I had the idea for this blog after receiving my brand new bike two weeks ago......
I feel the need to Blog about my new bike as it was something that I really wanted to find and read while I was in that difficult stage in any mountain bikes life,
"What bike do I buy?????"
After being forced to quit DH for medical reasons, I was certain that I was not leaving mountain biking for good...... and the idea of getting the lycra on for all day road riding sent shivers down my spine, I therefore decided to go into All Mountain riding, trial centers and XC pedalling.
Next step, what bike I buy!?
I was toying with the idea of 140mm travel versus 160mm travel, with 160mm better for AM and 140 perfect for trial centers, I decided I wanted 160mm as I feel 160mm of travel creates a great all round setup, especially with a lock out fork and shock.
I started looking and different bikes, checking out the Orange 5 AM, Cube Fritzz SL, Lapierre Spicy to name but a few. But while flicking through a copy of MBUK I came across an advert for the German bike company Rose. To be honest, I had never heard of Rose before, but I decided to check them out anyway, after browsing around there very slick website, I came across there 160mm travel enduro spec rig, the uncle jimbo 8.
The real sweet thing about Rose is that they have a pretty trick bike configurator section, where you can select any bike, and build it up with the part YOU want, great if you like me and are quite particular with what components and brands I like and dislike.
I threw the uncle Jimbo 8 into the configurator and had a play about......
The Spec I created was......
Fox 36 talas FIT forks
Fox RP23 shock with boost valve
DT Swiss EX1750 wheels
Formula The One Brakes
SRAM X0 Carbon cranks 3X10 shifters
KS industries dropper post
Syncros Stem and Carbon bars
The price for all this pimpness...........£2300....yep I know........I was shocked too!
Now being a mail order bike, there are a lot of things to consider, what size do I get If I cannot try one out first? How much will delivery be? What if I don’t like it? If it’s too good to be true, it normally is?
I started to research Rose to try and find out as much information as possible about them, there customer service, quality and how the actual bike performs? To be honest there is not much information out there, they are a massive supplier in mainland Europe, but do not have a distributer in the UK so are fairly unknown….
Size - The most important thing to get right is the frame size; I’m a tall lad, 6ft 4 with all my height in my legs, so an XL size (22”) was a no brainer. But Rose has a whole section on helping you work out the correct size for you. The Frames are built rather large so if you are uncertain as to which size to get, go for the smaller size than you would normally get.
Communication – Being a Germany company I was worried about communication, but rest assured the website is all in English, all the prices are in English, and the correspondence when ordering my bike was all in good English.
After a lot of thinking I decided I was just going to go for it, I could not say no to that spec for the price and with the 1 month returns policy, 10 year frame warranty, 2 year component warranty and 5 year crash replacement scheme, how could I say no!? I placed my order on Boxing day and waited for her to arrive!
I was really impressed with the communication at Rose, they sent me plenty of emails keeping me updated as to my bikes progress on the assembly line, bearing in mind I ordered the bike on boxing day, I got the dispatch email on the 3rd of January, which I was impressed with! I was able to track my bike VIA DHL as it was shipped from Germany to my house, 3 days after it was dispatched; it arrived on my door step! Moment of truth time, will it live up to my expectations????
Big Box!!!!!
It came out the box like this, all I had to do was pop the front wheel in and straighten the bars, simples.
The finished article
Now to get it dirty! More to follow!
