Suspension is just not something I’ve ever felt that I needed, so this is my first bike since owning a 1995 Pro-Flex 855 that has had suspension, and needless to say it’s a completely different box of frogs. I set the suspension up to the letter of the manual for my weight and rode it for a month or so like that to get used to it. Having never owned a proper bike with suspension and only having ridden one in anger a handful of times, I had very little to compare it to, but I do feel like 160 mm of travel on the front and 155 mm at the back are beyond my riding for sure. Overall, I increasingly rode a fairly niche bike relative to my location for normal stuff and having a great time.
My children love it and they are very happyand amazed. I recommend King Toys and I myself will reach out to King Toys for future purchases. The stiffer lever feels a lot snappier and makes the brakes feel much more direct and powerful, whereas the original lever has greater modulation and feels a little more progressive. hyper mountain bike The Oak lever adds a twizzly knob for adjustment normally reserved for the MT7, so if that’s important to you then the Oak lever upgrade might offer an alternative to a fancier brake set. The stem looked incredible in the unique raw forged finish. It weighs just 86 g and is tested to exceed standards for an enduro bike.
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 mountain 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.
Joining the esteemed ranks of Mazza, Martello and Mota, Mostro assumes the mantle of the “M,” offering gravity mountain bikers … Plus, a local bike shop is also a great place to find your next bike — something to work up to. A friend got tired of hearing me talk about riding and decided he also wanted to get into cycling. A few days later, he showed up at my door with a $99 Hyper Shocker full-suspension bike from Walmart.
I received the Sagma Lite version of their saddle without suspension, which was pretty comfortable. It was more padded than anything I’ve ridden for a long time and quite a bit shorter, as I’ve been riding mostly road-derived saddles forever, and I expect the Sagma Lite to be a little more enduro-focused. Obviously, the oversized 35-mm clamp diameter adds significant stiffness more efficiently than it adds strength, but it’s also designed internally to be super strong, which adds further stiffness. I’m not sure how it’s possible to feel the stiffness of a set of handlebars with 160 mm of suspension travel and a big squishy Schwalbe Wicked Will up front, but somehow, it is. On most bikes, the sensation would be unpleasant, but with all that movement going on below, eating anything the trail has to throw at you, the steel-beam-like stiffness feels quite confidence-inspiring and keeps the steering feeling agile and reactive.
The SRD came with the classic Acto5 mountain cranks, nice and short in 165—because this bike has all the gears—and long cranks are for flat-earthers. Looking at a component in isolation, I really prefer the performance of SRAM electronic shifting, especially in wet, grimy conditions, but some people prefer mechanical shifting, and those people prefer Shimano. Looking at buying a $600 mech, I love the idea that individual parts of the mech can be replaced if they get damaged, that it will run with almost any shifter, and that I can swap the cage out to run short or long so it can be used on more or less any bike. The frame is made from custom butted and bent 4130 tubes and cast parts manufactured in Taiwan.
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 hyper bike 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.
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 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.
It’s something in the middle, for a kind of riding I’ve never really experienced, and which I need to make a six-hour round trip from my house in a car to attempt. In many ways, it’s the bike least meant for me, at least on paper, and I’m the rider least meant for it. I recently purchased this bike for my son’s 7th birthday, and he absolutely loves riding it. He constantly asks if he can use it, even if it’s late at night. The quality of the bike is amazing and I highly recommend it to anyone looking to purchase a great gift for their child. That said, there is also some truth in “you get what you pay for.” If you want an off-the-shelf, bulletproof mountain bike, you need to be ready to pony up some bucks and head down to your local bike shop.