Ok, so a little background...I'm new to cycling, just bought my first bike about a month ago. It's a Jamis Citizen 3 that I use mostly for commuting and cruising around town, as well as riding along a bike path nearby for some exercise. I absolutely love the bike for its purpose, and I want it to be my commuting and cruising bike. In other words, I want to add racks and what not. But now the cycling bug has bitten me and I want a lighter bike for longer rides, fitness, etc (my current one is about 32 lbs). So I want to get a 2nd bike. Thing is, I'm really (REALLY) tight on budget, so I'm thinking of getting a used bike, possibly an older one, and then upgrading it slowly but surely over time. But I don't know much of anything about this stuff. So I'm perusing Craigslist and just want the advice of some more seasoned cyclists on a few that I saw today. Here are the links:
I would forget about the Schwinn to start. The World Sport was one of Schwinn's lower quality offerings in the early 80's and is on par with the big box store bikes of today.
The Peugeot is also a low end bike in their line.
The Trek and Fuji look good, although I think the Trek is priced a little high.
Before you buy any of these bikes, check your fit using an online fit calculator. Most are fairly easy to use and will give you a good ballpark figure of what size frame to get. After that, you just make adjustments with stems and seatposts to get your fit dialed in. A fit calculator that I often use is the one from Competitive Cyclist: competitivecyclist.comCCYOpen ↗
Velo Web also has a good explanation of how a bike fit works and fit formulas in this article: veloweb.cabike fitOpen ↗
If you do look at eBay, make sure that you carefully check the shipping charge. I have seen some sellers that try to make up the difference between the price that they were hoping for and the winning bid by inflating the shipping charge. My most recent bicycle shipping charge was $65.00 from California to Ohio two years ago. If they are asking for more than that, I would be wary.
