Some of the bikes sold at these stores aren’t suitable for upgrade. I have been most impressed with the Hyper Hydroform. For under $199, I found it to be better than anticipated out of the box — if properly set up. I have a few big-box bikes that I consider to be adequate.
Contrary to my belief that it’s a bike for riding trails, I found out later that it’s instead a bike for riding at trail centers, which I guess is proper mountain biking. But in reality, I only spend a fraction of my time on mountain bikes. With few exceptions, we all like to think of ourselves as hardcore mountain bikers.
The RD-1 rear mech is by far the best-looking out there, but more critically, it’s unfussy about what other parts it works with, meshing equally well with 11—or 12-speed SRAM, Shimano, or even Campagnolo shifters. In practice, that translated to the bars feeling significantly stiff. Regrettably ill-equipped for the scientific process, I’d estimate deflection over their ample span to be within the acceptable deflection tolerance over the same span for a rolled steel joist designated for constructing a skyscraper. The 35-mm clamp diameter carbon risers that the bike came with have an anti-crush zone where they be clamped, as well as a soft, high-friction coefficient lamination on the outside in clamping areas because over-tightening of stem bolts is often a reason for handlebar failure. In this way, the bars don’t move, even with less-than-the-ideal torque, and won’t get crushed with more, so the risk of crush-based failure is mitigated. My SRD’s life began as a pile of mitered tubes destined to be an iteration of the forthcoming enduro-focused Sour Double Choc during the middle stage of Sour’s onshoring process when tubes were still mitered in Taiwan and welded in Germany.
There were perhaps three weeks after I’d brought the bike home, it sitting in my living room, where I just looked at it a lot, half in disbelief that I owned a real mountain bike and half worrying about not riding it properly enough. After three weeks, I took it out for the first time on a familiar route to try to ride it up and hyper bike down some sets of stairs or to drop off street furniture to get a feel for it before taking it out on trails. Chris took one of ten tubesets that didn’t work out as an opportunity to redesign the swing arm to accommodate a simplified single-pivot suspension design with just enough room for a 29×2.5″ tire and some mud clearance.
SRD (Sour Racing Development) also stands for Stadtreinigung Dresden, Sour’s local refuse collection and recycling company. The twist feels doubly fun as my SRD is made from tubes that were actually repurposed. Given my non-mountain biking background, there may have been some mixup before I took the bike about what a trail bike is for.
I’m normally a fan of flex everywhere but in this instance, the super stiff BEAST parts kept the bike feeling positive and surprisingly efficient on climbs. And surprisingly, he often finds a diamond in the rough — or at least a salvageable build hyper mountain bike he can later modify. (In fairness, he finds total lemons too.) So I caught up with him to find out why he loves box-store bikes, whether it’s ever a good buy, and what you can do to make a 200-plus-dollar Walmart bike a respectable ride.
The frame was welded just outside of Dresden, Germany. While we discussed a basic bitch build kit as an intro to mountain biking, when I collected the bike it was built with some of the most esoteric, decently high-end made-in-Europe parts out there. The biggest problem I’ve seen is improper assembly and setup. Even a big-name bike can give a miserable experience if it isn’t set up properly. And sadly, this is an area in which most big-box stores are lacking. There are instances where that may be somewhat accurate because there are certainly some questionable bikes I’ve seen on the shelves at big-box stores.
The top cap, which integrates a bolt, looked great, weighed half nothing, and matched my Acto5 cranks well, although I’m afraid of aluminum bolts, even if it is just to preload the headset. However, I have needed a bike that can be maintained easily by any bike shop without ordering parts; I’ve needed parts to be repairable; and I’ve needed flexibility to run weird combinations of things so that I can use what I have instead of buying something new. These are needs that the INGRID rear mech satisfies, while neither SRAM nor Shimano does. The shifting itself is nothing to write home about, but it works well every time.
All the while being simple and, in my experience, maintenance-free with four sealed bearings between the swing arm and the frame. It weighs in at 356 g and is machined in two parts, a heat-treated steel part for the first nine smaller cogs, and a hard anodized aluminum part for the three largest cogs to save weight. It offers amazing and consistent performance throughout its 520% range.
Our lightest and lowest volume internally framed pack, the Waypoint is designed for on-trail or off-trail backpacking for a range of users and trips. At 35L and with integrated shoulder strap pockets, this pack is suitable for long trails for the more experienced ultralight hiker, short overnights for those still working toward lower volume kits, and technical pursuits when 40L is just too much. With the pivot point inline with the chain I didn’t NEED the lockout at the rear, while it might have saved a watt or two up hills the difference was negligible and probably balanced against the increased off-road climbing performance with the shock active. Through riding it every which way on everything, a bike that I initially found intimidatingly over-specced for my riding became a simple, easy to maintain, solid and enjoyable platform that has proved an invaluable addition to the bikes I already owned.