Our tea boy, Jake, chats about his Merida long-term bike and goes riding in the Forest of Dean.
hi I’m Jake from mbuk um this is my merid 160 longterm bike it’s orange and blue um and I’ve changed quite a lot on it since it was new that wasn’t even deliver so um since I’ve had the bike I made a few changes uh to the spec to kind of suit my style of riding a bit more um the first and kind of the biggest one is the shorter shock so I’ve gone for a 16 mil shorter shock um which kind of Alters the whole geometry of the frame so it’s now sitting at a 62° head angle rather than the 66° standard it’s also slammed the bottom bracket on the floor so the BB height has gone from uh 353 down to 302 mm so really really low wheel base now sits at um 1210 mil uh from 1157 1177 sorry which is the standard measurement originally it came with a 32 chain ring um as you can see it’s a looks slightly bodged on it at the moment with a um with a front Mech uh but it’s actually a single Cham ring with a 34 to ring basically I made the change because the original 30 to when you were pedaling felt as if the back end was extending really far and causing a lot of feedback to come back through the pedals so with the short with the shorter shot combined with the chain ring p pedling now is a is a lot better as well as um as well as actually having less travel with the shorter shock um so it’s actually running about 145 mil travel now rather than the 160 mil that it should have this bike uh with the original spec obviously is 3,300 and it’s a a good solid spec for the money you get a dual position Pike uh DT Swiss Wheels uh FSA crank set Rock shocks mono plus Deon air shock um with a Reverb stealth and a gravity bar setup um I’ve actually changed the bars to some to some production priv bars just so they’re a bit wider and a bit more comfortable shape I changed the front tire to a Maxis shorty and other than that this the main the main changes have actually been the shorter shock and the crank set to uh to deal with the bigger chambering I’ll be making more changes to this bike through the year especially with the uh with the shock length so you can read more about this bike and my other bikes in mbuk
2 Comments
I don't understand this. (With a lot of long termers not just yours) but you've taken a test bike and turned it into a completely different bike.
I know that if I had close to £4K to spend on a bike I'd want to see & read as many reviews as possible before I committed… But your review is of a £4K bike that has had close to another £1k spent on it making it longer, lower, slacker with a different drivetrain. It's not the stock bike so how will any potential buyer of this bike get any idea if it's any good?
how much do they sell brand new