There were perhaps three weeks after I’d brought the bike home, it sitting in my living room, where I just looked at it a lot, half in disbelief that I owned a real mountain bike and half worrying about not riding it properly enough. After three weeks, I took it out for the first time on a familiar route to try to ride it up and down some sets of stairs or to drop off street furniture to get a feel for it before taking it out on trails. Chris took one of ten tubesets that didn’t work out as an opportunity to redesign the swing arm to accommodate a simplified single-pivot suspension design with just enough room for a 29×2.5″ tire and some mud clearance.
Joining the esteemed ranks of Mazza, Martello and Mota, Mostro assumes the mantle of the “M,” offering gravity mountain bikers … Plus, a local bike shop is also a great place to find your next bike — something to work up to. A friend got tired of hearing me talk about riding and decided he also wanted to get into cycling. A few days later, he showed up at my door with a $99 Hyper Shocker full-suspension bike from Walmart.
This might mean that I have never owned a mountain bike because a mountain bike, in modern times, is so separate from the uncomplicated machines of the ’90s that I grew up riding. The mountain bikes that I have owned have mostly functioned as off-road tourers. Most notably, a 1998 Specialized Rockhopper (on balance, perhaps the best bike ever made), a Rock Lobster Team Tig 853, a first-generation Surly Krampus, and a slew of other bits and bobs I made myself. I have a great local bike shop, and I shop there regularly. It’s always a good idea to seek out a good bike shop, even if you own a big-box bike.
As a result, the mis-mitered tubes could be used to build a fun bike to be given to friends, and after some happy accident, I ended up with one—a steel, single-pivot, long-travel trail bike or, perhaps, a slightly sketchy enduro bike. While I’m not going to pretend to have ridden enough trail bikes or enduro bikes to be able to make nuanced observations about suspension kinematics, I have ridden enough bikes over the past two decades to have a good idea about what worked for me and how the bike felt to ride. It’s a bold move to build a deliciously dynamic and forgivingly flexy steel trail bike in Germany, the heartland of stiffness being touted as the grail of bicycle manufacture in cycling media. I stripped the bike down to the carbon frame (2 pounds 13 ounces) and rebuilt it from the ground up.
As for the dropper, I fiddled with it a few times at the start but otherwise just got it out of the way so I could ride. The dropper is designed for super quick and easy bleeding, which refreshingly takes significantly less time to do in reality than it takes to watch the 18-second video on their website about it. It’s nothing about the effects of tires, suspension, and steering geometry, hyper bicycles but the stiff bars worked nicely in the context of this bike. The BEAST rims also felt incredibly stiff both vertically and laterally, but again complemented the dynamic handling characteristics of a big squishy bike quite well. They were very light and felt incredibly solid, sustaining zero permanent damage from being repeatedly smashed against rocks when the tires bottomed out.
The SRD came with the classic Acto5 mountain cranks, nice and short in 165—because this bike has all the gears—and long cranks are for flat-earthers. Looking at a component in isolation, I really prefer the performance of SRAM electronic shifting, especially in wet, grimy conditions, but some people prefer mechanical shifting, and those people prefer Shimano. Looking at buying a $600 mech, I love the idea that individual parts of the mech can be replaced if they get damaged, that it will run with almost any shifter, and that I can swap the cage out to run short or long so it can be used on more or less any bike. The frame is made from custom butted and bent 4130 tubes and cast parts manufactured in Taiwan.
Embark on a journey with our smart, sleek, and incredibly engaging children’s electric motorbikes. I consent to the processing of personal data for marketing purposes through newsletters sent by email. By taking innovation to the next level and creating the world’s best hyper bicycles tires,we’re on that journey too. Let’s find you the right gear for your next adventure. If you do buy one, be sure to learn how to maintain a bike. Most of these bikes have little-to-no lubrication from the factory, and that can greatly impact their usable life.
I’m normally a fan of flex everywhere but in this instance, the super stiff BEAST parts kept the bike feeling positive and surprisingly efficient on climbs. And surprisingly, he often finds a diamond in the rough — or at least a salvageable build he can later modify. (In fairness, he finds total lemons too.) So I caught up with him to find out why he loves box-store bikes, whether it’s ever a good buy, and what you can do to make a 200-plus-dollar Walmart bike a respectable ride.
In addition to accurate and impartial news reporting, and compelling, original storytelling, his interests include camping in all climates and conditions, track cycling and bikepacking, all forms of fitness, the resplendent majesty of coffee, and sports of every kind. In my case, much of my daily riding happens on commuter/hybrid bikes. Recently, thanks to bikes like the Priority 600 All Road, I am starting to also look at adventure bikes. If you want to ride trails, you’ll likely need to spend around $200 plus to get something a light trail won’t instantly beat down. And make sure it has a threadless headset and a derailleur with a replaceable hanger. But on a mountain bike, weight can really drag down the enjoyment.