Hi all,
I'm looking for some advice on my next MTB purchase. I'm an experienced rider, not a noob, but haven't rode in over 4 years (New job, marriage, divorce, life, etc.). My gf wants to ride but not spend much money on a bike, and is looking at Walmart/Kmart/Target etc. I'm trying to send her on the right path, but we are trying to save for a house, and I can't really justify another big purchase. So I've been looking at craigslist for two decent used bikes, mostly for riding on dirt paths, and streets, mostly for exercise. I plan to do some more technical paths as I get back into shape. In the meantime, I thought I would go against all advice in this forum and try out a bike I saw at Costco that I thought had ok specs for an entry level bike. and keep said bike if I can adjust it to be pretty decent. Again, let me stress, I'm not a noob. I owned a specialized rock hopper and a hard rock in the mid 90s. I've rode my friends Ellesworths, Marins and Gary Fishers, and I had a couple of road bikes (Schwinn, when Schwinn was decent, and Trek). I rode many great trails on my MTBs while I was a grad student in Utah, including bobsled, gemini bridges, soapstone basin, millcreek canyon and many others I have forgotten. My last 4 bikes were LBS bikes, and most service was good or great. Of these bikes I still own only the Hard Rock, which I beat up for years, and upgraded it's Alivio components to XT, gave it a Softride stem suspension (which was really fun on singletrack), rode Hot Chili tires, and would swap out and use slicks for a commuter. That bike performed double duty for me for a number of years, so I appreciate the quality and a reliability of a decent bicycle. Why I bought a Costco bike a few days ago has to do with some peculiarities of my psychology, as well as Costco's return policy. I did most of the work on my bikes on my own, and learned a lot, so I thought that if a box store bike had decent enough components I can undo virtually any damage the employees at the store could do in assembly, and in the end get a decent bike for a decent price. So I saw this Northrock XC6 bike for $300. At first glance it looks nice, really pretty aluminum frame, disc brakes, shimano components, suntour fork, etc. They had about 8 of them at my local warehouse, so I picked the one with what appeared to the least damage, buy it and take it home. It wasn't an easy choice because all of them had flaws, scratched frames, etc. But the best part, EVERY SINGLE ONE HAD THE FORK MOUNTED ON BACKWARDS. Every one. I've never seen anything like it. Well, I took it home to work on it, and look for the 5 average mistakes in assembly of a department store bike, and below is what I found (but first the specs):
Northrock XC6 Bike:
Aluminum "lightweight" frame - designed for stability and control
Shimano Altus shifters - 24 speeds for responsive performance shifting
SR suntour XCT V2 fork
Ninja 26x2.10 tires
Shimano crank
Tektro IO Disc brakes with shimano EF50 levers
KMC Chain
Acera rear derailleur
Geometry is really pretty nice. I mean, after you reverse the fork, of course. The bike is heavy, a hair over 32 pounds. So what was wrong?:
1. Fork: Backwards. Freakin' backwards!
2. Front Brakes: rubbed. Constantly.
3. Rear Brakes: Too loose
4. Front Derailleur: Needed adjustment to shift properly
5. Shift cable: Wrong cable was used from front derailleur shifter to frame (frame to rear derailleur cable is currently there.
6. Steering wheel: angled back
7. Handlebar grips: ripped
8. Frame: Various dings and scratches. Made in China
9. Kickstand: Scratched
10. Kickstand: Installed
+ many more
Anyway, I fixed most of this stuff in about an hour with a couple of allen wrenches and a screwdriver.
Today I took it out for a ride:
First the good: The geometry is indeed nice. The bike shifts well, feels lighter than it is. The kickstand. Seriously, I really like it. I haven't had one in 2 decades, and now I wonder why? They actually are useful!
The bad: The tires are horrendous. Horrendous traction on dirt and grass. The brakes are even worse. After spending the better time of my tuning working on disc brakes, I got them to feel ok, but they don't stop me well. I'm only 175# (5'10") and I cannot endo, and I cannot skid the rear tire. No matter how hard I try. For comparison, I used to easily skid my rear or endo on my hardrock, and that was pre-V break, just center pull cable brakes. In fact, I remember skidding and practically endoing on my Free Spirit 26" 3-speed bike from Sears, with its crappy sidepull brakes, when I was a kid. It has to do something with the cables. The Tektro brakes can't be THAT bad.
So needless to say, the POS is going back to Costco, at least in better shape than it left (though I bet they flip the fork back to its original wrong position). I've already found a used Trek 3700 for about the same price on craigslist and I'm wondering if this bike is recommended. It's 19.5".
0 comments:
Post a Comment