Please mount the bike on a wall somewhere and every time you get a AMD trinkets or Ryzen/Radeon stickers just slap it on there, would live to see it in 30yrs just covered in AMD trinkets and stickers
I was a bike assembler for ToysRUs for several years. All bikes that came in were boxed and were very similar brands to Kent, as well as some Kents. 75% of bikes had something seriously or dangerously wrong with them that required repair or a new parts right out of the box, brand "new". Luckily a couple decades of selling bikes the store had hundreds of direct replacement parts to repair eplace most of the issues without returning or scraping the new bikes. Either way the bikes that went out the door in the box, about 50% of them came back within a week for proper assembly because of the brakes and\or spokes out of adjustment. 2nd biggest issue was the derailer\gear change mechanism being out of adjustment or damaged. Safety was #1 so quite a large number of bikes were just scrapped outright and needed to be returned. I forget the brand but the best condition bikes came in a box that had a picture of a TV on the box instead of a bike - it made a small but noticeable difference in them being damaged or not. But the reality of it is all those bike brands were virtually identical and the manufacturing methods were just absolute garbage.
One thing we're going to miss about the death of brick and mortar stores are all the people who worked behind the scenes to try and make the product the best it could be. Cheers.
if the average person can't - and the majority of bike manufacturers won't - adjust it so that the chain won't fly off, then it's probably better to have it
That is sheer experience. The guy knows. He simply does. This is not something you get on internet, it's through years and years working on the field. This is the type of professional people should aspire to be on any field.
It was so funny to see AMD release a bike to begin with. You have this high-tech, super-advanced company that is meant to advance computers, yet here they come making bikes of all things.
And this is the result. In an attempt to break into a market they have no knowledge of and no business making products for, they ended up with a massive recall and a PR fiasco.
@@GCAT01Living I don't think they tried to break into any market and never sold many of then anyways. This was probably just a PR thing, put your name on a random thing and roll with it, like the razer toaster. Didn't work out because they had no clue about bikes
They high tech and did not go with a ebike as a tech company I'd do that instead of a regular bike. I think he might build the bike into a PC case maybe one day.🤭
They didn't make these bikes they just buy them from another company and put their branding on them which almost makes it worse since they cheaped out so badly when they could have just paid a little more for something that reflected the quality of their brand
It was a cash grab because AMD wanted to profit on its fan base that thought they could do no wrong. You dont see other companies try to fleece their customers with weird side products like this.
All the finest automobiles used friction dampers! In 1910... The rear shock spring is the wrong hand (i.e., the spiral is wound in the wrong direction). It acts as an "unlock" washer, so every rebound unscrews the preload nut a little bit more.
That's an interesting detail about the spring that I hadn't noticed, but I think you're right. The length of the helix remains constant because that direction is not loaded; from the steel's point of view the load is from the side. But because it describes a shallower angle when compressed, the ends of the spring rotate relative to each other. If we assume sufficient friction between the spring end and whatever it's pressed against, the receiver plate at the rear-triangle end will hold that end still, while the other end will rotate clockwise (as seen from the rear) under compression. This direction tends to unscrew the tension knob, just as you say. Meanwhile when uncompressed, there would be less friction so the reverse effect doesn't (fully) cancel the unwinding. Friction dampers are still quite common on railway freight wagons. The suspension is arranged so that the weight of the wagon presses a friction block into the side of the axle horn-guides, or something mechanically equivalent to that depending on the bogie design. This ensures that once adjusted in the works, it generally doesn't need adjusting again until the next overhaul a year hence. The wagon could do a million miles in that time, depending on how intensively it is used. It's not a bad system, in the right application and when correctly designed and adjusted. Passenger trains, however, have either hydraulic or pneumatic dampers of the proper sort all over the place. On high-speed trains they are necessary to eliminate yaw oscillations in the bogie, as well as the more obvious applications in vertical compliance. A typical bogie will have one or two dampers per wheel in the primary suspension (between axle and bogie frame), another damper per wheel in the secondary suspension (between bogie and carriage body), a pair of yaw dampers, and possibly further dampers in the lateral and longitudinal locating directions. Often the primary suspension is coil springs while the secondary suspension is air bolsters (inflated via the braking system). All of this serves to ensure that the wheels are pressed firmly against the rails at all times (necessary for the wheel cones to steer the bogies along the rails, and if flange contact occurs to prevent a flange-climb derailment), and that the carriage rides smoothly for passenger comfort.
I got myself a bike recently for road and light trail riding. In part, I have Steve's mountain bike videos to thank for planting the seed in my mind. Now I'm not driving as often, and I'm getting more physical activity. Thanks Steve!
From time to time I get one these (cheap catalogue bikes) through my workshop. I always advise the customer not to ride it and I won’t do any work on it as that legitimises the bike as being safe to ride. I had one guy who brought one in after he rode it at a trail centre the bike was in bits! I showed him in the manual it said “not for off road use” These type of bikes should not be allowed their a death trap waiting to happen. To make matters worse when they need fixed their not worth fixing and their just pure waste. Good video as always Steve ty :)
That's true. Nothing is really upgradable like the 1" threaded fork, bad coil damper and the most likely 7spd freewheel hub. If you want to upgrade or just repair you're better of scraping the bike. And that hurts, because good quality components from the 80s are still working fine today, these won't in 40 years.
Cool video, awesome to see the team's interests outside of PC building. Matt's great at explaining bikes/mechanical concepts - awesome you hooked him up !
Worked bicycle sales (and some service, though not nearly enough to be qualified) through covid to pay for my PC habit so this whole series of videos has been super fun!
Matt really loves talking about bikes, that man has true passion for what he does. I'd love to see him on the channel again. Maybe when that new PC has some issue, you could let him do the actual troubleshooting and just give some pointers to show how close computers and mechanical things really are.
Reminds me of the £99 bikes we used to sell when I worked at Halfords (uk budget bike shop/car parts store chain). They always had poorly adjusted brakes and chains and buckled wheels because we were given 20 minutes to assemble each bike and make it ready for the customer and I was given zero training.
My experience of Halfords is a car parts and accessories store with a cycle section taking upto a third of the store. I wouldn't buy a bike from hem but if I need a tube and I'm passing one then I will go in
@@chr1sda1sey I was hired when I was 16 to go work in the stock room unpacking the deliveries and pricing up (this was the mid 90s and Halfords didn't have barcode scanners yet). So you can imagine the mess I made of it when in the run up to XMAS they went "You work on bikes now, have you ever built a bike?". "Umm I cycle to work and know how to do basic maintenance?". "Ok then start on the kids bikes, they are easier". Do you really want the person building your child's bike to be learning how to adjust brakes and chains by trial and error? That's before we got into the terrible quality of the bikes themselves. I learned quickly to pull 2 bikes out of the store if I needed to build one because between the 2 I might get a pair of mostly unbuckles wheels and a full set of parts and a frame that only had damage in places you could hide with a "free" water bottle holder or a pump.
I haven’t ridden a bike in 10+ years and typically don’t consume any biking content….but this was interesting as hell. And Matt is such a pro! Just explaining all that in an easily understandable way is damn impressive. So great of you to build him a gaming rig
As someone who can't drive, I rely on a bike as my transportation. This is appalling that a giant company put out a piece of garbage and a near safety issue with their name on it. Glad to hear they pulled it.
I also use bike for transportation but also i use very different type of bike. I wouldn't use mountain bike for transportation. I have noticed that they just have too much maintenance and also the exposed gears isn't great for reliability. I use single speed step through frame bike. It is very reliable and basically no maintenance needed. 🙂
@@oplkfdhgk It really depends where you live. If you live in a city that's relatively flat and it has good biking infrastructure then a single speed bike will do nicely. However, it would be a terrible idea where I live. In my city there's a lot hills and slopes everywhere, wherever I want to drive I will have to go through a couple of slopes. I would never drive a bike without a transmission here, it would be a pain to drive up all those hills with a single speed bike. And then, if you live in a rural area or you just like to drive offroad for fun, or your city does not have a lot of bike roads and you are forced to drive down and up the curbs all the time, you might as well want to get a mountain bike. Most people can't justify buying more than a single bike just so they can get around, so they just use a mountain bike for everything even if it's not the most optimal.
@@RiskOfBaer yeah single speed is not for everybody. personally i think that internal gear hubs are under rated and no even that is not for everybody but i think that for the majority of people it is the best option.
@@RiskOfBaer i used to have bike with internal gear hub and i don't think i ever did any maintenance on the gear hub and i probably cycled tens of thousands of kilometres on it. It was great. On my mountain bike i did similar amount of kilometres and i spend hundreds on the maintenance. It would have been cheaper to actually buy two bikes. One for transportation and one for fun.
Well I learn a lot about bike that I didn't know, that's was great! And you can feel the amount of knowledge this guy have, and the passion that come with it. And it's enjoyable to listen to him.
This kind of frame is not very suitable for any upgrading (not mentioning the expense). It has 1" threaded head tube to begin with, no mounting holes for disc brakes, no real hanger for a good rear derailleur. Suspension design is awful and shock length likely doesn't support any shocks that are half-decent. The frame is heavy (and has a crack I believe). So upgrading this "bike" would be a real waste of effort, time and money.
Great content! I love these videos where you interact with your regular local businesses. If my eyes were closed, I would mistake Matt's voice for Patrick Stone lol.
@@volvo09 Probably the person responsible didn't know much about bikes, and picked a large brand that was priced in their target. I mean, surely they couldn't actually stay in business selling a bike that's unfit for purpose and actually dangerous, right?
Every product has had issues. If GN was the size of our Federal Government, they could look into product issues on a grand scale. For the size you are, I appreciate what you are able to look into. What is heartening is companies seem to be watching GN as well!
I started off on a Walmart bike and eventually ended up with my road bike which is a Trek and my mountain bike which is Kona....I highly recommend both brands....they maybe expensive but as the saying goes buy once cry once. Great video GN Extras and greetings to all my fellow cyclist out there!!!!
i would like to see Mat take this bike apart , keep only the frame and make the best quality bike the money can buy using all the best parts in the world . like Steve does with the pc's every time . Make a full custom GN color and decals bike and sell it to a fan or make it a auction with the profits go for a good cause of your choice , like those you already support . I would love to have this bike and maybe signed but Mat and all GN team !
One of the other problems with these cheap walmart bikes, is much of the frame is non-standard, meaning you can't even put decent quality bike parts on it.
This is a like if Dell made a bicycle. All of the low-quality parts are proprietary, and all the fittings on the frame are designed for those proprietary parts. Cheap bikes are basically disposable, because there isn't a whole lot you can maintain. Also, I believe the frame is damaged on this one in the form of a broken weld after Steve's adventures with it.
Unfortunately the frame is so shitty that good parts can't even be fitted to it. And even if it weren't, the geometry would be all bad anyway, and it'd be heavy.
This is random but actually informative for me. I'm thinking of getting a bike since I've started freelancing my services so I have more personal time. A lot of info here. and I'll probably use this for future reference.
So, is there any saving of this bike? Like, is the frame fundamentally broken beyond saving, or could you actually rebuild it properly with good quality parts to make a good bike?
It's fundamentally broken - with that cracked weld being an automatic no-go, for starters. It's also a generally bad design that has been very badly manufactured from the frame upwards. You would want to at least start with a frame from a reputable manufacturer, even if you replace literally everything else. If we start from the out-of-box condition and *don't* take it on an obstacle course, we would first need to perform basic adjustments on all the components fitted (trueing the wheels, adjusting the brakes and derailleurs, etc.) and then do something about the rear suspension (replacing the spring-damper link with something halfway competent that won't routinely come loose within a dozen miles). For road use, I would personally also just flat-out replace the front forks with a non-suspension type; they'll steer better (note in the original video how much the bike wanted to pull to the right - that's from the suspension play) and won't immediately be a maintenance nightmare. While you're at it, grind the head-tube bearings smooth, and replace the grips and shifters with ones that actually work. That's a lot of work and expense to just bring the thing up to an acceptable standard for urban road use (probably the least intensive use case I could reasonably specify), and we haven't even put lights on it for that purpose. If I were designing a bike to sell at this price, I wouldn't even attempt suspension (beyond the pneumatic tyres and sprung saddle that have been familiar since the late 19th century). I'd get more value for money from fitting lights to enable night riding, mud and chain guards, luggage carrying devices (rear rack, front basket), choosing the drivetrain appropriately for the intended use, and paying attention to basic quality control. Over here in Europe, such bikes are not difficult to find if you know where to look.
Well at least its a good representation of AMDs use of Silicon quality! Oh no don't over-volt the 3DX Cache it might die! As you may know, shocks and springs are also used in cars and other wheeled vehicles too but...holy shit that's the most play i've ever seen on a "new" product!
Well if a brand new one is only 200$ and you don't maintain it for a couple of years and then bring it to a bike shop it seems kind of obvious to me that there is no point in wasting the time and money on that
@@marcogenovesi8570 Sorry, I assumed your comment would make sense. Why would you fix something new that you've bought instead of simply returning it because it's a pile of trash? I thought you were talking about the bikes in this price range...
@@Kyomara1337 if you don't understand something please ask before assuming things I didn't wrote. Why would you return it and buy another one that is also a pile of trash. You think this bike is an AMD special? No it is not, most of the bikes under 200$ are garbage meant to be lightly used at low speed for a short time on a good road.
I really enjoyed this video. Thanks for this. I'm both a PC and Biking enthusiast so this is right up my alley. I believe that bike was made by SMS. Telltale signs. Also, that low end shimano derailleur is trash and can't even maintain chain tension so if you step on the pedals hard, your chain will slip without even shifting.
Disposable bike that's not worth the cost. Yeah, had one of those. A Hyper from Walmart, was happy with it for a while, did the job. Then the rear bearing failed on my way to an errand, the ball bearings all escaped and when I looked up a new rim- it was 50% the cost of the bike- the bike being $100. I wound up buying an entirely new bike from another store because I figured I'd just get rid of the risk entirely of more parts failing. I had already replaced the rear tire which cost $20, 1/5th the cost of the entire bike. IDK how I wore the tires out so quickly, I'm not sure I ever, wore out tires on bikes even as a kid. Not doing any hard core riding and my errands aren't that bad.
It looks like the cheapest OEM mountain bike with the '90s design. The green Kawasaki DH MTB is synonymous with Xmas 2001-2010 in Australia. Poor kids.
Matt "Nice wall art." My reply scoffing "Don't you mean kitch?" B'Cause, a nice piece would be like a 1961 Colnago with a complete Campagnola groupset in Italian Road Race Team colours. Not this h.o.s.
@LiveType I'm just intrigued by the ability to shift under full load. That Nuvinci Enviolo is a brilliant design and I assume would be very nice to have when climbing up a hill. The extra weight is just an extra challenge for me, as long as I can shift on even the steepest grades.
@@imnotusingmyrealname4566 Wait you can shift a hub box like the Sturmey Archer or a SRAM any time you want don't you? Though it's been a while since i rode them. I might be forgetting.
I used to always buy these cheap crap "disposable" bikes. Usually Walmart Schwinns. Last one was a Hyper single speed that ... doesn't have long left. With my heavy use I'd have them worn out to the point that they'd cost more than they were worth to repair after only a year or two, although my poor maintenance practices (not using the correct chain lubricants) definitely didn't help in that regard. Although I did learn VERY WELL how to align derailleurs and brakes on these things. Given I had to do it basically weekly due to how cheap the things were built. Probably the best thing I'd ever done for my cycling habit was buy a couple quality bikes. A Motobecane mountain that needs tires and some other love, and a Trayl road hybrid that I just got overhauled top to bottom. It needed it. Poor thing was thoroughly thrashed.
You are a super rich company and want a comm operation with a bike, what would you do ? Buy a batch of generic but modern frame from reputable taiwanese manufacturer, put on some geeky axs or xtr group, fox factory for the bling and your logo on top ? Or you take the first awful full-sus from a random supermarket, straight from the 90s, and hope nobody will find it offensive or lame ? mmmhhh hard choice
I'm 40 years old and I feel ashamed for what I’m about to write but I have no clue what kind of bike suits me better I think I need a Gamer Nexus best cheap bikes for 2022.
My wife got a cheap mountain bike with the intention of getting into biking which caused me to dig out my 25 year old race bike. The difference in build quality even with a quarter century of technology advances is mind boggling. I had forgotten how heavy a steel bike is and how poorly built cheap bikes are.
Did AMD really commit the basic merchandising sin of putting their name on low quality?? How did they even market this? "Hey, this is just like a regular budget mountain bike but it has AMD stickers on it"? Some fool just wanted to get the brand name out there into the visible, I guess. ... Basically, they went all for the graphics, ha-ha.
I think they sold those for display, or if it was for real use, they had to be forbidden to sell it. In this part of the world, it needs certificates before you can sell it. For real safety. That is good arranged in the EU.
To my knowledge, there's very little bicycle regulation in the US. In part because the market is mostly children's toys or informed enthusiasts, with little in-between.
Is there actually certification? I know there's a CEN standard now since recently but manufacturers just pinky-promise that stuff is alright, don't they? And then you'll still get bicycles where all parts are "fit for use" and the frame won't just shatter, but you need to be proficient in setting up the spokes and the brakes and derailleur because they're gonna be just slapped on, maybe you get lucky. I think the US system is different and they rely more on product liability laws and basically vendors being sued regardless of whether there's a standard for it.
If they wanted a cheap bike why didn't they make it a hardtail? That way they could even have the budget to put on disk breaks because they wouldn't have spent money on shoddy shocks. Just an instant improvement to the breaks because there's no way for them to get so misaligned they go through spokes, instant improvement to the ride because you don't have the shoddy shock throwing you around all over the place and you could even put more money into a quality frame that's simple to manufacture because it's just a standard frame.
Really weird to see even a cheap bike without disc brakes these days...the discontinued $200 CAD crap-tier bike I rode for a while from Canadian Tire's Supercycle line while I was saving for my Voltbike Yukon had discs. I mean, the bike fell apart...the pedals broke off, the cables stretched alarmingly quickly, the handlebar grips wore out and started falling off on a daily basis, the frame bent under heavy use... but the brakes at least stopped the bike.
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It must be said that this bike is a failure from even more angles than I thought possible. This is a Walmart bike circa 2007, meanwhile, 2022 Walmart bikes are actually several times better than this thing. Kev over at KevCentral is the guy to watch on the topic!
