Originally Posted by
SlothRide
It's not a cheap bike. It's components are shimano and not the bottom of the line ones either... it's a mid-line comfort bike. The Shimano Acera Rapidfire Plus shifters are great.
My main bike is a S-works stumpjumper 29 w/ full xtr comps and fox rear and front suspension. I use the Del Sol LXI Flow 2 to cruise around with my kids for a nice comfy ride.
I had to go back and look into this as it has been a while. The bike is a cheap bike. You can go through the list of parts and see a lot of cheap stuff. JAK brakes, Random threaded suspension fork with no name... Not a good sign of quality. I have never heard of JAK and I looked them up and the only time I could find a picture was on eBay the rest was low end brake pads from other no name companies.
In terms of Shimano, that means almost nothing. Shimano is probably one of the largest companies in the industry and they make a wide range of stuff. Altus is one small step up from their absolute bottom end named group Tourney, Acera is one step up from that. 8 speed era came about in the late 80s and early 90s well over 20 years ago. Frequently on low end bikes they make sure to highlight SHIMANO parts and some even put big sticker proclaiming it because they want to equate their cheap crap with some sense of quality.
Like I said it is a copy of the Giant Cypress or the Fuji "comfort" bike that my old shop occasionally stocked. Nice and heavy with cheap outdated parts called comfort because nothing says comfort like lugging a super heavy poorly shifting and braking bike around. If a knife was held to my throat and I had to choose one of their "comfort" bikes I would go with the Flow 3. Still crap but at least you start getting a cheap but known and branded fork and hydraulic brakes with center lock hubs. Not of great quality but mediocre enough for riding once and while.
S-Works Stumpy is a great bike though.