Originally Posted by
rms13
I bought my wife a Windsor Wellington 3.0 to try to get her into biking. Perfectly acceptable for a beginner. For $400 you get a carbon fork and Sora shifters/derailleurs. Crank is a cheap triple, brakes are no name and even though it's alum/carbon it's heavier than my steel bike ....but perfectly good for a beginner.
But if you are a beginner be prepared to learn. Assembling the bike is easy but you will need to learn to adjust derailleurs to get good reliable shifting.
We both are new in this end of cycling. But my dad is quite the DIY-er when it comes to the house/cars.
Originally Posted by
Kopsis
I don't mean for this to sound negative, but based on your questions, you may not have the experience to assemble and tune a low-end BD bike. My experience with BD (and I've had three different BD bikes at three different price points) is that the lowest priced bikes require the most mechanical skill to get working well. Loose tolerances on the low-end components can stack up to require much more precise tuning in order to make it all work right. You'll also need to be prepared to remove and properly grease the headset bearings, true the wheels (possibly going as far as retensioning all the spokes to get the spoke tension evened out from the sloppy machine build), and possibly adjust/service the hub bearings. All of these things can be learned, but if you think assembly is "mount the handlebars and pedals", you may not have a good experience. And if you need to enlist the services of your LBS, you'll end up paying more than you would for a comparable low-end bike from a bike shop.
Case in point, my wife's Gravity CX developed a notchy feeling in the steering within the first 100 miles. When I took it apart I found that top headset crown race actually had a ragged edge on the narrow end of the cone that the bearings were hanging up on. 15 minutes of very careful work with a grinder and flat file cleaned it right up, but how many non-mechanics would have known what to fix or how to fix it?
I think BD offers some fine products, and for people with the right mechanical experience they can be an excellent value. But at the under $400 price point (on geared bikes), you may be better off looking for something used with older but higher quality components.
Makes sense. We may be able to still pull this off, with the internet maybe. I think your description is what we were expecting as it says the bikes come 90% assembled.
Originally Posted by
dtrain
...yeah, I wouldn't write off the Pilot 1.2 that quickly.
I'll still keep this in mind. The Giant was a hybrid and I think my dad is now looking for drop bars instead.