BD is fine if you either have basic mechanical skills (to set everything up properly), or a LBS you can take it to and pay them to put it together and adjust properly. You'll still come out ahead if you do the latter.

The bad part about discovering that a BD bike frame is flawed in design is after you've purchased it, assembled it, and have ridden it. No amount of touch up paint could correct the flex issues in my particular BD bike frame, stem, and wheels, and total replacement would have been the only option.

Fortunately, my second BD bike(a mtb) had a robust frame, and I was able to replace the "too soft" front fork with a rigid version, saving the bike from the fate of collecting dust in the rafters.

So a fair assessment would be connected to mountain bikes, imho.

Take a Fantom 29 w/ disc and put it through the same single-trail attack you would say a Cannondale F4, or even Hardrock 29 disc. Have a solid mountain biker make 3 passes with each, and get his feedback.

I digress, it would be very interesting to see a BD.com bike put up against a boutique bike, but I don't think it would happen.

On the aside: I know the owner of bd.com was a regular contributor here for a long time, if he was still around maybe he could weigh in on his product?

I can not speak for him; but, I suspect that he got tired of the treatment he got here. He was not being treated as a legitimate member of the cycling community.

Yeah, I stay away from the sleazy companies that do that. There's this one fly-by-night company called Trek, which also pretends to have separate companies that build bikes called Gary Fisher and Lemond, but if you do a little looking you find that they're really all the same people.

Seriously, this has been a normal business practice for, oh, at least 120 years. It's been less noticeable in bikes, but more so in other products - read up on the history of Aeolian-American Corporation if you want to be enlightened about how long it's been going on, and how prevalent it is. It's typical for products in which tradition plays a strong role, and we cyclists have only recently (20 years or so) begun to put much thought into what's traditional, as aluminum and CF have overtaken steel as the prevalent frame material, TIG welding has replaced brazed lugs, and we've been presented with the ever-increasing numbers of gears in our indexed shifting systems.

Is it misleading? Perhaps, if you don't do some minor homework - but that's sort of what marketing is all about, anyway. As far as Surly making it clear that they are "part of QBP," they don't - they simply state that they sell through distributors (presumably they're referring to QBP) so there's no such thing as an "authorized Surly dealer." I'd hardly take that to mean that they're owned by, or manufactured for, QBP - and in fact, I question whether that is even the case.

Oh, and for the poster who claimed that they must be building junk because they don't warranty their frames for a lifetime: Surly warranties its frames for three years (compared with BD's one year) - does that mean that Surly is building junk, too?

Yes, a Fuji or a Trek was much better bike than Moto in every price catagory. Specifically the Jubile was saddled with the Huret Jubile, and crummy French cranks, weird threads and tubing sizes. Moto was one of the first big brands to go belly up. By then the Moto name was dirt, took 20 years before anyone would buy the name and use it on bikes.

Contrast Raleigh and Schwinn, both names have lived on in the US market for 70 and 100 years. Gitane was so bad nobody has bought that name yet....

1st page of the Trek site has a link to the "Gary Fisher Collection". How do you get more obvious than that? I think they've dropped the Lemond brand.

The BikesDirect site makes it look like they don't own any brands at all. They appear to be just a reseller giving you a great deal on a named brand bikes. Not sure why people have such a difficult time understanding the difference between that and what QBP does. QBP helped build the Surly brand.

BikesDirect sells unassembled complete bikes with more or less generic frames like the kind Nashbar sells. Nothing wrong with that. Nashbar doesn't pretend the frames are anything other than what they are. Why does BD?

You didn't try very hard.

Very simply, the Performance Titanium frame frequently goes on sale in the $700 range. It's well known that that's a Lynskey frame - even comes in a Lynskey box. Another $750 for a 6700 groupset from Ribble. That leaves you $500 +$70 in team dollars from Performance for misc parts and a set of wheels. Easily at the same price point or less, and you certainly can't claim your third world titanium frame is a Lynskey.

BD is good only for people that have a CC in hand and need instant gratification for shopping and/or have no clue how to truly build a bike. There's nothing they sell that can't be done at a cheaper price point.

LOL, you're starting to lose it, you call anyone who likes BD a "shill" as if BD is paying people to post (please learn the correct definition, you sound silly and un-educated). Pull the tin foil hat a little tighter over your ears, you're starting to lose control!

When I bought my Grand Jubilé it was far and away the best value I could find at the time in that spec range. That was 1978 in Winnipeg, and I did a lot of looking around.

Incorrect, by 1978 the Grand Jublilé had Suntour Cyclone derailleurs. And what specifically is wrong with the Huret Jubilé compared to its competition at the time?

At the time, what made these designs inferior to the Japanese? (BTW, my 78 has an SR crankset and Swiss BB threads).

I'll take exception to this post. I'm am not a shill for anyone, I wasn't paid to buy this frappin bike. I bought the BD bike and have stated the flaws I found with my bike such as the crappy saddle the out of true wheels and the like. I dare you find a touring bike for $599.00 no tax free shipping. If you have any mechanical ability at all its easy to put one together and thats what I did and after few miles took it to my LBS to have them deal with some issues. The wrench that worked on it took it out afterwards and when I went to pick it up he tells me its a sweet bike. I know this guy and he would BS me. So get off your high horse and stop giving us the know it all attitude. I've put together 6 bikes from parts and did a damn fine job with all of them.(ask the folks that bought them) I didn't have the time this year to screw with building out another bike. Not all of us can afford a custom made bike or even the LHT. I've yet to find these great deals on CL that I hear about all the time. Perhaps its cause I'm a pretty short guy and they just aren't out there. BD fills a niche very well and I will most likely buy my next bike from them.

Too funny, you still defending Betamax (cue the Betamax sub-thread)? If the French stuff was so good, how come it died in the marketplace? I sold Fuji and Trek against Schwinn, Raleigh and Motobecane in 1978, it was an easy job back then, like taking candy from a baby. You couldn't have looked very hard, the Asian Schwinn stuff was better too.

Answer the question. Don't wave your hands around and scream "look! Bigfoot!". Attempting to supply distraction is a pretty good sign you don't have an answer.

The reason Motobecane went out of business is because their products were overpriced and low quaility. Saddled with French manufacturing unions and French work attitudes, Moto was unable to survive the letdown of the first boom. French manufacturing's short-comings are no secret, Gitane and Motobecane let down the world for bikes, Renault and Poo-goat did it for cars, Mirage for areospace. Fuji, Trek and Schwinn started the end of Moto, USA Raleigh and new brands like Lotus killed off Moto. BD bought the Moto name for cheap because it was worthless thanks to all the low quality products from the 70's. Now, thanks to BD, it's a well thought of brand with great sales. I'd say BD has rehab'ed the Motobecane name quite nicely, people are paying stupid prices of the old French Motos now, a few years ago you couldn't give away them away. Sell while you can!

I think you need to reference the post I made that said that the minute you say anything bad about BD it's like a flock of seagulls on a french fry. My "high horse" is that what I stated in regard to pricing is 100% correct. Sorry that it hurts. Don't you just hate it when someone throws facts into a BD lovefest?

The part I really took exception to was the part about being percieved as a shill for BD. I wouldn't call this a lovefest

The threading seems "weird" now, but French threading on a French bike was hardly "weird" for the time. English threading became "standard" because that's what the Japanese decided to use. Kind of ironic. Stronglite is still a respected maker of cranksets and they're not exactly crummy.

Anyway, by the late 70's Motobecane was using fairly "standard" parts, one of the first French manufacturers to make the switch.

It died for probably a lot of the same reasons you don't see many US made bikes (or even clothes) anymore. Manufacturing in Asia became a legitimate and much cheaper option.

BD bought the name cheaply because no one was using it for bikes in the US. The company was bought out of bankruptcy in 1981 and still exists as MBK in France but they sell motor scooters. The old Motobecane sold motorcycles along with bikes.

Motobecane, Mercier, Peugeot and others made both high AND low end bikes. Motobecane had some tour winners and some highly sought after models. They didn't sell just low end junk like you're implying. You may not have liked what they sold, but to say it was all junk isn't true.

Further, to say that people are paying stupid prices for old French Motos now because BD has rehab'ed the name is just plain wrong. People pay stupid prices now for Peugeots too and that's a dead French brand that BD has not "rehab'ed". The prices paid are due to the renewed interest in vintage road bikes. Spend a little time in the Classic and Vintage forum if you haven't.

BD has capitalized on the fact that there's renewed interest in those old French brands. I think your historical view of Motobecane might be a little skewed since they were competing against the bikes you sold.

Jeez, this is typical of the worse type of BF posting. The guy said he'd heard wheel truing was a bit tricky and asked if it was true, and you basically accused him of being responsible for the decline of Western civilisation. Why so passive aggressive to an innocent question?

As has been said by others - Motobecane was a mixed bag and there was a lot of dreck pumped out, just like Peugeot and Raleigh and others at the time. European junk shops and markets are knee-deep in them.

To me, it's sort of surprising that BikesDirect bothered to buy the brand for the US: anyone who knows the brand will know bikes and most likely know that either they weren't that great or they collapsed and were brought back to life, and anyone why doesn't know the brand won't care.

Why not? If you look at it, the LBS mystique IS part of the downfall of civilization. Everyone runs there for everything, at least that's all you hear. Sure, I know a lot of people manage an awful lot for themselves... as they should. But what you hear, the most common line on bike forums is that the LBS is akin to a magic shop.
All good things flow from there and woe to anyone who thinks differently.

I'll step out from the wall and disagree. Admittedly I was a bit strenuous in doing so.
But its all good.

BD is probably OK, but I don't use them for the following reason.

#1 The LBS has what I want at a price I'm willing to pay
#2 If there is a problem there are people I can talk to directly instead of e-mail and phone calls.
#3 Their feedback on some of my questions has helped me avoid a couple of big mistakes
#4 they have given very good service when I've had a problem I couldn't fix myself.

What it seems to boil down to in my case is I like the face to face contact and am willing to pay a little extra for it. If the face to face doesn't matter to you BD is probably a good alternative.

#5. Being able to see to a bike first hand rather than through a photo gallery.
#6. Being able to test ride a bike before purchasing it.

Wow, there's a lot of revisionism going on here. Motobecane, Raleigh, and Peugeot were no more "mixed bag" then Trek or Giant is today. They made models at different price points for different consumers. And let's be clear, the cheapest Peugeot road bike you could get in the States back in the mid 70's was a good 10 lbs. lighter than a Schwinn Varsity. I owned one. Why do you think so many European bikes were imported?

Mr IGH compared 70's Motobecanes to Treks and Fujis. Trek barely existed as a company at all in the 70s. They sold mid to higher end framesets to bikes enthusiasts. They didn't start selling complete bikes until 1978 and even then you'd be hard pressed to find one outside of the Midwest. They were a boutique brand. As far as Fuji goes, yeah they made decent bikes back in the 70s but certainly not world beaters. A lot of people didn't care for the geometry for many of of the Japanese bikes and found the ride to be kind of dead. I wouldn't rank them above Moto at all. Miyata mades some nice bikes.

If you consider dreck to be the likes of Murray and Huffy, then no, even at the low end Motobecane made much better bikes. If 40 years from now you look back at the low end Treks and Giants of today and consider them to be dreck, then that's probably a good comparison of relative quality of 40 year old low end Motos.

Oh, and just because a company fails doesn't mean they made junk. Suntour went bankrupt too.

So, if neither of my LBSs offer these things there's really no reason not to use BikesDirect. My LBS is simply another interface for ordering online. They don't carry any bikes in my size and won't order them until I'm ready to commit to buying. This means no test riding. And as far as advice or fit, he said they'd help adjust the seat but when I asked about stem size and angle and handlebar width he said that if the frame big enough for me would have handlebars that are good enough.

Maybe I'd have better service if I had a bigger budget but for someone who has to save up to buy a $700 road bike it seems that they just want me in and out as soon as possible. Looks like I might as well save $300 and buy a bike with similar components from bikesdirect, or spend the same amount and get something with a 105 instead of sora.

I enjoy shopping via the internet and wish more bike brands allowed it. Most local bike shops do not post prices or list what bikes are in stock on their web pages. Many big name bike brands don't allow selling over the internet or shipping direct to customers. I'd love to be able to "window shop" from my home, and visit a place that has a bike I'm interested in, or just buy it with a click. If you want to buy a quality bike on the internet, you are limited to bikesdirect brands or QBP brands for the most part. Bikesdirect does sell in a straightforward way. The policies of many major bike brands limit choice and competition.

I saw this statement and I m interested. I am considering purchasing a bike next month and am looking at two BD bikes. Can you give me some tips on where I can find similar bikes for less? I would prefer to use a LBS (not the one that doesn't want my business; but, there are others).

You seem to feel that a paeson can do better to purchase frame and components. Whenever I have looked into this approach it has not been cheaper. The only condition I will place is that the stuff has to come from a real source; not some, "get real lucky on ebay or CL," kind of thing. I dont mind building a bike, part of why I am willing to consider BD; however, I do not want to be left with a incomplete project siting around the garage for years.

Here is the letter that outlines what I was looking for at BD:
Like I said, if you can show me hoe to do this for less I would appreciate it.