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Halfoeds sell a 21sp cheap road bike called the TDF for about a ton. The only problem with it was poor brakes. It's still going fine. And half the weight of the tank bsos. I'm not looking down on cheapness just crapness. Those cheapy tank bikes a poor value for money.
Having a teenage son who for some reason is popular with other teenagers(Mmmm) , the garage always seems full of these bikes.
I think the point is they are better than walking, its just a shame the MTB fashion had to turn them all into tanks or they may see the proper value cos non of them go off road.
most of them used to have a sticker on with 'not suitable for off-road use' surely..?
These bikes from the likes of Halfords and the supermarkets can be a bit of a double edged sword.Some people who have one of these pieces of crud-iron as a first bike use them as a stepping stone to better bikes and cycling becomes a part of the rest of their lives.Other people have one as a first bike and it puts them off cycling for life !!
I was told when i was younger that these bikes (and the cheap chisels you can get in poundland) were made from old chinese railway lines....
...HOW MANY BLUMMIN' RAILWAY LINES DID THESE PEOPLE HAVE ?? 🙄
most of them used to have a sticker on with 'not suitable for off-road use' surely..?
This exactly. As I young teenager I was lucky enough to have a decent mountain bike. It was 2nd hand but I loved it. It was a 97 kona Kilauea (spelling?). My parents couldn't afford to buy me a bike so I had saved up for this from a weekend job. A few of my mates had decent bikes as well but there was one kid who had what I call a cheap nasty bike.
The parents of this kid were really up them selves as thought they were better than everyone else. Kids were spoilt etc.
However instead of buying a decent bike they bought a cheap nasty suspension bike from toys r us.
The kid thought he was the bollox on it but it ended horribly.
He tried doing tricks on it, bouncing on the front wheel with front brake locked on. As he slammed the brakes on, put his weight forward the rear wheel came up. The next part though is nasty. The forks sheered clean off where the steerer tube is bonded in to the crown, ended up in the boy face planting and losing most of his teeth.
So unfortunately now has false teeth.
Personally I don't think the parents should have bought a cheap bike and dressed it up to their kid as something it wasn't. I dont think a decent bike would have failed in this way. (well it never did for Hans no way Ray when he used to hop around on the front wheel) and remember this was just a kid doing an endo/stoppee.
The parents were livid that the bike had failed and I believe sued Tous R Us for quite a lot of money although I don't think they were honest with how the bike failed, so i guess it was a bit of a fraudulent claim.
I love the fact halfords charge an extra £20 to assemble that Trax in the link above. I also don't like the way they've described it, good on hills and fast to accelerate, compared to what? Bikes at this price are a pig to setup properly, couple that with people paying this sort of money probably not knowing their way around a bike is going end up with forks on backwards and gears that won't change. Fully rigids at this price have a role, describing that lump of garbage and not assembling it properly is pretty sharp practice.
Funny you should mention bikes being sent out of Halfords with the forks on back to front cos i've seen several bikes that have been sent out of our local Halfords with cheapo suspension forks raked backwards.
Worked with a guy who used to have a part time job in Halfords and he told me they were instructed to spend no more than 8 minutes safety checking the bikes before they left the store.
If you are going to buy a bike go to a bike shop not a car parts shop with a side line in bikes.
Worked with a guy who used to have a part time job in Halfords and he told me they were instructed to spend no more than 8 minutes safety checking the bikes before they left the store.
That is awful and playing with people safety even lives.
Never bought anything bike related from halfords and never will.
Infact the only money I have ever given them was for an MOT, bargain at £27.50 which I'm sure they are not even making a profit on. Must be a loss leader and only make it pay by failing lots of cars.
surely a heavy bike gets you fitter, so the heavier the better is the best bet for winter fitness? Sure, if you're heading off over mountains on an all-day epic, take your 4-figure dream machine, but for a pootle to the pub or shops on a grotty winter's day, the heavy bike will keep you in shape better....
Yeah you would think so. I've been trying this theory out recently but it doesn't appear to be working.
I've been going out on my DH bike for XC rides mainly because I love riding the bike and assumed I'd get fitter in the process but everyone it felt massively hard and once back on te hardtail I'm no faster than before.
It just needs more watts to move it but this does not mean you will do more. You may just go slower and less distance for the same effort.
I bought the Singletrack '£100.00 Weekender' bike from them after they'd used it in a feature a while back.
Steel Frame, decent V's, gears all worked, bearings fine, decent tyres.
Bought it for a mate who was just getting back into bikes and it was fine. Took it for a lap of Lee Quarry, stuck huge tyres on and it was good fun.
Very dead feeling and pretty heavy, but it all worked, apart from the cheap seatclamp.
It actually handled pretty well and nothing broke.
Sadly got knicked shortly after, but for £100 new it was a damn impressive bike.
Halfords I think.
Worked with a guy who used to have a part time job in Halfords and he told me they were instructed to spend no more than 8 minutes safety checking the bikes before they left the store.
I could do it in 2 minutes to be honest. It's not hard. There's very little to check that could make a bike unsafe, just a few bolts, 2 brakes and the wheel axles. Job done. Where does the other 6 minutes go?
If he means a PDI, then that's an entirely different thing and, for the average bike, simply won't happen in less than 1/2hr. I recently PDId a bike for an interview. Took me about 35 minutes. Thats from a sealed up box to a bike fully ready to roll out of the door.
It's not the checking that takes time it's the rectifying of the faults you find. eg brakes not lined up with the rims, over tight bearings, fittings not properly tightened etc. Those are the sort of things that are not going to happen in the '8 minute check' or a large proportion of home builds.
We got some £59 specials from Tescos last year and took them round Llandegla as the "Sh*t bike challenge" stage of a MTB based stag weekend.
All fell apart, but was pretty funny. And yes, we managed to get the forks the right way round, unlike 50% of the BSOs I see round town!
I stopped someone at Gisburn earlier this year, on a decent Trek full-susser, to point out to him that the forks were on the wrong way around. Its not exclusive to Halfords
andyrm - Member
We got some £59 specials from Tescos last year and took them round Llandegla as the "Sh*t bike challenge" stage of a MTB based stag weekend.
I rode one of these locally, it worked OK, but DAMN it was heavy and hard work... i was destroyed !!!
I rode one of these locally, it worked OK, but DAMN it was heavy and hard work... i was destroyed !!!
We were too! But I think the previous night's festivities were more to blame.......
a bike shop not a car parts shop with a side line in bikes
Is that still true? Do people still buy car parts now that opening the bonnet on your motor greets you with an inpenetrable mass of black plastic and changing a headlight bulb entails dismantling the front of the car? I couldn't tell you the last time I bought a car part from Halfords, 15-20 years ago I was in there regularly when I had a car that I could actually do some work on..
I would have thought bikes were a HUGE part of their business now?
I think their target market is a bit more 'innit' than the average STWer
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TO quote Pauline Calf "**** me Paul, it looks like you've covered it in superglue and ram raided halfords!"
Funniest group test ever...
[url= http://road.cc/content/feature/12692-scrapheap-challenge ]http://road.cc/content/feature/12692-scrapheap-challenge[/url]
It's like anything in life Not everyone can own a Porsche, Ducatti or Mansion.
Those who get a ~£70 BSO to ride to work on will probably be perfectly happy when they do some sums, no doubt the petrol savings and health benefits of buying one, mean that the average BSO pays for itself inside of a couple of weeks...
Of course if you bump the price up by a factor of 10 to ~£700 I doubt the maths looks all that enticing to most non-cyclists who could pick up a a knackered fiesta for half that amount and keep it on the road for a year with the change... that is kind of the mindset that keeps BSOs in the shops.
The Decathalon jobbies do look better for the commute than the Halfords offerings TBH.
True not everyone can afford a Porsche but that's not really a fist comparison.
The difference in money between a normal car and a Porker is huge but the difference between a piece of junk £70 and a half decent commuter bike is not.
I believe everyone can afford £250 which should get you something half decent to ride to work on or start cycling with.
For this money it should be reasonably well put to together and actually work.
So for the price difference of a few tanks of fuel you can have a shitter of a bike or something half decent.
What I really don't understand is these luncatics (and I see lots of them) commuting to work on the nastiest full suspension bike you have ever seen. They must really think they have a kid bike because it has a spring in the middle holding it together. I feel like educating some of these people and advising to get a fully rigid.
Stonster thanks for posting that group test. I laughed so much reading that it was brilliant.
Those bunch of lads deserve a pat on the back, it looked an epic boys adventure. They did very well not to get hurt.
Its more evidence to show these kind of bikes have no place anywhere. They are death traps.
tinytimbo - MemberTrue not everyone can afford a Porsche but that's not really a fist comparison.
The difference in money between a normal car and a Porker is huge but the difference between a piece of junk £70 and a half decent commuter bike is not.I believe everyone can afford £250 which should get you something half decent to ride to work on or start cycling with.
For this money it should be reasonably well put to together and actually work.So for the price difference of a few tanks of fuel you can have a shitter of a bike or something half decent.
What I really don't understand is these luncatics (and I see lots of them) commuting to work on the nastiest full suspension bike you have ever seen. They must really think they have a kid bike because it has a spring in the middle holding it together. I feel like educating some of these people and advising to get a fully rigid.
If it ain't broke, why fix it? I'd much rather have someone on a BSO commuting into work than one more car on the roads.
I was reading this thread and kind of assuming it was your standard horrible URT full suss thing, but then I saw the ad and found it's for their perfectly decent rigid. I wouldn't want one myself but they do the job. The tyres are a mistake mind, but that's just selling what people expect.
Fact is, loads of people will still choose the far inferior Trax full suss for £10 more.
Where's PhilsConsequence and his Carera when you need him?
At a Saturday shop group ride I used to go on a lot of people ride expensive bikes in the summer, then a few started buying Carrera's in the winter as they were less than they'd otherwise spend on shock servicing and drivechains etc. Most of those bikes were then used through the summer "ohh, I just fancied the hardtail this week".
The shop went out of business, not saying it was related to the number of people riding cheep halfords bikes, but it's an amusing coincidence.
As for destroying them on their first lap of a trail center, I nursed a £150 halfords BSO Saracen through 2 years of propper MTB'ing, then a £275 carrera through another 4 years (by this point I'd realized drivechains were replaceable).
Mi biek iz Kararer.
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[url= http://www.flickr.com/photos/53860438@N06/5892078548/ ]IMG_0366[/url] by [url= http://www.flickr.com/people/53860438@N06/ ]Northwindlowlander[/url], on Flickr
(There biekz iz Sarcin, mi biek iz also Kararer)
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[url= http://www.flickr.com/photos/53860438@N06/6224852810/ ]Old school[/url] by [url= http://www.flickr.com/people/53860438@N06/ ]Northwindlowlander[/url], on Flickr
Mine was identical to that Saracen hardtail in the 2nd pic! Even down to the plastic coated cranks and Chilli Works* suspension !
Although mine had black bars and silver/beige 7 speed combined shifter/brakes.
*I can only assume this was ironic.
We've still got all 3 of those bikes... sorry, biekz... in the garage. The hardtail's heavier than my downhill bike. The Raw's almost as heavy as my motorbike.
Yea, I remember getting the carrera afterwards which had an aluminum frame, deore groupset, forks made from magnesium rather than lead, etc, probably still weighed 30lb but it felt like a feather in comparison!
jam bo - Member
I bet the kid who gets one for Xmas will be made up and will be able to wheelie better than you...
POSTED 2 DAYS AGO # REPORT-POST
Don't think so mate, I am the f***king don at wheelies.
I used to race road rats on the back wheel of my dh bike. It was hilarious.
The roadies weren't to impressed and used to speed up and fly off.
I spent a year up in that london commuting on a giant hybrid I bought for £35, it had its quirks bit was a great bike, just as entertaining to ride as the 'proper' bike