ppg677

2011 Cannondale Carbon Synapse 5. Sold it after discovering vintage steel.

I'm surprised to see so many Titanium mentions.

My LHT is big, dull and heavy but it serves it's purpose as a heavy-duty winter commuter. Setting it up like a road bike helped substantially. You often see these with the handle bars jacked up way too high.

ryansu

I can't count the late 70's Huffy 10 speed - in lovely earth tones -I got as a birthday present and was so uninspiring I didn't return to riding until 1999?

RiddleOfSteel

1987 Schwinn Super Sport. Keep in mind that I am a happy C&V Schwinn owner and have several, but even higher end stuff can be off, as we've seen. The SS had late 620x indexed components which look pretty and work fine (6400 was such a leap, IMO), but it was the incredibly stiff and harsh ride. I've had an '89 Tempo (also a Tenax bike) that was a great bike, if a touch small. The tired paint and put-away-wet evidence on the SS didn't help it. Neither did a full 6400 group (though it looked good!). The two test rides were jarring and almost painful. Time to put the bike/frame up for sale after just two days of assembled life. Bummer. Sold it to a happy customer who said he might SS/FG the thing. Sounds good, man.

Murray Missile 

When I first got it I thought my '83 Fuji Espree rode pretty good but since then I've acquired better quality bikes and now it just doesn't do it for me. It's not the worst I've ever had but it is under the criteria given. I can't quite bring myself to sell it just yet though. I'm going to try a saddle change and some different tires and see if that helps, the saddle on it now was great on my MTB but not so much on a drop bar bike. Tires are Panaracers but they're old.

AdventureManCO 

Pulling this one back up from last year.

I remember purchasing a Trek 1200 aluminum framed road bike probably about 8 or 9 years ago. Definitely a bone-jarring ride, very harsh, and in agreement with other's user experience of these '90s Trek aluminum frames.

Also had a Windsor steel bike for a few weeks that I put together from the bike co-op back when I was volunteering there. I did one commute on it, then never again. I can't really fault the bicycle though - my mechanic knowledge set was small then, the wheels that were on this bike were out of true so bad they created a shimmy, and it was about a 64cm frame and I'm about 5'10"...so it felt huge, wobbly, and out of control. I'm betting that properly set up and correct fitting, the bike would have been fine. I will say, the ride was very, very responsive

Giacomo 1 

Ill put up my 1991 Miyata 1400A. Yes, the A is for aluminium and it was bonded tubing. Fork and seat stays were steel, so the ride was actually pretty decent. Its just that the bike was ok at everything, but not great at anything. It didn't make me want to ride.

Funny thing though, my son-in-law needed a road bike because he got a job as a triathlon coach at college and had to get a few races in. I told him he can have the Miyata, but don't expect to do too well because all the riders will have beautiful crazy very expensive carbon fiber bikes. Well, lo and behold, he came in second in the bike portion of the race and he was not very popular at the finish for doing that and making all those high dollar bikes and riders look bad! But truth be told, he is on the US Bobsled/Skeleton team and is expected to be at the next Olympics and Worlds so, he is a high level athlete that could probably have taken my Iverson Charger Stingray bike from 1970 and have done very well with it!

RobbieTunes

I may have already posted this. It defeated me.

Roypercy

I won't say the 10-speed Huffy something my parents gave me for Christmas when I was about 12. It was a dog, but I thought it was awesome and rode it all over town. I didn't have anything to compare it to but a 26-inch Western Flyer cruiser that must have weighed fifty pounds. The Huffy, tipping the scales at, say, 40 pounds, felt lightweight.

At the risk of heresy, I'd say my least favorite was a Raleigh Super Course, about a 1974 model. I bought it secondhand in the early '90s from a LBS as a return to riding after about a decade off, and I let the salesman convince me I should really be riding a 21" frame, not the 58 or 59cm I had ridden in college. It was a light bike, and the frame was in good shape although it sported a mishmash of unmatched components. I rode a lot for a few years, but it just never felt comfortable. Finally dawned on me that maybe it was the bike and not me (duh!). I sold it on CL and traded up to a 59cm Motobecane and found my love of biking again.

One of these days I'm going to get another Super Course in the right size, just to change my experience of those bikes.

jeirvine 

1978 fillet-brazed Schwinn Superior. I really wanted to love it, but it's ride was dead, and it was surprisingly heavy. Maybe if it didn't have an "X-tra Lite" sticker, it wouldn't have seemed so darn heavy.

ksryder

Something about Trek aluminum, right?

My first real road bike was a Trek 1000 that was just an abusive mistress of a harsh, rattle-the-fillings-out-of-my-teeth, ride. It was also sluggish and unresponsive, no matter how much power I put down. I didn't know any better, so I just tolerated the ride and ended up putting about 10,000 miles on it before getting a nicer bike.

My first ride on a quality steel bike was akin to a religious experience after that.

An aluminum hardrock gets my honorable mention. Slow, sluggish, heavy, nimble as an aircraft carrier, and uncomfortable. I still have it because it's not worth the effort to put it on Craigslist and wait for someone to give me $50 for it.

ExPatTyke

The Barracuda I've got at the moment. Aluminium, and it really does have an appalling ride quality.

Keep meaning to sell it, as it gets less use every month, but it seems unfair to inflict it on a fellow cyclist.

vintagerando

I am sorry if I offend......but I owned a Peugeot UO8....for a very short time. I guess it was more an aesthetic thing. I just don't dig white bikes.

RiddleOfSteel

1987 Schwinn Super Sport with Tenax tubing. I don't know if I got a mega-thick-tubed one or had the wrong tires etc, but that thing rode harshly. It's the only bike to have done so, and elicited the sentiment that 'that hurt' after the test ride. Cannondales were a cloud in comparison (and all my Cannondales have been lovely rides).

plonz 

Narhay

so bad you posted it twice.

Narhay

I spent more time fixing this bike than any other. I spent at least twice what I ended selling it for. I dressed it to the nines. Rebuilt the wheels with DB spokes and aluminum rims. It threw every mechanical issue known to man at me.

What a pig of a bike. Maybe one day when I want to plod along on a 40lb+ beast I will get another. Just sapped every ounce of effort out of one's body.

Phil_gretz

I had a 1977 Semi-Pro that had an aftermarket, period correct wheelset built on Phil Wood hubs. That bike had a sublimely fine ride. I would call it the best bike I've ever owned or ridden. So, there's that...

Except for the wheels, it was stock. Sugino Mighty Competition cranks, Gran Compe brakes, and SunTour 1st Gen Cyclone derailleurs. I had added a Fujita Belt saddle. Everything was flawless.

Phil_gretz

I've really enjoyed every bike I've ever owned. I guess that I like bikes.

I owned and rode a carbon Performance house brand purchased in 2009 following my back surgery. It had the Scattante brand name, but I later read that the frame lay-up was modeled on the Pedal Force award winning frame design. It was my first STI bike. I never gelled with it, although I had some fun rides on it. I think that the wheelset held it back. I sold it to a professor at UVa who intended to do triathlons. Meh.

Phil_gretz

Ugh.

texaspandj

It was a (2001?) Quintana Roo kilo PR Tri bike. It had the 7700 9 speed dura ace throughout including hubs. Rode fine but couldn't get comfortable. It was in perfect condition but sold it and got me a Centurion Ironman and absolutely no regrets.

jimmuller 

You probably didn't get the Multi-Set Phase Inverter upgrade. That made all the difference, especially at sub-warp speeds.

Wildwood 

Ex Pres 

Wildwood 

I did not own one but it was the only thing available to me for about a month, in flat Florida, seems like many years ago.



edit - above pic is just an example of a beam bike like the one I rode (minus fenders).

I also agree that the early Kestrel was a dead frame, but typical of the monocoque (sp?) frames of the early/mid 90s = Trek, Aegis, LeMond, etc.

Cougrrcj

When I turned 16 in 1974, rather than my parents buying me a car (heck, they wouldn't even let me drive until age 17-1/2!), after the frame broke on my Sears Free Spirit three-speed -- for the second time due to rust-through, my old man took me around to look at something a bit better. I still had to pay for it, but he did some 'research' - which consisted of reading Consumer Reports - and we set off to see what was out there at 'real' bike shops... I ended up getting my first Fuji - an all-steel base model 'Special Tourer'. $143 and change.

That first one lasted all of three months before it was stolen from the High School bike rack. It was replaced with the exact same color/make/model. I put that bike through hell... I remember I had to buy a replacement fork because of a curb mishap, and another time I was forced into clipping a telephone pole which bent the NDS pedal and twisted the steel crank arm!

Fast-forward to two years later when I was at Ohio State, and one of my roommates, Jim, had a Viscount Aerospace Pro. Other guys in the dorm had higher-end bikes. One guy had several Paramounts (one race, one track and even a Paramount tandem!) and yet another had a higher-end Raleigh. My other roomie Tim and I were stuck on our all-steel slugs (Tim had an Iverson) and couldn't keep up. IIRC, my 23" all-steel Tourer weighed somewhere near 35 pounds, and Tim's Iverson was almost 40! Heavy SLUGS! Absolutely no redeeming qualities to either ride!

Somewhere after that first month at OSU, I had broke a drive-side spoke on the rear wheel. Normally one would just unscrew the freewheel and replace the spoke, right? Not on this wheel! We put that freewheel tool in a vise and did the proverbial 'bus steering wheel left turn' and broke even more spokes while totally turning the rim into a pretzel. Replacement rim and freewheel obtained from a LBS near campus. But at this point, both Tim and I were getting tired of being dropped, so we both upgraded our bikes. I had gone home to Cleveland for the weekend and came back with my 'New-but-scratched-old-stock' Fuji S-10S that remained my primary ride for the next 35 years!

So anyway, to get to the point of this thread, I'd have to say that my least favorite bike was either that slug Fuji Special Tourer, or my only foray into Aluminum -- a Trek 1100 that any time I tried to ride it, it felt like it was beating me up.