  Meet Angus Couper, he is a wrecker. It's not that he's bad at riding a bike he just is hard on the gear...
Enter the MERIDA One-Forty 700. By no means is this a custom built trail machine, built to rail every berm flat land every jump, it's just a run of the mill trail bike with some mid level gear. 10months later and the bike is still alive. It's been ridden, it's been crashed, its bumped around on bike racks and shuttle trailers and as quoted by Angus... "It looks like a kitten and rides like a tiger."
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Today I read a well informed and laboratory tested report on chain elongation, elasticity and expected life. Pretty dry reading especially for those unfamiliar with Engineering terms relating to material properties, but the short answer in this study is that that fancy lightweight chain with the cutouts is going to wear out faster and worse cost you marginally in power transfer the entire time. Check it out here.  So winter is a pretty quiet time in a bicycle shop and we thought "Hey, lets do some videos". $1699The Merida Big Trail sports a plus size wheel and a great build kit for the price. It's an agressive trail hardtail with a much smaller pricetag than some of the more boutique brands, but without sacrificing on spec, and in some cases exceeding the spec level of more expensive bikes in this catgory.
$2299 w/ Dropper postThe Marin Hawk Hill is such an understated bike this year. Built with a much more aggressive geometry than many of it's 120mm travel counterparts. With a 67.5" head-angle this bike is a capable descender as well as climber.
Shop Models from Rocket Bikes Tauranga come with a dropper post fitted also. We've have a demonstration model in this bike, and so far have been very impressed with the performance both up and down trail. With a 1x11 SRAM drive train as stock and a price tag of $1500.oo this bike is a hard hitter for spec vs price.  The new One Twenty 7.800 has been in the store for awhile now and is gaining popularity with customers and the staff. Equipped with Fox Fork and Shock and sporting 1x11 Drivetrain this small travel bike feels like a much larger bike while still maintaining a playful feel inherent with the smaller travel platform.   So we received a 2017 model One-Sixty 7000 a couple of days ago, and must say this bike is shaping up to be one of the nicest bikes we've been able to offer to the public from the Merida range during my slightly over 10year stint of retailing Merida.
So many things are done well on this bike... A carbon front triangle, paired with an alloy swingarm makes for a superbike feel, without that niggly "better check my swingarm for cracks" when you get through the first season of sending this monster down everything you could. 1x11 Drivetrain is totally a given on this type of bike now, and the speclist leaves little to be overturned. Check it out full specs here. |
Rocket BikesReviews and light banter from Seth Jenkins and Angus Couper Archive
December 2018
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