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Is building a bike cheaper than just buying the bike straight uP?

Old 07-09-04, 02:09 AM
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Is building a bike cheaper than just buying the bike straight uP?

Is buying the parts and frame and assembling it ur self cheaper than buying a new bike? cuase i dotn want to spend alot of money but i want to build my own bike.... or would it just be cheaper if i just went out and bought my self a bike?
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Old 07-09-04, 02:22 AM
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Buying a full bike is cheaper than buying a frame and all the parts seerately. That's one of the reason bikes are sold built. But the problem with buying a full bike is that you don't get to have the fun of spec'ing it yourself.
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Old 07-09-04, 04:52 AM
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if you buy really carefully on ebay then there is not much difference between the price you will pay for a new bike and the price for the parts. What you can't of course do is just go in the LBS and buy the parts there and build up the bike that way. That's just crazy and the bike will probably cost double the final value. I built up a nice MTB using mainly (new Deore and no-name frame) bits from ebay and kept the cost down to about 750 euros. I guess if I had bought the bike new then it would be worth a bit more than that but then I had to buy some special tools (headset etc) so there was no real gain financially. You could avoid this by getting the LBS to do some of the assembly but I wanted to do everything myself.

Of course the gain to myself in terms of personal satisfaction of riding something that I planned and built and also the knowledge i gained cannot be measured.

Just be careful if you are a tight budget to factor in the costs for all the little odd and ends (e.g. cables, inner tube, seat post, saddle, grips, decals, lights, bell, reflectors,chain-stay cover..etc). It is surprising how they all add up.
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Old 07-09-04, 09:58 AM
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It's definitely more expensive to build.I've built 1 mt bike and a road bike for me and my wife.But you get what you want when you build and dont need to upgrade.Its a blast spec'ing and building.Plus you learn a lot more while building yourself(i'm even in the middle of building the wheelset for mine for the first time).And if you already have a bike you can take your time building the new one(kinda like making payments)
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Old 07-09-04, 10:15 AM
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It's a lot more expensive to build yourself. But look at it this way..... most of us will eventually end up swapping/upgrading parts and components on a fully assembled bike anyway so it may be a good idea to spec what you want and build yourself to begin with.
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Old 07-09-04, 10:50 AM
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Originally Posted by aznboi133
Is buying the parts and frame and assembling it ur self cheaper than buying a new bike? cuase i dotn want to spend alot of money but i want to build my own bike.... or would it just be cheaper if i just went out and bought my self a bike?
The cost of building anything is only part of the equation.
When you build (or customize to your tastes) a bike , car,
house or whatever the true reward is that you'll (if you do
it right) wind up with something that in all sense of the
word is "yours" your way. That can not be figured in dollars.

I,also, want to build "my own" bike after customizing my
daily ride. In the process of changing my daily ride I
found several features that I could only get by building
from the ground up. So I'm in the process of scratching that
itch now by looking for the components to build "my" bike.
I'm also having a ball in the "hunt" to find all the pieces.
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Old 07-09-04, 05:28 PM
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i guess i might either buy myself a bike or build it off ebay :-P but i want a full suspension and some of those rear shox and gadgets are confusing....
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Old 07-09-04, 11:43 PM
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Do you need full suspension? What kind of riding do you do,what kind of terrain?
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Old 07-11-04, 08:10 PM
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In a word... NO

Been there, done that.... Twice !
 

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