#11
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PSB wrote:
Learning toward one or the other for buying a new dept store bicycle. I know what to look for when it comes to assembling them. The bike is going to be used as a commuter. The Huffy's are about 30 dollars cheaper and both have Shamino gears. Just curious if I should spend the 30 bucks more for a Schwinn or not. If you are going to reply that I should buy from an LBS, save your bandwidth. So which would you recommend? For my commuter (two chainring 5 speed) I bought the cheapest one I could find. It cost me $50 and for 4 bucks more I put a shopping basket on it. It also came with a rear rack for panniers. Been using it for 4 years. For low, low end go on price. Kenny |
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#12
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Mike Jacoubowsky/Chain Reaction Bicycles wrote:
Bandwith is cheap, sorry. Look for a decent used bike. You could probably find one for nearly free at a garage sale or thrift shop that would be far better than the Huffy or Schwinn from a department store. If you have the skills to properly assemble a bike, you can probably easily deal with a used bike, and recognize a real gem that's there for the taking. I know someone who purchased a lugged steel frame Trek with near perfect paint for $10 at a yard sale. -- Tom Sherman - Near Rock Island |
#13
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On Tue, 28 Dec 2004 16:47:35 -0500, PSB wrote:
Learning toward one or the other for buying a new dept store bicycle. I know what to look for when it comes to assembling them. The bike is going to be used as a commuter. The Huffy's are about 30 dollars cheaper and both have Shamino gears. Just curious if I should spend the 30 bucks more for a Schwinn or not. If you are going to reply that I should buy from an LBS, save your bandwidth. So which would you recommend? Schwinn, because Huffy's in bankruptcy at the moment. For a commuter bike, though, I'd look at the rest of the Pacific bike lines as well. (Schwinn got borged by Pacific a while back, as did Mongoose and several other brands.) One of the regulars here may chime in with an observation that a $60 Roadmaster Mt Fury may very well serve your purposes just as well; the empirical evidence here pretty much confirms the observation that even the cheapest of the Mall-Wart units will stand up well under a daily commute of a reasonable distance...as long as your demands in terms of comfort and performance are modest[1]. (The former issue can often be addressed by swapping seats, and the latter is presumed not to be a concern given the parameters that you appear to be applying.) [1] I will add one caveat of my own from direct experience, though; if you weigh more than 180 lbs, and you buy a cheap unit, expect to have to change the seat immediately due to the absolutely abysmal mounting clamps used on most of the Marianas-trench-level bikes as original equipment. Oh, and have Captain Overtorque tighten the seat mounting clamp if you value your baritone singing voice. -- Typoes are a feature, not a bug. Some gardening required to reply via email. Words processed in a facility that contains nuts. |
#14
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Bandwith is cheap, sorry. Look for a decent used bike. You could probably
find one for nearly free at a garage sale or thrift shop that would be far better than the Huffy or Schwinn from a department store. If you have the skills to properly assemble a bike, you can probably easily deal with a used bike, and recognize a real gem that's there for the taking. I know someone who purchased a lugged steel frame Trek with near perfect paint for $10 at a yard sale. And isn't there something noble about giving a bike like that a new lease on life? But I'm beginning to suspect this is a troll, given the recent remark from the original poster regarding knobby vs slick tires for a "commute" bike. --Mike Jacoubowsky Chain Reaction Bicycles www.ChainReaction.com IMBA, BikesBelong, NBDA member |
#15
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I took a close look at a department store Schwinn a month ago,
http://search.bikelist.org/query.asp...MsgDate%5Ba%5D Specifically, the $108 schwinn hybrid at Target. Unlike earlier department store bikes that had obvious manufacturing compromises (e.g. cheap soft steel brakes that bent every time they were used, steel rims, lead-pipe frames, suicide extension levers), modern dept. store bikes have closed a tremendous gap with bike shop bikes. Although I don't own one, these bikes are probably not fun or practical to work on or tune. They are designed to be manufactured cheaply, used until the parts fail or go out of the adjustment, and then thrown away. Don't expect to get it fixed cheaply at a normal bike shop. Work on it yourself, if at all. Here is the best summary about "where are the bodies buried" on the cheaper department store bikes of today : http://search.bikelist.org/getmsg.as...10411.2094.eml With the US$ trading for 8 chinese yuan, and the average chinese worker in the countryside earning $0.65 per hour, you may not see a bike of this quality sold this cheaply another time for the rest of your life. If you buy, purchase the best model available, with all-aluminum parts. - Don Gillies San Diego, CA |
#16
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Hi Carl, just curious to how well the thumb shifters on the Mountain
Fury act. Have you had problems with them getting loose? I thought about getting this bike and perhaps changing the tires to slicks. I didn't like the seat on the Fury but I got a good saddle from my old bike. I'm also curious since nearly all my riding will be on roads or dirt roads, will slicks give a much smoother ride than knobbies? Thanks. |
#17
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On Tue, 28 Dec 2004 19:34:03 -0600, Tom Sherman
wrote: Mike Jacoubowsky/Chain Reaction Bicycles wrote: Bandwith is cheap, sorry. Look for a decent used bike. You could probably find one for nearly free at a garage sale or thrift shop that would be far better than the Huffy or Schwinn from a department store. If you have the skills to properly assemble a bike, you can probably easily deal with a used bike, and recognize a real gem that's there for the taking. I know someone who purchased a lugged steel frame Trek with near perfect paint for $10 at a yard sale. A few months ago, I grabbed a group of five bikes for the total sum of about $60 at the city auction; the lot included a Miyata Elevation 1000 that needed just a chain and cassette replaced due to wear. Of the other four, two were absolute scrap. Those two were a mid-60s drop-frame Schwinn tourer with tires rotted off, and a badly ethno-engineered Huffy with a 24" rear wheel and a tireless EA3 front wheel on a 559-wheel frame with a complete lack of brakes, shifters and seat. The remaining two were reasonably servicable department-store-level bikes in almost immediately useful condition; a Pacific mtb with a missing dust guard on one front wheel bearing, and a Roadmaster Mt Fury (alas, in the 24" size) with the most creatively obliterated set of brake calipers I have ever seen. The front caliper's arms were devoid of pads and had been twisted in between the fork legs (I should mention that the fork had been turned around backwards) as though the brakes had been suddenly applied while the bike was being towed at high speeds with an overload aboard. Given the presence of a trick-bike footpeg on the rear axle, that may be exactly what was being done. There was also an impressive amount of chain slap damage to the chainstay paint. Despite the apparent abuse, however, with the substitution of some less twisted calipers from Le Carton Du Junque, it became a useful bike which presently awaits a suitable rider. -- Typoes are a feature, not a bug. Some gardening required to reply via email. Words processed in a facility that contains nuts. |
#18
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On Tue, 28 Dec 2004 19:42:41 -0500, PSB wrote:
Ron Hardin wrote: I generally get 6 years before that happens, and the current one looks to be going strong for more years yet. I was hoping you would ring in Ron. The thing about the Huffy I was looking at has knobby tires. The Schwinn didn't have knobbies. What do you recommend Ron, knobbies or slicks? For commuting? Slicks! Your wrists, elbows and shoulders will thank you for the reduced vibration. Note, however, that a pair of slicks for a 26" bike can be had for about $15 (maybe less) at Mall-Wart, and they're not hard to install on whatever you buy. A slick-tired Mt Fury could be concocted for well under $100, even after sales tax. -- Typoes are a feature, not a bug. Some gardening required to reply via email. Words processed in a facility that contains nuts. |
#19
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On Tue, 28 Dec 2004 21:37:59 -0500, PSB
wrote: Hi Carl, just curious to how well the thumb shifters on the Mountain Fury act. Have you had problems with them getting loose? I thought about getting this bike and perhaps changing the tires to slicks. I didn't like the seat on the Fury but I got a good saddle from my old bike. I'm also curious since nearly all my riding will be on roads or dirt roads, will slicks give a much smoother ride than knobbies? Thanks. Dear PSB, Since the exciting mechanical adventure described in merciless detail in this link, loose shifters have not been a problem: http://groups.google.co.uk/groups?q=...gle.com&rnum=1 or http://tinyurl.com/3zpsn Generally, the Fury uses high gear after rounding the street corner at the neighbor's house. I suspect that most department store mountain-style bikes can be pedalled around reasonably level towns in high gear like a single-speed, with a choice of fourteen or more lower gears for any hills. Their high gear is a bit short of a 53x11 700c. After a thousand miles, the Fury Roadmaster was treated to a pair of new slicks, which seemed to perk it up about 9%: http://groups.google.co.uk/groups?q=...4ax.com&rnum=2 or http://tinyurl.com/44xm3 [A hideous typo requires the reader to imagine the word "removed" between "already" and "584", somewhat in the fashion of Theobald's famous conjecture that "a Table o' green fields" was a misprint for "'a babbl'd o' green fields": http://www.bartleby.com/215/1113.html Hmmm . . . I wonder why a quote about babbling came to mind?] Anyway, the slicks are certainly quieter than the knobbies. They're also noticeably smaller, so the engine was forced to rev higher. Miserable weather set in shortly after the new tires, so it's hard to be sure if the original speed improvement has outlasted the usual two-week new-toy effect. The Fury Roadmaster's engine often shows signs of flagging when it's cold and windy. Of course, without a cyclocomputer, stopwatch, and mindlessly regular route, I doubt that I'd notice much difference one way or another in terms of speed. Depending on your height, a longer seat post might be needed for almost any department-store bike. Carl Fogel |
#20
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I'm six foot tall and about 160. I'll check closer into the Roadmaster
when I go back to the department store and make my decision then. One more question, does the Roadmaster have holes where a bike rack can be attached easily? I know the Schwinn Sidewinder does. |
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