Huffy Mountain Bikes for Men, Fat Tire Option

Right out the box the brakes were nearly impossible to adjust to have them work properly, and of course as soon as it gets out of the return window part of the shifter breaks off the bike while my son was riding in our yard. The pedals constantly click when pedaling, shifts randomly no matter how much you adjust the bike nothing worked properly.

It was easy to assemble and it rides smoothly. Just make sure to properly inflate the tires before taking it out for a ride.

I bought this bike because of the green color. It did require assembly and it’s kinda been a pain to put together and adjust. The front wheel and the brakes were the hardest to mess with and get correct. I think the quality is great.

I’m baffled by Huffy support. The bike arrived with the brake lever screws twisted under the shifter cable mounts. It’s possible this happened during shipment, but their ‘aftercare’ fell short.

Huffy-recommended email support went unanswered. It took DAYS to get support on the phone. Tech support solution to my problem? Take it to a local bike shop and pay them to put things right. When I objected to paying to fix a new bike, the attendant said those were my options: Have a bike shop fix it or return the bicycle.

Instead, I bought the appropriate Allen wrench. Being careful not to end up with a handful of parts (which could give ‘exploded diagram’ new meaning), I was able to loosen the shifters and rotate the brake levers into useful positions.

This debacle could have been avoided by including a 50¢ 2.5mm Allen wrench. Alternatively, Huffy could have offered a voucher to cover the cost of a bike shop correcting the problem, but I’m sure cost is a factor. This is a company that needs to provide their people in phone support options.

How is the bike?

I haven’t had much time in the saddle, but thus far so good. It’s built like an Army tank with a thicker, heavier frame than I expected. It took a lot of muscle to anchor the seat. Overall, I like it… but I keep the 2.5mm wrench handy just in case.

The tldr of this review is, if you aren’t deterred by the thought of learning how to completely tear down a bike and rebuild it, as well as buying bike specific tools that you’ll eventually need(assuming you plan to do all your own maintenance), it might be worth the amount saved in the long run. I’m a prepper and this thing is also to be my get out of dodge transportation, if it gets that bad. So the full tear down and rebuild knowledge is valuable to me. If that sounds interesting to you, keep reading on the conundrums I dealt with. If not, you’d be better off to just start with a $600-700 bike.

Starting my third summer with this bike. 95% of the miles I’ve put on this bike has been road miles. At this point, I’ve did about $350 in parts for repairs, not counting the cost of bike specific tools. I always replaced things with better quality. So I have about $600 in this bike, to bring it up to good quality, and break roughly even with just buying a $600 bike.

One issue with this bike, is that it uses outdated standards. It has the heavy steel 25.4mm handle bars. The old quil stem setup. Classic solid axles. No mounting for disk brakes. The bottom bracket uses the older cup and cone style setup, and the bearing is not sealed. So water and moisture can get into it through the seat post and the fork mount. I had to replace mine in the middle of last year (approximately 500mi to 600mi). I also had to loctite the cups in to get them to stay tight. The crank arms fit the older and less common square taper spindles. The free wheel on the back is a rather uncommon Chinese KANGYUE brand. I was barely able to google up what tool I needed to remove it. To save everyone else the trouble, the Park Tool bbt-22 will fit.

Right out of the box, I knew I wasn’t riding this thing until I put a different seat on it. I noticed the kickstand on mine was rather inadequate. It needed to be longer. The bike was very unstable on even the carpet in my house, unless I had the handle bars turned a certain way.

I really had to crank the handlebar screws down on the stem, to get the handle bar to keep from loosening up, but at least didn’t have to loctite them. The screws for the crank arms are pretty tough, but even cranking them down with a half inch drive breaker bar, wouldn’t keep them from gradually backing out, without blue loctite. This problem eventually caused my spindle holes in the crank arms to get messed up to the point that even red loctite and a breaker bar wasn’t going to keep the screws from backing out. So I had to replace the crank arms. The whole double nut and keyed washer set up on the fork kept coming loose, until I used blue loctite on it.

The rear derailleur is a Shimano at least. It did need adjusted out of the box, but it wasn’t bad enough that it created a headache to ride it. It just wasn’t as responsive as I’d like it to be. It does seem to be quite sensitive chain wear. It will start struggling on the shift, and throwing the chain as soon as you hit the .75% stretch that is recommended to replace at, or even a little before. Overall, its been the best functioning part on the bike, and is about the only thing left that hasn’t been replaced or upgraded. And btw, the original chain only lasted me 3 months, vs a year and a half on the chain that replaced it.

The front derailleur was a very basic looking SunRun. It didn’t need adjusted initially, but after I replaced the crank arms, I could never get it to be quite right with the new gear rings that came with the crank arms, and ended up replacing it with a Shimano.

While it was difficult to find the tool for that odd freewheel, in the first year and a half(approximately 900mi to 1100mi) that I used it, it wasn’t showing any signs of failure, or premature wear on the teeth. It only got replaced because I had to replace the back rim after a couple spokes failed and busted free from the hub. The rim I found sounded decent, and had a good Shimano freewheel on it, that also fit the tool I bought for the Kangyue. So figured considering how everything else went on this bike so far, I might as well at least use the brand I know has a good reputation.

As for that rim, I hadn’t did any off road riding at that point, and it wasn’t like I was ramping or jumping the street curb or anything rough. But for some reason two spokes busted, and left me limping back home about 6mph.

So to sum it all up, I had to pretty much become a bike mechanic to keep this thing moving. In the end, after all the repairs, plus other upgrades not mentioned, its about on par with the quality of a $1100 bike, and a couple hundred short of spending that much. Not counting the cost of bike specific tools that I’d eventually need anyway. So if you are willing to put the work into it, and the learning experience is desirable, its maybe worth it. The Park Tool guys on youtube will quickly become your best friend too.