Originally Posted by
mudpuppy
I see that most winter bikers prefer hardtails as their preferred winter bikes. When it comes to performance, this seems a little counter-intuitive to me. My experience is that fs is the best way to go for maintaining traction and control on rough surfaces. Has anyone experienced failure of front or rear suspension components in cold weather? Or is it more a matter of avoiding general wear and tear on a more expensive bike?
I use a hardtail or a rigid bike for commuting partly because of expense, partly because of maintenance and partly because of performance.
Expense: I have 3 mountain bikes. One is a hardtail, one is a softtail Moots YBB and one is a full on double squishy Specialized. The Moots and the double squishy are pretty expensive and I'd rather keep them as my fun bikes. The hardtail is still a good bike but it's just fallen to the bottom of the heap.
Maintenance: The Specialized has lots of pivots and the rear shock is right in the line of spluge fire
It has a cover but there's no real way of protecting it with a fender. The Moots only has slider on the rear but it's indirectly in the line of spluge and fitting a fender to it is difficult. The hardtail (a Specialized Stumpjumper, by the way
) doesn't have anything other than the front derailer that spluge would hurt. And it's pretty easy to fenderize
Performance: There are a couple of reasons I don't use the dually for commuting. First, I can't put fenders on the rear. Second, I can't put a rack on it...easily. Third, I hate riding it on the road. The inch worm effect is okay in the dirt and the traction is fantastic but having to deal with it bobbing along for 9 or 10 miles without a need for it just sucks. Plus, I don't run slicks on my mountain bikes
Particularly on a dually
If I ride my mountain bike to work, I want to be able to tooley off into the woods and have some fun.
I have a rack on the Moots. I do ride it to work occasionally and I do play around in the woods on the way to and from work. Since the Moots' rear suspension is very limited, it doesn't have the inch worm problem of the dually and is more pleasant to ride. However, it's very difficult to put fenders on the Moots and, like running slicks, fenders would be wrong
The Stumpy I can fenderize or defenderize as I like, it has a rack, maintenance is simple, I can lock the fork out and go rigid on the road but still have the ability to tromp off into the woods when I like. I can deal with a slightly rougher ride...the front fork does most of the heavy lifting when it comes to handling anyway
...with a bike that is less expensive than the other 2 (but not by much
)