Big Box Store story.
 

About 3 years ago I was in Target and saw a TriAx road bike clearanced to $70. It was crimson and silver, a pretty bike, so I took a chance and bought the thing-my first road bike. It was fast, comfortable, and fun to ride.

After about 500 or so miles I replaced the original tires with some Gatorskins. After only 5000 miles the hub developed problems and the rear bearings were shot. So I ponied up $500 for a Specialized Sirrus, nice bike. Very happy, but after 500 or so miles I upgraded the tires to Armadillos.

But my TriAx was laying around with the good tires on it, and I did miss a pure road bike.Plus it's always good to have a not-so-expensive bike to ride/leave in certain areas. So I took it up to my LBS, and found a had to pay the sum of $23 to get it back right! After a year of riding the Specialized, I find the TriAx to be comfortable, fast, fun to ride and it's still pretty. I plan to put several thousand more miles on it. Boy did I get taken!

You have the ability to put the repair price in a different perspective than most TriAx owners:

You: "It only cost $23 to fix it and now I can ride my bike again"
Them: "$23 just to fix the rear wheel? That's a third of what I paid for the whole bike brand new!"

Which is why big-box-bikes are typically seen as disposable items as opposed to more expensive LBS bikes, where the same $23 repair would be a lower percentage of the initial purchase price. 5000 miles is a good lifespan before needing a repair, so I'd say you got your money's worth from it.

Curiously enough, ToysRUs were selling some 650c wheel Triax bikes for £70 apiece, a couple of years ago, so we bought 4 for the Kids Club. Yes, they're rather heavy, have 48(!) spoke wheels, but they've introduced quite a few of the youngster to roadbike riding and they've stood up to some clumsy handling and haven't needed much tweaking.

Not all Big Box store bikes are bad.

Oh, and one of the dads bought his son one as a cheap way into circuit racing (9 years old at the time). A month or so back, some thieving piece of diseased scrotal tissue broke into his garden shed and nicked it. The insurance are paying out £250 as replacement value :thumb:

After my BMX racing days* I got my first 10spd from Sears, and it performed admirably for what it was: A department store bicycle. It was heavy, but aside from some chain oil and a spring tune up for the brakes and derailleurs that bike never needed a thing. I rode that Free Spirit until I was tall enough for a hand-me-down Fuji sport touring from my dad.

* I raced BMX on a department store bike, too; a Murray X-24 :)

It's been said many times before, and proven by you... there is really nothing wrong with big box bikes. They are sold in volume which helps keep prices low. The caveat is you need to know how to wrench since the whole bike should get a good going over after purchased due to not knowing what monkey put it together. Many of the components can be considered disposable, but seriously... how many box store bike buyers are putting any where close to 5000 miles on them? 1%?

Might want to check. A LOT of the smaller ones got recalled for safety issues. Here's one of them : http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/prhtml07/07142.html

Been saying this for years... though some of the bikes are garbage, the better ones are perfectly ridable and serviceable, just heavy.

You have to be careful with stuff like that, always. Though, as a general rule, I stay away from BigBox store suspension bikes... I prefer a good hardtail MTB anyway.

EDIT: I almost forgot to mention, I just passed 1000 miles on a Wal-mart aluminum MTB, so far so good. I'll just upgrade bits as they give out.

There's a BF member who put an insane amount of mileage on a WalMart bike. (might have been cigtech?) He had upgraded/replaced worn parts, but in general the bike held up well IIRC.

The Triax obviously sucks. You should box it up and send it to me immediately. Though the shipping would cost half as much as the bike. Is that a bad thing?

Manufacturer: Shun Lu Bicycle Company, of Guangdong, China

All our bikes are checked regularly and so far no probs. They are, in any case, road bikes and not the model recalled. I suspect the cheap full sus bikes shown have been abused by their young owners because they are mountain bikes! Ho ho.