Road Cycling - buying a new high-end bike just seems like an impossible mountain of a task

i'm thinking about buying a new racing bike next spring.

i'm not sold on a material yet, but looking at what's out there, it'll probably be monocoque carbon fiber, possibly ti or possibly a combination of carbon with ti or al.

i think i know a lot more about bikes than your average guy, but even living in NYC and having access to 5 or 6 top bike shops with decent inventories, i fear it's going to be impossible to make an informed decision.

i'm wide open right now, considering pinarello, colnago, trek, lightspeed, bmc, look, opera, cervelo, cannondale, lemond, merckx and others, but even the best of shops is only likely to have a handful of these frames on hand, probably not built up, and probably only one or two in my size.

forget about comparing different models within a range, and no shop in their right mind would order and build up both merckx team sc and majestic models, each in 58 and 59, just so i could try them out and maybe buy one.

i've seen so many cases of "we don't have it in a 58, but ride the 60 and if it feels good and you want to buy it, we'll order the 58 for you" or "we have another model in a 58, ride that and if the fit feels ok, we'll order the one you want."

i feel like i'm going to have to just try as many bikes as i can, read as much as i can find on each one, and buy the one i'm happiest with, but if i'm going to blow six thousand bucks on a bicycle here, i kind of feel like that method is selling myself short.

what's a guy to do? tour of east coast bike shops?

Curious - what are you going to use the bike for? ie - what kind of rides, what distances, how long do you want to have the bike, etc.

i went through the same thought process when buying my most recent bike. i wasn't
quite in the same price range, but i was looking to test ride high-end frames in a 60cm
size. there were few of those in my area even when going on a big bike-shop tour.

i wish that i had an answer, but i eventually took a small leap of faith in buying
my bike. i did not get to test ride the frame in my size, but i was able to ride one
a few cm's smaller. in the end, i am happy with my bike though.

i'm going to use it for racing and training.

how long do i want to have it is a hard question to answer. as long as it lasts and is doing good things for me, i suppose. i'm certainly not in a position to blow that kind of money on a bike regularly, but i've spent very relatively little money on road bikes in my life. thanks to connections, teams and sponsorships, i've got very little money in the custom steel serotta i've been riding and racing for over 5 years now. (which i love to death and would be relagated to a training, club and recreational ride bike.)

i also would not object to buying lightly used, but that's even harder to do, unless you get really lucky.

This is one reason why I won't buy new. It's impossible to make real comparisons and an informed decision without taking some sort of leap of faith. My current project - an '04 Lemond Tete de Course (carbon/Ti combo) was purchased without any experience on the frame whatsoever for the following reasons;

-It fit - I'm very familiar with the Lemond geometry.
-It was the combination of materials I wanted.
-It was a deal I couldn't pass up.

The thinking is, even if I hate it after finally getting it finished 4-6 months from now, I can recoup a huge portion (if not all) of my capital investment and start over. Fortunately, having done this 4 times, I don't think that'll be the case.

55/Rad

makes sense... if i could get a great deal on a bike that i *think* is going to work out well, i'd certainly take the chance if i could turn it over and not take a loss.

and buying another custom frame is certainly an attractive option, but not if i want a full carbon frame.

the tele de course is a great looking bike. i spent about an hour configuring one on the lemond site the other day.

here is what i did... and it worked very well for me. i settled on a frame type and geometry first. i went to most every shop in seattle and portland and rode as MANY bikes as i could... steel, al, ti, carbon... road and cyclocross.

it became clear that i wanted a high-end steel frame with a specific geometry, in a specific budget range, with the best component group i could find.

i then searched every bike shop and online classified section i could find for a bike that would meet those reqs. KNOWING that i would never find a "perfect" bike.

i ended up buying used... a gorgeous custom columbus/genius steel frame campy chorus/record group, campy proton wheels, richey wcs stem/bars/post... all for less than 1K. most incredible ride.

)( s

You're always going to run into this problem, especially with the high end foreign stuff, it's just cost prohibitive to keep that many frames in stock when they don't move. However here are a few tips;

1. You may have already done this, but find the bike shops in the nicest parts of town, they are most likely going to have the nicest stuff and your chances of hitting in your size is more likely to happen.
2. The phone is your friend, call them and ask what they have in stock in your size.
3. Riding a bike a size above or below will give you a pretty good idea about how the bike rides, it's obviously not ideal, but it's better than nothing. Riding a different model may or may not help, as an example with Trek, riding a 5200 will give you a good idea of what a 5500 rides like, ditto for quite a few Cannondales (which use the same frames between 2 or 3 models with different component groups).

Andrew

Brunning ,

take a trip to jersey to see Mike @ Cyclesport in Park Ridge N.J. . Give him a call and tell him Calfee Bob sent you , he's a great guy and a top bike fitter . Here is a link to his website ! (http://cyclesportonline.com/site/intro.cfm)

Bob