Bicycle Experts! It's time for Skoorb to buy a bike.

[bizmark]

heheh on the subject of bikes... I just saw at my school today the following absurdity locked up to the bike rack:

A Huffy Full-Suspension bike.... with a freaking CARRYING RACK. (If there's a better term I forgot it... forgive me, I'm delirious now after over a day with no sleep, except for 30 minutes pinched in the library, about 20 minutes ago so now I'm all groggy) Now this wouldn't be so bad, except that this rack is connected to both the SEAT POST and to the REAR AXLE BOLT/QUICK RELEASE. So we have a (very sh*tty) full-suspension bike, with the whole purpose of a full suspension bike being that the seat can move indepently of the rear wheel, whose function has been disabled by the addition of this rigid rack which bridges the gap between wheels and seat. IDIOT! I wish I had a digicam so I could take pics.

Oh and Skoorb -- glad to see you liked the 4300 It was the looks that got me too I actually have the previous year model, it's really nice shiny red with black... too bad the fork is an orange that doesn't really match the red bike. Oh well.

I haven't done any real trail riding or anything (I don't even know of any places around here) but I give it a decent beating between snow and rain and curbs and going through the park. From what I've read on the internet, the frame is essentially indestructable, while the weakest links in the bike are the fork and the derailleurs. I don't care about the fork really, as I'm just happy to have something to take the bumps out of curbs and stuff, but the back derailleur has been getting on my nerves, although it hasn't been so bad that I've actually done something about it. It just kind of makes noises, and once I click to downshift, it will shift but the chain won't come off the gear and go to the next one so it'll make a noise until I mash on the shifter again a little bit more to make it change gears. I never touch the front derailleur But as far as I can tell, you can never have a maintenence-free derailleur because the cables always stretch and that leads to the things not working as well. You have to constantly maintain them. Which is another good thing about Trek, I get free maintainence for... I'm not sure? 3 years? Anyway, I've brought it in once and the guy adjusted my derailleurs and my rear wheel (which I had evidently bent up by taking too many curbs

-- I've learned now not to do so) for free. Although I imagine that most major brands are the same way and offer a good warranty.

 

[Don Vito Corleone]

<< BTW: For wheel sets....Velocity make some of the BEST rims I have ever seen. FAR better than Mavic these days (IMO)

linky >>



To each his own, but I am compelled to ask: in what way do you find Velocitys far better than Mavic?

In my experience Mavic is the premier rim/wheel manufacturer in the world, and many of the Velocity designs (other than the original V-shaped ones, which have found are too narrow to provide good flotation with MTB tires) seem to be borrowed wholesale from Mavic. I am just curious what the basis is for your opinion, as I am open to trying new things with my next wheelset (I am planning to purchase a Chorus build kit for my Moots VaMoots one of these days).

 

[badluck]

Can anyone recommend a good bike lock to use? I just bought a bike for about $350, but don't want to spend $75 on a bike lock. I need to spend around $30. I know thieves can get to anything, but I still would like ideas...

Thanks....

 

[flavio]

I need a new bike as well

 

[yakko]

<< Can anyone recommend a good bike lock to use? I just bought a bike for about $350, but don't want to spend $75 on a bike lock. I need to spend around $30. I know thieves can get to anything, but I still would like ideas...

Thanks.... >>

Kryptonite. They make a really nice cable lock for around $20 that I use on my Trek 2300 and while I only lock it inside the house (I don't leave it anywhere else where I would need to lock it) I would trust this lock outside in a lot of areas. Yes thieves can get it but if you are locking your bike in an area bad enough to worry about the lock even a $75 lock probably wouldn't help you.




Brutuskend,

I have ridden almost exclusively Mavic rims and nothing I have seen comes close except for the old Araya rims (RM -20, RM-17)which I don't see anymore. I have Velocitys on my current mountain bike and while they are nice I would rather have Mavic.

Also you should not need to replace your chain every 1000 miles. If that were true my last mountain bike would have used at least 35 chains in the time I had it and my old road bike would have needed a new chain every two months because it was 10 miles to work and another 10 miles home. Doing just that 5 days a week is 100 miles a week. A Shimano chain runs about $20 and the nice chains can be as much as $70. So just using a Shimano chain would have run me $120 a year by your replacement interval. If you have a cheap K-mart bike that cost you $70 and road as much as I did you can get away with using the $10 chain but then you would be spending almost as much on parts as you did for the bike each year but you would also probably be paying someone to replace it for you.