> If he rides a used bike from a garage sale or a $100 department store bike, I think that he'll be
> fine. Millions and millions of people in Asia seem to do fine on rougher roads and cheaper bikes,
> none of them assembled with loving care by Western local bike shops.
Carl: Bicycles are not (yet) disposable items that require neither assembly nor maintenance nor
occasional repair. I suspect (OK, actually I know for a fact) that Asia has a large service industry
to support those inexpensive bikes they ride. They can be wheeled in for very, very cheap repairs.
If you buy a department-store bike here, you're really not buying the same thing that somebody in
Asia has, for several reasons.
First, department-store bikes are the *opposite* of generic. They're changing all manner of things
solely for styling, nothing else. This makes some repairs rather nightmarish... in contrast to those
sold in Asia, which are highly generic and standardized.
Second, there are very few communities where the cost of living is so low that a business can
survive doing cheap repairs on inexpensive bikes. Nor do the department stores have any interest
whatsoever in keeping that bike on the road. This severely hampers the utility of such bikes. For
those that are willing to learn even the most basic of mechanical skills, this should not be a
problem... but such people are becoming increasingly rare. We expect things from department stores
to either work or we toss them aside.
To conclude, it's not that "Western local bike shops" offer any more care than their urban Asian
counterparts. The issue is that we're talking about different bikes here than there, and very
different product support infrastructures.
--Mike-- Chain Reaction Bicycles
http://www.ChainReactionBicycles.com
"Carl Fogel" <
[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> "Pete" <
[email protected]> wrote in message
news:<
[email protected]>...
> > "Carl Fogel" <
[email protected]> wrote
> > >
> > > Are you serious that these "stupid" riders who saved money are taking "their life into their
> > > hands on a commute with a bicycle that may or may not be assembled properly"?
> > >
> > > If so, how many people would you say are killed every year while commuting on bicycles
> > > improperly assembled, either by local bike shops or chain stores?
> > >
> > > That is, if it's as stupid and dire and risky as you explicitly say it is to ride bicycles not
> > > assembled in local bike shops, shouldn't there actually be some striking consequences?
> > >
> >
> > It's not a matter of people being killed, or 'striking consequences',
but
> > rather a slow degradation of pleasure.
> >
> > A cheap bike, such as many of the bikes found in the dept stores, will
offer
> > worse braking, worse shifting, and a 'heavier' ride. Right out of the
box.
> > Wait a few weeks, and the braking/shifting gets worse. Condensation/rust
in
> > the cables, loose tolerances, a loose nut here and there all lead to
"WTF is
> > wrong with this thing?!?" Without significantly more maintenance, it degrades quickly. The owner
> > gets to a state of not wanting to deal with
the
> > hassle of riding, because the 'bike' is fighting him at every squeak of
the
> > pedal.
> >
> > And so it sits in the garage. Maybe eventually left in a garage sale.
> >
> > Now, if you want to talk about the raw safety aspect, look at the
stamped
> > steel brake arrms, and chromed or painted rims in the rain. Or the forks assembled backwards. Or
> > loose headset adjustment. Or brake levers at a
bad
> > angle. Or QR levers used as nuts, instead of locking arms. Little or no grease in the bearings.
> > Poor design, welding and QC, leading to broken forks.
> >
> > All too common on the low end dept store bikes. Could all this be fixed? Sure. But should a
> > buyer expect to tear down and rebuild a brand new
bike
> > completely to get it in a rideable state?
> >
> > Buying a bike does not have to be a multi-thousand dollar experience.
But
> > neither is it an $80 experience.
> >
> > In 1981, I bought a $600 Fuji. Many tens of thousands of miles later,
it's
> > still going strong. How many $100 Huffy's would I have gone through in
that
> > same mileage? How many more hours of maintenance would I have done
trying to
> > get and keep all those bikes in a usable state?
> >
> > Would you consider a Yugo to be a valid car purchase?
> >
> > Pete (cue Ron Hardin, Huffy maven)
>
> Dear Pete,
>
> A Yugo? Thirty years ago when they were inexpensive? For a four-mile daily school commute? Linda's
> Yugo worked fine at Colorado University in Boulder, but Steve hated to change its oil because it
> took an enormous hex wrench.
>
> Please don't misunderstand me (easy to do).
>
> A prospective college student asked for advice on what bicycle to get for a 4-mile daily
> round trip.
>
> If he rides a used bike from a garage sale or a $100 department store bike, I think that he'll be
> fine. Millions and millions of people in Asia seem to do fine on rougher roads and cheaper bikes,
> none of them assembled with loving care by Western local bike shops.
>
> I don't think, despite dire and explicit warnings about shrubs tearing mis-installed quick-release
> skewers off that the original poster will die a horrible death if he fails to pay more. And he'll
> have $700 if various posters convince him that he needs to push it by hand to a local bike shop
> for expert and detailed rehabilitation.
>
> Hell, he may realize that bicycling bores him silly, never go on to join the club that he had in
> mind, and find that girls are easier to meet when he walks or trots to school. (Most people in the
> U.S. and U.K. don't commute by bicycle. The ones who do usually don't begin in college.)
>
> If he bags it after seeing how it turns the lot of us into loonies, then he's about $700 ahead of
> the game. If not, he can put $700 in the finest contraption that we can come up with and still
> have a beater bike.
>
> Here's an interesting page. It's almost ten years old, but it's as close as I could find to a
> problem with improperly installed quick-release skewers:
>
>
http://www.swhlaw.com/cyclwin.htm
>
> And remember, wild dangers were what some posters were warning us about at great length,
> apparently quite seriously.
>
> Do any accident, injury, or fatality statistics back up the claims that bicycles not purchased
> from local bike shops are clear and present dangers?
>
> Come to think of it, while all local bike shop owners and employees who post on rec.bicycles.tech
> are infallible gods who invariably agree with each other, aren't there an awful lot of other local
> bike shops routinely trashed here as being ignorant, incompetent, greedy, careless, and so forth?
>
> (I forget--is there any agreement here about whether the retaining thingy is really needed for
> safety on a fixed gear?)
>
> For you in hindsight, spending more on a first commuting bike on a college student's budget makes
> sense. But realistically, how many tires, tubes, chains, gears, and brake pads do you expect to
> wear out pedalling twenty miles per week? What kind of expert maintenance is needed for what
> amounts to no more biking than I did as a kid?
>
> They actually roll along with rattly bearings, creaky pedals, loose chains, low tire pressures,
> and the tiny noises that lead to long threads here. We just can't bear to admit it without a
> struggle.
>
> It's a little like fishing. Fifty feet of line, a hook, and a worm will often do as well as a
> carbon rod, hip-waders, and a tackle-box full of hand-tied flies, particularly when you're
> interested in eating the fish, not size or catch and release or seeing how light a line you
> can use.
>
> A four-mile round-trip college commute is hardly impossible or dangerous on an inexpensive bicycle
> that costs less than the shoes and pedals for what most of us consider the bare essentials.
>
> Carl Fogel
