Mountain Bicycle

[munruss]

I'm thinking of purchasing a new mountain bicycle. I'm looking to spend $200-300. Any recommendations with models and links?

 

[Fausto]

Any of the "big" brands should do you just fine in that range (ie- brands you'll find in a bike shop and not a department store....Giant, Specialized, Trek, DiamondBack, Fisher, etc). Do NOT buy a department store bike. There's a reason they're so cheap.....it's because they are complete crap!

At that range, I would stay away from any full suspension bikes you may come across. It costs more money to make a f/s frame so they will use cheaper components elsewhere to make up for this. An aluminum frame is also more expensive to produce than a steel frame, so same logic applies there. Alu is getting to be pretty common as bike frame material tho, so the "hit" to the components on the rest of the bike will be much less than for the f/s bike. I personally like having an aluminum MTB as you can just hose it down after a muddy ride and have no worries about the frame rusting.

Hit your local library and see if they have back issues of Bicyling Magazine or maybe Mountain Bike Action and dig through them for reviews of lower-end bikes. They'll usually do a good job of breaking down why a bike is a good value for the money or not. I think Bicycling has a sister mag called "New Rider" (or something similar) that is geared to new cyclists...might be a good source for entry-level MTB reviews.

At the price range you are looking in, they main thing to be concerned besides proper fit (very important! If the bike store sales guy seems clueless on this, find another store!) is what level of components you are getting for your money. Take a minute to browse through Shimano's MTB components page and familiarize yourself with the heirarchy of the component "grouppos". That way you will know what stuff is "better" when shopping for the bike. Let me know what you find and I'll be happy to offer my input FWIW.

Good luck, let me know if you have more questions.

Fausto

 

[munruss]

Thank you very much for your input. I will keep you up-to-date with my purchase and I will keep in mind what you said while I'm in the store.

Thank you again.

~Russ

 

[Fausto]

Not a problem....always happy to get someone else into bikes. My main hobby, if you hadn't already guessed.

 

[yakko]

You also need to figure just how serious you want to ride. The harder you plan on riding the more you want to spend on the bike to avoid having it constantly break. My last mountian bike I purchased cost $900 on close out but it was still going strong 8 years later when someone broke into my house and stole it. I put very little money into needed repairs and most of that was tubes and tires. I did spend money to upgrade so total between intial purchase, repairs and upgrades was probably around $1600 which is not bad for 8 years of really hard use.