Hi All: I purchased this with a 17" frame in red for $266.99, down from its $443.99 MSRP w/ free shipping and no tax a few hours ago for my Grandson. He is ~ 5 ft. 5 in. tall. It has decent ratings on both Amazon and the Hiland site given the std. equipment. I just hope it lasts. Hiland Spectre MTB Wayne
It should be a good one. Someone needs to teach him how to shift correctly. Similar to my first bike ( 2006 ) , a 26" Mongoose.
Ha ha ! I did have some bikes when I was a child. But I bought my first personal bike in 2006 ( at age 53 ).
At 11, I got a Sears 10 speed street bike (never liked heavier off-road bikes) with aluminum wheels for $60 or $70. Must have been one of the first 10 spds. in our small town. That bike lasted more than a decade. What magic it was to be able to go from town to town, without needing a car & money. With a few cheap maintenance brake & shifter cables & tires (& lots of tire patches), I discovered my local beautiful Washington state, before all the traffic build-up. The problem was, I was always on the street bike, & I didn’t discover hiking the lowland trails, which would have been wonderful. Also, I wish I would have discovered some of the nearest trailheads, so I would have fallen in love with hiking Washington state mountains earlier than I did. It was sweet tho, going down the 600 foot hills, pretending I was on a motorcycle.
Hi All: I built my grandsons Hiland Bicycle last night. I still have to adjust the derailleurs and brakes but my first impressions is that it is very well built. Hiland Spectre Mountain Bike Wayne
Looks like a good one , Wayne. Are those wheels 26" , or 27.5 ? My 26" Trek mountain bike does NOT have disc brakes , my 27.5" Giant has hydraulic discs.
Hi Edwin, it includes 26" wheels on a 17" frame. To small for you and I but for a 5'-5" 10-year old, it should be good for a year or three. The brakes are disc's but are much simpler mechanical units. Wayne
I like my 27.5 better , but it does not fit in the Prius without a little disassembly. With the 26" wheel Trek , I just throw it in there. I really like the feel of the hydraulic disc brakes on my Giant , but they''re at a higher price point. The 27.5" Giant costs $800 in 2017 , and the 26" Trek wasunder $400 in 2009.
Hi All: I am going to go with this one as a no. Hiland MTB inside the 2022 Kia Niro Hybrid The derailleurs are cheap Chinese Shimano knockoffs and getting them to handle the full 21-speed range reliably is a PIA. Even now, from 1st on the rear and 1st on the front - granny gear to 7th out back and 3rd up front - downhill high speed is ok, I would not like to be standing on the pedals for a hard climb or a fast descent in 8th/9th or 15th/16th for fear the chain will slip trying to jump to the adjacent gear. I have the cables tight and the front and rear derailleurs adjusted dead on for the best shifting experience from one to twenty-one but it still is not quite right in the high chain cross gears. 8th/9th and 15th/16th. Mechanical discs - They look modern but their stopping power is $**t. Even with the cables stretched and the brakes adjusted to barely touching the discs while riding, a hard pull of the handles front or rear will not lock the wheels. Ergonomics - The bars are flat and it places you into a more road bike position than a MTB should. Alignment - The front wheel does not line up with the forks centerline and there is nothing I can do with the hub or disc attachment to fix this. Wheels - They needed a truing touchup but were not to bad out of the box. I will revisit the wheel truing in a month or so when my Grandson has a few miles on them. Front Fork Suspension - The front suspended forks do not have an internal bump stop so anytime you reach full extension as in you lift the wheel or the front suspension fully extends to fall into a hole etc, you hear a metal to metal contact clunk. Paint - Easy to scratch, not that great quality under closer inspection, and some of the decals are peeling away. At $267, I would say pass and spend 50% more for something a bit better built. Wayne
That's fixable if due to rim not being properly centered with respect to the hub, and one takes the time. It's not so fixable if due to bad fork alignment. Other typical problems to watch out for on cheap bikes include maladjusted bearings, and improper or uneven spoke tension.
Man…..my $70 bike in the early 1960’s, didn’t have such problems. After 6 years or so, I DID get the spokes evenly tensioned & tightened (big expenditure for me).
Cool! I was a kid back then, so really didn’t have a grasp about “purchasing power”. I lived with my grandparents. Grandpa didn’t make much blue-collar money, altho grandpa worked hard & overtime. Whatever he got for company Health & retirement, I don’t think it was much. Social security & Medi-care might have been his retirement. So that $70 bicycle was an extraordinary purchase. I knew there wasn’t much money, & “I thought” I kept my desires in reign. The bicycle was sweet & my grandparents never talked about its expense (& other expenses relating to me). Back then, I paid $3 for replacement tires & $2 for brake & shifter cables, & I find it hard to believe it was the equivalent of $27 today. What do bicycle tires cost today? From your “purchasing power” calculator, a cheap $2000 car back then, would be like $17,857 today. I bought the 2016 Elantra for under $13,000, which has been an extraordinary purchase.
Every year ( when I was riding 2500-3000 miles a year ) , I would test for tension by plucking the spoke like a harp string. It's not mandatory to wear a curly blonde wig when doing this , but it made it more fun. One needs to have a musical ear to know when tension is lower than the previous spoke. It ain't scientific , or perfect , but the wheels end up as true as they were before. Since my favorite bike shop went out of business , I no longer have a good bike mechanic. Certain things , like shifters , I prefer not to mess with.
And I was going to ask "Why?" (re: One needs to have a musical ear to know when tension is lower than the previous spoke.) It just has to sound different, not pretty.
Spokes follow the laws of pitch of vibrating tensioned members that we all should've learned in high school physics. They're a little more complicated than a hypothetical string, due to stiffness of the spoke, and the way spokes normally rest against each other. For reference, if you do have "a musical ear," the ratio of pitches of adjacent notes in the musical chromatic scale is about the twelfth root of 2, roughly 1.059.
