Have you ever thought, “my mountain bike is good, but I wonder if it could be better”? Mountain bike upgrades can be a great option to improve the performance of the bike you already have, or to bring a new bike you want but have minor gripes with to the next level. Here’s what you should know before you start upgrading your bike.
Best mountain bike upgrades
- Mountain bike tires
- Brakes and rotors
- Pedals
- Grips
- Dropper post
- Suspension
- Mountain bike shoes
Mountain bike tires
Upgrading your mountain bike’s tires is an awesome way to immediately improve your bike’s performance, and can have a huge impact on how your bike feels out on the trails.
The most important thing to consider when looking to upgrade your MTB tires is how much grip a tire will have, and how much grip you personally will want and need.
For instance, if you ride a lot of cross country, you’ll want to get less knobby tires with a smaller footprint, lighter casing and fast rolling tread pattern. Tires with these characteristics will offer good acceleration and the ability to maintain speed efficiently once you’ve got it, both of which are essential to a tire being good for XC riding.
In contrast, if you like to ride a lot of downhill oriented trails, and maintaining control over rough terrain and at high speeds is more important to you than rolling speed, you’ll want to go with tires that have thicker casing, and a more knobby, aggressive tread pattern.
This will provide you with more grip on the trail, and will benefit you by offering more grip for cornering aggressively and when you need to hit the brakes and shed some speed or come to a quick stop.
There are also a range of options for tires that fall between extremely knobby downhill tires and more minimalist XC tires, so there are good options for everything in between DH and XC, including trail bikes.
Whichever type of tires you need for your riding, upgrading can really boost your riding abilities and experience.
Brakes and rotors
Brakes and being able to maintain control on your bike are about as important as it gets in mountain biking. Upgrading your brakes can make a huge difference in how your bike rides and your level of confidence while riding it.
There are two keys to look for in any MTB brake’s performance – power and precision.
Power means how much stopping power do the brakes have? Can they stop your bike quickly even from higher speeds or while descending steep terrain?
Precision is more about how much control you have over the amount of braking power being applied – like if you just want to shed a bit of speed, can you do so precisely?
There are different ways to go about upgrading your bike’s brakes. One option is to replace the brakes themselves with an upgrade along with the brake rotors.
Alternatively, you can just replace the rotors of your MTB’s brakes with larger ones. Larger rotors will improve the braking power your current brakes have. If you ride long downhill stretches, you probably already recognize how your brakes can get too hot from overuse. Larger rotors, in addition to providing more braking power, have better heat dissipation to stop your brakes from overheating when riding downhill.
If you decide to upgrade your brakes entirely, you’ll benefit from more adjustability that higher end brakes have. This will allow you more customization of the brakes to your preferences, allowing you to get your bike more dialed.
Pedals
Mountain bikes often don’t even come with pedals in this day and age, but if they do, they’re usually subpar at best. Most often, stock pedals on today’s mountain bikes are made of cheap materials like plastic and are not very grippy and also aren’t built to last.
Flat pedals
Quality flat pedals will last you a long time because they’re built with high quality materials, often made of durable composite compounds with metal pins for grip. These pedals are designed to hold up even through hard pedal strikes where your pedals hit obstacles like rocks.
Most importantly, a good set of flat pedals will provide a much better connection and better grip between your shoes and the pedals. This is accomplished through pedal pins that help you to get that locked in feeling while you ride.
Flat pedals come in a variety of sizes to fit different foot sizes and preferences. Some riders prefer a large platform while others rather the feel of having a smaller platform to stand on.
Clipless pedals
You can also opt to upgrade to a set of clipless pedals if you want your feet physically attached to the pedals while you ride. Cross country mountain bikers often prefer clipless pedals because of the pedaling power and efficiency they can achieve, and some downhill riders find them to be a benefit to avoid pedal slips on rough terrain.
For XC riders, there are good lightweight clipless pedal options available. For those who ride a lot of downhill, there are clipless pedals with larger platform footprints available as a safety measure in case your foot were to come unclipped while riding.
Whether you choose to upgrade with clipless or flat pedals, your riding experience can be seriously improved by this change and at a relatively low cost.
Related: Clipless vs flat pedals – which are right for you?
Grips
Another easy upgrade that can both improve your riding and make it more enjoyable is getting new grips for your handlebars. Grips are important because they are one of the only contact points between you and your bike (the other being your pedals).
High quality grips have the potential to both improve your control over your mountain bike, but also your comfort while you ride.
There is a wide variety of different grip options available, allowing you to customize yours to your preferences. There are different textures and tread patterns offering different levels of grip. There is also a variety of compounds used that each have different feels.
Grips are also available in a range of thicknesses to allow a better fit for a variety of hand sizes, and to fit the preferences of more riders.
Dropper post
Some bikes come standard with a dropper post, and some do not. If your mountain bike doesn’t have one and you’ve never tried one, you don’t know what you are missing. Dropper posts can be a huge upgrade for MTBs previously lacking one.
A dropper post allows you to both raise and lower your seat while riding through a control lever on your handlebars. This can really improve the quality of your ride, because it allows you to raise your seat up nice and high for pedaling power on climbs, and also to drop it back down low and out of the way for descending.
Being able to remain seated while you climb is a good way to save energy on your ride, and the ability to drop it down low for more technical riding, including jumps, rough terrain and fast descents does wonders for not only your confidence but also makes your riding safer.
A dropper post is an excellent upgrade to make to your bike to improve your riding.
Suspension
Suspension is another area of your mountain bike to consider making upgrades to. Suspension upgrades should be considered carefully before making them because they can change your bike’s geometry if you decide to increase either your fork or rear shock’s travel.
Because of this, its smart to run your plans by a someone you trust or a local bike shop to see if they think it would improve how your bike rides, or if the new geometry of the bike would cause problems. The last thing you want is to spend money on something that won’t improve how your bike rides.
If upgrading your suspension, you don’t want to dramatically increase the travel because it will alter the geometry that was optimized around shorter travel suspension, so you shouldn’t add more than 20mm to 30mm of travel (and even that could be too much).
Beyond looking to increase the travel of your bike’s suspension, you can also look to improve the effectiveness of how smoothly the suspension operates.
Forks and shocks with the exact same travel numbers can be wildly different prices for a reason – higher end ones are often far superior at smoothing out the trails for you, which is not only dependent on travel. They’re also often much more adjustable and can be finely tuned to your size, riding style and terrain choices.
Mountain bike shoes
While not technically an upgrade to your bike, getting a pair of quality mountain bike shoes can make all the difference to your riding. While good pedals can help to keep your feet firmly in place on them as you ride, they are only half of the equation.
If you’re going to upgrade your pedals to clipless pedals, you’ll have no choice and will need clipless MTB shoes to be able to clip in to your pedals.
But with flat pedals, you can get by with flat bottomed shoes that aren’t purpose built mountain bike shoes. That doesn’t mean you should though. Flat pedal mountain bike shoes have thicker, stiffer soles which provide you with greater energy transfer between your feet and pedals, improving your pedaling efficiency.
They’re also made with specialized, grippy rubber compounds that are both durable and keep your feat firmly planted on your pedals as you ride.
Frequently asked questions
What you should upgrade first on your mountain bike depends on your bike’s particular weaknesses, if any, and also on what will benefit you and your riding most.
Often the most impactful upgrades to make to a mountain bike will be replacing brakes and tires with higher quality ones.
Both MTB brakes and tires have a big impact on your control over your bike through all kinds of trail types. They allow you to ride more aggressively while still maintaining control which will make your rides that much more fun.
If you have an old mountain bike that still works well with a good transmission, and that you like the frame of, it can be worth it to make upgrades to. Especially where many upgrades, including tires, brakes and rotors, pedals and grips can be done relatively inexpensively.
With that being said, its probably not be a good idea to try to add high end expensive suspension to an older bike that is run down, especially if it was a cheaper bike to begin with.
The best upgrade to a mountain bike will depend on that particular bike’s weaknesses and what type of riding the bike will be used for.
New brakes and tires are some of the most impactful upgrades you can make to your bike, but other inexpensive upgrades like pedals and grips can also make a big difference to your MTB experience.
Many mountain bike upgrades are worth it, however, it is all bike, rider and riding style dependent. If they are lacking, upgrading a bike’s tires and brakes can make it much more capable. Other upgrades that can benefit your riding include improved pedals, grips, a dropper post and the bike’s suspension.
Conclusion
Many upgrades can be made to your bike that will greatly enhance how it rides and your overall riding experience, from quick, easy upgrades like tires, pedals and grips, to more involved upgrades like your brakes and suspension. All can go a long way to improving your current bike, but which ones will be best for you to make will depend on how you like to ride and where your bike’s weak spots are.