Which bike upgrades are best? If you love your mountain bike but feel that a few tweaks could make it even better, we’ve got some great ideas for components from the best manufacturers around. Whether you’re looking for something on the aesthetic side to reflect your personal style, you want faster engaging wheels or you’re after raw stopping power, here are our tips for the best upgrades in stock at Big Bear Bikes.
This Cheshire-based manufacturer makes everything from grips, handlebars and stems to pedals and axles so you can add hits of colour however you like. These are choice aesthetic upgrades backed up by precision engineering and top quality performance that means Burgtec are favoured by plenty of pros.
Choose from up to 12 colours to offset or match your bike’s colour way or create something that reflects your personality. This is a great way to upgrade your bike on a modest budget. You could start by spending as little as £16 on a pair of new grips or you could bling your bike from top to toe with the full Burgtec range.
For a lot of cyclists, their first choice upgrade would be a new set of wheels. Improving your wheels with a lighter, faster set results in something you can physically feel. Better wheels feel lighter, stiffer and more capable, offering better engagement so that when you put the power down through the pedals the result is virtually instantaneous. They also have increased rolling performance as a result of higher quality bearings.
Hope wheels are made in the UK and do all of the above but with an affordable price tag where you get a lot for your money. These are great looking wheels, with a choice of coloured hubs so you can match your new Burgtec upgrades.
We also stock Industry Nine wheels which offer incredible amounts of customisation and are a truly stunning upgrade option. With carbon fibre and aluminium options available, you could literally have every spoke a different colour on a set of Industry 9 wheels.
We love the Enduro S, which is an incredibly high quality set of wheels for trail and enduro riding. However, there’s no colour option on this one and it comes as an entire wheelset. There’s also the Enduro 305 V3 with Industry Nine’s amazing Hydra hubs and a]ll the colour options you could ever want for spoke and hub. Both the Enduro S and 305 V3 have the same moving parts inside, with an unbelievable 690 points of engagement, which means that every ounce of effort that goes into your pedals is rewarded by movement in the wheels. They also give Industry Nine wheels their famous rolling sound that’s been likened to being chased by a swarm of angry bees. Watch this video.
These are the industry standard if you’re looking to upgrade your brakes with fantastic stopping power, lever-feel and aesthetics. Hope are beautifully machined and the individual parts are made in their Lancashire factory, which allows them to offer the individual colour ways and personalization options. These are known for being one of the most powerful brakes on the market, with lots of adjustability so you can set them up to your riding style.
Many brakes feel like they’re all or nothing; fully off or fully on. Hope brakes are more modulated, meaning the pressure applied by the brakes is gradual and relates to the amount of pressure you apply to the lever. We stock Hope Tech 4 E4 for trail riding and enduro and the more powerful Hope Tech 4 V4 for downhill and e-MTB.
Come and visit us in store to check out our upgrades wall and discuss with our team how you can take your bike to the next level.
