Got a bike

Wally said:

Got me a bike. After all the good advice in here, I decided that fiscal
prudence was the better part of having an expensive, potentially-rarely-used
toy, and got one out of Asda.

I think this is a reasonable approach so long as you are realistic
about it (which you seem to be). Ride it into the ground over the
next year or two, by which time you will know what sort of bike
you _really_ want. Just don't make the mistake of trying to make
a silk purse out of it, or allowing the shonky apects of it (which
you will no doubt discover) to put you off the whole idea.

James

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

Quoted message said:

Got me a bike. After all the good advice in here, I decided that fiscal
prudence was the better part of having an expensive,

potentially-rarely-used

Quoted message said:

toy, and got one out of Asda.

I hope you get to really enjoy cycling Wally.
If you do then you will be in for a treat when you replace this machine with
a better quality one as you will by then be more qualified to appreciate the
improvement.

--
Pete
http:[email hidden]/P

Peter B said:

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

Quoted message said:

Got me a bike. After all the good advice in here, I decided that fiscal
prudence was the better part of having an expensive,

potentially-rarely-used

Quoted message said:

toy, and got one out of Asda.

I hope you get to really enjoy cycling Wally.
If you do then you will be in for a treat when you replace this machine with
a better quality one as you will by then be more qualified to appreciate the
improvement.

Very true.

I used a £275 mountain bike (+slick tyres) for four years or so as a
commuter. Did the job & was fine to ride, but when I got a bonus one
year I decided to put it into something that I'd enjoy for years,
rather than paying for the landlord's holiday, so blew ~=£800 on a
sorta-kinda flat bar racer / hybrid bike. Weighed nowt, and the
difference compared to my old bike was huge.

Jumping straight in at the deep end may be fine if you've got cash to
burn, but for an ordinary joe (ie. me!) who lives from paycheck to
paycheck, it's better to dip your toe in the water first.

James Annan said:

Wally said:

Got me a bike. After all the good advice in here, I decided that
fiscal prudence was the better part of having an expensive,
potentially-rarely-used toy, and got one out of Asda.

I think this is a reasonable approach so long as you are realistic
about it (which you seem to be).

Yup. I'm fully aware that, if you buy cheap, you buy twice, and there's
every chance that this will be replaced at some point.

Quoted message said:

Ride it into the ground over the
next year or two, by which time you will know what sort of bike
you _really_ want.

Somethng like one of the mid-range Giant MTBs was what I had my eye on. I'm
not looking for a commuter or a road bike. During my research, it became
evident that there are a whole range of ancilliary parts of varying quality
that can go onto a Giant bike - my feeling was that the XTC frame and MPH
brakes are as good as I'd need, but that I'd need to look a lot more
carefully into the forks and other mechanicals before coming to a decision.

Quoted message said:

Just don't make the mistake of trying to make
a silk purse out of it, or allowing the shonky apects of it (which
you will no doubt discover) to put you off the whole idea.

Not likely to happen. I suppose my main concerns are how long the forks will
last, and whether the gears and brakes work without needing an annoying
amount of adjustment. I can grease the stanchions (they have plastic boots
to keep it away from the hands).

--
Wally
www.artbywally.com
www.wally.myby.co.uk

Peter B said:

I hope you get to really enjoy cycling Wally.

I'm sure I will. On the odd times I've done it in the past, I've always
liked it, even though the bikes were pretty nasty (steel frames, wobbly
rims; once had a rear deralieur explode going up a hill...)

Quoted message said:

If you do then you will be in for a treat when you replace this
machine with a better quality one as you will by then be more
qualified to appreciate the improvement.

Yup, as I said in a previous thread, I had a shot of a used Giant XTC4
recently, and that felt pretty good - superb brakes.

--
Wally
www.artbywally.com
www.wally.myby.co.uk

At Sun, 26 Jun 2005 12:44:25 GMT, message
<[email hidden]> was posted by "Wally"
<[email hidden]>, including some, all or none of the following:

Quoted message said:

if you buy cheap, you buy twice

Very true. Of many things, in fact - we bought a very good hi-fi
system with the exception of the CD player, which was cheap because
we'd run out of budget and it sounded OK. The Yamaha cassette deck,
Mission Cyrus amplifier, Panasonic tuner and Tannoy DC2000 speakers
still work perfectly. The CD player has been replaced - twice. Once
by our in-laws old Sony, which by the time the laser finally died had
done about 20 years of service and now by a cheap - because things are
still in a state of flux and we're waiting to see what will emerge -
DVD player.

We started Michael off on cheap second-hand bikes. It was a good
call, he grew out of them quickly. Pete doesn't grow as fast (asthma)
and we know now that we use bikes all the time, so we bought him a
reasonable Trek instead of a cheap second-hand bike. Michael's last
bike, a Dawes Kokomo 24, is on loan to friends and will come back for
Pete next year. Considerably more expensive than some others we saw,
but worth every penny.

Buying cheap in the full knowledge that it will enable you to make a
better choice next time is not only reasonable, it's often the very
best possible decision, provided that what you get is not so
compromised that it puts you off altogether. I have a view that any
adult bike costing significantly under £200 at today's prices is
likely to fall into that category. Not everyone agrees. If I want to
spend much less than £200 on a bike I will always look first at the
second hand / last year's model stock at my local bike shop.

Guy
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

"To every complex problem there is a solution which is
simple, neat and wrong" - HL Mencken

Just zis Guy said:

Very true. Of many things, in fact - we bought a very good hi-fi
system with the exception of the CD player, which was cheap because
we'd run out of budget and it sounded OK. The Yamaha cassette deck,
Mission Cyrus amplifier, Panasonic tuner and Tannoy DC2000 speakers
still work perfectly. The CD player has been replaced - twice. Once
by our in-laws old Sony, which by the time the laser finally died had
done about 20 years of service and now by a cheap - because things are
still in a state of flux and we're waiting to see what will emerge -
DVD player.

I echo your sentiments about CD players. That they wear out is a potential
issue in terms of sound quality - the replacement might sound different and
thus have an effect on the system overall. I get around this by using a
separate DAC, and plug the DVD player into it. The DAC has a much better
sound than the DVD player (the original reason for getting it), and the
sound will stay the same when the DVD wears out and is replaced. My DAC is a
Meridian 203, which has a very good reputation - they come up on eBay quite
regularly, and I think they go for about 100 quid on average.

Quoted message said:

Buying cheap in the full knowledge that it will enable you to make a
better choice next time is not only reasonable, it's often the very
best possible decision, provided that what you get is not so
compromised that it puts you off altogether.

Yup, I think that was the difference between the steel-framed full
suspension bike in Asda, and the ally-framed front suspension one I did get.

Quoted message said:

I have a view that any
adult bike costing significantly under £200 at today's prices is
likely to fall into that category. Not everyone agrees.

I think this has a lot to do with what a given person's intended use is.
Proper 'sport' riding, or daily commuting, may dictate a higher quality of
bike than the farting about on paths and trails that I'm looking to do.

Quoted message said:

If I want to
spend much less than £200 on a bike I will always look first at the
second hand / last year's model stock at my local bike shop.

Never did get round to many LBSs - Halfords is about the nearest to a proper
LBS in my town, and there are a few others about 5 miles away. The edinburgh
bicycle place was good, but generally aiming at a higher-priced market.
Anyway, the decision has been made and the money spent. :-)

--
Wally
www.artbywally.com
www.wally.myby.co.uk

James Annan said:

Wally said:

Got me a bike. After all the good advice in here, I decided that fiscal
prudence was the better part of having an expensive, potentially-rarely-used
toy, and got one out of Asda.

I think this is a reasonable approach so long as you are realistic
about it (which you seem to be). Ride it into the ground over the
next year or two, by which time you will know what sort of bike
you _really_ want. Just don't make the mistake of trying to make
a silk purse out of it, or allowing the shonky apects of it (which
you will no doubt discover) to put you off the whole idea.

James

Agreed. When I returned to cycling after an admittedly short 3 year
break, I spent around £175 on a bike. It served me fantastically for a
couple of years and is still doing sterling work in the ownership of my
brother.

To be honest, it was entirely used as a utility/commuter bike and even
after two years was perfectly up to the job. It was just that in the
intervening time, I'd taken to reading bike magasines and newsgroups and
had fallen victim to "buy the best" syndrome.

Three bikes on, I now ride a £300 Halfords hub geared bike for commuting
and utility. For this type of riding cheaper can actually be better.
Even if only for the reason that the potential financial losses caused
by theft are reduced.

Sure, it'll probably get ridden into the ground within a couple of
years. But I'll almost certainly replace it with something similar.

in message <[email hidden]>, Wally

(') said:

James Annan said:

Just don't make the mistake of trying to make
a silk purse out of it, or allowing the shonky apects of it (which
you will no doubt discover) to put you off the whole idea.

Not likely to happen. I suppose my main concerns are how long the
forks will last, and whether the gears and brakes work without needing
an annoying amount of adjustment. I can grease the stanchions (they
have plastic boots to keep it away from the hands).

Remember that virtually all of the partscan be replaced and upgraded. If
anything is so [censored] it's spoiling your enjoyment of the bike, replace
with a better equivalent. Of course, there comes a point where you
spend more doing this than you would getting a new bike to replace it;
and that is the time to do exactly that.

--
[email hidden] (Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/
Copyright (c) Simon Brooke; All rights reserved. Permission is
granted to transfer this message via UUCP or NNTP and to store it
for the purpose of archiving or further transfer. Permission is
explicitly denied to use this message as part of a 'Web Forum', or
to transfer it by HTTP.

At Sun, 26 Jun 2005 13:51:23 GMT, message
<[email hidden]> was posted by "Wally"
<[email hidden]>, including some, all or none of the following:

Quoted message said:

Never did get round to many LBSs - Halfords is about the nearest to a proper
LBS in my town,

Their political stance is unacceptable to me, so I now eschew them as
minions of Stan. Whereas previously I merely regarded them as the
last resort ;-)

Guy
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

"To every complex problem there is a solution which is
simple, neat and wrong" - HL Mencken

Just zis Guy said:

At Sun, 26 Jun 2005 13:51:23 GMT, message
<[email hidden]> was posted by "Wally"
<[email hidden]>, including some, all or none of the following:

Quoted message said:

Never did get round to many LBSs - Halfords is about the nearest to a proper
LBS in my town,

Their political stance is unacceptable to me, so I now eschew them as
minions of Stan. Whereas previously I merely regarded them as the
last resort ;-)

Ah, yes. I haven't bought so much as an inner tube from them since Then.

Simon Brooke said:

Remember that virtually all of the partscan be replaced and upgraded.

Indeed.

Quoted message said:

If anything is so [censored] it's spoiling your enjoyment of the bike,
replace with a better equivalent. Of course, there comes a point
where you spend more doing this than you would getting a new bike to
replace it; and that is the time to do exactly that.

Yup.

So far, it all seems to work. I spent a couple of hours adjusting bits this
afternoon. The brakes were pretty straightforward - set the shoes and
adjusted the tension springs, and they seem to work very well (on this nice,
dry, sunny day). The gears took a bit more tweaking. The cage was off line a
bit, and the end stops and cable pinch nuts on both mechs needed to be set
up. All working pretty well, other than rather a lot of effort needed to get
the chainset into top gear. I'll give it some time to settle and see how it
goes. Very happy so far. :-)

--
Wally
www.artbywally.com
www.wally.myby.co.uk

Wally said:

Got me a bike. After all the good advice in here, I decided that
fiscal prudence was the better part of having an expensive,
potentially-rarely-used toy, and got one out of Asda.

So shoot me!

I didn't get the full suspension jobbie that led to my original
enquiry. Instead, I got the Venture Tempest model. This is an ally
frame MTB with front shock, 18-speed gears, and V-brakes. The bike
cost 100 quid.

Now, you're going to tell me that the frame is made of papier mache,
and the gears are made of putty - and you may well be right.

No - there were times (more than 10 years ago) when those cheapy frames
were more likely to break. Especially the first generation Ally-frames
had these problems. But nowadays producers of cheapy frames just use
more material for the frame meaning thicker alluminium, which makes the
bikes pretty heavy but still quite robust, at least regarding the frame.
As long as you don't use your bike as a mountain bike, but instead as
road bike that merely looks like a mountain bike, you should be on the
safe side. Hopefully you were lucky to get the right frame form and size
for your body geometry. In that case you might even use this frame as a
basis for further upgrades, step by step with more high quality
components. If the frame is not the right size, cycling is much less fun
and much more tyring. You might experience quite a bit of improvement
once you decide to get a better bike that is the right size.

Quoted message said:

The way
I see it, if it hasn't fallen to bits in a year, and if I'm still
riding it a year from now, then I'll have got my money's worth. If
it's knackered by then, and I'm still into cycling, I'll look into
something better - I've done enough research over the last couple of
weeks to have a pretty good idea of what I'd want if I was spending
sensible money (a hydraulic-braked Giant with good forks is a strong
possibility).

A disc brake? So you are into mountainbiking? Or why would you need a
hydraulic disc brake? IMHO you just need these disc brakes in very muddy
situations. And downhill they tend to overheat much easier. Not to
mention the increased stress on the spokes... My favourites are the
hydraulic Magura HS33 rim brakes. Or as good value for money the simple
Deore V-Brakes with Kool Stop pads that i recently fitted to my bike.

Quoted message said:

I got a spare tyre because the front tyre on the bike
a road/trail hybrid, while the rear is a knobbly (no idea why). I want
knobblies on both wheels, so 5 quid(!) went on the extra tyre.

As long as you don't get offroad you don't really need knobblies on the
tyres, apart from optical reasons when parking in front of the pub ;-)

Andreas

Andreas Schulze-Bäing said:

Wally wrote:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

I got a spare tyre because the front tyre on the bike
a road/trail hybrid, while the rear is a knobbly (no idea why). I want
knobblies on both wheels, so 5 quid(!) went on the extra tyre.

Quoted message said:

As long as you don't get offroad you don't really need knobblies on the
tyres, apart from optical reasons when parking in front of the pub ;-)

Not so much "don't need" as "are better off without". Unless you're
mixing it with Serious Mud and/or loose surfaces, knobblies range from
neutral to actively bad. They suck out a lot of power from the extra
friction and cornering on tarmac at speed is much worse as the knobbles
mean you have less rubber in contact with the road.

I have knobblies on my MTB, and they make riding any distance on the
road a pretty [censored] experience. They're wonderful on marginal surfaces,
but anything better and they're a hindrance.

As for £5 on a tyre... I remember a TV prog on an advanced driving
course being run by racing/rally drivers. The instructors started off
with the importance of good tyres. "A good car with bad tyres is a bad
car", quoth they. And the same with bikes. Good cycle tyres make a
very tangible difference to the ride quality, rolling resistance and
decreased chances of Losing It, and actively make a useful difference
every second you're on the bike.

Pete.
--
Peter Clinch Medical Physics IT Officer
Tel 44 1382 660111 ext. 33637 Univ. of Dundee, Ninewells Hospital
Fax 44 1382 640177 Dundee DD1 9SY Scotland UK
net [email hidden] http://www.dundee.ac.uk/~pjclinch/