How to buy a second hand mountain bike

Dieter is a bike mechanic at Happy Days Cycles in Sowerby Bridge, where he regularly revives donated bikes to sell to customers, or repairs customers’ …

By down_and_across

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Good piece and good advice. I would add to the stolen bikes bit, if possible ask to see the original purchase receipt. It’s not necessarily a deal breaker, but if they have one its 99.9% not a stolen bike. I’m Looking around on e-bay/Gumtree/Facebook at the moment and there are lots of “pandemic” purchases now up for sale “bought it last year, but now not riding it…..”, especially as we get into the winter months.

Ooh, a Raleigh Peak! I had one of those, it was a lovely bike, even had a titanium handlebar. Mine unfortunately died in a collision with a Post Office van in North Wales.

Oooh I had a Raleigh Peak and bloody loved it. Hmmm Zoom stem and seat post, just wonderful.

Good article, and great counterpoint to £12k bike reviews.

Agreed. Respect to STW for publishing it.

Why is the grey frame classed as ‘child seat unfriendly’? Yeah with the cable stop where it is you can’t have a Hamax style child seat but it has got rack mounts instead.

Do they need donations? I have a spares bin dating back to the 90’s. Don’t do Instagram so can’t see from the link.

@Jonno yes, they accept donations. Their website is a bit out of date but give them a call and I’m sure they’ll let you know if they can take what you’ve got. https://happydayscycles.co.uk/

Fair play. That’s really good.
I’ve never bought a new bike.

Good read, Also never bought new, Remember buying a £50 Raleigh Tundra over 10 years ago to get me started!

Disagree on the ‘no service station’ meet up. When I’ve sold bikes I’ve always made sure the meet-up has been away from my house (well away!) The reason being, I don’t want anybody to know I have potentially decent bikes stored at my house. Even if they don’t see my garage (or the contents of) it doesn’t take much imagination to wonder what else I might have lurking about the place…

@jimthesaint I’m just not a fan of rack mounted child seats! Does anyone actually still use them? I thought they’d pretty much been killed off by the rise of Hamax and the like!

OK so how do I sell second hand bikes? N+1 is all well and good but I need to get in my garage again!

I agree with the ‘sonny sell from your house’ bit. I don’t want potential thieves to come back and ‘have a look’ later on.

So… what are folks offering me for a 2005 Stumpy FSR expert. 1 careless owner. Always raced and rallied. Still has the original front triangle (!) and an off trend 110mm stem. 26″ wheels obvs. Hope bulb rear hub.
Alpine proven.
It has ‘street cred’ all over it 👍

roberta – 20 rothmans and a wrap?

This is excellent!

I had that exact model, same colour. Used to race it in my teens, it was blinged up with anything that could be anodised purple.

X-Lite took a lot of my money in those days. Good times!