Originally Posted by rekmeyata

Most 5 year old used bikes are going to be low quality bikes in the price range he's looking at when they were new and thus, believe it or not, will not be as reliable nor as easy to fix as a vintage bike. New advancements do no automatically mean better reliability, in fact low end bikes with those new advancements can be quite a headache.

And a 1 1/8th fork and stem means nothing, pros raced for many more years on 1" then so far ever on on 1 1/8th, and 1" stems and forks are still being built to this day including very expensive custom bikes, so there is no difference other that the right of some to say: "look at me, I got something modern".

More gears advantage is also argumentative, the only thing more gears do is enable a person to shift more to stay within a defined RPM range which wears out the cables, chain, and gears faster due to all the shifting, and added wear due to thinner gears and chains from the vintage days. Staying within one's RPM is great for the rider who wants to be performance orientated, but for the everyday rider it's not necessary, and again pros rode on 5, 6, and 7 speed gears for a very long time climbing mountains and never thought about it. Also no matter how many gears you have your first gear and last gear is the same ratio as lessor geared bikes, you just have more gears to chose from in between.

Also the comment about 3 speeds are great for cruising around for a couple of miles, is not true, Europeans and English countries use to do loaded tour on nothing but 3 speed bikes! Including climbing mountains with this stuff, don't ask me how, those old timers were stout, today we're a bunch of weenies by comparison. Now a Walmart type of bike is good for only a couple of miles a few times a week and those have more gears than a 3 speed. I use to have a 3 speed when I was a kid and a friend and I rode 20 miles and more one way to other towns and then rode back, we use to take those 3 speed bikes all over the place, they're extremely reliable.