Originally Posted by
Abneycat
And then there's the camp of cheap bicycles which attempt to imitate their far more expensive, far more sophisticated boutique brethren. Occasionally, we get donated some real nightmares - full suspension bikes with faulty, play ridden linkages, disk brakes with flimsy, poorly performing components, soft, poor metals being used in high stress applications (we have a pile of cheap forks with play in the stanchions and lowers that grows and grows).. I could go on.
Bicycles can be built reliable, cheap. And those bicycles can be put to good use, its just a matter of sorting out good use of a small budget to build a modest bike, from a flashy waste of metal.
You are very very right. Suspension on bikes does not belong in a department store. I'd rather people be safe and grinding every component than have something that looks snazzy and get injured.
I always find it humorous when people say that their bike is better because is has all kinds of crazy suspension and stuff which then turns to worry when they mention jumping off stuff. I have seen a FS Wal-Mart bike pretty much collapse after the rider took it off three very shallow (enough so that I can ride, not hop, up them easily) which was probably 2 feet - the same two feet that I would feel infinitely more comfortable riding my roadies off of than his bike.
Frankly, I don't see, besides that snazziness factor, why department stores don't just churn out single speeds. After all, the gears generally don't work anyways and it seems nowadays that single speed commuting is becoming popular.