Originally Posted by GetUpnGo

FWIW, I agree with you here, I get the same comments all the time on my bike.

So i just looked at the coda femme and i have a couple of questions for you

1. You want 36 hole schrader rims. How much does your friend weigh? will you be loading up this bike? A female would have to be extrememly overweight to necessitate 36 hole rims. Regarding schrader vs presta I can see how presta valves would annoy or confuse someone new to cycling however for $1 you can simply leave your presta valve screwed open and screw on a schrader adaptor. In my experience, finding 36 hole wheelsets stock is somewhat tough most people get them custom built which adds significant cost. Nashbar.com has a set of vuelta corsa HD wheels that are 36 holes and get great reviews from clydes. they are pretty darn heavy but if you want durable it's a cheap option. I am 6'3 and a strong and athletic 250lbs who rides aggressively. I did have cracking at the spoke holes on my stock "doublewall rims" on my entry level giant rapid after 8 months of use. it was replaced under warranty and the consensus was it was as much the torque that i put on pedaling as much as my weight that caused the problem. Other than that, I never broke a spoke and the wheels were always true. Your best bet is to keep the stock wheels and replace at the first sign of issues.

2. The jamis you mentioned already has "mountain" gearing at 48/38/28. How low are you trying to go? 42/32/22? Something to consider is keeping the stock crank and when you upgrade the gripshifts go from 8 speed to 9 speed and get a casette with a 34 tooth cog. thats a pretty darn low gear. I suppose you can probably get an 8 speed with a 34 tooth cog but it will probably be a megarange that will jump from 24-34 which isn't too desireable in my opinion.

3. Why do you think you need to change the deraileurs? That rear dearaileur spec is for a 34 tooth rear cog and 42 tooth chainwrap capacity and shimano is always conservative with those ratings. You shouldn't need a deraileur change at all. IF you do go from a 48/38/28 crank to a 42/32/22 you probably won't need to change the FD either but you will need it repositioned lower. this can be done quite cheap and easy.

4. Saddle. Saddles are interesting. If your friend hasn't ridden a bike in a long time, chances are the first couple weeks her butt is gonna hurt no matter what so you may want to wait a bit. otherwise, changing a saddle is really something you should be able to change out yourself but if not, I imagine a bike shop would take 5 minutes and do it for you for free.

5. Tires Tires are easy enough, my recommendation to you would be to change them yourself for a couple of reasons. If you do enough riding it's only a matter of time before you have a flat on the road and need to do a tire change. changing the tires yourself will give you the opportunity to learn and teach your friend how to do it. regarding tires, I have some nice nashbar streetwise 700x35 road tires that are very light for their size and handle all the bumps great, I love them on my commuter.

It would be more cost effective for you to buy the whole jamis and just change out a few parts. building a bike from scratch takes more time because of all the little details you have to take care of like running all the cables, greasing everything up, etc. Also the sum of all the parts will probably add up to at least as much as the jamis if not more and then you are still paying labor to complete the build.