"Lemon" Bike???

Stephen Harding said:

Most of us have probably experienced owning a "lemon", most
likely a car, but they come in other products as well.

Can't say I've ever heard of a lemon bike though?

Anyone ever own a lemon bike?

Yes. My very first mountain bike -- a $1200 Gary Fisher Paragon (1996) --
had all sorts of strange problems from day one. Terrible shifting, breaking
chains and cables, etc. Finally one day I was climbing a short hill and the
rear derailleur completely disintegrated! I had to walk it home (didn't
know any better back then) and went straight to the LBS still bloody and
sweaty and dirty and demanded my money back.

Instead they agreed to replace the frame. Apaprently the first one was
enough out of alignment to mess everything up. (The new frame cracked
eventually; still have an almost new warranty replacement Paragon, as I went
full suspension around that time.)

Then just recently I bought a Madone SL "frameset" (frame & fork & seatpost
clamp), and the rear dropouts were so crooked it was obvious right from the
first wheel install. Even the less-than-helpful (kind terms) store manager
had to grudgingly admit it was twisted, and gave me a new one. (Suddenly
they had /plenty/ in the back, even though they acted like the first one was
the ONLY one left in my size.) It's been fine...although a PITA to dial in
(my fault for buying a "micro-adjust" seatpost -- I'm literally inbetween
grooves! Story of my life 🙂 )

So yes, bikes can be lemons.

Now let me tell you about my brand-new CAR... (SIGH!)

Bill S.

oh yes *mart bikes are DEFINITELY lemons...

...."when is cheap TOO cheap?"

example: the one piece crank on this generic *mart ATB I had come into the
shop recently. In decent shape otherwise, the owner was complaining that
the chainrings weren't moving while the pedals were.

Normal one piece crank is cast & machined. There is a little "peg" cast
into the crank that engages a hole on the el cheapo sheet steel chainrings
and turns them. There are no keys/channels cut into the chainrings or the
crankshaft...it's all accomplished with that one peg.

This one-piece was NOT cast...it was a machined and bent piece of barstock.
The peg? 'Twas a small chunk of the same barstock...welded onto the RH
crank with a resistance welder.

Of course, it failed...

This kind of [censored] design is ok for kiddie bikes, but for a 200lb rider with
a little "heft" in his legs, that peg is gonna pop off like a champagne
cork.

B.

Work to Eat
Eat to Live
Live to Ride
Ride to Work.

"Stephen Harding" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:n1Cig.1249$ZB3.378@trndny05...

Quoted message said:

Most of us have probably experienced owning a "lemon", most
likely a car, but they come in other products as well.

Can't say I've ever heard of a lemon bike though?

Anyone ever own a lemon bike?

[I know some will be tempted to call a *Mart bike a lemon
by definition, but a cheap or inexpensive product is not
necessarily a lemon.]

SMH

I had a fulll suspension ATB that I had bought years ago at the LBS.
It was a mid level bike, not an entry level model.
After a couple of weeks, it got to where it would never quite shift right.
On the three of the most common to pedal on gears (for me at least), it
would jump back and forth and never just stay on the gear.
I had taken it to the shop twice and they never could get it to work right.
Later the shop went out of business, and so I took it to a different shop
and paid to have it worked on. They replaced the cables and tuned it up
pretty good.
But sure enough it still had that stupid jumping around on the gears
shifting problem.
It appears to work fine in the shop on a stand, but when you go to ride it
around, the rear shock compresses a little and apparently that changed the
frame geometry just enough to screw up the shifting somehow.
Eventually I wound up selling it at a garage sale for super cheap next to
nothing, as I could never ride it with the gears jumping like that.

I have messed with a super cheap folding bike from a big discount store
chain. The bike works OK, but the frame isn't straight, as you sort of ride
down the road sideways a little. The bike tends to pull to the right if you
let off the handlebars. When you are riding the bike, you can see the front
wheel is angled to the left a little, about 3/8" ro 1/2 of an inch when you
are going straight. I even tried obnoxiously angling the rear wheel all the
way over to one side almost rubbing on the frame chain stays and it still
tends to ride down the road a little sideways.

On Sat, 10 Jun 2006 23:15:11 -0700, "Brian" <[email hidden]>

Quoted message said:

oh yes *mart bikes are DEFINITELY lemons...

..."when is cheap TOO cheap?"

example: the one piece crank on this generic *mart ATB I had come into the
shop recently. In decent shape otherwise, the owner was complaining that
the chainrings weren't moving while the pedals were.

Normal one piece crank is cast & machined. There is a little "peg" cast
into the crank that engages a hole on the el cheapo sheet steel chainrings
and turns them. There are no keys/channels cut into the chainrings or the
crankshaft...it's all accomplished with that one peg.

This one-piece was NOT cast...it was a machined and bent piece of barstock.
The peg? 'Twas a small chunk of the same barstock...welded onto the RH
crank with a resistance welder.

Of course, it failed...

This kind of [censored] design is ok for kiddie bikes, but for a 200lb rider with
a little "heft" in his legs, that peg is gonna pop off like a champagne
cork.

From experience assembling and inspecting a pile of bikes equipped
with those last year, I will add that the type of crank in question
isn't so much machined as it is bent and hammered. The flats for the
pedals are produced by just severely flattening the end of the rod,
probably done cold, most likely with a trip hammer. If the hole is
punched[1] a bit too close to the shoulder, there is a tendency for
the tab to fail when the pedal is properly tightened; it rips open
from the corner of the tab to the hole. It doesn't even require the
weight of a rider for these to go south; just putting the damnthing
together can break it.

[1] Drilled? Don't make me laugh. No, it was *punched*.
--
Typoes are a feature, not a bug.
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Earl Bollinger said:

I had a full suspension ATB that I had bought years ago at the LBS.
It was a mid level bike, not an entry level model.
After a couple of weeks, it got to where it would never quite shift right.
On the three of the most common to pedal on gears (for me at least), it
would jump back and forth and never just stay on the gear.[snip]
...
It appears to work fine in the shop on a stand, but when you go to ride it
around, the rear shock compresses a little and apparently that changed the
frame geometry just enough to screw up the shifting somehow.
Eventually I wound up selling it at a garage sale for super cheap next to
nothing, as I could never ride it with the gears jumping like that.

I bought a used double-squishy whose owner had complained of similar
misbehavior, and solved it by rerouting the rder cable so that its
flex radius was lots longer and less severe. The problem went away.

--
Typoes are a feature, not a bug.
Some gardening required to reply via email.
Words processed in a facility that contains nuts.

Stephen Harding said:

Most of us have probably experienced owning a "lemon", most
likely a car, but they come in other products as well.

Can't say I've ever heard of a lemon bike though?

Anyone ever own a lemon bike?

Okay, maybe it doesn't *exactly* qualify, but...

There's a green Pacific mtb (yeah, I know, [censored]) out back that came to
me cheap; it had a few obvious issues that I fixed, and I thought it
was ready to ride, so I stuffed it into the "friends can borrow these"
group. Every time it got used, it came back with something wrong.
First, the front der wouldn't reliably shift up onto the big ring
unless the bike was being ridden on smooth pavement; riding up and
down the street, it worked great, but on the backyard course it just
made grinding noises and refused to climb to the big ring. Swapping
the cable, swapping the right crank with one that looked better from
the junque pile, replacing the der and the housing all had no effect.
Then I noticed that the screw on that plastic pad thingy under the BB
was a bit loose, and wouldn't really tighten down very well; I pulled
the pad off, cleaned the surfaces, applied a strong gap-filling glue,
installed a new, slightly larger screw, and the problem went away[1].
On the next outing, the rider came back with a vague complaint that
"sometimes it's hard to pedal"; this turned out to be due to the rear
hub bearings developing a bunch of play. Cleaned, greased and
reassembled, it was back to ride-ready. I thought. Next trip, it
comes back with a no-puncture rear flat. WTF? Aired up, it holds
pressure overnight with no trouble. Ridden, it slowly goes flat in
the rear. Swap out the tube on general principles, look at the old
one...and the tube's got this interesting little flaw at the base of
the valve stem which only leaks if you press on the stem in a certain
way. Okay, at this point it should be fixed for good, I'm thinking.
Wrong. The quill stem comes loose (but not floppy or falling out) on
the next ride. I try to tighten down on the stem bolt, and the hole
in the wedge strips out. One helicoil later, it's back together and
secure.

I'm just waiting to see what the next annoyance will be.

[1] Note that I didn't say that the problem was solved, or that it
was fixed; I'm still not convinced that what I did really was
effective in making it shift right, but yet that's the sequence of
events. Over the years, I have had other problems vanish upon
application of attention in a manner that *should not* have fixed
things, and have learned to simply accept such occurrences.
--
Typoes are a feature, not a bug.
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"Green Pacific Mtb"

-popped any of the brake posts off yet?

B.

"Werehatrack" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Earl Bollinger said:

I had a full suspension ATB that I had bought years ago at the LBS.
It was a mid level bike, not an entry level model.
After a couple of weeks, it got to where it would never quite shift right.
On the three of the most common to pedal on gears (for me at least), it
would jump back and forth and never just stay on the gear.[snip]
...
It appears to work fine in the shop on a stand, but when you go to ride it
around, the rear shock compresses a little and apparently that changed the
frame geometry just enough to screw up the shifting somehow.
Eventually I wound up selling it at a garage sale for super cheap next to
nothing, as I could never ride it with the gears jumping like that.

I bought a used double-squishy whose owner had complained of similar
misbehavior, and solved it by rerouting the rder cable so that its
flex radius was lots longer and less severe. The problem went away.

--
Typoes are a feature, not a bug.
Some gardening required to reply via email.
Words processed in a facility that contains nuts.

That is interesting, too late for me now, but I'll definitely keep it in
mind the next time I run into it.
Thanks