges to making a decent mountain bike then the above would not be possible.

A testament to the amount of R+D going in?

LOL – Yes, all that innovation we see in fundamental bicycle design each year.

Seriously, it depends on what industry you compare it to – there's enough money in the business to sustain a small amount of research, but it's small potatoes in the grand scheme of things.

They cost what people will pay. It's that simple.

If they cost £200, they wouldn't sell to those people who want a "proper" mountain bike. If they stick a £2000 tag on it, it becomes a thing to lust after.

Think about the "R&D" cost – your paying for a couple of frame design engineers (£50k per person per year) and a bunch of prototypes – at a couple of k each. Spread across a few thousand frames (for the volume manufacturers) it works out at not much per frame.

I can pretty much guarantee that a good quality Taiwan made frame from Giant/Scott/Spesh/ etc costs about £300 to make (plus shock). The rest is made up of tax, duty, profit, shipping, overheads, etc etc etc

I'm probably going off point here but I'd argue that all decent quality bikes/components are expensive and arguably overpriced. You could get a brand new moped for sub £2k (not that you'd actually want one) – and surely that has more component parts and is more complicated/expensive to design and build than any full suss bike?

The shift units in the tens or hundreds of thousands though…..so the cost is divided by many units.

On a similar note…….gravity droppers/speedball. Hardly new technology or much R&D gone into those and yet you can buy a whole office chair for a fraction of the price 🙄

Why bother about the cost?

Buy it,
Build it,
Ride it,
And,most importantly,

ENJOY IT….. 8)

Why bother about the cost?

Probably because I don't earn very much and I haven't won the lottery yet 😉

Woody and Gary_C both have very good contradicting points!!

Why are full sus frames so expensive?(

The cheap ones aren't!

Lots of points contribute to why they are expensive. Small scale production is one of the main reasons. For example i know that if Chumba were to increase their production run by 4 times the cost of the frames would reduce the cost and sales price by a very good amount, but they simply don't sell enough to warrant the extra volume.

R&D is expensive, but it doesn't have to be prohibitively so, especially for the small companies who can do small prototype stuff from a work shop (as Chumba do).

Of course there is also supply and demand, everyone wants an Orange 5, Lapierre, other flavour of the month bikes, thats why they hold their value well in the shops, not many sticker discounts to be had keeps the prices in check and demand high, couple that with small runs of production and it contributes to expensive full suspension bikes and frames.

I would imagine a large part is the supply/demand area. Small scale production runs won't affect Specialized or Kona.

Also I would imagine road bikes are expensive precisely beacause they don't have suspension. You have a relatively fixed position, roads are not smooth and you're in the saddle for a longer time and of course there are the weight and aerodynamic factors.