This is not a bike review channel and it will never become one. But bikes for me are an important means of transportation with the nice side effect of improving my fitness. So I like to talk about them. This is a review of my old CUBE LTD mountain bike which I have been riding for more than 20 years. I also compare it with modern mountain bikes.
Hey there a few months ago I did a review of my new mountain bike and I said that I’m not going to do another bike review so today I have changed my mind because I think it would be interesting might be interesting for you to see a review of my old mountain bike
As well and I think I found the perfect location for this review in front of the these ruins from the Middle Ages so I am close to the town named durit in Hungary which is in the Balaton Uplands so you can see the lake down there nice place and here is my
Bike I actually don’t remember exactly when I bought it must have been somewhere between 2000 and 2002 so it’s more than 20 years old that’s for sure so it’s not as old as these ruins but it’s from the very beginning of this Millennium so it is a
Cube Cube by the way is a German Grand um they looks like they actually still manufacture their bikes in Germany not sure if they really weld the frames or if they do that in Asia like almost all other bike companies I’m not sure um but at least the main manufacturing plant is
In in Germany in Northern Bavaria actually very close to the place where I was born and and yeah it’s a cube LT which stands for limited for some reason some marketing reason uh I don’t know the exact the exact type maybe it’s just ltd2 something like
That so that’s a bike more than 20 years old and I think I made uh something like 30,000 km with it was my first real mountain bike uh had some other bikes before racing bikes tracking bikes and yeah the frame of course is made from aluminum so it’s aluminum alloy
705 uh I’m I’m not really I’m not really familiar with these um aluminum Alloys so it’s it’s not highend I think but it’s it could be worse so yeah that’s the frame and of course at this time uh all the mountain bike frames were had 26 in
Wheels and same here and so the wheels are smaller today you typically have 29 in so the wheels are smaller and that means that the frame can also be smaller so so as I said I bought a new mountain bike a 29in bike a few months
Ago and yeah how does it compare so I would say as long as you are riding the bike uh it feels better with 29 in so it maybe it’s just my imagination but it feels somehow that it rolls smoother more stable but uh uh when you I mean sometimes you
Have to you have to carry the bike around when when the terrain is really difficult or if you store your bike in the in the basement and have to have to carry it up the stairs like that so in this case the 20 in uh sorry 26 in frame
Is much handier so it’s it’s really much easier to carry it around and well yeah they both have their their advantages and disadvantages so what else do we have let’s have a look at the brakes another difference of course nowadays basically all mountain bikes have disc brakes these are magura hydraulic caliper
Brakes so this company mura was it’s also a German company and they were one of the first producers of these hydraulic brakes so at that time uh many bikes still had these uh mechanical caliper brakes V brakes normally and the hydraulic ones were a little bit high-end at that time but I really
Wanted to have them because they they are much smoother you can control the the force the braking Force much better with these hydraulic brakes so these are the mura brakes and yeah how do they compare to disc brakes uh normally you don’t notice a huge difference of course these uh caliber
Brakes they at least in theory they can be much stronger they have much more braking power just because you know the the diameter of the wheel which is used for braking is of course much larger than the diameter of a disc so the The Leverage The Torque is is higher but in
In practice there is no huge difference in practical situations and yeah the the drawback of course of these uh caliber brakes is that they can they can get wet and dirty easily but again in practice no big deal another thing that another reason why many people don’t like these caliper brakes
Is uh yeah they they basically break on the on the wheel itself so of course when you break a lot when you do a lot of breaking uh the the material at least in theory will be removed from the wheel and that can be a problem but as I
Said 30,000 kilm more than 20 years no issue at all with that okay what else do we have the saddle okay the saddle it’s actually quite a quite a nice leather saddle it’s but now it’s a little bit uh torn up it’s a little bit damaged but it it still does
Its job so no issue with the saddle okay so let’s look at at the gear shifting mechanism so I think I have to turn the bike around okay so let’s have a look the front derailer I’m not sure if that is the correct term is an Shimano
LX and the rear one is an XT which is quite a good gear shifting mechanism I I had no issue with it it still works very well uh only one repair about 5 years ago I think which I wasn’t able to do myself okay so anything else worth mentioning okay
Yeah of course so I think the most interesting thing are the tires so the bike didn’t come with these tires originally uh it had a type of tire tire named racing Ral from Schwalbe and these were great tires I mean they were super lightweight they had perfect
Grip and so on but I found that I I got some punctures So within 2 weeks or so I had I think three punctures three flat tires and so I decided that’s not the right tire for me and I I decided to change it I’ve have
Been looking for a tire that is really uh durable and I have chosen this one it’s also from the same brand schala it’s a marathon XR so and the interesting thing is this tire has been on the bike uh since more than 20 years I’ve never changed it and
During all that time I had I think two flat tires uh it does have some drawbacks so when you look at the profile here it is it is not a typical mountain bike profile so and you can imagine that it does not have the best grip especially
If you’re riding on gravel but not doing that that often but then when you look at the profile it’s it actually didn’t change a lot within these 20 years and 30,000 km and the other disadvantage of this tire is it’s it’s heavy so you you did notice the difference between the
Original tires and and these ones so that’s something I found quite interesting uh because many people will tell you you have to you have to change the tires after 5 years or even 3 years because the material will deteriorate you will get issues but at least in this case no issues at all
So yeah I think that’s about all I wanted to to say about about my old mountain bike so you can see it is not always necessary to to change the bike after a few years so why did I change the bike why did I buy a new one last
Year uh it was mainly because I was curious I wanted to see how it compares to my old one and the other reason is I I wanted to have two mountain bikes because you know I I live in Germany uh most of the time but but I spend a lot
Of time and do a lot of cycling in in Hungary here in Hungary and I don’t want to transport my bike all the time with the car so I wanted to have a bike here as well and that’s it and it’s always good to have some to have some different
Options wait a minute I I forgot to talk about the suspension and yeah probably the reason is that suspension never has been that important for me and actually I I don’t really know what what brand what what kind of fog that is it’s I don’t know I don’t
Know that’s it once again I’m saying probably my last bike review but who knows so my next video probably will it might be bike related but it will not be a review okay so hope that was interesting for you see you next time bye-bye