Starting out?

Chairman Bill wrote (see)

There's a factory shop for girlies? Where?

Ok, this seems to have turned into a "name your mountain bike thread". Mine's a 2000 Marin East Peak full sus.  Doesn't look anything like the current one, but it's still a great bike.

I agree with Matt about disk brakes. V brakes work great and are easy to maintain. I just can't be bothered with the faff of hydraulic fluid and specific (very expensive) disk pads.

Suspension is nice off road, but not really necessary. I'm always surprised by how capable my cyclo cross bike is off road. I wouldn't take it round a trail centre, but for most off road riding it's fine on 35mm knobblie tyres, very fast too.

My wife has a Specialized Hardrock - it's a pretty good bike but made better for her use (more rough paths than proper off-road) by ditching the crap & heavy suspension forks for some nice Kona Project 2's.

As far as name your mountain bikes goes - I've got a few. Full-suss is a Specialized Epic with Fox Floats, full XTR & Hope wheels & brakes. I've also got a rigid One-One Inbred with Pace carbon forks and a hardtail Cotic Soul with Fox Talas forks. The Cotic is probably my favourite do-anything bike but the others have their merits. The Epic is pretty light for a full-suspension bike (24lbs including pedals) and works really well at trail centres which mix significant climbing with some fun downhill stuff.

I used to run V-brakes on a couple of bikes and got on fine with them however the pad wear was terrible in muddy/winter conditions and at places like Glentress I've had rides where I've worn new pads down to the metal in a single ride, plus had problems with the rims icing up on winter rides. For that reason all my MTB's have disk brakes now - hydro's on two bkes and the excellent Avid mechanicals on one. I also dislike setting up hydros but only need to do it rarely so it's not so bad. The Avid mechanicals are a good compromise though - very effective and easy to set-up.

I have a cyclo-cross bike as well (a Specialized Tricross bought as my bike-to-work scheme commuter) which has V-brakes while are excellent, although if used in muddy conditions there are still some pad wear problems.

Just about to get a Scott Aspect 45 from my employers 'cycle-to-work' scheme to replace my 20 year old Raleigh Memphis (it lasted well including two re-welds!)

It might of been 'salesman' talk but they said the 2009 bikes will be going up in price due to higher cost of materials and transport. 

talking about bikes ...i've got a ridgeback ladies MTB only ridden couple of times due to fact it is b****y  uncomfortable ...been sitting tied up to a tree for three years rusting & getting on neighbours' nerves ...anyone bike fanatic in / around old smoke wanna come and do a maintenance whizz on it for me ?!

apart from that anyone married to TALL lady who has a decent mountain bike ? i mean does one exist ?  they didn't three years ago for some reason ...

I have a Voodoo Wanga, no really, singlespeeded with big tyres to cope with the Peak rocks... Works for me, in winter, and the lack of gears helps with the Peak grinding paste environment in the wet. 

Disc brakes with sintered pads round here, but if you live somewhere less abrasive, then vees are okay, though not nearly as good in the wet as a disc brake.

The good news is that more affordable mountain bikes are now way better than they used to be, you get a lot more bike for your money, though as has been said, suspension at the sub-£500 level tends to be a bit basic and you'll also find cheapo headsets, bottom brackets etc specced to keep the price down. Just replace with better as they wear out.

Good resource for working out what's worth looking at is What Mountain Bike? magazine - they have a section at the back with their top choices in every price category.

skint bint wrote (see)

apart from that anyone married to TALL lady who has a decent mountain bike ? i mean does one exist ?  they didn't three years ago for some reason ...

Depends what you mean by 'tall'. Women relative to men tend to have longer legs and shorter trunks. Women's specific bikes like Trek's WSD series or Specialized's D4W are designed to suit those proportions - that means shorter top tubes to cope with a reduced reach, but longer seat tube so you're not perched above the frame.

If you're tall, but your legs aren't long relative to your body, then a normal men's bike, maybe with a shorter stem and an inline seatpost may fit you just fine. If not then take a look at the women's-specific designs and see if they suit better.

Some shops will actually offer a bike fitting service where they measure you and can tell approximately which frames are likely to suit on that basis, what length stem you need etc. It's more common with road bikes where fit is more crucial, but feasible with MTBs as well.

Finally, don't forget our sister sites, BIKEmagic and Shecycles.com, which as you can probably guess, is specifically aimed at women who ride bikes.

Wot Jon Sez, but note that the saddle will have a huge impact on comfort and there's no such thing as a "one size fits all" saddle, or "one size fits all women of a certain height range" saddle.  The only way to be sure a saddle fits well is try it: I like Brooks, my wife finds them too narrow (she's tall(ish) at 1.78m, just uses a standard MTB and bike rather than WSD models), others find a standard Brook s too wide, and so on: go to a decent bike shop and sit on a load.

You're looking for the right width to support the "sit bones" on your pelvis.  All the gel padding, fancy cutouts etc in the world won't help if that isn't right, and it doesn't actually improve maters if it is.  Saddle compatibility is primarily about shape relative to your backside.

Pete.

Thanks for all the great advice i will take it all on board and have a good think about it.

Kevin