[Closed] Tell us your least favourite bike

Easy: Ellsworth ID. weird geometry, weird looks. Tried to kill me several times. I bought the frame cheap (well, not all that cheap, about £900 IIRC) on a whim. Next bike was an Orange 5, Massive improvement.

My Croix de Fer. Quite a useful thing, and not bad-looking. But heavy, surprisingly stiff and overall very uninspiring to ride which is not what the reviews said at all. Swapped it a Camino and I'm happy again.

Mountain bikes, I don't have a single bike I didn't love. But when I had a choice of 2 (hardtail and full sus) I was forever on the 'wrong' bike. So now I just have one 🙂

Specialized SX Trail. DH weight, XC geo.

Honourable mention to a GT pro Cruiser. Lusted over at Uni, one came up for sale years later, bought, rode once, realised not having a BMX track (or the ability to ride one proficiently) for miles would be an issue, Sold.

Ellsworth ID as well, would've been around 2003/4 i'm guessing, as above, weird geometry made it feel rubbish, well and truly in the days before suspension frames were designed via software packages.

Canyon Inflite from 2015 I think. On paper it was great; big tyre clearance, disc brakes, lightweight alloy frame. In reality it was an absolute ball ache to build up due to Canyon’s odd standards, the geometry was off, the fancy leaf spring seat post always slipped in the frame, the Canyon specific stem didn’t clamp the bars well and I always got heel rub.
https://flic.kr/p/2kUkqb8
Even after I’d sold it the misery didn’t end as the courier damaged the frame in shipping.

Orange Sub 3. Bobbed like a tramapoline.

Niner EMD from early 2000's.

The frame, 29er, awesome.

The QR Reba forks and road bike nabbed rims with chunky rubber on = I steered one way and the flex in fork and wheels mean the route was anywhere but where I wanted.

Thankfully someone nicked it.

A Salsa xc hardtail. I forget the model. It was alu and red. Looked awesome like it was going a 100mph standing still. Anyway, there was something about it, maybe it's size relative to me that wasn't right and it would result in the rear wheel shredding tyres like they were going out of fashion. It slashed the sidewalls of a fast trak, a saguaro at a xc rampage, a x-king at a gorrick, and another tyre. None were super light tyres. Anyway after 4 sidewalls trashed I sold it.

I think if I was a little taller it would have been less wayward and been fine.

A Pinnacle road bike from about 2014 that suffered from such severe speed wobble that it nearly killed me in a Froome esq style crash into the side of a house on a 90d bend

I just clicked on this thread to post this, pretty much word for word:

For me its an easy choice: 2009 Pace RC305.

I bought it on a whim without testing it. It had good reviews, I’d always wanted a Pace and fancied a hardtail again.

Built it up with a 140mm Pike and some other nice bits. It pretty much disappointed the whole time I owned it. It just felt uninspiring and dead. If I had to sum it up in a word it would be “Meh!”.

Absolutely awful bike. On paper it ticked all the boxes. The reality was a crushing disappointment. It felt completely dead. It didn't last long. It convinced me that my next hardtail would be steel.

A mate has an original Orange Aluminium O. Comprehensively the worst bike I’ve ever ridden: steering geometry from a 70s racer and a ride that could only be made more compliant by replacing the rear triangle with a granite monolith. A stem that spans time zones all finished off with x-ray gripshi t. Radial spoked front wheel in a manitou 3 fork add to the feeling of impending doom whenever it’s ridden.

It was awful when he bought it in the 90s, it’s utterly ludicrous now.

I’ve a specialized crosstrail that I got on CTW: that’s truly terrible, but nothing in comparison to the blight on the trail that is the O.

2004 Cannondale Jekyll. Super low pivot with a wallowy 135mm of travel matched with a 100mm, skinny Manitou fork, you could pointlessly wind down to 60mm. The damn thing came with V-brakes, in 2004! Even fitting discs and a 140mm Fox Vanilla couldn't save it and I sold it shortly after discovering Ebay. I've had a couple of really nice Cannondales since, to be fair to them.

I guess my least favourite was a Cube Stereo HPC 160. It was just a bit dull and I really didn't like the way it ate bearings. It wasn't a bad bike I just didn't particularly love it. The forks sucked too, they were Fox 34's with the terrible damper.

Had a Commencal Meta 5.5 that cracked (like they all did) but I loved the way it rode so could forgive it it's sins 😛

Trek VRX - short, tall, steep head angle and bobbed like hell. When it wasn't making me seasick it was trying to tuck the front.

Honourable mention to a sliding dropout inbred - Dead heavy, dead feeling

Easy: Early/mid-noughties Cannondale F600.

Apart from the really-quite-nice paint job, everything about it was nasty. Worst bike I ever owned by far. I've built rigid SSs out of shonky spare parts which fitted, rode and worked better.

EDIT: Honourable mention to my Mountain Cycles San Andreas which tried to kill me on several occasions.

Specialized SX Trail. DH weight, XC geo.

I really lusted after one of those, 2008 era.

I had the Enduro with the same frame, and yes, DH weight, XC geo but I loved it despite itself.

Dialled Price albert for me. i had high hopes but the BB was stupidly high instead. went back to my cheap cannondale trail and was much happier.

Spot Singlespeed. Waited a year for it by which time I'd given up Singlespeeding! So not really the bikes fault.

Ellsworth ISIS. The "Hinge and Stackit" as it became known 😉

Worst bike I ever owned was a Lapierre Spicy 516 (2011), they always got rave reviews, but the reality was a 160mm Enduro bike that was pretty unsuited to riding rough stuff quickly.

I could blame the reviews, but the test bikes were a tiny bit different, they came with top of the range Fox forks, not the terrible open-bath Talas R the final bikes got, they also got proper Conti tyres (still not great) not the Conti-in-name-only OE ones that didn't work. Ruined a good bike really, but meant they hit the price point they wanted.

It was also the year they decided to use filler over all the weld points to make the frame look 'more Carbon' which was fun when it cracked - have I cracked my frame, or just the filler? Lets find out based on whether it snaps or not I suppose.

San Andreas. Looked awesome, built with Stratos MX6 forks, Hope brakes & Big-un hubbed wheels with Middleburn cranks and XT drivetrain.
Rode like crap. Pogoed, bottom bracket was somewhere near the International space station, rear ended and crank flex meant the chain device was vital to keep the chain on but rubbed mercilessly. The forks? Best thing I can say is they were anodised gold! Massive legs and 6 inch travel, but with a qr axle and bolted arch/crowns. Sooo much flex and after every run had to loosen all bolts and realign them so they actually worked.
Sold it and went back to my GT Lts pretty quickly...

my cannondale f1000 was supposed to be infinitely better than my 10 year old sm1000 it replaced but it wasn't.

the xt v-brakes were so powerful that the seatstays flexed giving that very unnerving 'its gonna snap' feeling every time you really needed to slow down. and the whole bike was so super twitchy.

i never really gelled with the bike but eventually managed to sell it to guy that i couldn't stand so the bike ultimately made me smile...

I had a Rocky Mountain ETSX in the early 2000s. I thought I wanted something with longer travel than the Instinct I had. But the Instinct was a much better bike. ETSX was actually amazing at going uphill - I remember a Gorrick race where I was one of the few to make it up a steep muddy climb. But the BB was so high, it was really hard to corner the thing, felt really unbalanced. It wasn't absolutely terrible to ride, but I was relieved to find a crack in the seat tube (I think they ALL cracked in the same place). I'd bought it 2nd hand, so cheated (fraud!) the original owner receipt, got a brand new frame and sold it to a roadie, who still has it 🙂

My Croix de Fer. .

My least favourite too. There was simply nothing enjoyable about riding it at all.

I really don't get the love for them.

Ended up selling it on Gumtree to a uni professor who looked like Doc Brown from Back to the Future.

Specialized SX Trail. DH weight, XC geo.

My '07 SX Trail was one of my favourite ever bikes. It had a 5th Element coil shock and pre-Taiwan Marzocchi 66 ATA up front (then later a Lyrik) and the thing was plush AF. Was much more fun to ride than the Demo 8 it replaced.

GT XCR4000 for me. First full suss (or any suss!) I'd owned and it was terrible. My previous bike was a light, rigid Orange Clockwork and the GT was a bouncy lump compared to it. The forks were woeful, the shock basically just a spring, the riding position hopeless and just no fun to ride. Put me off the sport for another 5 years and I sold it on, virtually as new to a pal.

A mate has an original Orange Aluminium O. Comprehensively the worst bike I’ve ever ridden: steering geometry from a 70s racer

Agree the 'O' was stiff but the geometry was pretty bog standard early 90's style, as were long stems (which you could spec shorter when ordering). Pretty sure the 'O' had gone by the time Gripshift and Manitou 3's popped up so he must have chucked some coin at it?

PX Kaffenback.

Dull, just so dull.

Heavy, slow moving, dull looking and just sucked the joy out of riding.

It's still built up as a commuter bike where I value practicality over but that doesn't alter how average is is to ride.

My Croix de Fer. .

My least favourite too. There was simply nothing enjoyable about riding it at all.

This for me too. I went from the CDF to a cheap alloy framed road bike from planet X and that was so much nicer and more enjoyable to ride.

Absolutely awful bike. On paper it ticked all the boxes. The reality was a crushing disappointment. It felt completely dead. It didn’t last long. It convinced me that my next hardtail would be steel.

I don't think I could blame the material. All my hardtails have been alloy and the Pace actually rode worse then my first proper MTB which was a £600 Gary Fisher Marlin. To this day its the most money I've ever spent on a hardtail frame and it remains a mystery why it felt so awful. It wasn't the fit or the geometry, it was okay weight wise too.

But as soon as you slung a leg over it and turned the pedals it rode like it was full of sand.

In terms of ride my late 90s 853 custom cross bike. Flexy rubbish.
In terms of ownership my Whyte M109C full sus. Rode OK but I snapped 2 frames in one year.

Was much more fun to ride than the Demo 8 it replaced.

Mine replaced a Demo 8 too. Properly loved that bike, but alas it was stolen so I just wanted that again but lighter, guess I wasn’t fully committed to the (enforced) change.

SC 5010 V2. Bought on reputation without riding, thinking it'd be like an old Blur that liked. Never got on with it- didn't pedal efficiently, too overbuilt to climb well, not very plush or capable enough descending to make up for that, numb anywhere inbetween with an odd handling balance. Its sole purpose seems to be aimed at surviving sessioning the woods in yer skinny jeans...which would make bits of my body fall off if tried these days. So given how overpriced it was for what it was, by far the worst bike I've owned in 35years of mincing. Sorry SC fanboys.

Marin Wolf Ridge from 2003 or 2002...

The single pivot jobs with the 4-6inches of travel that could be adjusted with a QR "TARA" link.

I think it was designed around 5in of travel, which meant the 4in and 6in settings were pretty compromised either due to the sky high BB in 4 or the falling rate leverage ratio on the 6in.  The 5in mode was just about usable.

The feeling of the bike hinging in the middle put me off single pivots for life and suspension bikes for nearly 20 years.

It also ate shock bushings and front mechs.

It also creaked and was stupidly flexy.

Stripped the parts off the frame and sold it.  Built up a Dialled Bikes Prince Albert instead.

Kona Entourage freeride thing.

Should have been great with 170mm rear travel and 180mm 66 RC3 ti fork.

But the ahead-of-its-time 460mm reach and super-short 415mm chainstays combined to make it feel really twitchy and weird - and hard to find a good body position on.

Then the shock blew when I was riding it at Pila for the day and it nearly rattled me to death.

Should've just kept the Patriot I had before it as my final 26er.

Specialised Enduro. Pretty much everything that could break on it, with the exception of the frame, broke multiple times.

Forks stopped working
Shock failed twice
BB would last 3 months
Frame bearings lasted a similar time
Wheel bearings went after 4 months
etc

Only thing that was reliable was the Command Post dropper, which to be fair was the only Specialised bit of kit on it. Never treated it any different to any other bike and never had the same problems with stuff constantly failing.

Eventually replaced all the breaking bits and got it reliable, at which point I sold it!

Maverick thing every part of the suspension failed and the forks leaked oil over the front brake. I hated the thing.

YT Jeffsy (Mk1) all hype and no trouser! got rid that quickly i dont think i lost any money on it!

Santa Cruz Bronson cc 2019. Too light and too stiff. I hated it and couldn't stop crashing. Reviewed well, just didn't work for me.

2010 Orange P7 with the sliding dropouts. It rode like it was built back to front.

P-Jay
Free Member
Worst bike I ever owned was a Lapierre Spicy 516 (2011), they always got rave reviews, but the reality was a 160mm Enduro bike that was pretty unsuited to riding rough stuff quickly.

I could blame the reviews, but the test bikes were a tiny bit different, they came with top of the range Fox forks, not the terrible open-bath Talas R the final bikes got, they also got proper Conti tyres (still not great) not the Conti-in-name-only OE ones that didn’t work. Ruined a good bike really, but meant they hit the price point they wanted.

I had one of those - white with blue and black graphics - I bought mine without the stock wheels or tyres, so never tried the crapy Contis. Not wrong about the fork, but I was fond of the bike as a whole, I progressed a lot on it, and I know it's still being used, so I got one of the non-cracky ones.

Lynskey Ridgeline ti

Published geo was wrong, so had to send back the medium and swap for a large, which was a gate and horrid to ride. Expensive mistake.

Two honourable mentions from me:

Genesis Vagabond. Everyone loved them, but it was just heavy and dead. Which is pretty much how I felt too after it's 2nd ride.

Specialized Pitch. The geometry was amazing. But:

I blew the shock twice (and apparently the new owner disassembled it on arrival and found the seal about to go again).

The Sektor forks were rubbish.

The rear wheel ate bearings. 2 cartridge bearings, one in the freehub, one in the hub shell, the rest unsupported! And as a result, had so much flex in the axle the freehub would jam.

The cranks/bb were rubbish

The stem was actually flexible despite being ~50mm, took a while to figur out why the handling was so bad.

The SRAM brakes I binned as I couldn't in good conscience sell them even after they'd been back to fisher and failed again.

Made me realise that 10/10 in a magazine test means nothing, journos just send them back after a few days and they get a full service and sent out again, it's not the real world where you expect a £1400 bike to at least get through a weekend without falling apart.

I've bought and quickly sold other bikes as they weren't what I expected. But those two are the ones that stick in my mind for being both very expensive (after throwing money at upgrades to impove them) and just rubbish.

My Croix de Fer. .

For me too. I really wanted to like it and spent ages tweaking it, but it always just felt dead.

Honourable mention for the Iron Horse MkIII. Other people seemed to like them, but it never really felt right to me.

Haha, yea anything PACE from late 1990's really was cack, those rc35 forks, great on paper but just snapped when you rode off a kerb.

My worst was prob a Raleigh M-Trax full suss. Supposed to be a DH bike but the shock mount was way too weak and just peeled off the frame on my first ride. Then the RS Superdeluxe shock blew up. The 853 tubing and 4-bar linkage design were good but it was way too flimsy for any real DH. Finally totalled it when I fitted Boxxers and rode into a rock, creasing the front tubes (tbf I was a lardass then and no skill). Whadyamean it's not under warranty?!
Should've bought an Orange Patriot

Only thing that was reliable was the Command Post dropper,

Was that the one that returned so quickly and firmly it could pancake your plums? Scary things.

A 2007 Santacruz Superlight, it was my first full suss - I was so exited. It rode fairly well though I discovered that if I pedalled hard enough I could make it change gear without shifting due to the flex in the swingarm. It also ate shock eyelet bushings due to the flex and the swingarm shock mount not being square to the frame shock mount. The swingarm ended up cracking, I got it replaced under warranty and then sold the frame. The experience put me off full sus until 2016 when I got a Kona Process 111 DL (which was awesome).

A DW Turner 5spot. The previous HL 5 spot is arguably the best bike I've ever owned. After it died in a crash and replacement parts were no longer available I had a new 5Spot via insurance.

It should have been better in every way, but it wasn't.

I've been lucky enough not to have had any bikes I've REALLY hated, though I suspect if I went back to some of them now I'd realise how bad they actually were.

My first full sus was a Giant VT, in size large which was flipping massive. It really was like a gate. And I actually have quite little legs. I never gelled with it, the shock was knackered and I reckon I'd hate it now. It was free though, and felt like an upgrade at the time.

I also had a Cove G-Spot (the original with the pivot around the BB). That was rubbish too. Short, tall and steep(ish). It was probably great for hucking off cliffs, but for riding around the Peak District it was exhausting riding up and surprisingly scary going down. I bought it for an Alps trip, did one ride either side then sold it. I still have the coil Lyriks I ran on it though, doing sterling service on a 456 that I love.

Finally, the bike I hated most when I got it was (drum roll...) a Cotic Rocket. It just felt sketchy and uncomposed over anything remotely lumpy. Turns out that's what a shock with no damping whatsoever can do... Swapped that out for a shiny new CCDB Air and it was transformed, and is now probably my favourite bike. Currently building it back up and getting a little bit giddy.

Kona Explosif.

ticked all the boxes, lightweight steel, Kona (when they made decent bikes) I was hugely excited to have it.  In all honesty It couldn't have ever lived up to my expectations for it. It was dull and stolid, was expecting liveliness and skip, but it was boring and lifeless. Lasted 1 ride before I replaced  it with a Cove Hummer.

I sold a mk 1 Soul to fund a dialled morning glory because titanium is so much better than steel. Weighed more than my orange 5 and was deader than a dead thing. Being shameless I spread the misery and swapped it on here for another Soul, guy messaged me later and offered to buy the cotic back.

My Specialized Allez Elite road bike.

It went from old faithful commuter tgat was also surprisingly fun at the weekend (for a bike with mudguards and heavy commuter tyres) but itbis now the one bike that seems most able to provoke crippling back pain on any given ride.

There must be some weird quirk of fit or maybe even frame compliance which makes it so miserable, but I just don't ride it any more ☹ Need to try and kiss and make up, my other road bike is just impractical for riding through Scottish summer it seems!

I'd say these two:

Velo Orange Camargue - like many here, on paper the bike looked perfect in paper: a HD commuter, bikepacker and dirt tourer. In reality it was a flop, super super flexy and the fork was misaligned in almost 10mm. When confronted with the fork issue Velo Orange first denied it, then said it was within tolerance, then in the end told me not to worry as it would have no impact in my riding experience. Luckily the dealer stepped forward and offered me a replacement from a different brand.

Specialized Stumpjumper Evo - absolutely gorgeous bike, super comfortable and cornered like no other. But the very low anti-squat made it climb like a pig, the suspension kinematics are awkward to say at least and the ultra low BB was a hazard on anything but a flow trail. The worst by far was durability. After an year of riding 2x a week (not even a full year as it included the first lockdowns) it went through a couple of bent shock bolts, several dead pivot bearings and creaks everywhere. My current Bird AM9 V3 is under much heavier use (4-5 rides per week, harder riding) since July and its like new

Dialled Bikes Prince Albert was the worst I owned. Heavy, dead feeling and high bb meant it was very unstable.

The worst I rode though was my mates Klein Mantra, that full suss thing that had a single pivot mounted on the top tube. It rode like it had a hinge in the middle of the bike, because it did!

Slot dropout inbred circa 2011.

It felt dead and the wheel never sat correctly (even with chain tugs).

PX Kaffenback.

Dull, just so dull.

Heavy, slow moving, dull looking and just sucked the joy out of riding.

Snap. Replaced as a winter bike by a De Rosa Milanino Training. Lovely bike.

On one 456. A brick. Was hot pink though, that made it more bearable.

Raleigh Chipper. Absolutely pathetic for 5' drop offs.

Two spring to mind, one was just poor and the other was completely and utterly useless.

Back in my youth I bought a Saracen Rufftrax, just at the point where they were turning from decent bikes into BSO's. It was ok but very heavy and sapped all my motivation out for MTB that I moved over to road instead for a while. Never got rid of it, even after I replaced it with a much better Carrera Kraken (both bikes bought while I worked at Halfords while at college) so it sat in my parent's shed for over 20 years getting wheeled out occasionally for a ride down the local fields. That was until they got flooded last year and the insurer's gave me £200 for it!

That bike pales into insignificance compared to the the Specialized FSR XC Comp I bought in 2010, my first full suss bike. Loads of good reviews on the web and in print, rode well on the demo ride (short loop in perfect weather) and was a good discount on it too. The first few rides were great, everything worked well and it made me smile. Then it had it's first ride out in normal Welsh weather and after that it went downhill. The brakes no longer worked properly (Elixir 4's, Elixir lever with a Juicy caliper), all the pivot bearings now creaked due to non-existent sealing, the hubs were shot due to being C&C with no seals, the headset seized solid due to being loose ball and no seals (spot the trend...) and the gear cables decided to rust solid. A full strip down and rebuild later and it did the same on the next ride in just regular weather and a few miles. Never got any of it to work properly again and even the dealer just looked at me like I was an idiot at the '6 week service' they insisted on doing back then. I couldn't afford to buy a different bike so ended up throwing upgrades at it instead: Hope wheels, headset and brakes, new drivetrain and some Goodridge sealed, braided cables and outers. That got rid of most of the issues but then the X-Fusion rear shock decided to lose all damping, warranty was tried but denied and servicing only fixed it for a few rides so chucked on a second-hand Rockshox one instead. Then 10 months in the rear chainstay snapped in half at FOD as the brake cable routing meant it rubbed every time the suspension compressed. It wasn't work all the way through, just enough to remove the paint after eating through the protective tape I was having to replace every month or so, but that was enough to cause it to fail. Specialized refused warranty on that too and even tried to charge me £300 for a new one! Found one at another dealer that had been taken off a cracked frame for £100 so used that for a few weeks before that snapped in the exact same place while riding at Glyncorrwg while on the first climb! Was so fed up I lobbed the bike down the hill towards the path below, walked back down, picked it back up and went back to the car park. Chucked the bike in the back of the car and as I was kitted up hired an Orange 5 from Skyline Cycles. Had a brilliant ride on that so 6 weeks later I was at my LBS speccing up a 5! The Specialized got stripped for parts that were sold on and the frame was unceremoniously beaten up with a sledgehammer and taken to the tip. Thankfully the 5 turned out to be the best bike I have ever owned and was retired at 7 years old due to me wanting something a bit longer in the frame and standards moving on, the frame is hung up awaiting me to get a mancave to hang it up on, never selling it.

If it wasn't for that decision to rent that bike that day I would have walked away from biking due to the pile of shit Specialized and the attitude of the dealer.

Trek Fuel EX 7 (I think) from c. 2009. Exciting upgrade from my Rockhopper and as a PhD student £1600 for a full sus was a lot of money but good value. But it bobbed at the backend like anything. Always had strict rules on firm pedalling platform on any full sus since.

Halfords Raleigh rubbish aside i would say my Salsa fatbike which i still have but has been languishing in the shed for quite a while now. its probably fine for folk living in Canada but just too much effort to ride here.

Agreed. Mine was easily the least ridden bike I've ever owned. Cheap so perhaps I was expecting too much, but a bike you don't want to ride is never a bargain.

diamondback heist - initially loved it because it was my first mtb but the geometry is so wierd and makes no sence.

My Ellsworth Dare. Actually rode worse than it looked and it looked like this:

[img] [/img]

Iron Horse 7 Point. So heavy, sooooo short, and needed the specific DW shock tune out of the box as they were supplied with a standard very dead tune.
Why didn’t I just buy a Sunday???

I too had a 456 in Shocking pink. In the end I gave the frame to one of these bike-rehab charities. I have felt guilty ever since, nobody deserves that.

Orange 5. Kept trying to kill me.

Ragley Ti, a 20” if I recall correctly. I bought it on a bit of a whim with what I thought was a silly bid late at night on ebay, hoping it would be a more modern geometry version of my 2001 Litespeed Kitsuma.
It was so stiff at the back and wooden to ride, no where near as good as the much older Litespeed.
Strangely enough I had a go on a friend’s 18” and it was a much nicer ride.

1992 Marin team issue. Thought it would help me race better. So stiff it just battered me.

Kona Hoss.

Bad geo.

Very heavy

Harsh

Shimano wheel played up constantly

Awful Dirt Jumper 3 fork.

Isis BB failed on me super quick.

Seems to be a lot of hate for 456s. I really like mine, I should probably never ride a 'nice' steel frame.

Came here to say exactly this.

PX Kaffenback.

Dull, just so dull.

Heavy, slow moving, dull looking and just sucked the joy out of riding.

A few come to mind for me. Evil Sovereign- heavy, dead feeling & probably more of a jump bike that I was using for trail riding. Transition Trans AM- weird bolt through axle and mech hanger that was a proper PITA if you got a puncture. Nicolai Helius(?) just didnt feel right for me and only rode a few times. And finally a 5-Spot- I was quite underwhelmed by it even though everyone else raved about them.

Marin Attack Trail, the one that had a quick release to adjust the rear travel.
None of us could get on with it. It didn't feel good on anything.

We were having some building work done and the builder took a liking to it after coming on a couple of rides with us. When he had finished the work he asked if he could buy it but decided to just let him take it as I wouldn't have been happy selling it to anyone.

I'm amazed no-one has mentioned Proflex. I had an XPX in the late 90s. The elastomer suspension didn't work in the cold and wasn't much better in the warm. The Magura rim brakes were hopeless. I fitted some Bombers, v-brakes and a coil spring, which kind of worked, but made the back end pogo. I sold it and bought a Giant NRS, which was infinitely better

I’ve had sone right old klankers that I never expected to be any good but got on ok with them for gravel/ATB. Raleigh Apex and Saracen Tufftrax to name two.

MTB proper? It’d have to be a toss-up between GT Avalanche 1.0 disc (dead feeling heavy lump), Genesis Core 20 (same), Rocky Mountain Thin Air (cost me an arm and a leg then broke then cracked at the dropout on a 10” dropoff) Giant XTC 2.5 (great on paper but very wrong geo IME, shite B/B which caused me to slip going into a power climb and cobbled my bonch hard on the toptube. P’ing claret and clots for three days, thanks. Resulting bladder biopsy was not fun either.

So the Giant XTC 2.5 wins MTB.

Road - Pashley PDQ. Horrific. Truly.

Hybrid - Raleigh X1. A cheap tank of a BSO with Raleigh head badge. Truly awful. Hated commuting on this more than any other hike I’ve owned.

Agree/disagree on the 2k Cannondale's. Absolutely loved my F400 w/Headshok. F900 also. But I repurchased one in recent years*, but on re-riding it I couldn’t quite see what I’d loved so much about them 14 years ago? Except for the light weight and solid tracking. Undeniable.

*By which time I must’ve been spoiled by more (not very, mind you) modern geometries...

Another vote for the 456. This time in baby blue colour. Felt like it was made of scaffolding. Happily, due to Planet-X's pricing, I sold it pretty much for what I bought it for.

Kirk Revolution, my first, second and third mountain bikes. The first was my 21st birthday present, I was very excited. Two snapped, the other spat its BB threaded insert onto the road. Hateful things. The bog standard steel frame I got as a warranty replacement from Dawes felt amazing in comparison.

Orange 5, black gold special edition no less ! Never fitted properly despite my trying Alford of cockpit combos and even a bigger frame! I never got used to its ability to lock the rear suspension solid when you pulled the rear brake. So it climbed like a fs bike and descended like a hardtail!! Definitely the worst of both worlds.  Never dared but another single pivot since

Some great stories on here, making me feel better about being picky about my own bikes.

I don't want to give a full history, but some honorable mentions should be included for context...

'98 Marin B17 with RST Hi5 triple clamp fork. By objective standards from so many years later, not a great bike, but it was awesome to me. Sure it broke, and needed constant attention, but made me the biker I am today.

K2 Maintime cruiser BMX... Bought as a counterpoint to the Marin. Highlighted all the reasons why I didn't like BMXs. Even with a fat tyre on the front it killed my wrists on even moderate off-road. Might have been a fine bike, but not for me.

Sold both to but an Orange MsIlse in 18" frame as my do it all bike. Too stiff to ride XC, and too big to be fun. Sold the frame for more than enough to fund the first in a series of very enjoyable Inbreds. Until...

I bought a sliding dropout inbred, with the fatter top-tube. Nothing like the good old ones, and my last 26er.

2004 Stumpy FSR broke a couple of times, but was great when it worked.

I've owned some great and much loved bikes amongst these, but the least favorite... probably the Orange.

Holy crap that Ellsworth is a minger!

As above Marin Attack Trail, never got on with it and eventually stripped all the parts and forks off and built a Mk2 Soul with the bits. Still got the Talas forks in a box in the garage.