Originally Posted by
dabac
I look at cost of repair(at lbs) vs cost of purchase(at store). The sooner the cost of a repair begins to approach a significant part of the purchase price, the more likely it is that it's a BSO.
A "rea"l bike should make financial sense to repair, beyond flats and brake/derailer tuning.
Take a department/web store bike for 100-something USD, not really a lot of repairs that you can reasonably have done on one of those.
Heck, even the cost of having tubes+tires replaced can easily be 1/3-1/2 the cost of purchase.
Or let's say that the crummy sus fork begins to squeal intolerably, and you can't stand to wait until it's rusted solid.
Even with the cheapest noname replacement fork Ebay have to offer, with work, you're still looking at half the purchase price or more to have it replaced.
Originally Posted by
UberGeek
Not a good rule of thumb.
If you pay $3000 for a bike, and it requires tube and tire replacement (Hypothetical situation), and you put $100 in the bike for repairs; thus far, the total cost of the bike if $3100.
If you pay $100 for a bike, and it requires the same; thus far the total cost of the bike is $200.
You are still ahead with the purported "BSO". It's like saying you shouldn't do a $1000 dollar repair to a $500 dollar car; and instead buy a new car for $5000. It makes no sense.
I agree. I ride a bike that I picked up for $5. I've since spent close to a thousand dollars kitting it out the way I like. I know some people wouldn't see the sense in this, but in addition to my prefering the geometry and utility of a 20 year old full rigid MTB, I'd spend almost as much (if not exactly as much) replacing all the components of any brand new bike to suit me.
If I followed that rule of thumb, I might as well throw away the bike rather than change the first flat! It's value to me has virtually nothing to do with its cost (only if I had to replace it), for me the bicycle isn't an investment in the monetary sense.