[Jeremy R]

Barel took a stock frame and drilled some holes in it. Thats a lot different then what other companies do for thier riders.

Its hard to figure out why people slam kona. You ride thier bikes, and they work. Beat them like an ugly child, they work. Neglect them, abuse them, and they just keep going. The tweak them year after year to suit changing riding styles, without abandoning the design that works so well for them.

How is that bad?

You are focusing on suspension design for the reasons that people do not like them. And that may be what people SAY they do not like about them, but mountain bikers really buy on image. Like it or not that is the truth.
And I think that is what really hurts them.
From their lame Hawaii theme, to their ridiculous names, to last and certainly not least the horrific vomit inducing neon bird $hit paint jobs they throw on most of their bikes. Even Barel WC bike was heinous.
Their tired image is what hurts them, and makes them come out with their bikes way before everybody else.
Its supposed to be all about the ride, but we all know it is not.

 

[dropmachine]

INteresting, and sadly a good point. Kona does have weird colors and designs, but I gotta admit they are kind of refreshing, for me anyways. I'll admit i'm not a fan of the outlined logo, i much preferred the spraybomb look. But, what can ya do.

The neon does have to go though, i agree there.

 

[Jeremy R]

INteresting, and sadly a good point. Kona does have weird colors and designs, but I gotta admit they are kind of refreshing, for me anyways. I'll admit i'm not a fan of the outlined logo, i much preferred the spraybomb look. But, what can ya do.

The neon does have to go though, i agree there.

Yeah, some of their bikes do look nice, like the plain grey ones.
Maybe the fact that they are different does get some people to buy because of that though.

 

[McGRP01]

coiler air looks nice.

Word.

 

[sanjuro]

Hold on, due to customer pressure, Kona is going to change colors to more popular schemes. For 2007, all bikes will be painted matte black...

Who gives a f*ck is the colors are awful!?!? Buy a frame from a small builder, get it exactly the color you want, and pay $1000-1500 more than a Kona.

 

[RhinofromWA]

Man some of you guys just don't get it.

Do you ride for the gear, or to ride your bike? Kona is the kind of company that isn't interested in doing the new thing just to make A.D.D. e-bikers happy. They build the bikes they do to ride the terrain that they ride. You want the newest, fanciest suspension design on the block? Grab your brilliant copy of MBA and run down to the store to get it. The Kona bikes work damn well, especially for the money. They do the job they were designed for, and don't compain even after you beat them silly. If you don't like the ride, or want whatever the flavor of the week is, don't buy them.

Change does not always mean for the better.

They have a rep around here for eating deraileurs at an accelerated rate. *shrug*

I wanted that 1999 Stab Delux BAD back in the day....of course your options were That and the Mongoose NX DH bike and the IH (pre SGS) etc. That and the bent DT really looked cool! Now I am over it and 5-7 years in DH bicycles is a looooong time. Look at everything else that was available back then and then another 5-7 years before it. 5 years is a long time....in bicycle life terms not geological terms.

Rhino

 

[Jeremy R]

Who gives a f*ck is the colors are awful!?!?

PEOPLE WHO BUY BICYCLES.


Buy a frame from a small builder, get it exactly the color you want, and pay $1000-1500 more than a Kona.

They do.
Again, I am not saying if it is right or wrong, just giving my opinion of why people do not like them.

 

[stinkyboy]

Kona Suck big time, Most of the staff they employ no nothing about bikes and the bikes they sell. I will go into more details when I have time

I can't wait until your schedule opens up and you bless us with more misspelled words and capitalized words after a comma!

 

[sanjuro]

Here is my bike. The muted greys and blues (with the matching Fox fork), offset with the bare aluminum. It just makes me puke to look at it:

 

[McGRP01]

Here is my bike. The muted greys and blues (with the matching Fox fork), offset with the bare aluminum. It just makes me puke to look at it...

Why?

Here's mine. I don;t think it looks bad at all.

 

[sanjuro]

Sarcasm alert. I love the color scheme of my bike. Not to say the orange and neon greens from last year were "pretty", but they were eye-catching...

 

[McGRP01]

Sarcasm alert. I love the color scheme of my bike. Not to say the orange and neon greens from last year were "pretty", but they were eye-catching...

Ahhh.....sarcasm, I get it.

I gotta go home, 10 hours at work has made my brain dumberer.

 

[Jeremy R]

Here is my bike. The muted greys and blues (with the matching Fox fork), offset with the bare aluminum. It just makes me puke to look at it:

That bike looks sweet.
I like the way the gray matches.
I owned a Kona for 3 years back in the day, so I do not have some kind of bias on them. Its just some of their bikes have a cartoonish look to them.
But hey, who gives a $hit what I think, if you want a cartoonish bike, grab one up and ride the wheels off it.
I never had one issue with my Kona frame itself. I had a few derailleurs literally jump off the bike, but that is another story.

 

[klunky]

I hate Kona because when I bought a stab primo fitted with the wrong linkage plates causing the seat stays to hit the seat post I was told "its supposed to be like that, fit a heavier spring" Obviously I did not want to do this. It took a letter from a lawyer threating breach of warranty contract for someone to realise I had the wrong linkage plate. Later when the frame cracked and sent it off for warranty I was told "the cracks are not big enough to warranty- wait untill they get a little bigger". At this point I bought a new bike.

 

[stinky6]

I don't know what you are talking about when you say Kona has a bad image. There freeride team has some super sick riders on it, Dave Watson, Cowan, ect, which give a company a good image. Just because every other bike company has people that only see in black, red and maybe one other color doesn't mean that Konas paint scemes are hindious. Not all have been the best, but for the most part the all their bikes look pretty good, better than most when it comes to paint. As far as the names of their bikes go just because most comanies use the _____-1, ______-2, ect or ____X-1, _____X-2 formula doesn't mean that a real name is bad.
Any way, keep on hating Kona if you want, I doubt I or anyone else will change your mind.

 

[arboc!]

I hate Kona because when I bought a stab primo fitted with the wrong linkage plates causing the seat stays to hit the seat post I was told "its supposed to be like that, fit a heavier spring" Obviously I did not want to do this. It took a letter from a lawyer threating breach of warranty contract for someone to realise I had the wrong linkage plate. Later when the frame cracked and sent it off for warranty I was told "the cracks are not big enough to warranty- wait untill they get a little bigger". At this point I bought a new bike.

when you have nothing to say do you sometimes make up stories?

 

[sanjuro]

Fatality!

 

[lovebunny]

They have a rep around here for eating deraileurs at an accelerated rate. *shrug*

I wanted that 1999 Stab Delux BAD back in the day....of course your options were That and the Mongoose NX DH bike and the IH (pre SGS) etc. That and the bent DT really looked cool! Now I am over it and 5-7 years in DH bicycles is a looooong time. Look at everything else that was available back then and then another 5-7 years before it. 5 years is a long time....in bicycle life terms not geological terms.

Rhino

my point exactly. i think they should do a lil r&d and come out with something new and fresh

 

[klunky]

when you have nothing to say do you sometimes make up stories?

why would I make that up? I guess it sounds far fetched but thats how it was.

 

[Percy]

my point exactly. i think they should do a lil r&d and come out with something new and fresh

Like something that would.....say,win the World Champs?

Their bikes work,are tough,and cheap,and get a lot of people started in the sport,which cant be a bad thing,nuff said.

Right,Im off to ride my Roast around to look for the scum who stole my Stab.

 

[thaflyinfatman]

Barel took a stock frame and drilled some holes in it. Thats a lot different then what other companies do for thier riders.

Its hard to figure out why people slam kona. You ride thier bikes, and they work. Beat them like an ugly child, they work. Neglect them, abuse them, and they just keep going. The tweak them year after year to suit changing riding styles, without abandoning the design that works so well for them.

How is that bad?

They work, but so does clubbing people over the head with a lump of wood in order to harm them. Since then, mankind has invented guns/swords/blah blah which are much more efficient, work better, and so forth. See what I'm getting at?

Konas are good for their bombproofness, but they're so completely unrefined that it annoys me to ride them. The geometry on all their bikes just does nothing for me - their hardtails are alright for cruising round on but don't give you confidence for any particular type of riding, their freeride bikes are so short/high/steep/easy to bottom out that they have to be set up too stiff to ride comfortably, the Stab Supreme or whatever it is that's meant to be a "race" bike has such blasè geometry for riding DH that I don't feel any inspiration of confidence like I do on so many other bikes, they don't offer any performance advantage in any way OTHER than the fact that they're nearly impossible to kill. Even the spec is relatively unimpressive at any given pricepoint. To me they come across as people who have no incentive to improve their product (which may be wrong, that's just the impression they give me). They're good for people who don't have much money (or just don't want to commit $rediculous to riding a bike, which is fair enough), but IMO they don't even offer that good value compared to Norco/Giant/Iron Horse. They do stuff like put massively wide DH bars on XC hardtails and so on.

Whatever, if you like riding em, good on ya. I don't. But who cares, as long as you're having fun... in fact now that I think about it this whole debate is retarded.

 

[frorider]

this debate is retarded, sure, but it's pretty much standard-issue e-yakking that we do to avoid watching american idol or whatever crap is on tv, so in that sense it has value and i should attempt to contribute.

seems like people knowledgeable about bike design and the industry have two main complaints about kona:

1. the total reliance on the single-pivot chain stay / faux bar design. PUTTING ASIDE all the other threads that get into the limitations of this design vs others, the real issue here is that despite selling a fairly large number of bikes that are in the 'affordable to moderately expensive' category inhabited by Trek, Giant, Specialized etc., Kona can't be bothered enough to actually REINVEST some of that profit into new suspension designs that might work better for certain segments of their wide product line. People say 'well Kona makes basic bikes for entry-level riders' etc....yeah well so do many other brands at that same low price point, and yet those other brands seem to find the time and money to actually make significant improvements over the years. Imagine if ALL Giant bikes (DH to XC and everything in between) were variations on the old AC frame design. I don't ride Giants (to pick one example), but they've obviously put thought into what makes a decent DH frame vs. a 5 inch trailbike.

2. the frame designs / construction that screams 'low cost' even compared to others at similar price points. i don't follow Konas closely, but for years I used to wince when looking at the crappy little chainstay/seatstay cheapo bushing/bolt interface on many of their bikes, or the general avoidance of CNC or complicated forgings or hydroformed tubesets etc. In this sense they are similar to KHS (not exactly a powerhouse in influencing the industry). Depending on which price point / type of bike you're talking about, this el cheapo kona design philosophy results in frames that are an inferior combination of stiffness/light weight, and in other cases inferior reliability (a friend has one of their 4 inch XC bikes, and he has to replace the bushings and pivots all the damn time despite riding in dry conditions). I don't recall the exact price of the Trek Session--I think it's similar to Kona equivalents---but the Session frame (which also uses the faux bar design) is pretty effin sweet. big ass pivots, lots of nice frame design aspects that obviously indicate that Shandro & the engineers were trying to combine huge lateral stiffness, relatively low weight, high strength, good tire clearance, etc. etc. As others have remarked when seeing or riding the Session, it's like 'damn, here's a high quality version of a Kona...at the same price'.

so i think the general prejudice against Kona is not just about superficial things like paint jobs (a matter of personal taste i guess). i'm not an expert on mid-level bike pricing, but last i checked if I had only $2k - $2500 to spend, i could get a better performing, better construction quality bike from yeti/trek/specialized/etc. than i can from kona.

 

[sanjuro]

this debate is retarded, sure, but it's pretty much standard-issue e-yakking that we do to avoid watching american idol or whatever crap is on tv, so in that sense it has value and i should attempt to contribute.

seems like people knowledgeable about bike design and the industry have two main complaints about kona:

1. the total reliance on the single-pivot chain stay / faux bar design. PUTTING ASIDE all the other threads that get into the limitations of this design vs others, the real issue here is that despite selling a fairly large number of bikes that are in the 'affordable to moderately expensive' category inhabited by Trek, Giant, Specialized etc., Kona can't be bothered enough to actually REINVEST some of that profit into new suspension designs that might work better for certain segments of their wide product line. People say 'well Kona makes basic bikes for entry-level riders' etc....yeah well so do many other brands at that same low price point, and yet those other brands seem to find the time and money to actually make significant improvements over the years. Imagine if ALL Giant bikes (DH to XC and everything in between) were variations on the old AC frame design. I don't ride Giants (to pick one example), but they've obviously put thought into what makes a decent DH frame vs. a 5 inch trailbike.

2. the frame designs / construction that screams 'low cost' even compared to others at similar price points. i don't follow Konas closely, but for years I used to wince when looking at the crappy little chainstay/seatstay cheapo bushing/bolt interface on many of their bikes, or the general avoidance of CNC or complicated forgings or hydroformed tubesets etc. In this sense they are similar to KHS (not exactly a powerhouse in influencing the industry). Depending on which price point / type of bike you're talking about, this el cheapo kona design philosophy results in frames that are an inferior combination of stiffness/light weight, and in other cases inferior reliability (a friend has one of their 4 inch XC bikes, and he has to replace the bushings and pivots all the damn time despite riding in dry conditions). I don't recall the exact price of the Trek Session--I think it's similar to Kona equivalents---but the Session frame (which also uses the faux bar design) is pretty effin sweet. big ass pivots, lots of nice frame design aspects that obviously indicate that Shandro & the engineers were trying to combine huge lateral stiffness, relatively low weight, high strength, good tire clearance, etc. etc. As others have remarked when seeing or riding the Session, it's like 'damn, here's a high quality version of a Kona...at the same price'.

so i think the general prejudice against Kona is not just about superficial things like paint jobs (a matter of personal taste i guess). i'm not an expert on mid-level bike pricing, but last i checked if I had only $2k - $2500 to spend, i could get a better performing, better construction quality bike from yeti/trek/specialized/etc. than i can from kona.

You make some fine points about the lack of improvement. Even Spec/Ed and C/Dale, who have not changed their suspension designs but have tweaked them like with hydroforming or the one piece BB shell design.

I think Kona's strongest sales point is the wide range of mountain bikes at a decent cost. Most companies have only the XC, trail, and maybe FR designs; where Kona has 3.5, 5, 6, 7, and 8 inch designs.

If you choose to live at the cutting edge, yes there are many better bikes (Rocky Mountain comes first to mind). Better technology yes, better reliablity, hmm.

 

[WheelieMan]

this debate is retarded, sure, but it's pretty much standard-issue e-yakking that we do to avoid watching american idol or whatever crap is on tv, so in that sense it has value and i should attempt to contribute.

seems like people knowledgeable about bike design and the industry have two main complaints about kona:

1. the total reliance on the single-pivot chain stay / faux bar design. PUTTING ASIDE all the other threads that get into the limitations of this design vs others, the real issue here is that despite selling a fairly large number of bikes that are in the 'affordable to moderately expensive' category inhabited by Trek, Giant, Specialized etc., Kona can't be bothered enough to actually REINVEST some of that profit into new suspension designs that might work better for certain segments of their wide product line. People say 'well Kona makes basic bikes for entry-level riders' etc....yeah well so do many other brands at that same low price point, and yet those other brands seem to find the time and money to actually make significant improvements over the years. Imagine if ALL Giant bikes (DH to XC and everything in between) were variations on the old AC frame design. I don't ride Giants (to pick one example), but they've obviously put thought into what makes a decent DH frame vs. a 5 inch trailbike.

2. the frame designs / construction that screams 'low cost' even compared to others at similar price points. i don't follow Konas closely, but for years I used to wince when looking at the crappy little chainstay/seatstay cheapo bushing/bolt interface on many of their bikes, or the general avoidance of CNC or complicated forgings or hydroformed tubesets etc. In this sense they are similar to KHS (not exactly a powerhouse in influencing the industry). Depending on which price point / type of bike you're talking about, this el cheapo kona design philosophy results in frames that are an inferior combination of stiffness/light weight, and in other cases inferior reliability (a friend has one of their 4 inch XC bikes, and he has to replace the bushings and pivots all the damn time despite riding in dry conditions). I don't recall the exact price of the Trek Session--I think it's similar to Kona equivalents---but the Session frame (which also uses the faux bar design) is pretty effin sweet. big ass pivots, lots of nice frame design aspects that obviously indicate that Shandro & the engineers were trying to combine huge lateral stiffness, relatively low weight, high strength, good tire clearance, etc. etc. As others have remarked when seeing or riding the Session, it's like 'damn, here's a high quality version of a Kona...at the same price'.

so i think the general prejudice against Kona is not just about superficial things like paint jobs (a matter of personal taste i guess). i'm not an expert on mid-level bike pricing, but last i checked if I had only $2k - $2500 to spend, i could get a better performing, better construction quality bike from yeti/trek/specialized/etc. than i can from kona.

I agree completely. I think Trek has beat Kona at their own game. The Session frame seems way more refined than the Stinky (huge pivots, 1.5 headtube) Why Kona still makes falling-rate linkage DH bikes puzzles me.

 

[stinkyboy]

Don't listen to the haters my lil' Stinky, it'll be ok.