Mountain biking is a massively popular sport, rising from a niche activity to a globally adopted pastime in the last 20 years, much like snowboarding and with a similar focus on fun. If you’ve been away for a while, you might not recognise modern bikes after their rapid advancement. From humble beginnings, today’s mountain bikes are packed with technology and appear radically different to anything else with wheels and pedals.

Most of that is due to the suspension systems that have pushed back the boundaries of the sport and the terrain that can be tackled. Here’s a basic guide to help you know what to consider when choosing a bike.

Wheels

Knobbly tyres maketh the mountain bike, with a huge range on offer to suit all conditions. The original size is 26in, though 29in wheels have gained massive popularity recently; there’s also a 650b (27.5in) in-between size. Mountain bike wheels have tough rims and use more spokes than road bikes for greater strength.

Cassette

Mountain bikes need a wide range of gears. Most are 9- or 10-speed, and both SRAM and Shimano have 2x10 chainsets with two chainrings, as well as 3x10 with triples, and SRAM has just launched 11-speed.

Chainset

Most mountain bikes use a triple chainset for a wide spread of gears that will get you up real mountains and speed you back down, but double chainrings in 2x10 set-ups are now increasingly common. Downhill, trials and single speed bikes use a single chainring.

Handlebars

Nearly all mountain bikes these days have riser bars, rather than flat bars as were commonplace in the nineties. They give a comfortable position and excellent control, and come with varying degrees of rise, backsweep and upsweep to enable you to fine-tune your cockpit to your liking.

Clamp size is now 31.8mm. Different widths are also available – about 710mm is becoming the norm for trail bikes, 750-60mm for downhill rigs.

Frame

The shape of a full suspension mountain bike frame is dictated to a great extent by the type of suspension system used.

Top-tubes tend to slope or curve to allow extra manoeuvrability and standover height. The geometry varies greatly depending on the intended use of the bike.

Suspension fork

Suspension is the single biggest area for technological development in mountain biking. Cross-country forks with 100-130mm (4-5in) travel are pretty much the norm now and entry-level forks are much better quality and cheaper than ever.

Setting them up for your weight and riding style is key to get the best performance from them.

Brakes

Hydraulic disc brakes are now standard on mountain bikes from the mid-range upwards, and they have huge power. Entry-level bikes are more likely to use mechanical disc brakes or even V-brakes.

Hydraulic systems are essentially scaled down versions of motorcycle brakes and servicing them requires a new set of skills.

This feature is brought to you by Get Into Cycling from Future Publishing, the publishers of www.bikeradar.com

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