Flow or Ion or ?

[marg26]

Thinking about getting a street trials bike, budget has led me to look at 24", namely Czar Ion, or Inspired Flow. The Ion has the edge at the moment as it comes with disc brakes. Can swap to some hydraulic SLX from my commute bike.

Am I right in thinking there's not anything cheaper than these two bikes for riding street trials? Are there any other bikes I should look at at similar price point? For some reason I thought Canyon might do something but no - any other fairly big name brands do them?

[Luke Rainbird]

If budget is an issue then pick up something second hand 

[Mark W]

Street trials is way too niche for any of the big brands to get involved with.

The Ion and Flow are both good.  There's pros and cons to each.

The Ion is pretty light and has disc brakes as standard.  The cons are that it's got a lot of proprietary parts on there, so for example the sprockets and freewheel are Echo's own spline type so you haven't really got any options for changing them without changing a lot more of the bike too.  It also uses a front freewheel system (the freewheel is located on the crank arm rather than on the rear hub) which I'm not really convinced by for street use.  The chain is always spinning on it so it feels like it gives a lot more resistance when you're coasting along, and it's also a pain in the arse if you get jeans caught up in them.  I got pretty good at sewing when I had a 20" with FFW.  As before, if you want to change that with so many parts being specific to Czar/Echo it's pretty tricky.  You wouldn't be able to fit mountain bike cranks to it, for example.

The Flow is a little heavier, largely due to having steel forks.  The square taper cranks aren't necessarily ideal either, but with it having a normal MTB-style threaded BB shell you can change them to pretty much whatever you want further down the line.  The geometry is decent and the wheelset is nice and solid too.  It doesn't have discs as standard, but most Inspired retailers will give you the option to upgrade to the same BB5s on the Ion, or Hope or Magura brakes.

They're both fun bikes to ride though - I've spoken to a reasonable amount of people who ride one or the other and they all seem to be buzzing about them.  They'll both be more than up to the job of getting you started with street trialsy stuff, and you'll be able to progress on them too without necessarily needing to replace half the bike.  

As Luke said the other option is to go second hand - just make sure that you're getting a decent spec, and that it's in good condition.  You won't have the same benefits of getting a warranty and after sales like you would with a new bike, so it pays to be fussy about getting plenty of photos of the bikes you're interested in to see just how 'used' they are.

EDIT:  Oh, SLX brakes - I'd probably be more inclined to use the BB5s on the Ion rather than switch to the SLXs.  The Shimano brakes I've tried have generally had quite a lot of pad knock, and although you can minimise that, the BB5s are pretty solid without needing to mess with them.  They don't quite have the same feel due to them being cable rather than hydraulic, but they're pretty powerful.  Trialtech and possibly Jitsie do upgrade pads for them as well which are well worth getting.

[Lucky_Stickman]

I have a flow plus and love it even though not used it much due to illness . The bb5s on it are better feeling than the xt if have on my mtb , so I would just go for the upgrade when buying .

It took me ages to pick the bike after asking loads of questions to tarty bikes but they were great answering everything so a noob would understand .

[marg26]

Cheers Mark, great info.

Would rather avoid proprietary parts. But then at the same time I probably won't be needing to replace parts as much as with a regular geared MTB given single speed's robustness (so I hear) and it won't be mud churning through the Winter and I probably won't want to do my 8 mile round trip commute on it too often either. So still tempted by the Czar ION, it's lighter, disc brakes no extra, and I mostly wear shorts .

I did wonder if the SLX brakes might not be quite right for trials, so glad to have asked that.

It might come down to how much the cost increases with disc brakes are on the Flow. I haven't used non-disc brakes on a bike for years, can't imagine going back to not stopping in a hurry, but they must work well enough for trials right?

 

 

[DeersSlayer]

3 hours ago, marg26 said:

It might come down to how much the cost increases with disc brakes are on the Flow. I haven't used non-disc brakes on a bike for years, can't imagine going back to not stopping in a hurry, but they must work well enough for trials right?

Stopping power is nice, but holding power and feel/modulation is needed in trials. I opted for the Flow Plus upgraded to hydraulic disc, DB5 (only upgrade option available from Tarty in Dec 2016). All my bikes are hydraulic, except my road/CX with cable disc. The bikes with hydraulics have way better feel. Whenever I ride the road/CX I remind myself to squeeze HARD on the brakes when I really need to slow down.

[Shadytree]

Learning to ride trials on rear disc brakes can get expensive. I switched back to rim brakes because I found myself not trying certain moves after I'd replaced a number of rotors that got mangled.