First road bike
 

I bought this bike today from a buddy that road it only once, and decided it wasn't for him. I paid $150 for it. It's my first road bike, and plan on riding 4-5 times a week around 10 miles each time and work my way up.

Did I get a good deal?

http://www.walmart.com/catalog/produ...uct_id=4990075

Also, is there anything I should do before I start putting a lot of miles on it?

Btw, I realize it's an "xmart" bike, all I wanted was a cheap road bike I can ride for a while to see if I want to stay with it. If I stick with it I'll get a better bike.

But please don't flame me for riding this bike. Like I said if there are some inexpensive upgrades I can do to, feel free to chime in.

Thanks in advance.

Seems like a decent deal so long as the bike fits you good. The only thing I can recommend is make sure everything is tuned correctly on the bike.

You know, I saw this bike at Wal-Mart a few weeks back. I pulled it down off the shelf and gave it a good once-over and I do remember thinking a few things to myself that would probably be of use to you, but I can't for the life of me remember what those things were. I do remember that it's a nice step up from the $150-ish "GMC Denali" model.

I may be wrong but if memory serves me correctly, your bike may have a cheap freewheel rear hub, which means you could break or bend the rear axle (wheel) if you're heavy and/or ride it a lot. Fixing that is as simple as buying a cassette (the gears on the back) and a rear wheel designed for the cassette if the original rear wheel starts having problems.

Best of luck, and keep on riding!

Pump the tires up every time before you ride.

Great looking bike. Remove the kick stand.
Ad toe clips and straps.
Helmet and gloves and Ride Ride.

Thanks for all the input. I'm going to take it down to my lbs and have them look it over.

Oh 10 Wheels I see your in league City.

Houston here :thumb:

Good luck with the new bike. As you realized, some people have the perception that BF is not too friendly towards "xmart" bikes; that's a shame, because we should really be friendly and helpful to all cyclists.

If you're interested, there is an EPIC thread somewhere in which a member named Cigtech posts about his experience on one of these bikes. Basically, he rode it at 30 MPH for 75 miles per day, and it was awesome, or something like that.

EDIT:
Here's the link
http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread.php?t=237231
this thing kind of got out of hand, but maybe someone else's experience may be of interest.

I didin't own this version but the lower end denali but I think if I were you, I would replace the the rim tape so that you don't get unexpected flats...

I don't mean to detract from the OP thread but is there any reason you're recommend ditching the kick stand?

probably because he is a race weenie... it seems that the current thought is that a kickstand is useless weight that will slow you down and will only postpone a fall not prevent it...

I, myself, have found a kickstand to be useful for my commuter...

I've read and re-read that thread, and I've finally come to the conclusion that the CigTech Denali thread is the absolute best troll I have ever seen on any message board. Absolutely masterful. He had admirers, defenders, detractors, haters, and people who just thought the whole thing was funny. He kept it going for *months*. And he left little bread crumbs that would clue you in to the fact that the whole thing was a joke, but you had to pay attention. The best part was that he'd say something totally nuts, people would start to think it was fake, but he'd defend all the crazy stuff very matter-of-factly that made you believe the guy.

Sorry to go way off-topic, but reading that entire thread is a very good way to spend half an hour. Just don't drink any coffee unless you want it on your monitor.

I'd say $150 is a great price to pay for an interim road bike to see how you like road bikes, especially if you're going into it with the idea that you'll get a better bike if you like it.

I just love the irony of a bike named after a huge SUV. Imagine the looks you'll get when you tell people, "I save X dollars a month on gas since I got my GMC Yukon."

I spent a few minutes re-reading it, and I honestly think Cigtech was a well-intentioned guy who was a little bit of a fish-out-of-water posting in the Road Cycling forum. I think his mistaken sense of speed just added to the crazyness, because every time he spoke about how fast he could ride ("Its flat in florida," etc.), people would kind of get fixated on how unrealistic it was.

I think it was just someone who was willing to keep a close eye on his walmart bike and keep it together. (Although didn't his read derailleur or his rear wheel fall off eventually?)

Now, I *do* believe he really bought a Walmart Denali and rode it. But I also think he embellished the hell out of it because it made everything so hilarious.

That's the beauty of the thread, it was so on the border of being unable to tell if it was a troll. Do recall that he claimed he calibrated his computer on a track and vs. a car - there's no way he was off by like a factor of 2. He was absolutely adamant about this.

It was little things that made it awesome - the fantastic speeds, when he said (dead serious) that he wanted to get in the race to replace Lance, the collision with a car where he bounced off the hood and back on to his still rolling bike, etc. There were a few other things too that were absolutely hilarious.

The funny thing is I'm still not 100% sure he's a troll. But if he's not, he should be, because that thread was fantastic. Either way the guy is a freaking hero.

Probably the same reason he recommended a helmet. :p

Make sure the hubs have grease in them. I bought the cheap schwinn varsity when I was visiting my family at christmas time. All the bearings were dry, but once I greased everything and adjusted the derailers it rode good. I think my brother is still using it to train for his first triatholon.

Doing 100 miles a week is a bit much if you're just starting.

Since this thread is already going down this rabbit hole.... I don't even believe he bought it. Check out the photos on his first post. Now compare them to what's on the Walmart site right now (http://www.walmart.com/catalog/produ...uct_id=3663046). Granted they aren't the same photos, but they are photos of the same parts of the bike, and two years have passed which might be enough time for Walmart to update their photos.

Given the photos on the Walmart site and a copy of Photoshop, it wouldn't be hard to put that bike in your kitchen. As an experiment, I spent about five minutes with the Paint program the comes with Windows (I don't have Photoshop), and made this picture of the Denali in Redwoods State Park.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3279/...a65661e8d6.jpg

Of course this isn't nearly as good as CigTech's pictures, but I hardly spent any time on it and didn't have good software. The main reason my picture is so obviously fake is because the background wasn't all exactly the same shade of white when I combined the pictures, so the anti-liasing shows around the bike. Photoshop could not only fix that for me, it could have the bike cast shadows. My other big problem is that I didn't get the bike picture quite to scale.

Whats that saying something about hell in a hand bag

Anyway.. OP, that seems like a good bike to begin with especially for the price. If you stick with it believe me that bike will find a use or a home if you decide to upgrade. You might want to look at the "bikes under $750" to get an idea for what you might want if the bug bites you so to speak. I just did a quick little mash up around town on my new Lemond Etape for no other reason than to ride / excercise after work, and I'm going to follow with some back excercises in the house with weights in a few. I'm hoping I can get my regular bike ride routine up intense enough to go back to bulking so I can properly diet for lifting.

To reiterate what others have said, keeping the tires inflated properly is one thing. Get a floor pump and pump your tires before every ride. Takes only a couple of minutes and keeping the pressure up will reduce the incidence of pinch flats as well as reducing rolling resistance.

Also keep that chain clean and lubed. It will make a major difference in how well the bike shifts and how quiet you drivetrain is.