Thanks for the info. It's more of a daydream idea I think. My current bike is aluminum, coming up on tens years old. If the frame cracks, I'm stuck for transportation that way, so I'd want a new bike asap. That would be the giant time crunch. When I thought of that I wondering what building a bike from scratch would involve. Sounds too expensive though, plus a lot of time, esp. for me.


If you didn't build a bike yourself, and wanted to avoid your local bike shop, what other options are available? I would imagine you can just order a whole bike online now, right? If I knew my frame size... Is that good enough? I already know what it's used for, how I'd ride it, details like wanting a basket in front which eliminates a fork/shocks, etc. This is the same question as for building a bike -- How do you know it fits/is a good match without actually riding it first? The easy answer is to go find one and physically try it out, but it must be possible to figure it out without doing that, right? What factors come into play? Is it just the frame size?