New bike or update old?

Dano · 19 Aug 2011 at 20:32

I have a Claud Butler Vitara mountain bike, it's fairly old but still in pretty good condition though it does need a service and a few bits doing on it.

Is it worth fixing it up or should I just go buy a new bike for approx £400 and get one with front suspension and disc brakes?

What would you guys do?

weescott · 19 Aug 2011 at 20:45

How old is it? What needs doing to it? Where/what do you ride?

Dano · 20 Aug 2011 at 08:24

It's about 20 years old if I remember correctly,main thing wrong is that the front three state shifter doesn't work properly, it'll happily work the two smaller gears but just wont engage (goes all loose and appears to have no effect whatsoever on the cable) to move the chain up to the biggest gear.

Other than that it's just a general full on service really.

I ride a mixture of road and offroad stuff, nothing extreme at all.

weescott · 20 Aug 2011 at 08:39

There is no point in spending any money upgrading it. You could get it serviced spending £20 on it, which is probably what the whole bike is worth. If you plan on spending any decent amount of time on a bike then spend that £400 and get a bike that will be in a different league in every respect. You will have much more fun on it.

Dano · 20 Aug 2011 at 13:53

That's certainly the way I'm leaning. I suppose that just like computers the technology has moved on a lot in the interviening years and my shimano STX (was midrange iirc) gearset is probably not even as good as the low range stuff these days?

weescott · 20 Aug 2011 at 14:37

STX was low range. The STX-RC was OK. I guess the equivalent of Deore today.

STX
STX-RC
LX
XT
XTR

Today components are:

Deore
SLX
XT
XTR

Anything below that is budget parts.

Bike parts have moved on a lot. Roughly speaking you see the biggest changes every 4 years. So 20 year old parts will seem complete rubbish in comparison.