Mountain Biking - The damage report is in.

I got an update from the bike shop today. The cassette body on my wheel is smoked... these wheels are practically brand new. Granted they've seen some miles, but I am honestly let down by the quality of these Shimano hubs. My previous set lasted me literally 3 years of hard riding and nasty conditions with practically no maintenance whatsoever, and these failed after less than 6 months. The axle inside the hub was also bent, which to me is completely unacceptable for a person of my size and riding style. I'm a 130 pound XC rider, and I also ride street every now and again, but I never take drops or jumps bigger than maybe 3 feet. I'm seriously disappointed.

My Headshok has apparently dissintigrated. The plastic piece that holds all the roller bearings inside has apparently snapped, spilling bearings inside the fork and providing poor performance and a horrible sound. I'm not sure how the hell this happened, but I bought the frame/shock second hand so I'm not really complaining about that.

But I feel that the quality of my XT disc hubs is completely unacceptable. The freewheel was about 40 bucks to replace, plus about 16 dollars worth of labor, and the axle was another 8 bucks. The fork is between 80-100 dollars and will be away at Cannondale for nearly 2 weeks. I have another bike to ride, but I prefer my hardtail. Ah well.. at least I can still ride I suppose. I'm really surprised at all this damage considering that I'm not a heavy guy in the least, and I'm usually very smooth and not hard on components. All this came at a really crappy time because next month I'm moving out and I'm gonna have lots of crap to pay for.

:mad:

Jim, man that sucks! http://smilies.networkessence.net/s/cwm/cwm/eek2.gif

I have to tell you that I have had some bad luck with light weight high performance stuff in the past. It seems that light weight = less durable in some instances.

I remember a set of RX100 road bubs that lasted 6 seasons of hard riding and got sold with the bike when I upgraded. That same bike watched me trash a set of the mavic cosmic hubs back when they tried making the freewheel from high grade aluminum. a 200$ set of wheels that lasted 6 times as long as an 800$ set.

I've had similar experience with mountain bike hubs as well. Granted I am a 190+ pound rider I still expect expensive stuff to hold up at least reasonably well.

I've had good luck with my headshocks though. My lefty was a real issue but I bought into that one while cannondale was still using us poor customers as guinea pigs for the new stuff.

Hope you get it all fixed up.

Sam

Good to hear from you again Sam.. haven't talked to you in a while.




The thing was... the XT hubs aren't even really lightweight. I could have sworn there were freeriders and people who generally bash their rigs pretty good using them. It's wierd that I had issues with the hub and not the rims.. the rims are Mavic X3.1 UST tubeless XC rims.. not really designed for any heavy hits. I would have thought they'd crumple far before any hub damage would have occured. The rims are still pretty true and running well with no flat spots. I agree that Headshocks are good forks... thats why I'm having mine rebuilt when I could have just bought a new fork for a couple more hundred bucks. I love the feel of them.. very smooth and progressive. Just wish it had another 20 mm of travel.

I guess I just expected more from a relatively high end wheelset. The last set of wheels was a set of XTR hubs on Mavic 217 rims.. and they held up forever. I sold them on ebay and as far as I know the guy loved them. I should be riding again sometime soon.. I hope so anyway.

Get that roadbike out and come to savannah for the labor day weekend century.

BTW, I check your website out from time to time, the fun of riding must be overiding the web development huh ;) The videos of the jumps and the crash are cool though.

Hehe.. yeah.. I actually put up a new picture on the front page. That website was sort of a project that I never really got around to, especially since I switched computers. But my buddy Chris moved away to Austria, so I put sort of a "tribute" pic up. He asked me to keep my website current, and I'm going to start doing so. I just downloaded some web page building software, and I've got a better and faster computer now, so I'm going to load up all the pics and see if I can't give my web hosting service a run for it's money. Keep an eye out.. it will be further updated soon.