Just a quick warning to anyone buying a bike from Halfords. Make sure you take tools with you on your first ride.
I bought a bike yesterday - it is a jolly nice bike in terms of components and appears to ride up and down hills in quite a pleasing way. It is (this one.
Anyway, I made the mistake of getting Halfords to build it up (they do it for free), and the second mistake of assuming that it would be in some way safe to ride home from there (about 10 miles, partly off road, over some small hills, but nothing scary). I then made the second mistake of forgetting my tools, not even an allen key set.
Things wrong with it:
1)One tyre at 10 PSI, the other at 50
2)Handlebar bolts loose
3)Front derailleur limit screws adjusted wrong
4)Front derailleur tension wrong.
5)Rear derailleur limit screws wrong.
6)Rear derailleur tension wrong.
The most annoying thing is that they obviously tightened up the bars just enough so that I could be 4 miles away before the bars started twisting, meaning I had to find someone with a 5mm allen key in the middle of nowhere in Derbyshire (thanks to the passing mountain biker who stopped). I sorted the tyres, seat height etc. in the shop, but I was taken by surprise by the loose bars - you would think if you sold bikes, you'd at least make sure the bars were tight, after all that's potentially pretty dangerous. I wasn't surprised by the gears, after all I knew Halfords don't have the best reputation for bike maintenance, but they did send me out with a pretty dangerous bike, which is dodgy really.
I guess having to do your own maintenance to make it safe is the price you pay for getting way way better components than any of the local shops could offer, but in some ways I wish they'd just stop pretending that they do a build up and safety check service - if I bought one again I'd probably get it sent out to me in a box.
Joe

