Originally Posted by
Little Darwin
I disagree with this.
My primary bike had a front shock only, because I was going to do a combination of road and trail riding. I found I was doing only road and very light trail riding, so I switched to a rigid fork, and the handling of the bike improved immensely. I like riding the bike a lot more.
I see people half my size and half my age pushing their fully suspended bikes up hills I ride up all the time... I suspect that at least part of it is because the suspension sucks just enough energy to make it too hard to climb them.
Unless your primary time on the bike is hard core down hill riding, and unless you spend the big bucks for GOOD suspension, don't bother with suspension on a bike, especially on the rear. Go hard tail.
If you are old enough to recall when the first suspension forks for MTB's came out, the things that skeptics said-
"Oh my god, how dumb, they're too heavy, they don't work right, they cost too much, you don't
need them,
who would ever pay for such a thing?"
And look at what MTB's are now.
Go into your local bike shops, and count up all the MTB's on the floor that have no suspension, and compare that with the number of the ones that do.
-----------
Someday in the not-too-distant future--it will be difficult to walk into a bike shop and buy a bicycle that doesn't have full suspension. And
I'm including road and touring bikes in that prediction.
In fact, if you consider suspension
seatposts to be generally equivalent to rear suspension, then a lot of "comfort" bikes sold for "pavement riding"
already are full-suspension.
~