Ha! I already have to wear a disguise in public and dive into the bushes everytime someone rides by in a LIV Bikes jersey AND I have nightmares about German-speaking engineers in SRAM baseball caps sporting weapons derived from X-Sync-2 chainrings... you really want me to make things worse?!
Okay, one common local, really old, example is the old Rocky Mountain ETSX. There were tons of ETSX bikes around and I still regularly see them for sale used but a solid scan of the seat tube will usually yield at least one crack - where it joins the top tube, at either of the bearing journals or at the shock mount.
Now, say we take a 2007 ETSX and that's a solid NO SALE, what's interesting is that 2007 happens to also be the best year of the Rocky Mountain Switch. Looking for a shuttle/park bike for as cheap as possible and want a genuinely great bike? The Switch has a good leverage ratio that's not hard on shocks and can easily handle a double crown fork in the event that a 1-1/8" single crown proves hard to come by.
I've recently seen a 2007 Green Switch in really decent shape, with a freshly serviced shock, that was bought for $600 mated to a used Fox 40 coil dropped to 180mm travel that was in great shape bought for $450 + a service. Shuttle ready with fresh suspension for $1050 all in.
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I threw in some more generic where-to-look ideas in my reply to Bagheera above.
May 9, 2018, 2:47 p.m. - Andrew Major
Ha! I already have to wear a disguise in public and dive into the bushes everytime someone rides by in a LIV Bikes jersey AND I have nightmares about German-speaking engineers in SRAM baseball caps sporting weapons derived from X-Sync-2 chainrings... you really want me to make things worse?! Okay, one common local, really old, example is the old Rocky Mountain ETSX. There were tons of ETSX bikes around and I still regularly see them for sale used but a solid scan of the seat tube will usually yield at least one crack - where it joins the top tube, at either of the bearing journals or at the shock mount. Now, say we take a 2007 ETSX and that's a solid NO SALE, what's interesting is that 2007 happens to also be the best year of the Rocky Mountain Switch. Looking for a shuttle/park bike for as cheap as possible and want a genuinely great bike? The Switch has a good leverage ratio that's not hard on shocks and can easily handle a double crown fork in the event that a 1-1/8" single crown proves hard to come by. I've recently seen a 2007 Green Switch in really decent shape, with a freshly serviced shock, that was bought for $600 mated to a used Fox 40 coil dropped to 180mm travel that was in great shape bought for $450 + a service. Shuttle ready with fresh suspension for $1050 all in. . I threw in some more generic where-to-look ideas in my reply to Bagheera above.