Be Excellent To Each Other

I am after buying a bicycle for the first time. The only other bike I've ridden is my childhood one.

Should I try online, or am I best looking for a bricks and mortar store, and doing online research only?

I will be using it for short journeys of less than a couple of miles, and not going off-road. Ideally it will be as light as possible as well as being around the £100-£150 mark.

Any suggestions?

If you buy online then there's a very high chance that it will arrive needing assembly. Personally I would go to a store and get one. Halfrauds are usually OK.

Uh-oh!

I'd just go into a shop and see what you like. See if it's comfortable, looks sturdy, and relatively light.

Can I just go in and say "hello. me wanty bike?" without looking stupid?

Are they going to ask me questions like what sort of ratio I'll be using it for?

If you buy online the assembly is usually stick the pedals on the right way, maybe attach the front wheel & attach/straighten the bars. Piece of piss.

I'd avoid Halfords. However, if you do get a bike from there make sure they've stuck it together properly

As Malaboob says just go to your local shop, if nothing else it'll give you an idea of what you're looking for & don't worry about making an arse of yourself I still do it regularly despite having played with bikes forever... and the fucking kids at the skatepark take the piss out me & my "old school" BMX*
*Everything's superthin & ultralight now AKA flimsy, shite & expensive.

PS. A BMX or 24" cruiser doesn't make a great bike for going any kind of distance due to the lack of gears & in the case of the BMX no comfort. Having said that I've done a 50+ mile journey on the BMX & regularly go to Glesga & back on the cruiser. Meanwhile my big comfy thing with the 3-speed hub just sits in my livingroom making it look awesome

I guess local store is the best bet. Thanks guys. I'll just turn up and pretend to be slightly monged.

I can't believe I'm considering giving up my car for this.

More fun than a car though since you can fly down/off steps like a 2-wheeled Michael Caine and all you'll get from the po-po is a wee tut/sigh or maybe a "Are you no a bit auld for that, sunshine?" AND you can ride it around half-pished as long as you're not dangerous/wobbly

Fit the brake cables, tension the brakes, fit the seat post, adjust, fit the front wheel, tension the chain at the back ETC.

I got my Kuwahara last summer and it needed quite extensive assembly. And that was a BMX. Mountain bikes I have had online have usually needed gear adjustments and so forth.

At least with Halfrauds or similar if something comes loose and you fall on your face* they are responsible.

* Which is exactly what happened to me when I was 15. I got a mountain bike (Saracen) and on the ride home I turned to steer left. Sadly the stem was loose and although the handlebars were pointed left the front wheel wasn't. I crashed into the back of a bus bending the forks and cutting myself up pretty bad. Funnily enough when I returned my £400 Saracen I rode out on a £900 Saracen that had been built by the manager.

Stop buying your bikes off strange Chinese men on ebay then
Out of the last 4 bikes I've bought only one needed fully assembled & that one came in bits from a handful of different shops.

...but anyway, if you'd bothered to read the rest of it you'd see that I recommended a local bike shop.

I got mine from one of the biggest BMX shops in the UK. That's just how they come man.

The handlebars are not fitted to the stem, they're cable tied to the frame sideways. The front wheel is also cable tied to the frame and so on.

And that's been with every single BMX I have ever bought (ranging from Haro, to Standard, Basic Bykes Hoffman, Schwinn, ETC) and every one I built when I worked in a bike shop.

Bikes are cheaper online sure, but then they're literally ordered from the distro and sent onto you or in some cases sent directly from the distro.

At least by paying more in a shop you have it all built for you and you can hold some one responsible. And I would imagine with the new health and safety laws the bikes would be built by professionals as opposed to some spotty twat on min wage who really can't be fucked to care about people's personal safety.

You could fill this thread with nonsense while playing the anecdote game and mentioning at least one bike company that sells their bikes as frames only (meaning that unless your name is Mr. fucking Majeika there's not a chance in hell you'd be able to ride it fresh out the box) or you could just accept that you're wrong.

So because you've found that Evans build them before shipping that means that every one does?

Stop being such a pedantic cunt.

Yes. That's what I said.

PPPS if you bothered to look you would see that most of them don't.

The ones that do charge you for the service meaning it's still better to go out and you know? actually fucking sit on it and ride it to make sure it suits you.

It's also a good idea given that things are built like shit now (Taiwan on bikes) and if anything goes wrong you will be looking at large postal fees to get it back for repair.

So hey, if I'm wrong then so be it.

EBay can be really good for high end second hand bikes in that sort of price range.

So we're agreed that you're the belm merchant of terrible reading comprehension & crap reasoning then?

o/

My bike came part-assembled after ordering it online, but only for efficient shipping. The handlebars, peddles and front wheel were off, and a doddle to fit.

If you need a hand putting stuff together, give me a shout. Although I doubt you will. I think Bik bought a bike on line from the shop near me, and had little to no trouble with it. The only tricky things on pushbikes are crank removal and the star fangled nuts used on aheadsets.

If you need any tools, they are fairly cheap.

See, I don't want to do any maintenance with it. It will be a strictly A to B machine. I'm not going to suddenly start showing it love and wanting to go out riding around the countryside or anything.

I bought a bike from Halfords.

It has a bell that goes *DING*

I bought a cheap second-hand bike for about £60 off my local gumtree for the sole purpose of going to work. All I've ever had invest with it was buy LED lights for about a tenner or so and new brake pads for a fiver off ebay after a year.

Two years later, it's a bit squeaky and totally filthy but it still takes me to work every morning!

Whatever you say cunt.

If you need to fit the pedals, remember the left one has a reversed thread. Eh, Mali?

Double post.

Shh! I think I got away with that one.

Now now. I know you're a bit... slow, but is there really any need to resort to that kind of language?

Yes cunt there is.

Howay lads! Stop the fighting.

So if I respond to a pisstaking cunt it's fighting, yet if I put up with cunts like that continually goading me and taking the fucking piss it's what?

Answers on a postcard please, because I'm tired of cunts.

Try being righter.

Try not being a cunt !

But teh Internets r SRS BSNS!!!1!1!

I think you're both cunts

Get a helmet, too. And a pair of gloves.

Lights.

Oxford plods tried a scheme where if they nabbed people without lights, they could get the fine repaid if they brought in a receipt to show they'd bought some. Apparently, people started gaming the system and returning the lights to the shop immediately afterwards.

EDIT Ah, here's the story

Lots of places sell the bikes in peices, lots of places sell them made up.

If you buy it online and it's in peices, then take it to the bike shop and ask them to put it together (I did that and it cost something like £30 for them to do 2 bikes)

Best of both worlds then see.

Malc

Well see that's what I was trying to say. I could of course list plenty of places that send bikes in literal pieces but I couldn't be assed. Personally I don't find it good to pick at people with mental illnesses in some cunty point scoring game, but whatever floats your boat I guess. How I ended up wrong over offering my opinion seems a bit of a mystery. Still, nevermind. New years resolution was to ignore cunts so I've begun making a list. I'm growing sick of coming here to have the piss ripped out of me by supposed caring and intelligent people. Must make them feel real good about themselves to take the piss out of some one with mental problems.

Mind you it's kinda funny because I've begun to notice a pattern. Usually those who take the piss out of me or continually go around being spiteful toward me tend to end up having problems of their own. Which would make sense, because it's really fucking easy to take aggression out on others when you're feeling shitty.

My point of course (because even though I made mine first and then got parrotted before being called wrong aswell as slow and anything else) is that if the O.P has absolutely no idea of how to put a bike together (and from what I can gather he doesn't, wouldn't have made the thread otherwise) then it's absolutely pointless playing the fucking smartarse and telling him to get one in bits because 'it's only a couple of pedals etc'. That may be so for some one who knows what they're doing, but it's fucking bummy advice to some one who doesn't. Numerous times I have given people advice on buying computers (whole ones) because at times it's a bit, how do you say? 'up your own arse' to expect them to take a large pile of parts and put it all together and get it working without any experience.

Still, I suppose we could always change the forum name to "besmartarsestoeachotheraslongasitsnoteachotherapartfromjohncoffey". Has a certain ring to it.

Get over it or fuck off, for God's sake.

Infact I think I will do that. Thanks for the advice.

And maybe if every one else who came here that doesn't sit in the wank circle does the same then this place will be what it pretends not to be.

Cheers.

To be honest he did have a point.

When I was looking online last year, most of the places online were showing as shipping it in parts.

Obviously some ship whole, but some places don't.

I still think my suggestion is best though

Malc

Wasn't debating that.

Ach, if you don't like folk sniping at you then don't paint a target on your big shiny heid.... & don't play the innocent victim, you're not above preying on people's weaknesses yourself


That aside, if you'd read the rest of my first post instead of the first sentence you'd have saved yourself a load of hassle. Instead you started a pointless argument with someone with a twisted sense of humour on a slow day & then rose to some pretty fucking obvious trolling

Just a quick question - since when did "fucking obvious trolling" become acceptable here? It's not always obvious to the person being trolled, because at the time they're wound up. It needs to stop. Obvious or not, it's still trolling and totally not what this place is supposed to be about.

And JC, please don't fuck off.




To be fair mate, he's trolled by people constantly. I'm not surprised he's finding it difficult to get over. This is supposed to be about buying a fucking bicycle, ferchrissakes.

In general we (as a forum) wind each other up on a regular basis.

I wind up my nearest & dearest on a regular basis, so why would I behave any different here?


However, you'll notice that I only started trolling JC after he'd called me a cunt, but I'm guessing that was fine

FFS, Beex.

Wullie you've derailed my thread with your trolling.

JC you're not the only one with a mental illness so stop using it as a crutch to hide your opinions behind.

*DING*

If it's just going to be used for commuting and suchlike, I'd recommend getting a cheap secondhand one. That way, if it gets stolen you won't feel too out of pocket. My lights and lock cost me about twice the cost of what I paid for mine - I'd rather the ne'erdowells took the bike!

Yes, this is a good idea.

Also, mountain bikes are not ideal for purely road-based riding. Bit too much friction on the fat tyres. You might want to consider an Urban Bike

See here: http://www.stanleyfearns.co.uk/hybrid.html

Edit: Obviously they're out of your budget range, but they'll give an idea of the shape you'll need.

SLICK TYRES!