Mountain Biking - new biker

i am new biker been to most bike shops near home buying bike for around 1000.00 motocane. fantom 3.0 free replacement parts for life 900.00 bike feels good in parking lot.also giant 1200.00 different parts different warrenties full 1 year warrenty.feels good in paking lot.trek kinda far from home slight inconvienence. any help i would greatly appreciate.

if you could post the model of the giant and trek it would help.

Have you looked at the Motobecane Fantom Elite DS? It comes with much nicer components and the MSRP is $100 more.
http://www.motobecane.com/MBUSAeds.html

The 3.0 comes with ProMax discs and from what I have read they are a pain in the butt.

promax discs a pain ?NAH if you do not know a thing about disc brakes they are ok.now that i have a different type it is amazing how little the promax worked.there was not much adjustment option,i had to adjust the pads at each ride, the rotors warped,they were noisy,but they stopped great when they were coated with mud unlike some rim brakes.welcome to the forum by the way

dangit, thats what I meant. I didn't mean they were a pain to set up, I meant that they didn't work very well.

The Fantom Elite comes with Avid mech disc brakes, much better.

James, Orlando as in Orlando, FL?

I'm in Sarasota, 1 hour West, and 1 hour South!

Welcome to the forums, from aother Floridiot!

If you ever go riding in Lakeland or Tampa area, let me know and I'll try to meet up with you!

Now, regarding your bike purchase. What type of riding do you see yourself doing? More all around trails, road riding, commuting, jumping...etc.

Believe it or not, there are a lot of trails in Florida that are VERY technical. Granted we don't have long drawn out climbs, but what we lack in elevation, we make up for in technical trails.

L8R

There was an article about technical trails in the last BIKE magazine I got. It was about a cycling club called the "Ridge Riders" I think.

Yep, check em out at www.ridgeriders.net

L8R