MidAirCrisis the Geordie Mountain Bikers

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If you decide to swap bits between bikes in the pursuit of a cheapo MTB, be careful what you spend. You may have guessed from the sermon that I've moved on from hardtails. You'd be right. This was as recent as Christmas '05 when I had the brilliant idea of transferring all the bits off the Univega onto something bouncy. My luck was in when I spotted a real cheap suspension frame on one of the bike web sites (OK, Dreamcycles). It was a Barracuda for less than a ton. It looked good, but I made a few tentative enquiries before taking the plunge. I talked to the owner of a bike shop at the Coast near here. He confirmed the obvious, that Barracudas are low end consumer items, and the display of four or five in his shop window backed this up. He told me they were "great showroom bikes" but perhaps not so clever when you started riding them. Anyway, the frame looked OK so I ignored his warning and ordered one off the web site.

It arrived looking like this: cuda

What a lovely little thing, I thought. Anyway, it had all the basics, so the job of part-swapping came next. Because I was more-or-less in the middle of upgrading my Kona Bear aswell, I had a set of Hayes HMX-1 cable disc brakes going spare from that. What I didn't have was a disc wheelset for the Cuda, so I got some dead cheap from Merlin Cycles. Strike £90. I wasn't going to put old chainrings, bottom bracket, cassette and chain on the missus' new susser, was I? So strike another £100. The Tioga Factory tyres on the Univega had seen better days so it got some Specialized Enduro folders - another £40. You can see where this is going now, can't you. New head set was a necessary addition - £14. Short alloy stem as befits a jumping machine - another £20. The Univega's seatpost was ginormous - almost 32mm diameter, so I had to buy a new one for the Cuda at £15. What else? Oh, yes - while searching for bits on the internet I found a Rock Shox SID Air shocker for £69 - pennies! Where are we now? Pedals OK, handlebars OK, front Marzocchi MX Air forks off the Bear OK. Inner tubes OK, saddle OK. Had to buy a whole set of brake and gear cables - about £20. Rear derailleur from Univega a bit worn now - another £30 for LX, but the front LX changer was good although it would be activated upside-down on the new frame. Totting up the "swap" job looks like I spent about £490 - How much is a Haro Extreme??? And the 2005Mongoose andSaracen sussers look pretty capable as second machines (for the Wife).

The moral of this tale - be V-E-R-Y careful with upgrade spendies. The upside for me is that the Cuda is a decent 32lbs worth of very agile rock softener with manageable pedal-bob that none of the crew have managed to break. And we've tried hard, as part of the experiment. But maybe I wouldn't repeat the exercise!

Oh, and if you can't do the work yourself, get yourself a mechanic. Here's ours:

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