I’m fortunate to own more than one bike. I like bikes. I like building bikes. You can never have too many bikes … right?

The thing is I usually end up not riding the bike I like most during the winter ’cause it’s just too nice. I tend to leave my nice carbon HT at home during the winter months as I don’t want to “ruin” it, and ride my FS instead. The FS is a nice enough bike, a lot heavier than the HT, but I don’t mind it festering in a little mud over the winter.

So I took the HT out at Christmas and cleaned it up pretty well afterwards. 2.5 months later I take it again to find the rear wheel bearings are seizing up. Fair enough I probably didn’t do a good enough job cleaning it, but had I been riding it more I’d have been aware of any issues sooner.

I’m beginning to think that with limited riding time, maybe I have too many bikes.

Is it just me? Do other multi-bike owners suffer simialrly?

Yes, just you ……….. 😀

too-many-bikes? Sorry I can’t get my head around that phrase – doesn’t scan for me.

Does it look like this outside your house ?

I have 3 bikes they all get ridden. I don’t have a favorite cos they all have different purposes.

Road bike for commuting, Hardtail for local stuff/riding with the kids, FS for shredding the gnar and generally getting rad

When you have 2…

All you need is 1… The rest is just about how quickly/slowly you do the boring stuff.

When bike maintenance starts to feel like a full-time job rather than a hobby. I’m at that point now, and it’s sucking the joy out of it.

Two would be my minimum as I need a hack bike for commuting. Funny thing is I neglect that bike a lot, but use it 5 days a week. Don’t have too many mechanical problems with that regime.

It’s putting my decent bike away when it doesn’t move for a few weeks that causes the most problems.

Fasthaggis the inside of the nearest bike shop to me (not my LBS though!) looks strangely like that. Where bikes go to die…

OP, yeah it’s just you. Having multiple bikes means you dont have to compromise when you do get to use some of that limited time to ride.

You have too many bikes when you don’t actually know how many you have 🙂 I counted once and over the next week several more came to mind that I’d entirely forgot about 😳 For the record I’m trying to get down to 14 (I still don’t know how many I have)

Iknow what you mean with this.

I got to a point a while ago where they all needed some sort of maintanence of new parts and was moaning to the wife I can;t afford this hobby..

She pointed out quite sensibly that her bike was never an issue as we maintained it as it was her only choice… so if I only had one do it all bike then it would be better maintained and want for nothing and always have any parts changed that it needed.

Maintaining and running multiple bikes through a wet winter = expensive in my opinion and won’t be repeated.

I’m currently building my 4th edition to my collection though so probably do as I say… not as I do might be apt here.

When you have to play tetris to fit them all in shed/garage/storeroom/kitchen, and/or need to discard one to be able to do an N=N+1

When you have more than the missus.

She has 2, I have 2.

This is now a problem because I’m building my third.

Sigh.

to properly address this question we need the OP to come clean about the full extent of his stable. So far we have the commuter, the FS, and the plastic HT. Not mentioned so far are the cx bike and the tandem. Any others you wish to have taken into consideration? 😉

for me the key is to have very different bikes so the bike I take is determined by where I’m going. Road bike, mtb, commuter (aka frankenbike).

I’ve been thinking I’ve got too many recently. Same as the OP really – multiple bikes with something vaguely wrong with them sitting for weeks on end waiting for some attention…

I had a bit of a slim down of bikes that are now redundant and got to four.

Sensible steel HT, ‘naughty’ HHT, bouncy bike and cross bike.

I’m trying to talk myself out of another cross bike at the mo…

I have two many road bikes (i.e. 3) and get fed up with the constant maintenance swapped out my HT for soemthing smaller my daughter can use but I doubt a week goes by where I haven’t got something to footer with, cables, brakes, headsets. took my road bike off the hook yesterday to do new bar tape and it needs a new Headset bearing 🙁 am supposed to ride it in my first ever crit this weekend!

I am just putting a half built frame in the loft as I have run out of space in the garage, probably too many then……….

Too many bikes…?????

Think of it this way – the more bbikes you have the more oppotunities to swap round components when something gives out. My bikes are all a random selection of components now.

My wife tells me

In my garage I have:

BMX
FS MTB (Orange 5)
Road bike (Old frame – nothing special)
Commuter (Pompino)
P7 frame
Old Kona Blast frame which was my original commuter

My Wife has
Commuter (Giant Rapid on loan from a friend)
Previous commuter – heavyweight Giant step through
Town bike – another heavyweight Giant commuter but hub geared!

I’m still looking at another bike (although it would replace the commuter and possibly even the roadie for me) Surly Straggler, want, want, want!

How do you know? I dunno, I suppose first you’d need to ask yourself the question 🙂

ShedOfDreams by Alex Leigh, on Flickr

5 for me. All get ridden. Okay the road bike gets ridden once a year for the Wye Valley Warrior Sportiv thing. The rest tho – selected by where I’m riding/how I’m feeling. I could easily get by with less, but at no point do I think that’d be a good idea 🙂

Oh actually it’s six. That thing about ‘not knowing how many bikes you have?’ up there? He might have a point!

The 2 that live in my bath don’t get used much 🙂

If a bike goes for more than a year without being ridden then it gets swapped for something else.

I’m down to four now. Xc, road, fixie and cx. I pretty much have a bike for any type of riding I do and I’m not really hankering for anything else.

When they don’t bring you happiness.

I did have 6 and then realised at least two or three do not get ridden. My strava tells me the boardman road bike beats all the others put together.

I sold my kona Cindercone, Alan top cross leaving only 3 single speed road bike, HT and carbon road bike. However will get a new steel road bike in 3 weeks time.

Three is the magic number. How you arrange those three is variable depending on you.

6″ mountain bike FS for proper rides
Road/tourer/commuter/town/pub (utility road bike)
Single speed Mountain bike as a spare and to keep the others in good nick when its filthy.

+ a choice of flats, clips, or touring double sided jobbies.

No use if you want to race anything, or ride trials, or jumps or anything else.

only 3? I’m on 3 at the moment but still wanting a hub gear winter mtb to save the wear on the FS when the peak is a mudbath

I’ve been mulling this recently too. I always used to have just one or two bikes, but it’s getting a bit out of hand for someone who lives in a rented shared house, and is about to move somewhere smaller.

Obviously, the mountain bike, pride of joy, love of life, etc etc.

The Apocalypse bike (AKA the cargo bike with a hunking great basket on the front that weighs more than the 6″ FS mtb…

Now the roadie rocket ship.

Finally, the tall bike, my proudest bicycle and more awkward to store than any of your bikes, but more badass too. Ahem.

Now I’m building a new bike to go touring on… Not ideal in a flat. But hey, bikes is great.

+ 1 for when the wife pulls rank!! I have 6, they all get ridden. Commuter, XC HT, Full sus XC, 5″ full sus for fun rides (trail centres), road bike & my 90’s bike that I use for towing the boy about in the trailer. I’m after a new road machine but have been told that I’m not allowed to keep the old one!! :-/

I’m down to just 2 from 4 this time last year.

Commuter has gone as I no longer commute since I gave that job up
Road bike went and was replaced with an Alfined Croix de Fer ( tough road bike IMO)
Ti hardtail and Alps bike ( Enduro) went and were replaced with a carbon blur.

My mates though I was mad going from 2 mountain bikes to just one with phrases like “but what about the Alps holidays or uplift weekends” interestingly, most have followed suit now.

Sometimes, less is more, apparently.

My hard tail is hanging in the garage and should really be stripped for parts but everything is too heavy on it, the fun goes when your HT is heavier than the 140/160mm FS next to it.
The road bike gets plenty of use.
The FS (Blur LTc) goes everywhere and does everything.

So Simple I really only need 2 bikes.

I’ll just get the DH bike built up if next few months of work go well and then add in the 100mm XC FS race bike.

So yep I need 4 bikes

If have to ask then it’s to many.

i’ve got 6 and there’s too many to keep in my flat. Also, my girlfriend has two, so that leaves us with 8 altogether. Added to that, the winters are so long that i can’t ride them for half of the year and for the other half, i tend to be injured. I’d be ok with 3 bikes.

1) Cotic BFe (keeper)
2) Marin Quake FS (could be sold)
3) GT Hans Ray trials (keeper)
4) Spesh Tricross (selling atm)
5) Vitus Vee 29 (keeper)
6) Cougar road frame (to be restored)

HansRey no bike is a keeper it’s just a good one at the time, your dream bike is always your next one. (Unless you are actually Hans and have a big house to keep all of the free bikes in)

http://revanchebikeco.wordpress.com/2014/02/17/n1-lifestyle/

nah, they’re keepers. Well, the Vitus will be kept until it is stolen as it’s often left locked up on show about the city centre.