My wife has been riding her bike around the track at the school the last couple of months for exercise, and I was in Walmart the other week and noticed this nice looking Schwinn hardtail. It was a nice teal or blue, and what really caught my eye was that it had a tapered head tube. So I thought about getting it and maybe adding a few things here or there. She rides a Mongoose full suspension with the crappy spring for a rear shock. I just think she'd be better off on hardtail.
Now before everyone starts in on the whole Walmart bike thing, let me explain where I'm going with this. The other day when I was on the Trek website looking at bikes for myself, I checked out some hardtails and I looked at the Marlin 4 for $500-something. It got me to thinking, why buy a Walmart bike and throw a bunch of parts at it when I could just spend a little more and get a "real" bike. But then when I went back and started studying the components I noticed that the Trek really wasn't any better off. Mechanical disc brakes, spring fork with no lockout, straight head tube. Pretty much the same things I was going to change on the Schwinn, I'd want to change on the Trek. So then I started looking at budget models of other brands and they were the same way. So then I started going up in models to get to what I wanted, only to see the price keep climbing. So then it puts me right back to the Schwinn where I can get it upgraded at a much lower price level than buying a decent hardtail complete.
I find it odd that the name brand companies are not using tapered head tubes on all their bikes except maybe their smaller bikes like 24". I'll be the first to admit that you probably don't need a tapered head tube on every bike, but with 1 1/8" forks getting more and more scarce, if you had to replace one either due to performing poorly or due to it breaking, you're about SOL on finding an actual upgrade.
Any way, my point is not to start some war on department store bikes vs LBS because I know how these things go. But it's more to say my surprise at how inadequate I feel the name brand low-end models are. I was doing some searching to see what people had to say about the Marlin bikes and I saw a lot of "they're crap". But let's not pick on just Trek because I saw a lot of other low-end "crap" too.
Now before everyone starts in on the whole Walmart bike thing, let me explain where I'm going with this. The other day when I was on the Trek website looking at bikes for myself, I checked out some hardtails and I looked at the Marlin 4 for $500-something. It got me to thinking, why buy a Walmart bike and throw a bunch of parts at it when I could just spend a little more and get a "real" bike. But then when I went back and started studying the components I noticed that the Trek really wasn't any better off. Mechanical disc brakes, spring fork with no lockout, straight head tube. Pretty much the same things I was going to change on the Schwinn, I'd want to change on the Trek. So then I started looking at budget models of other brands and they were the same way. So then I started going up in models to get to what I wanted, only to see the price keep climbing. So then it puts me right back to the Schwinn where I can get it upgraded at a much lower price level than buying a decent hardtail complete.
I find it odd that the name brand companies are not using tapered head tubes on all their bikes except maybe their smaller bikes like 24". I'll be the first to admit that you probably don't need a tapered head tube on every bike, but with 1 1/8" forks getting more and more scarce, if you had to replace one either due to performing poorly or due to it breaking, you're about SOL on finding an actual upgrade.
Any way, my point is not to start some war on department store bikes vs LBS because I know how these things go. But it's more to say my surprise at how inadequate I feel the name brand low-end models are. I was doing some searching to see what people had to say about the Marlin bikes and I saw a lot of "they're crap". But let's not pick on just Trek because I saw a lot of other low-end "crap" too.