Comments on: Buying a bike

By: lewiz

lewiz — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 17:04:39 +0000

Yeah, the Bad Boy’s also look awesome. I keep looking at the one for about £1.5k though… clearly not a good idea!

By: David

David — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 19:22:30 +0000

I too am looking at getting a new bike. Have a look at the Cannondale ‘Bad Boy’ range, I saw them recommended a while back.

http://www.cannondale.com/bikes/07/cusa/urban/badboy/index.html

David.

By: Rob

Rob — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 23:06:03 +0000

I don’t think hybrids are necessarily the answer. I did 3000 miles last year and will probably do about 5500 this year, mostly on road but trails too. I ride a GT Avalanche 1.0 which cost about £380 in a sale. Can’t fault it as it was, but I’m also slowly upgrading it – I’ve put high end disc brakes, new wheels, better groupset etc on it, to the tune of about an extra £400!

Yes, it weighs a bit more but buy one with an aluminium frame and pay over £350ish and it’s not that important. My dad has a road bike (racer) and reckons it’s maybe 20% more efficient, thin tyres and all – seems about right to me. Not a big deal. My speedo reckons I average 15mph but that includes stops – on the flat it’s about 20.

If it was lighter you could accelerate faster, but IMO I get away quick enough. Suspension’s more important to me simply for reducing rider fatigue, and you can lock out any good fork for road use.

Mudguards are piss easy on an MTB, less so elsewhere. Panniers are OK but I’d prefer a rucksack. Don’t forget that lighting, safety and security are crucial – adds a big cost so be careful.

By: Paul

Paul — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 07:58:14 +0000

Depending on how much you are looking to spend, you should check to see if Sun will offer you an interest-free loan for purchasing the bike. Quite a few employers do this nowadays, I think it’s partly funded by the government and/or they can write it off against tax.

By: inomine

inomine — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 06:26:11 +0000

Please to be keeping us informed, it would be interesting what they say.

My next step after drawing up my list was to start comparing what components the bikes used and reading reviews of them. I don’t really want to pay the extra for the Sub 10 at the moment, and the Dawes has slightly sub-par components compared to the Trek 7.5, so I’m probably going for that. At the end of the day, if I have any problems with any of the things bolted to the bike I can just get them replaced for not that much money. Right Chris {G|T}?

Oh, and mudguards can be strapped to any of them for not much money, but from what I’ve seen panniers might be more of a problem for Hybrids.

And don’t forget that you’ll also want some blinkers, a basic toolset/puncture repair kit and some waterproofs, all of this adding something like 150 quid to the cost of the bike.