Posts
3
Joined
5/13/2013
Location
Cave Creek, AZ
US
Edited Date/Time
6/21/2017 7:06pm
Just as the title says, opposite of the "regret selling" thread. I think there are plenty of us who have bought bikes we either regretted immediately or in the long run. I have a couple that come to mind:
My current 5010c...we just don't get along that well for the riding I do. I bought a bike for where I thought I would be riding, not where I actually ride.
Surly Pugsley...it was fun while it lasted, but lugging the extra wheel weight around on the desert hardpack got old quickly.
My current 5010c...we just don't get along that well for the riding I do. I bought a bike for where I thought I would be riding, not where I actually ride.
Surly Pugsley...it was fun while it lasted, but lugging the extra wheel weight around on the desert hardpack got old quickly.
I can't say that I really have a bike that I actually regret buying, because I've always had so much fun on all my bikes. But... there's at least 2 I can think of that were pretty rough around the edges.
First one being this 2005 Big Hit FSR.... I bought it on closeout for a LBS because it was a pretty good deal and I needed a bike in a pinch. It was a medium and I'm 6'1 so... it took some adjusting to. The Manitou Stance Kingpin on it promptly blew the dust wipers days after bringing the bike home. The FOX Vanilla R shock was mega oversprung and even when I finally put the right spring on it still felt like crap. I ended up upgrading the suspension and going 1x but in the end I just didn't like the bike and sold it.
I replaced that Big Hit with a 2004 Demo 9, which was also a bad choice as I was getting into racing at the time. 48lbs?
this is not the bike, but it resembles the build LOL #badideajeans
This previous Christmas I scored a near mint 05 Prophet frame on ebay for a good price. It's my first FS bike (I'm a little behind I know) and I've wanted a Prophet since they first came out. So I get the frame and it looks like a museum piece. So big score there. I figured I'd get the stock 11 yr old Manitou Radium R rebuilt and deal with that until I could upgrade. That would allow me to go with a better fork to start. Well apparently rebuild kits for that generation are impossible to find so I had to source a new shock. I blew most of my fork budget on a Manitou Mcleod. I'm happy with it but I don't know the difference tbh. So I got stuck with a bottom end Marz 44 rlo from 2012 that some site was blowing out dirt cheap.
I had to move most of my components over from my hard tail (07 c-dale caffeine) including my QR only wheels so that made the difference in forks. No $$$ left for wheels and a decent 15mm thru fork.
Then the guy forgot to include, or didn't know about the little plastic f der cable guide under the BB. I had to source that. Cheap but more delays. Had some confusion finding the right head set. Almost x threaded the BB, and my rear brake line was too short. I was wrenching in my apartment living room and somehow my wife didn't kill me for the mess I made building it all up over time. (No work stand either)
I've been on it for a few months and honestly my only big regret (besides no $$$ budget) is the sizing. I got a Medium. That'd be my size now for most bikes. I could've sized up to a Large. The geo and Cannondale's sizing at the time make it an odd fit. The stand over and seat tube length are good but the top tube and related numbers feel short. I've played around with stem length and bar width/rise and it helps but it seems odd running a 90mm stem with 725mm mid rise bars. Maybe I'm still adjusting to the handling coming from my twitchy hard tail.
Regrets? Mostly in budget and planning. The bike seems to ride fine more or less. The biggest annoyance tuning wise is that the f der adjustment screws are very hard to get to with the way the rear swing arm is designed. I want to go 1x11 anyway.
I was so happy I will have a bike from dude who designed Balfa BB7. Oh boy, the quality was so bad.... once I killed around 10 shock linkages (these black plates) in a month, I knew this is the worst purchase ever. It was so badly manufactured, not only wrong materials, but it seemed like no one thought about it for a second how it should be engineered.
It was just wrong. Luckily I escaped from it (while loosing a lot of money anyway).
Shame on me!
The guy that started the project endend up lowering the seat mast but not being able to ad the linkage we though before, so after 7 months waiting for it to come back and a lot of discussions, I adjusted the shock mount in house, by hand, to put a bigger Stratos Helix Pro.
In the end I had the noisiest bike in the country, a super high BB, bad suspension system and a bike that looked like a war ship.
You guys with the SB6... what kind of sag were you running in the rear? What size chain ring?
It would have been more entertaining to take the money I spent on this frame, put it in a pile and set it on fire.
2007 Diamondback XSL. This was a warranty replacement from of a 2004 I had. This frame sat in storage until the winter of 2014 when I sold by hardtail and decided to build this up as a light freeride type bike. Lots of pedal pob, tight cockpit, and some of the pivots on the linkage didn't have bearings!
Great starter bike for a youngster but really outdated for an advanced rider!
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