Preventing new bike lust...

Switch up some parts, I am in a similar boat but the money is tied up in other things this year. New brakes and shock, maby forks will satisfy me this year.

Avoiding falling into the n+1, or new bike lust, trap is easy for me since I can’t afford it. However, if money and space are not an issue for you, there has never been a better time to buy a new bike (and probably never will be a time this good in the future). If I could afford it, I’d be getting something new now (still running a Nomad 3 that will be 10 years old this December).

I buy and sell frames often, I look for good deals, then you can sell them without losing much.  Prior to this economic down turn in the industry, I profited on all my bikes and frames since 2020.

To me, trying new bikes, frames and parts keeps riding very fun for me.  Also note, I'm "tech" savy so I don't mind buying used a stripping and rebuilding fresh.

Buy used off friends with this exact problem.

Other tactics: a) Test ride everything possible before committing to the initial purchase. b) Only buy bikes you think look sick. c) subtle anglesets. d) update cockpit, tires, etc. every once in a while. d) Refresh your decals (fork, wheels, frame)  e) keep up with maintenance, including the little things (bleeds, cables, wheel trues, etc.) to keep it smooth and quiet. 

I'm on a Sb5.5 that I can't manage to justify to replace since it's been modernized, still shreds, and just looks mint. 

Any time I get new bike lust I get a demo and ride it back to back with my current bike. So far the Cotic Rocket has seen off all challengers, although an Enduro 29 came awfuly close a couple of years ago.

However, I mainly think that if I can afford to spend thousands on a bike, I can also afford to spend thousands on a bike park holiday. I know which one ends up being more fun.

I used to be in to sports cars. Then had kids. Sports cars were too expensive and tickets werent getting cheaper. Bikes are cheaper, relatively safe and give me that same hit of dopamine man! Switching up frames/components yearly keeps it interesting and fun. Can't wait for my daughters to be old enough to hit the trails with me! 

I have no reason to replace my spire or my hardtail but man does a dh bike have me interested.  Then I’d be set for life.

I know this answer will be downvoted especially on this forum, but...

I personally got rid of my upgraditis back in 2018, when I bought my first e-bike. Previously, I had changed my bike every other year, always buying one of the cheaper models and swapping over almost every component to mid/high end stuff. Every bike swap brought some clear benefits from 12mm axles, 29 wheels, geometry etc.

Once I got my e-bike, with heavy cheap wheels, a heavy cheap drivetrain and its 23kg, which I got closer to 24kg once I put the heaviest DH tyres I could find, I had an existential crysis: the e-bike rides better uphill (obviously) and downhill than any other bike I have owned, by a significant margin. I found some upgrades to do to it, but the changes were so marginal, they put all my previous bike swaps into question.

So now my upgraditis is limited to only 2 objectives factors: will the bike be more reliable than my current bike and will the new bike have more range? I upgraded based on these factors in 2023, we'll see how long I stick with the current bike going forward.

I am building a Specialized Status single-speed bike just for fun.  Why not!?  Bikes are cool, building them is fun, and I am going to enjoy the jibs from my friends when I show up with a totally impractical "Slopeduro" bike that I can't pedal up any hills on an evening fun ride.

If you have the budget and time and interest, go for it.  Enjoy the ride, we only get to go around once.

The weight penalty on eBikes has single handedly steered me away for years. As well, the lack of modularity; all companies using proprietary batteries and electronic bits. The newer models coming out like the SC Heckler SL have me a bit interested. Then now i'm worried about fire safety, a few locals in my area know of others who've lost their garages due to eBike fires. I don't know particulars involved, but having seen a few Tesla's catch on fire around here as well, the entire electric bike/car paradigm has me skeptical. BUT, technology has to start somewhere. Also, eBikes have been banned on some of my local trails, they tend to rut out a lot of the soft dirt and mud very quickly. I suppose you don't have that issue as much out in the south west/west coast? 

New bike Koolaid is delicious. If you can afford it, go nuts. 

I’ve had the same experience. I’ll be on my third season on my Rocky Altitude Powerplay, and I have no desire to trade it in for something new. I do, however, have an itch to add a lighter weight mid power bike to the fleet to add variety to the experience. After that purchase, I think I’ll be set for quite some time.

I finally got a DH bike last year.  I don't know why I didn't do that years ago!  Worth every penny.

Multiple forks or just one fork? 

slightly off topic but effects this a little: Hopefully more Brands jump on the Frame only option as the prices come down...
At the moment here for e.g a frame is 3k but complete slx build is 4k... we shouldnt be able to buy complete bikes and make money off them by parting them out, (for e.g i bought a heap of status's, stumpy evo's & slashes when on a huge throw out) I made a heap of money.
Basically if frame only options wernt so damn expensive i would buy even more Frame only options so i can try the Frame geo/design. This would drive my lust up even more. IMO Full bike builds are a terrible way, end up flooding the market with crap parts. Our LBS makes a heap of money from building up frames for people(frame swaps) currently 

This is a great question! UPCOMING ESSAY WARNING:

I know I'm an outlier but, for me, getting a new bike is kinda the worst. For example, it takes me about 3-4 months to feel truly dialed on a new mountain bike. I can get any new bike feeling “rideable" pretty quickly, but I’m talking about getting the bike to fit like a glove to the point that riding it feels like second nature. "New bike day" requires tuning the bike's fit and suspension simultaneously, two parameters that affect each other. Not to mention that you’re pretty much guaranteed to need some dumb small part or special tool before you can build up any new bike these days- weird proprietary bottom bracket, special brake adapter, impossible cable routing, something rubs, etc. No matter how much research I do ahead of time, I’ve never had a new frame-up build go smoothly. Always an aneurysm involved.

I’ve been really fortunate to ride a bunch of bikes in my life, lots of different designs, sometimes multiple similar bikes in the same season, and with enough time, I’ve been able to get pretty much any bike to ride like pretty much any other bike, provided the size of the bike is correct and the type of bike matches the application, i.e. 160mm travel bike for enduro, 200mm bike for DH, etc. In my experience, the newest, latest, greatest rarely is. It probably rides like a bike, has a different set of tradeoffs, etc. I’ve also ridden and seen enough $10000 wonder bikes to learn that every bike becomes old news pretty quickly, and eventually becomes either a museum piece or just another tool. You either appreciate the tool for what it does, or you don’t. This is why the three things I look for and prize in bikes are fit, reliability, and ease of maintenance, because those three things significantly affect my actual user experience. YMMV

This leads me to believe that a lot of what people (including many professional bike testers) talk about when they discuss different bikes “performance” isn’t the bike per se as much as their setup of the bike (or lack thereof). I’m talking basic stuff like spring rate, too. Sometimes it’s just a question of “did you buy the right size?” I think a lot of people either don’t know how to make adjustments on their bikes, don’t know that they can keep making adjustments to continue fixing problems they feel, or don’t care to bother. “The rear suspension on x, y, z bike is rough.” Is it? “The new x, y, z fork is really divey.” But is it? Or my favorite “x, y, z design doesn’t have mid stroke support.” “Mid stroke support" could mean about a thousand different things. You may feel like you’ve found the limit of a design, but you may have just found the limit of your setup knowledge and experience. Keep puzzling! And often, tuning doesn’t require buying a new shock, tune, or handlebar, often it’s just a question of playing with allen's or a shock pump.

So if I get a bike to where I want it to be, I tend to like to keep it. I had my last bike for 3.5 years and was kinda sad to see it go. I’ve had my new bike for three months and I’m still not quite dialed on it yet. Not because it’s a bad bike, mind you, just because everything is a little different and I haven’t had enough back-to-back runs to dial it in. When it takes this much time and effort to dial in a bike, it makes new bikes really unattractive for me.

That said, new bike stoke really works for some people. Some people get fired up to ride a new bike because it’s shiny, or they truly believe that this new placebo is going to solve all their problems. If that works for you, great! The placebo affect is a real effect. If a new bike helps you overcome the Seasonal Affective Disorder and ride more during the cold, wet, short days this winter, I’m happy for you.

So why do you want a new bike? Is it just because it’s shiny and new? If so, great. On the other hand, if you’re chasing a particular performance improvement, I would recommend asking someone smarter than you and going down the rabbit hole of adjusting and tuning your current bike, because I doubt you’ve fully explored the world of possibilities. You’ll probably learn something new about how bikes work or how you work in the process, and that knowledge is transferable to every bike you’ll ever own. Also, like you said, a bike vacation or bike coaching are almost always going to have a higher ROI on performance than something new and shiny.

There's a whole 'nother rabbit hole of "Is the problem you're feeling located in your bike, or is it mental/emotional in origin" but that's another essay entirely.

For better or worse, I had updated my mtn bike quiver in 2019 (enduro & hardtail) and at the beginning of 2020 (trail) and I've seen no reason to change since then. Two of them were built up from frames with fairly high-end parts. The third was bought complete, but was a top-level spec, so there isn't much to upgrade.  I've thought about getting a DH bike, but right now I don't really ride my enduro bike often enough, so I'm not sure how often a DH bike would get ridden. 

"Upgraditis" will generally be limited to wear items. Tires, cassettes and chains. 

A new bike is a lot of effort. Not to speak of the terrors of selling your old frame to buy a new one plus sourcing whatever special parts you'll need to make your parts work. But having to get to know it all over again, figuring out how it rides, switching tires/bar/stem/etc and doing suspension setup. For me this always takes a long time. For 5-10 rides I'm doing setup instead of just charging on a familiar bike. That reality really tempers my new bike lust. To offset that, when it's new bike time I buy the exact bike I want even if it's more expensive - that's a simpler route in the long run than cheaping out and selling it to get what I should have bought in the first place. If it's the perfect bike I'll be happier with it in the long run. I'll also be more likely do the key things to keeping it great for longer: regular suspension/dropper service, prompt drivetrain replacements, more frequent brake bleeds/pads/service. 

Buying once and crying once hits home. I recently bought a bike I thought was close enough... Then ended up buying the one I really wanted six months later.

I could have just spent that half year playing around on my hardtail and saved the cash and hassle. Now I have N=(1 too many) and get to try to recoup my cost in this buyers market. 

I used to do 2 seasons on a bike and move it on while it still held value.

As soon as I'd got a bike, I'd be looking at what might be next, things to tweak or change, hovering around bike shops and perusing websites.

But then I got an Atherton am150 in 2021, and I can't even look at another bike with interest. Like I know hands down that nothing will have the reliability and creak free, near zero maintenance of this chassis. Nothing I've ever owned or ridden has been so trouble free.

Plus the ride and fit is exceptiinal and all I'm ever after. Maybe, maybe I'll get a 170 ( they didnt do one when I bought mine or I would've gone 170), but its hard to justify as it's currently so perfect.

Maybe your Atherton was the one I saw on the back of a car in Welly a few months back? Certainly the only one I've seen in NZ. 

Funnily enough I have the same sentiment towards my Geometron - it's made the new bike lust vanish, and I only read the reviews of weird niche bikes now. 

Geometrons are sick bikes.

I really like how modular they are. And bombproof

I can agree with this. I’m never fussed on new bike day, there’s always the worry when I that I won’t be able to ride it as fast as my previous bike, it takes months of tweaking to really start pushing a new bike. I’m also not keen on things looking “shiny”,I never tape my bikes, I love worn grips, heel marks, polished cranks, I like a bike to look used.  I like to get the bike setup and then just focus on riding and trying to improve technique. I’ve been riding a Santa Cruz megatower for over 4 years now and for the last two years I’ve been saying I’m going to change it as it’s too big but I hate changing that much that I have just put it off, though I finally caved in this week and ordered a new frame.

I'm with ya, new bike lust is really hard this off season since everything seems to be on a crazy sale now. I have had my eye on this Forbidden dreadnaught frame that is on sale for only $1799, except I have a perfectly good 2021 transition patrol. 

But the Dreadnaught JUST so happens to be my size, my color and fits all the bike parts I currently have.....

I need help to be strong and not spend my money on this thing that I don't need yet again. 

Given how difficult it is to sell a used bike for a reasonable amount these days I'm less likely to take a chance on something or be a little flippant. I actually bought the last XL Dread last spring because I thought I miiiiight be able to make it fit but it was priced very well and would at the very least score me some good parts and give me some time on a HPI bike. It didn't fit in the end and it rode really well but not well enough to deal with all the extra maintenance issues that many owners warned me would come. I swapped into an XXL Megatower and couldn't be happier but wow was that a spendy purchase. Besides they're about to drop a new Dread. They've been blowing out the gen 1 Dread for a while now, partially to bring them all up to UDH/Transmission spec but also to get rid of them since the gen 2 will probably use their new suspension platform. That all being said I liked the way the Dread rode and if it fit me better I'd still be riding it. There was a lot of juju going on with the AS and AR  and highly variable RC but I really liked it. I easily adapted to it. But after a fair trial the fit was a dealbreaker. We parted ways amicably enough.

I find it hard to imagine something will come along within the next 18 months that will have me wanting to stray from the Mega. That combination of proven evolved suspension, construction quality, global serviceability, relatively light weight and (most rare of all) a proper fitting XXL is very very rare. Specialized still doesn't the Enduro in S6 because tall people suck I guess.

Yea I had a very similar experience with the XL druid. It just didn't fit and the Seat tube was just too tall for me, I feel like all those gen 1 forbidden bikes have that issues as well, including the dread. 

Maybe they will do a deal in a few years on the new dread frame and I can scoop one of those up for myself because I agree with you, they do ride amazing and had me grinning ear to ear around the turns. Hard to lift the front end for sure but not a deal breaker considering how sick it railed the turns. Maybe in 2-3 years I'll get reunited with the better version

i support this notion.  I'm sure Scott would agree too. find a used 27 bike and you'll be in business. i'll even help!

one way i'm avoiding new bike-itis is by building up some old frames I have sitting around.