PWRDbyTRD

is this southern kid for real? I'd almost be tempted to call bluff...or atleast a lack of grammar

bruiser2

I'm with you, how does the fork hit the tire anyway? And if you cant do a one foot jump you shouldn't be riding extreme downhill.

TroyLeeRacer199

let alone the sea otter!

bruiser2

He reminds me of that kid IndustriaL. Didn't they both join around the same time too?

southern91love

*******s, i snaped my fork after sea otter. and il put up a picutre

southern91love

[IMG]C:\Documents and Settings\cosmos Rothenberg\My Documents\My Pictures[/IMG]

southern91love

wtf was that?>??

southern91love

it wont let me put up a picture, so belive me

madbiker555

You can't use it directly from your home computer...pm me with the pic.

MadHatter

Wal-mart bikes aren't bad for what most people do with them, but I have one (i think) it does great i've put it through hell still runs good
cept i have to keep it in 3rd on the top or the chain comes off cuz the railers are bent or the sprockets w/e... but thats a great workout for the heart and legs.. now I can smoke 40 blunts and the heartrate wont go up none

madbiker555

I can tell you can southernlove and you are going to best friends

southern91love

you know what a great work out is? im not joking iv done this with a couple friends, if there are any tials that have fire roads that lead to the, blaze all the way up, get it, its a pun.

ramius

I was lucky enough to have someone talk me into a 'quality' bike to start with, i.e. a Trek 7000, but on one of my first rides, I got 5 or 6 miles out (this on a long rail trail) and met a young lady riding so erractially I first thought she was drunk... turns out she had a brand-new 'x-mart' bike, and the pedal had stripped the threads clean, and the hole was so wallowed out no amount of engineering I could come up with would make it work. She ended up riding back the 5 miles to the parking lot using one pedal, by pushing down and then putting her foot under it to pull it up. By the time she got there, she could no longer stand up straight, let alone walk. She being Hispanic, I'm not sure she understood everything I told her, but hopefully she got some service when she returned the bike. Definitely made me glad I'd 'spent the extra money'....

Zapcod

I vote this should be a sticky

Drunken Chicken

Cool story. Do you think they mention the rider's name in the article somewhere?

Zapcod: I think so too.

bruiser2

I'll third that one.

darkmother

First MTB. From Canadian Tire. It had a sweet MIG welded 1020 straight guage steel frame, a steel 3 piece crank, chromed steel rims, galvanized spokes, and friction shifters. The stem was a solid block of steel-must have been cheap in those days. Naturally, it had plastic platform petals, and slick center ridge tires for the ultimate in offroad performance. It had these brake calipers-and I use the term very loosely-that had two arms and a central linkage made up of pined steel members sliding on a crude track. As the pads, and pivot points wore, the brake would actually completely fail if you pulled on it hard. Not that it mattered, because the steel rims made sure that you couldn't stop with anything other than the bottoms of your shoes anyway. None of this seemed remarkable or frightening to me at the time.

The bike must have weighed 40 lb, and that's with no suspension, boys. I knew it was a POS, but I didn't care. I remember I tried to christen it with a wine bottle, and it just put a big dent in the top tube instead of breaking the glass, which my to my twisted, metal head teenaged brain was especially amusing. The wheels would go so far out of true that I would have to bend them back to the point where they would not hit the frame by stomping on various parts of the wheel-a precision truing operation at it's finest. I used to take that bike on the trails, and man, it was a PIG. Eventually it met it's untimely demise after a nasty ghost riding session.

Then I bought a Rocky Mountain Fusion, which was infinately nicer. But still had crappy brakes, and plastic pedals as I recall. It weighed around 30 lbs with no suspension.

madbiker555

4th

Wasatchrider

Drunken Chicken-

Yeah, the article had the guy's name, but I don't remember what it is. Keep in mind I read the thing 11 years ago or so. Like I said, I think he was from a scandinavean country so he probably has some scandinavean sounding name. Jan, Hans... I don't know. (Are those even scandinavean?)

Now that I'm writing, I may as well mention another cool x-mart bike story. My sister's first mb was an x-mart special. I think it was called a River Crossing or something equally inspiring. She was, I don't know, about 12 or so when she got it. She rode it around the neighboorhood like any kid would for a few years. When she was about 15 or maybe 16 she got it into her head that she wanted to go mountainbiking in Moab. (We live 5 hours from Moab.) So she talked my dad into taking her on a trip to Moab. She took her x-mart bike and my dad borrowed my Trek 930 (he's a roadie, still doesn't own his own mb.) To make a long story short, my sister road all 12 miles of the Slickrock trail on her x-mart bike- steel rims, plastic levers and all. It took them considerably longer than average, and they got stares from every person they met on the trail, but they had a great time.

These days my sister rides an '04 Stumpjumper FSR.

Zetal

Currently I'm trying to ditch my Wal-Mart bike. I always noticed the not for off-road use warning. It really didn't matter to me because I wasn't anywhere near anything major. ...not even trails.

So right now, I'm stuck with my Mongoose XR-350. ...and I've had this bike for 6 years now. Hearing all these horror stories about X-Mart bikes really makes me feel lucky because I've never had any big problems. I've only had the minor tune-ups. Only thing I had to replace on that thing were the break pads because I wore them down good. But right now, I'm having to replace a spring for one side of my rear breaks. A piece of metal in the spring got bent up so I'll be replacing that just so I have a bike (might I add this is after 6 years of abuse). But I did do some damage to my shift lever though. I crashed it (completely my fault) and took the top off the shift lever (next to that, some metal got scraped good so I'm surprised it didn't take off more). I stuck it back on, and it works fine.

So for 6 years, it's held up. Not bad for some x-mart bike at $185. At that price, it gets you around. It will probably have to last for one more. I'm going for a real mountain bike this time because now I'm close enough to some trails (not much in Nebraska but I've heard there are some good places in the farthest directions from me). A rockhopper has been looking good to me since I want to keep the price down a tad. So hopefully, that will work out for me.

By the way, getting an x-mart bike for your kid at a younger age sounds good to me because then they can learn to respect it when they get a real bike. You just have to hope you don't run into those bikes with the pieces falling off. Nightmare...

Brian

The sticker isn't necessarily a reflection of quality so much as a reflection of society. I race a Haro Group 1 SX 24 BMX cruiser. It was designed and built for racing. It was also delivered with a sticker stating it was not to be used for racing.

Feel free to draw your own conclusion.

Raiyn

Rest assured that in this case it means EXACTLY what it says.

Brian

Raiyn, don't be a weenie. It's something like AU$700 for this bike. Not a toy.

Raiyn

Actually I believed you were referring to this guy's sticker
In his case it most certainly IS a comment on the quality of bike.

Brian

D'oh! My bad. Feel free to insult me with some interesting image from your expansive archive.