Bike Mechanic’s Best Rated Brands – Without mentioning LOOK or Time…

You keep asking, so we tried to answer. Aside from some boutique brands I think we covered most things.

This is a list of brands I feel are consistently good.

Focus
Pivot
Colnago
ENVE
Rocky Mountain
ARGON 18
FELT
MOOTS
Quintana Roo
Time
LOOK

We also discuss the brands that almost make it, the collective brands that definitely don’t, and some brands that should be on the list but aren’t.

So we have a reputation of shown you guys some of the poor quality bikes that we work on and how we fix certain issues that they have but the question that you always have down in the comments are what else do you recommend who else makes good bikes so I thought this is

Going to be a little chat through some of the experience that we have and hopefully you guys can add to the discussion and we’ll try and discover um who makes good bikes other than look and time because I have noted that I have mentioned those two Brands quite a lot

Recently so this is is going to be my attempt at doing this without mentioning those two Brands okay here we go this is the relatively short list that we came up with um there we go so Focus little German brand can’t say that they have anything in their range that’s

Particularly inspiring but I’ve always enjoyed working on their bikes they always clean up really well whenever we have them in for service and some of these bikes we might be working on is like more than a decade old they the paint workor cleans up really nicely everything comes apart really nice it

Goes back together the brakes don’t rub the bottom brackets fit they’re one of those brands that I just go oh that was a really pleasurable experience working on like looks pretty standard but um I’ve never really needed to fult a focus there we go um Envy the new melee Etc

I’ve seen a couple of them up close now and yeah they’re impressive workmanship as their wheels couldn’t really not put them on there that’s early days yet but um I don’t think knowing how Envy’s quality control work etc I don’t think you’re going to have a problem so this is

Remember this about being consistently good okay Rocky Mountain Rocky Mountain is one of the few mountain bikes I’d really really like to own one day I’ve worked on several of them now and they’ve always impressed me the pivot bearing sort of enclosures are just beautifully made the paintwork is

Immaculate even decades after owning them really really given them a hard life um they just seem to fit I like how they put details in and yeah I don’t know that’s one of the bikes I’d really really like to own one day but opportunities never Arisen to do

It at a price I could afford I love all their paint workk and everything else similar sort of thing with pivot actually um although I a bit upset with pivot don’t offer a frame only option anymore I think that’s a real shame because mountain biking should in theory

Lend itself to the upgrade especially at that top end that pivot um position themselves at but again working on pivots they are always a beautiful thing to work on it’s like the engineering has thought about how a mechanic is going to remove pivot bearings and work on them

Paint quality is always fantastic and yeah it’s just one of those bikes I just like yeah this is a really high quality item in my hand also got felt on there uh an American brand and yeah they’re Mak some really lovely stuff and especially their sort of aerodynamic

Time trial triath long bikes as well they’ve got some really interesting stuff in there always beautifully finished like the little Finishing Touches have with them as well they’re almost like an American version of look like they really innovative ideas but well executed um and yeah I’ve always appreciate that someone’s actually

Looked and spent some time and I can always tell that some quality control has gone on there uh kago um has to be on there they are they still make beautiful bikes they’ll always make beautiful bikes or hopefully that continues but one of those bikes that people have owned these

For decades and decades and they still Absolut they don’t want to sell them they keep them um and yeah when we service them there’s there’s hardly anything ever wrong with them you know they all the parks just come apart beautifully we’ve never had like a bottom bracket get stuck or

Anything like that it’s just um beautifully made bikes with really good luxurious paint but they ask high price so expect it uh argon 18 little Canadian company really really like their time Tri bikes um as well and their road bikes are just I think very underrated actually I think they do some really

Really nice stuff but um we don’t really talk about them enough but yeah if you ever see one they are yeah that they’re on the list and then finally down there bottom right hand corner is a brand called kintana rou now we’ve seen a few of these work we do with some

Triathletes and they’re really famous for their triathlon bikes they have just launched a new road bike want I say Just Launch this probably a couple of years ago now they do um lovely colors the paint works really good quality the quite Innovative designs as well but you

Can still adapt them quite a lot and um yeah if that’s the market you’re in um can I have to say it’ss that consistently good for me okay so there’s a few things here that I really wanted to put on the list but we just went ah you know what it’s just

It’s not consistently good so this is the fewer anomalies aside could almost be that list so we got Mason about the only people I know of who are really trying to make an effort to make high quality aluminum bikes um and they’re really really nice but the not quite at that

Sort of early 2000s canondale standard yet you know the beautifully smooth worlds and that paintwork shown you before we’ve had some of those old canadel in that paintwork is still fantastic two decades later they were just like that oh I would be all over them um biane we’ve got on there because

Here in the UK we only ever really see their top of the range stuff um and that is fantastic it’s really nice quality but they have such a massive range if we were to put it on consistently good in Europe and where biane is a much bigger

Thing and much wider range comes um I don’t think it hits there they sort of lose interest as you come down the price scale with bankee uh got basso bikes again some really fantastic examples but every now and then just a couple of little things just creep in which

Like it’s so close Santa Cruz is on there as well because um they make some fantastic bikes but they eat through pivot bearings like no tomorrow but um you do get them on on free warranty and they send out those pivot bearings straight away but still an awful lot of

Labor involved and I love how the fact they’ve got all their cable routine is beautiful apart from their drop a cable routine which is horrendous you like come on just not quite on the consist uh we’ve got Ora on there similar sort of thing I think Ora makes some lovely

Bikes but as they’ve expanded again they’ve kind of lost interest a little bit as they come down the range so as you uh enter sort of the Ora Market if you like on a cheaper price point you don’t get the same quality that probably made them famous um and Scott Scott actually a

Really big brand that it is I think are doing some really really fantastic stuff only thing that bothers me about SC got is they’ve got some really innovative ideas and they don’t always keep a good inventory of the parts needed to actually fix them which in contrast is

Why Trek is on the list because bb90 aside recently we haven’t really seen a bad Trek and we’ve also being able to get parts for them really really easily the Tre website is just been a fantastic Resort get parts crack on um and actually that’s that’s a noticeable

Difference compared to all of the other big brands that really have had cause for concern on any sort of tre recently apart from probably early 2010s Etc or the mid-2010s when they had those of bb90 issues which are now starting to have problems now some of this actually

Think might be because Tre dealers are doing some more work before they get to a shop like this so maybe if you’re a Tre dealer you might have a different opinion but as bikes come to us um haven’t already left the shop they they seem to be in good condition that’s

Either well done to Tre or well done to the mechanics who are working in tre dealerships okay um couple of things here which we thought exceeded expectations we’re not going to say they’re blanket good quality but I think for the price that you pay you probably get more than you expect they better

Quality than you would expect for the price so chinelli uh on there I think they’ve got some open molds in there but they do tend to come through well finished uh they’ve got some lovely bikes some lovely paintwork their website is appalling I don’t know who does their photography but when you see

Their bikes in the flesh as opposed to their website you will be pretty chuffed I think um they make some really lovely stuff uh cube is on there as well big German brand again big Mass produ stuff almost in that same thing as of Trek buying it at a lower price point an

Awful lot of value there and they’re probably better than expected the only downside to cube is probably on some of their bikes like the stereo where the Engineers haven’t really thought about how a mechanic might remove a bearing safely because they how they put their pivot bearings together is not very mechanic friendly

But yeah other than that I think they’re pretty good and sarson uh a mountain bike brand which I actually think get a pretty good frame they tend to come supplied with some very value components but if you ever wanted to buy into a bike um that you thought you might

Upgrade as you go you could very happily some good quality components on Aus and get a good bike there as well so go some exceeds expectations and then we got some unmentionables and we were going to put like a whole list of unmentionables but we actually went on to like AI website

And just came up with random brand and just typed in over overhyped overpriced and inconsistent and this is stuff where it’s just there isn’t really a brand there it’s a Chinese Factory that’s being rebranded and I’ve just got no interested in that at all and wish the slogans were like massive amounts of

Marketing overpriced for what they are they’re really just using their frame as a way to sell Shimano group sets um or whatever outsourced and and unknown quality consistency is just I don’t know I wouldn’t like to call them a proper brand if you like it’s like a marketing logo so

Um so then we got this identity crisis the things that we thought you guys probably expect to see on the list but they’re probably they’re good but for the prices these brands are our skin we just didn’t feel like we could put them on the consistency consistently good list because they’re not

Consistently good pinell I we’ve had experience that we have with pinell our pinell owners go down to the pinell Brand store in Manchester um had five or six owners who have spent an awful lot of money at Pella Brown store at Manchester reporting a relatively lack cluster experience had problems we’ve

Had um paint flaking off we’ve had broken Ridge seat dayss we’ve had break mounts which are out of spec not necessarily not flat but just completely out of spec we had bottom brackets out of spec we’ve had seat posts that slide down out of the way um and on the

Pinella website there’s like a really long document about how you should build a Pinella bike and it loads and loads of copper copper grease and oh my God their mechanics go to town with that like if you ever have bikes from the Pinella Brown store it will come caped in Copper

Grease it’s everywhere um it’s no wonder things slip and come undone because there’s copper grease absolutely all over it um yeah I the prices that they’re trying to charge I just kind of got get on board with it uh cell although nearly every CLL at the moment

Is on sale so if you get one in the sale you’re probably not doing too bad but um it’s it’s their bottom brackets that really let the SE down BB right Etc it’s probably a nice engineering solution but it’s just poorly executed sadly uh Vila triestina uh again um the money that they’re

Paying and you get them you just don’t unpack it and feel like you’ve got a quality item don’t feel like a high quality thing in your hand they feel like you’ve got a Tracker or Specialized or something it doesn’t expectations don’t meet reality exactly the same with

Like they’re very very nice I love the paint designs on them and they’ve got some fantastic ideas and colors very much seem like it’s a designer thing as opposed to a high quality thing because once you actually unpack it for the price that you pay you’ve gone look

Beyond the paintwork um for me that quality doesn’t represent the price that they’re trying to charge and Yeti you know I I I brought myself a Yeti I’ve had rides but just a bit disappointed with the quality of it if if I’m on honest it’s um the quality is like paint

Deep very similar chiellini lovely designs I love that sort of sloping top tube thing it’s got going on but when I look inside it’s just bit disappointing um so the big names uh haven’t really mentioned these too much apart from those sort of track and Cube because there’s too many it depends

Because the ranges are so big there are some fantastic things in there a lot of it will depend on the the mechanic that actually put it together whether they actually noticed things that might need face in so a lot of this will actually depend on the bike shop that sold it uh

And their training and their quality control but the reason these haven’t hit the bigger list is specialized we come across loads of problems with specialized range now it’s got so so complicated they’ve always got widgets and gadgets on them uh and they don’t necessarily always have easily available

Parts or those long lead time arms for those parts so if you’ve got um specialized rubet with that head shock thing getting bits and pieces for that fixed is more painful than it needs to be it’s not impossible but it’s just not as seamless as it should be this the

Inventory holding must be getting quite big now as they’re trying to hold stock of all these like Legacy bits uh giant fantastic value frames but when you look at the entire package I don’t think it’s there they also as you come down their range into the aluminium stuff I don’t

Think quality is there again just inconsistencies as you go through go through the brand cendal inov Innovative great engineering ideas but often poly executed um I’ve owned lots and lots of canals i’ always loved them for like their weird quirky designs and stuff but always been like

A it’s probably what got me to bite mechanics was trying to fix canones if I’m honest um BMC similar love the team machine and the Road machine fantastic bikes but like racket problems Ridley as you know they’ve got some fantastic stuff but they just can’t execute on on

The stuff throughout the range Canyon we featured on the channel loads before so I think these are the brands where get them but make sure you keep your receipt and keep an eye on your warranty um and all that sort of stuff and also keep an

Eye on the bike shop that actually built them actually done the funnel a lot of how the quality will depend on the bike shop fit together I think there we go that is um a look at hopefully something that answered some of your questions as always please get down in the comments

Add to the discussion um let me know what I’ve got wrong I’m pretty sure I have it’s is just a start for 10 like I say it’s a podcast hopefully you enjoyed listening and um yeah make sure you get down the comment and read the comments

As well all right take it easy have a good weekend