Originally Posted by
JoeBear50
Burton: "The reality is that any mtb bike that costs less than $500 or is equipped with Shimano Tourney or Altus or Acera or Alivio components is intended for city driving , light use and any suspension system is purely in name only."
Then I guess all the Trek 3 and 4 series hardtails, are only meant for light use, and not designed to take off road? Because they are all equiped with the above components.
Opinions are easy to come by so I try not to post anything thats just speculation or entirely my own opinion.
If you check the Shimano Retail Catalogue and go to the section where they classify MTB components, you`ll find exactly what diciplines each component group is targeted for. It specifies what catagory of bike, what activities, what terrain and what style of bike the components are suitable for.
For your benifit I`l translate from the French copy I have here. I guess you might order your own in English if you can.
Starting with the Tourney group for example, the group is targeted for `Velo de ville` or City Bikes. and the activity is `Practique recreative en ville` or recreational city bicycling; the terrain is given as `Route a paves en ville` or paved municipal and city streets; and the style is given as `Imitation VTT` or MTB look-alike.
The original question was `is it SAFE to do tricks on a folding mountain bike` and it turns out that not only does it have dual suspension- it retails for less than $300.
You can do all the tricks you want on any cheap bike it you don`t care how fast you break it. I do deal with Konas and Haro BMX`s and there are different grades there too. And what I stated applies to those Konas just as much as to your Treks.
Price is actually a good indicator of quality. For five bills you can get a good BMX. You can`t get a good dual suspension MTB and I personally can`t recommend a single MTB with a decent front fork for that price.
But if you`re really only going to drive it to school on paved roads - its all incidental.