- We often talk about upgrading your bikes
here at GMBN, and you guys quite often ask us
what are the best things to upgrade
and to put onto your bike.
But does it add any performance to your bike?
And is it actually worth it?
- Of course it is Doddy.
- Really? Well let's find out shall we.
(gravel crunching)
- Okay how about this Doddy?
If I upgrade all the parts of my bike,
if I put a new wheel set,
new carbon bars,
new grips,
change from three bite to one bite,
it's definitely going to increase the value of my bike.
- Not necessarily.
It means you're spending money on that stuff
and you're putting it on to your bike
but all of these things are going to depreciate and stuff.
So you're not necessarily making your bike
worth more money.
It might be a better bike as far as upgrade
but you've got to factor in,
you are still spending money.
It's costing you money.
- Well of course afterwards
it's definitely going to increase the value of my bike
because just add that price that I've paid
for these carbon bars and put it on the price
and get my money back.
- It's not that simple Blake.
Think about buying a car
or buying a bike outright in the first place.
The minute you wheel it out that showroom,
it's losing money.
You see, an item is going to be used.
It's going to depreciate.
You're going to lose money on that stuff.
It's not a bad thing because you want your bike
to work nice and look nice,
but don't think by adding stuff to it
that it's going to add value.
- Maybe a little bit?
- Potentially but I don't know.
(trap beat)
- All right Doddy,
what about performance upgrading
that's definitely going to make you ride harder,
faster, be more aggressive,
definitely upgrading those parts.
It's going to make you better.
- To be honest,
the only thing that's going to make you
harder and better as a rider is practice.
No amount of things are going to make you better.
Don't fall into a trap of thinking
that you're going to spend loads of money on your bike
and you'll be faster or jump higher.
That doesn't happen.
You've got to watch Blake's videos
and Neil's videos to do that stuff.
But you can technically make your bike a bit faster
or ride a bit lighter.
So you could say that's a performance upgrade.
Lighter tires or tires that roll faster
or that are more suitable for your terrain
will help you find traction and roll a bit better
and lighter wheels are definitely an upgrade
that can make your bike feel like it's going faster
and you'll put less effort in to get that speed.
I would say that light-set wheels
can transform a bike.
If you've got a fairly entry level bike,
say anything from 400 quid maybe up to a thousand pounds,
some people might not deem that as entry level
if we just say that bracket.
If you put some decent lightweight wheels on that,
that bike will feel like it's
like a two thousand pound bike straight out.
- And I've had some people say,
I just need a brand new fork.
Well potentially, you can just upgrade that fork
that you have on your bike
by getting it serviced
or changing the internals into that fork.
Makes it perform a lot better.
- A hundred percent,
I completely agree with you Blake.
I would advise anyone,
instead of just spending money outright,
to get your bike serviced.
Get it in good condition.
That is an upgrade straight-out.
- I think that's the bottom line.
- You're obviously supporting your bike shop
by doing that anyway.
Or if you're able to do it yourself following our videos
that's great.
But don't fall into a trap of thinking
you're going to need to buy stuff.
You don't necessarily need that new suspense fork.
Like Blake said, if you get it tuned,
and you get it serviced,
it's all greased properly and working correctly,
it's going to feel amazing.
- Correct.
- Basically yeah.
And you could, for example,
you could upgrade to a coil.
Well it's not even an upgrade,
you could change to a coil internal or an air internal
if it's the other way around.
You can do that on some forks.
- Exactly.
- And shocks too.
(upbeat music)
- So you get a new bike and you want to upgrade this,
but over time.
So you're going to be riding your brand new bike,
and then over time you want to think about
upgrading parts on your bike.
Now, where do you start?
- I guess you could probably start,
I would say with the consumable parts,
things that naturally wear out as you use them.
It could be quite easy to see
an XTR derailleur on your mate's bike
and be like, oh I really want that on my bike.
- Yeah.
- Don't just do that.
Wait until your existing derailleur is worn out
and then when you replace it,
you upgrade that at the same time.
Same goes for your chain, your cassette,
all those things that wear out.
Tires, you don't necessarily need to replace them now,
although you can get better performance
by replacing them.
You may as well wait 'til they're worn out.
Get some good use out of them.
- Exactly and also talk about tires
you could actually get a little bit of weight out
because that bike you've bought
probably come with any tubes.
So maybe convert to being tubeless.
- A hundred percent I agree with that.
Inner tubes to me is backwards technology.
I say to everyone, convert your bike
to a tubeless.
It's great 'cuz you lose some rotation weight
which is great,
which means your bike is going to feel lighter and roll faster
and it seals up little punctures on the go.
And that's a win-win.
- You could potentially do that straight away
as soon as you get your bike.
But cockpit wise,
if you're not too keen on the width of the bars,
changing the bars actually is not an upgrade as such
but an upgrade to body position on the bike,
feel of the bike.
- Yeah.
- Can definitely upgrade your bike.
- Yeah like Blake said, that is definitely not an upgrade
as such unless you, for example,
going to a carbon bar from an aloe bar,
it would be an upgrade for example
if your aim is to try to lose weight off the bike,
so a carbon bar may be lighter.
But it's not again a performance thing,
it's going to be a preference thing.
So don't confuse those.
It will definitely make your bike feel nicer
if that's what you're looking for.
But it won't make it better as such.
- Over time, the best upgrade ever,
what is it Donny?
Because I agree with you on this one.
Okay well we've already covered wheels
at the beginning of the video.
I think the most significant thing you can change
on any mountain bike,
if it hasn't already got one to add performance
is a dropper post.
- Exactly.
- I reckon, and I still think we need
to make a video on this,
you can ride faster on a rigid bike with the dropper post
than you could on a four suspension bike
with the saddle fully up.
I reckon there's a video there.
- There's a video there for sure.
- I mean you're a bit out of control on the rigid bike
but getting the saddle out the way could compensate I think.
- Exactly.
(trap beat)
Color coding, now I've seen this a lot
out there in bike parks and trail centers.
Color coding everything to the,
to your valve stems.
- Oh yeah.
- All of those things like orange, blue, green, everything.
Now I'm a sucker for this because I love green
for obvious reasons,
my nuke proof mega is green.
I've got these grips on there.
My vehicle's green,
my clothing's green, everything.
My watch strap.
- Blake is bonkers about green to be fair.
- That is an upgrade but it's a personal upgrade
so when it comes to actually selling that bike at the end
someone would probably hate it
and you probably won't sell it.
And it won't add any value.
- That's a good shout actually.
Doing sort of the color coding thing
is great but it is your personal taste.
So maybe be cautious with that
if you do want to resell the bike at some point.
Don't go too crazy.
- Yeah maybe keep those old parts
and then put them back on if--
- I quite like a bit of color coding though.
- Yeah
- I don't like to go too over the top but, here and there.
- Talk about color coding,
now you've done a significant change to your bike.
- Yeah, there's one or two little changes on there.
- So the biggest change is now, is an upgrade
and it's going from air to coil.
- But is that an upgrade?
- We don't know.
- Right. So I've basically on my new
it came with a new shock on there which I love.
I'm a big fan, in fact,
I'm probably a bigger fan of air shocks
than I am of coil shocks.
However, a lot of GMBN tech viewers
have been asking about what are the differences.
So I'm making a video at the moment
and I've just changed the shock on my bike.
You could say it's an upgrade
but I don't think it is.
It's a level, it's a preference thing.
- Yeah.
- But now it's got an orange spring that looks really cool.
And it does match with the colors
some of that orange valves.
- But it's a very expensive route to go down
if you were to do that and you end up
it's not the best thing for that bike depending.
- There's something that you won't have seen though.
So that's not an upgrade,
but it's a really interesting thing.
I think we'll make a cool video and figure it out
if it rides better,
but there's an upgrade you didn't see
that is an upgrade.
I volted the fork travel,
so there's an internal shaft on the fork
you can change basically.
It's a fairly cheap component.
I did it myself
and I've added ten mil to the travel of that bike.
- What?
- So it comes with different options
it's compatible for the bikes,
some of the models have a 150 fork,
some have a 140,
and I really like the 150 rode.
So I've upgraded mine to a 150.
- That's an exciting point there
because a lot of viewers do ask,
can I put a bigger fork on my bike?
Now that could potentially
not be an upgrade in itself maybe.
- Yeah you could ruin your bike.
- You could ruin your bike.
- If you're doing ten or 20 mil,
on most bikes you could probably get away with it
but you change some of your angles.
So you've got to be careful with that
because you can actually
make things worse rather than better.
- Downgrading it.
- Oh yeah downgrading, don't downgrade.
- A hundred percent the coil's definitely better.
- I'm not sure about that.
- Definitely better.
- Honestly,
(sped up voices arguing)
Hold on, you still there?
Oh guys.
Yeah you should probably subscribe
if you haven't done that already.
See you later.
- Coil's better.
- It's not.