Decent Price?

Doki said:

My local bike hire place are selling off some of their bikes. They're Giant Boulders, yellow and
blue paintwork if that helps date them. Asking £150 a piece. What do you reckon?

They had front suspension too (just googled and realised some don't) BTW. RST or some such.

Doki said:

Doki said:

My local bike hire place are selling off some of their bikes. They're Giant Boulders, yellow and
blue paintwork if that helps date them. Asking £150 a piece. What do you reckon?

They had front suspension too (just googled and realised some don't) BTW. RST or some such.

Done a bit of looking and I reckon it's one of these: tinyurl.com2bqcfOpen ↗

Doki said:

They had front suspension too (just googled and realised some don't) BTW. RST or some such.

At the bottom end of the market suspension isn't necessarily a Good Thing. As well as soak up bumps
it'll soak up power you're putting in to pedalling, especially if you're standing to get up a hill.
As well as this, it's another thing that needs maintenance and can go wrong. For road use, unless
you habitually ride across cobbled streets for miles on end, I'd personally avoid it unless paying
Real Money as there's more important things for your money to go on.

But... Giant is a good brand so you're unlikely to end up with anything wretched. But though you
wouldn't be getting a Lada, you may well be looking at a 1.0 Fiesta with alloy wheels and a Go
Faster Stripe, in automotive terms.

Pete.
--
Peter Clinch University of Dundee Tel 44 1382 660111 ext. 33637 Medical Physics, Ninewells Hospital
Fax 44 1382 640177 Dundee DD1 9SY Scotland UK net [email hidden]
dundee.ac.uk~pjclinchOpen ↗

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

Quoted message said:

My local bike hire place are selling off some of their bikes. They're

Giant

Quoted message said:

Boulders, yellow and blue paintwork if that helps date them. Asking £150 a piece. What do
you reckon?

Thats what they cost, and that is pretty much what they are worth. It has often been said here, that
you don't get much of a bike for less than 250 quid. However, if you don't want to go to that much,
they seem to be pretty much as good as you get for this price, and they are a nice step up from the
standard superstore type bikes. One recommendation: the only mountain bike I saw when I went to
holland was a Giant Boulder (but the blue Al one, I believe the yellow ones are cro-mo steel).

Its a shame they don't do them without suspension any more, because it would have otherwise been a
rather good cheap and cheerful bike.

.... as for the fiesta analogy, I'd agree. But of course whether you buy the "1.0 fiesta" or the
"ferrari F40" of the bike world, you'll find they still come with the same engine options.

W K said:

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

Quoted message said:

My local bike hire place are selling off some of their bikes. They're Giant Boulders, yellow and
blue paintwork if that helps date them. Asking £150 a piece. What do you reckon?

Thats what they cost, and that is pretty much what they are worth. It has often been said here,
that you don't get much of a bike for less than 250 quid. However, if you don't want to go to
that much, they seem to be pretty much as good as you get for this price, and they are a nice
step up from the standard superstore type bikes. One recommendation: the only mountain bike I saw
when I went to holland was a Giant Boulder (but the blue Al one, I believe the yellow ones are
cro-mo steel).

After looking around a bit it looks like they're on a couple of websites new around the £220 mark.
According to the Giant site the bike is Alu. There's one on ebay now (unwanted gift and all that),
I'll see what that gets to (assuming ebay bike buyers aren't as daft as some of the other buyers).

Quoted message said:

Its a shame they don't do them without suspension any more, because it would have otherwise been a
rather good cheap and cheerful bike.

.... as for the fiesta analogy, I'd agree. But of course whether you buy the "1.0 fiesta" or the
"ferrari F40" of the bike world, you'll find they still come with the same engine options.

That's pretty much what I was thinking. I'm not sure why there's such an obsession with making the
bike really light. Maybe it'd matter more if I were 7 stone 😉.

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

Quoted message said:

That's pretty much what I was thinking. I'm not sure why there's such an obsession with making the
bike really light. Maybe it'd matter more if I were 7 stone 😉.

It does make it easier to accelerate and to carry, but more importantly the lighter bikes tend to
feel nicer and to reward your effort.

cheers, clive

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

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

That's pretty much what I was thinking. I'm not sure why there's such an obsession with making
the bike really light. Maybe it'd matter more if I were 7 stone 😉.

It does make it easier to accelerate and to carry, but more importantly the lighter bikes tend
to feel nicer and to reward your effort.

Shell optimax makes my car go faster (despite it not having a knock

sensor)

Quoted message said:

and the shiny OFC copper free wires on my hifi make it sound so much

clearer

Quoted message said:

😉. I can see how weight savings in the drivetrain and wheels will make

the

Quoted message said:

bike easier to ride, but you'd need to be removing serious amounts of

weight

Quoted message said:

from the frame for it to make much difference to the average rider at 12 stone or so. I can
believe that a good bike will last longer than your average cheap one before bits drop off mind.

Weight savings in the frame count as much as weight savings in the drivetrain and wheels for
hillclimbing/carrying (half rim savings for acceleration, otherwise the same for the rest).

The real difference is in the feel - there is obviously significantly more potential to notice the
difference if you're swinging the bike beneath you while sprinting, as your body weight is
irrelevant in this situation.

cheers, clive

On Thu, 04 Mar 2004 14:09:38 +0000, Peter Clinch
<[email hidden]> wrote (more or less):

Quoted message said:

Doki wrote:

Quoted message said:

At the bottom end of the market suspension isn't necessarily a Good Thing. As well as soak up bumps
it'll soak up power you're putting in to pedalling, especially if you're standing to get up a hill.

Is this true? I only ask as originally pneumatic tyres were frowned on as soaking up effort, and
they're actually more efficient than solid tyres.

Cheers, Euan Gawnsoft: gawnsoft.co.srgawnsoft.co.srOpen ↗ Symbian/Epoc wiki: html.dnsalias.nethtml.dnsalias.netOpen ↗
Smalltalk links (harvested from comp.lang.smalltalk) html.dnsalias.netsmalltalkOpen ↗

Gawnsoft said:

Is this true? I only ask as originally pneumatic tyres were frowned on as soaking up effort, and
they're actually more efficient than solid tyres.

Pneumatic tyres make life better by deforming the tyres over small deviations while the frame and
rider stay more static in the vertical. This means less energy gets converted from going forwards to
going up and down. Good roadgoing suspension works on the same principal, and if you ride behind a
bike with good road suspension you can easily see how the frame stays far more still than the
wheels. On a perfectly smooth surface a solid tyre would be better, but roads tend not to be
perfectly smooth. Note how rollerbladers use solid wheels, but stick to the smoothest paths.

But cheap suspension is made with the primary goal of looking like expensive suspension rather than
to soak up small deviations in the road surface. It also tends to be modelled on chunky MTB
suspension which is there to soak up major shocks rather than lots of small ones, and the
combination of these factors means that the frame tends to bounce up and down more rather than less,
which steals the energy you put in through the pedals.

Note how high end MTB forks can often be locked out on the fly for when the rider is climbing. And
also note how much the UK market's low end is dedicated to looking like sports machinery rather than
what actually doing what works best as a utility machine.

Pete.
--
Peter Clinch University of Dundee Tel 44 1382 660111 ext. 33637 Medical Physics, Ninewells Hospital
Fax 44 1382 640177 Dundee DD1 9SY Scotland UK net [email hidden]
dundee.ac.uk~pjclinchOpen ↗