Ben’s Long Term Test Bike
Focus Black Hills 2007
Price: £399.99
Weight: 28lbs
From: www.wiggle.co.uk
I’m taking a slightly different tack with the idea of a Long Termer. Thing is, I’m fortunate enough to be in the position where I ride lots of expensive, cutting edge bikes week in week out with Singletrack so I thought I’d check out what’s happening with entry level bikes these days. The sort of inexpensive-but-decent bike that may be of more interest to your work colleagues, friends, Significant Other etc. I’m interested to find out if a £800 bike is twice as ‘good’ as a £400 one.
I make no apologies for getting a mail order bike over the internet; a lot of first time ‘proper bike’ buyers will do exactly the same thing due to a combination of price, free time and fear of LBS showrooms and salespeople.
Like a real life first timer I did a lot of shopping around before deciding on my choice. I did try and find a rigid forked bike (for less money) but there just weren’t any around really. I also had to choose between having crap forks and crap disc brakes or forks that looked okay and decent v-brakes - not that tricky a choice really.
Out of the box everything seems to work fine except the brakes rubbed the rims a bit as they weren’t tensioned properly but after a few seconds of screwdrivering they were sorted (although a newcomer might not be able to work that out without assistance). The frame has some impressive detailing to it: bi-axial down tube, triangulated stays, good mud clearance, disc mount etc.
There’s no horrendously bad bits bolted to it either by the looks of things. And it’s good to see a decent set of tyres on an entry level bike for once (Schwalbe 2.25 Racing Ralphs). I can’t see anything that shouldn’t perform perfectly adequately for quite a while - although it’s going to be interesting to see how long the forks behave adequately I guess.
May 10th, 2007 at 1:21 pm
How has the Black Hills peformed? I am thinking of buying one of these and, as a newbie, would certainly appreciate your opinion. E.g. have the forks continued to “behave adequately”?
Cheers.