acidfast7

HAPPY 1-YEAR BIRTHDAY TO MARLEY!

Bicycle specifications:

Date of bicycle arrival/assembly: 2013 OCT 08
Total number of round trip commutes on the bike: 135.5
Total commuting km: 2669 km
Total commuting miles: 1658 mi

Modal transport since acquiring BSO

Bike commutes: 135.5 (79.5%)
Car commutes: 24 (14%)
Bus commutes: 8.5 (5%)
Rail commutes: 2.5 (1.5%)
Overall commutes: 170.5

Note: Some of these could not have been avoided as I need the bus to the airport or needed the car to pick a colleague from the airport. In addition, sometimes the car needed to be serviced.

Costs/location of purchase (standard MSRP in UK converted to USD/EUR on day of purchase)

Bike (SS Mangobike from mangobikes.com): 299 GBP / 466 USD
Front/Rear Knog lights, Kryptonite U-lock (amazon.co.uk): 92 GBP / 148 USD
Sigma 1009 cycloputer (amazon.co.uk): 26 GBP / 41 USD
Crud Roadracer MkII (amazon.co.uk): 23 GBP / 37 USD
Total initial rolling cost: 440 GBP / 691 USD


Failure modes and outcomes (i.e. running costs):

02 APR 2014 (1406 km / 873 mi / 28 GBP / 46 USD)

Rear tire worn through canvas - replacement needed
1 Schwalbe Lugano
1 Tube
1 10min service

08 MAY 2014 (1559 km / 968 mi / 13 GBP / 22 USD)

banged rear rim on kerb cutting a corner short
1 new tube
1 bend rear brake track with adjustable spanner

12 MAY 2014 (1597km / 992 mi / 28 GBP / 47 USD)

Split Schwalbe Lugano in half with only 191km on it
1 Gatorskin tire (cost of Lugano refunded)
3 new tubes (one used)
1 10min service

04 JUN 2014 (1789 km / 1112 mi / 30 GBP / 50 USD)

Front tire worn through canvas
1 new gatorskin tire
1 tube used (second of three)

06 JUL 2014 (2119 km / 1315 mi / 4 GBP / 6.8 USD)

Flat rear tire and front bake pad replacement
1 pinch flat after leaving bike in locker and riding without inflation (last tube used)
1 set of new front brake pads

Experience gained since acquiring BSO

Good tube/tires changing practice ... Gatorskins on/off like butter and finding lodged debris
Haven't changed adjusted/rim brakes in about 20 years ... so this is getting updated

Bike Gremlin

I've stopped tracking mileage. Rough estimate is around 100 km per week. However, my bus fares cost monthly - fixed amount per month. Around 40 euros per month.

The PinkThing has cost around 120 euros so far. Tools, lights and lock are kept from previous bikes, passed on to next, so I don't calculate that as a particular bicycle cost. But if I did, it would add another 100 euros to the price tag. Officially became the main commuter this May.

My backup bike, WhiteArrow which I use on sunny days cost around 900 euros so far, will get a new chain this weekend. It has served me for the past 2 years.

So, expensive as hell. The WhiteArrow cost around 40 euros per month, while the PinkThing adds to about 30. Too damn much, but I expect as the time goes by the cost will drop, unless they get stolen again.

noglider 

Congratulations, @acidfast7. Time to publish a paper.

And modify the title of the thread.

acidfast7

Thanks ... revising a paper today.

Yeah, I'm curious how long the thread/bike will go!

e0richt

@AciDfast,
pardon me a bit as I haven't read the whole thread, do you have the bike setup as fixed gear or single speed? (I am assuming that it has a flip flop hub...)

wphamilton

Good job, and an encouraging result for anyone thinking of a cheap single-speed for commuting.

I still think you should do a study logging your cost of calories consumed for commutes and compare it to actual gasoline cost driving the same route. For example my bagel this morning at very near the calories I used cost about 20-30 cents more than gasoline burned when I take the highway route (I checked that yesterday). But you could use a power meter and your scientific method. Whatever food you normally eat, log that and whatever extra if any. It would be enlightening.

I-Like-To-Bike

That would make sense if a person considered eating food and drinking a chore, duty or some other form of transportation tax that must be paid/endured, rather than being one of life's pleasures.

I prefer to think of the additional food/drink that bicycling allows me to eat/drink, without gaining weight, as an added benefit of bicycling, regardless of the cash paid for the additional pleasure.

himespau 

Tell the journal to send it to me. I'll be really friendly on it, I promise.

wphamilton

Why can't we consider it a cost? It can be epicurean if you insist, and at the same time an additional cost.

I suspect that acidfast may be more inclined to your outlook, but he seems suited to that kind of study and it would be in line with this BSO experiment.

acidfast7

Hi!

I'm riding it as SS. I wanted to flip it over to FG but haven't because I took the toe clips off due to a crash last winter. This summer has been busy with research and moving and now the winter is coming. Next summer, FG it is!

I-Like-To-Bike

Sure you can consider whatever you want to be a cost, whether it makes sense or not.

Enjoying food does not require an individual to be an epicurean or a connoisseur of fine food. If a bicyclist enjoys Pizza Hut offerings, Big Macs and Whoppers, sufficient bicycle commuting effort can allow him to super size and/or down their meals with an extra beer or two, without concern about the waist line.

Note: Food snobs/food nannys can take their clichéd bleating to another thread.

wphamilton

Well, something that costs more would be logical to consider ... a cost. I don't see where you're going with this.

I wouldn't have had a bagel this morning without the commute. I'll typically have a bag of chips, trail mix, banana, fries at lunch, for no other reason than the calories. Whether you enjoy it or not it's an additional cost and there are good reasons to want to know this information. Individually, and possibly useful in macroeconomic policy.

I don't ride to save money, so you're preaching to the choir in a sense. But that doesn't mean I don't want to know.

I-Like-To-Bike

A bicyclist interested in cutting the food cost of a commute can always switch to a low-cost/high energy grade of fuel and "save". Lots of Miles/Food$ when the fuel consists of beans, rice, gruel, powdered skim milk and ramen.

wphamilton

Correct, and I do that thing for pure calories but I'll let acidfast speak for himself on that. But when you think about it, it doesn't matter as much for this question what we could do, but what the actual diet is.

I'm lobbying hard for acid to incorporate the fuel cost into his study even though I think he has more refined tastes and might balk at your suggestions.

I-Like-To-Bike

The test bicycle is a so-called BSO, if food costs are to be considered as part of the test why should the food be more "refined" than what is necessary for cheap transportation fuel purposes?

After all, the purpose of the exercise was stated by the OP as "to see what I can get out a cheap bike."

acidfast7

Hi all!

I'm willing to take suggestions for a kcal inclusion and I'll set some ground rules below but I think we must agree on kcal consumption first. I'd love to buy a power meter but I'm cheap and would rather have a RT flight to India/China for that money.

wphamilton

You could use Strava for an estimate of calories, which is probably better than a wild guess. Maybe not a lot better. But it's free.

Possibly you could improve that with two threshold tests, one on a trainer with a known good powermeter and one on the bike, to look at the Strava estimate. Then use the ratio times Strava calorie estimate.

RaleighSport

There's an app, not "accurate" per say, but they claim within 10% yada yada yada for power metering, possibly this fits the bill?
https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...wermeter&hl=en (8 bucks or so american)

I'm wondering though.. do you need to start factoring in costs of clothes you ride in, liquids consumed pre/during/post trip? etc? etc? I really don't see the point in factoring in food personally.. since you need to eat anyhow!

acidfast7

Here is a nice blog post that explains the calculations:

Calories burned when walking, running and cycling over a fixed distance | wearstheevidence

Luckily I am around 82kg or 180#.

Over the course of the year, my average speed has been 24km/h as I haven't reset it once. So, let's set that to be an average 15mph.

This works out to 340kcal/10km (or 34kcal/km) consumed (if we accept that my course is flat and over the ride there is no change in wind resistance).

I think we can also agree that it's 19km RT ... so that works out 19 x 34 = 646kcal/day

Are we OK with this number?

wphamilton

Do you have some way of verifying that empirically? With your own typical activity that is.

(it looks reasonable but a little high from just intuition).

RaleighSport

NO! Okay so we're just talking calories burned riding... 646 seems fairly low, but then again 19km RT isn't a large distance, so to break it down to my feeble american mind your RT is just slightly shorter than my one way... hmm now I'm assuming your calculations are factored around your wheelsize/tire size, crank length, and gear ratio?

I-Like-To-Bike

My suggestion is to consider any additional food consumption necessitated by bicycling should be considered as another positive psychic (if not physical) benefit/bonus of bicycling far more important than the insignificant money "cost" of the incremental fuel increase.

Maybe a good exercise for the OCD set though.

acidfast7

Nope ... weight, speed (air resistance) and being flat ground.

RaleighSport

Meh.. are just shooting for getting roughly close to the accurate number? If so, sounds good to me.

I-Like-To-Bike

Sure, if going down this path of extreme trivia in calculating costs of bicycle commuting, don't forget to include the extra cost of utilities for heating the water required for cooking the extra food and bathing required by the exercise, extra sewage costs for disposing of the increased waste products, etc.