Had some good uns in the "Best buy" thread so lets turn it on its head.

https://www.bikeforums.net/showthread...s-for-the-year

Limit it to recent as I can go back years on the "Worst" buy I have made. But I reckon I now have have enough experience to know the good products from the bad and what is going to be good for me. However I will still make a bad purchase and to be honest- I have not had a really bad one in the last year. I know what I want- how much I want to spent and how useful it will be to me.

However I have had two in the last 12 months that have not been the best buy I could have made.

First was the Pinarello FP Uno I bought as my retirement present. The bike is not bad but with two far better bikes in the shed- it is becoming redundant. It was bought to save the good bikes from over-use and to that end it has worked but after having used the good bikes on a few hard rides this winter it has become obvious that it is not as good as the others. I just have that feeling that it will not be used as often as it should this year as it is not up to their standard.

The other is a set of C.F. bars I bought to replace the Bars on the TCR. Bought them as they are a compact version and I always felt that the hoods on the TCR were just a bit too far away from the flats. Compact bars being shorter would cure that problem and being C.F. would be lighter. They are no lighter with the original Aluminium bars being 220g and the C.F. at 215g. An expensive way to lose 5g and now they are fitted- I do need that extra length to the hoods. They fit well and are comfortable and now do not feel any different. So $120 wasted for no improvement whatsoever.

So what are your worst buys? And will you admit it.

An iPhone handlebar mount. Waste of money.

I am happy to be able to say that I really don't have anything to contribute to this thread!

I am fortunate to have 2 things working in my favor:
1) I am fairly new and inexperienced.
2) I have a great LBS a mile from my house with a manager who not only knows bikes but is more interested in making a happy cyclist than a sale. Plus he has a good head on his shoulders. He's smart, experienced and, best of all, he has good common sense.

So, I know enough to know I don't know enough. So, I follow his lead. He has yet to steer me wrong.

... Sometimes you get lucky!

It can be easy for me to go negative big time. Like looking for the fly poop in the pepper kind of mind-set.

When I bought my Trek DS I really should have ordered Schwalbe Marathon Racer tires. *sigh* and brought them in to be installed.
But I let myself be talked into Bontrager H2 commuter tires over the LT2 that came on the bike. The LT tires(lite trail) have little knobs that just throw up road grit and this i did not want.

The H2 do not roll or ride well imo. They do corner well, hard to flat and will last forever however.

EDIT: Schwalbe tubes are the best I have ever used and only needed airing once a month in 26x2 size.

Bought a Park PFP-4 floor pump. Quite expensive and leaked from the guage area from the get-go. The base was made of plastic and flexed when pumping. The chuck itself was a pain to use. The pump itself looked like a million bucks but worked like a much cheaper department store pump. Returned it to the LBS for a full refund. Picked up a better pump for 25$ less. The saying, "try before you buy applies here". Al

After buying a set of Ergon bar grips with the built in bar ends, (which are great BTW), I found I had no place to mount my bar end mirror anymore so I found this set of flexible mirrors that mount on the handlebars. Boy, what junk those were. The did not have the safety view so everything apppeared in real size instead of smaller like it should be and they just shook all over the place and I couldn't see anything behind me whatsoever. Big waste of money. Good news is I found a way to mount my original Third Eye Mirror back on the bar end with a minor modification and all is back to normal.

I'm not satisified with a bicycle computer which was actually a gift.( I would have bought one any way so I think it qualifies)Only half the screen works sometimes,it is useless in the dark,I can't reset the mileage to zero and it is rather small.Meaning I have to stare at the screen for longer than I want to for a read out.I would not recomend it to anyone.Don't tell my daughter.

A pair of Crank Bros. eggbeater pedals.

I burned up the bearings in about a month(!) And when I say burned out, I mean burned out ... you couldn't even turn the spindle!

I gotta think that they were a defective pair. They sell oodles of pedals to happy customers and that wouldn't be the case if they were all like the ones I had.

Sorry for re-posting, back to abnormal now.

My only regrettable purchase lately was a bulk group of Specialized tubes, 700X18-25, from the LBS. The valve stems are messed up, I cannot figure out why they start loosing air because the stem in the valve goes bad. I checked my new Park Tool PFP-5 pump for damaging the stem/valves, it was not the culprit, it works very well, so far. The stem top screws down completely but air leaks out there. I have a new supply of the Continental tubes that have worked very well for me in the past.

If anyone has some idea or a similar experience with this problem please give me an education on what could be wrong. I cannot find that I have bent a stem but I could have done something bone headed and not realized what I have done, but this has happened to 3 of the 5 tubes from this batch. I am talking with the LBS about this tomorrow morning.

Bill

The jury is still out on whether my amazing new panniers are a great purchase, or a total waste of money. I bought them as a must-tour trigger, but the spouse is leaning heavily toward hiking or kayaking, so it might not happen.

But they certainly look cool.

https://www.arkel.ca/ca_e/all-categor...ring-gear.html

Bikes that were 62 cm. Found out several years later a 58 was the optimum size for me.

A rebuild kit for my Joe Blow Pro floor pump. I could have accomplished an adequate rebuild with a bit of carefully crafted scrap inner tube. Not at all bad given this was the worst of the last season.

Got the Continental tubes yesterday, now for the replacement of the 2 Specialized tubes that are questionable. Taking the defective ones to my LBS so Tom can examine them and see what he needs to do. Still a mystery to me , but much of life is that way for me. Actually just one thing that disappointed me or didn't measure up for the last year is pretty good considering what I have purchased. I was really picky this last year because of the economy and things on a personal level and I am dealing with a new bike so nothing broke.

Bill

I got one from eBay (direct from China) that really looked good on the screen and was very reasonably priced. When I received it, it wasn't very sturdy and the cover lock was flimsy. Hit a good bump and it opened up, making it very probable that the iPhone would come out of the case if you didn't notice it was open. The one I have now works great and is water resistant, very secure and is reasonably priced.

Not really a bad buy, just something I didn't need - a $59 Target fixie bike. Cost me more than that to put decent brakes and seat on it. Still, having some fun with it.

$59?!?

Have you got a pix? I gotta see this.

A $38. light from Ebay, Chinese made. The light is bright and the battery holds a charge a long time. But the handlebar mount is weak and has broken loose. I have super glued and wired it in place. But the time spent to attach and un-attach it are frustrating.

Set of 'collector' Hubs the seller lost parts to, but did not say, so or want to take them back
after pointing out their ethically challenged non disclosure..

Well, in the interest of complete honesty and just plain being used to shame and ridicule, the Specialized tubes' stems were not flawed. Before I took them to the LBS I looked at them one more time, I examined each one and noticed a slight bend in the stems of the 3 that had gone bad on me. This made me think about the pump again so I checked the pump head and put it on the valves and inflated the tubes a bit then removed the pump head from the valve. It was me not disengaging the lever for the head that holds the head on the valve while you are pumping. I did not completely move the lever to the release point and the stems got bent as I popped the head off the valve. I can just barely straighten the stems enough to hold air but they are not my first choice for safe, reliable tubes with the little kink in the stem from my ham handedness. So strike my complaint about the Specialized tubes, it was my fault and I now have 3 extra "last hope" tubes in my spares box. One is not damaged at all since it was on my seat bag as my ride spare, it will stay there, and it was an initial count of 6, 3 that I ruined, 2 that are slightly bent on the bike now (coming off tomorrow for the Continental tubes) and the one that I didn't get a chance to ruin.

Glad I didn't make a fuss or write any emails or letters to Specialized about these tubes. It payed to take my time, keep my cool and look carefully. Lesson learned the hard way, no sweat though, I really prefer the Contis anyway.

Bought some decently priced Serfas Seca 130 psi road tires that stated it had FPS but man, every time we rode, one of us got a flat so even though the tires are almost new, we bailed them for Conti Gatorskins. The CG's are "twice the price" but so far no flats, I guess you DO get what you pay for sometimes!

Went to the Trek Store....Nuff said!

We use Serfas with the FPS on our tandem. We generally wear all the rubber off before we get a flat. Maybe you got a bad set? I bailed on the Gatorskins when the first few I tried didn't even roll 300 miles before they started getting flats. Oddly, the Conti 4-Season, which has the same flat protection (I think) as the Gatorskins, hold up nicely for me.

What? You made a mistake and you're admitting it?!? That's ... that's ... that's just not done!

Seriously ... kudos. Kinda silly, but that's not the kind of thing one hears very often.

Now that that's over with, let the shame and ridicule begin!

I'm generally too cheap to make a bad purchase; I just don't make many purchases. However, I did make one that most folks would laugh at. My wife has an old, heavy Schwinn bike that she likes to ride as a town bike. It has a huge rear basket and she has always kept it set up as a fixed gear. The wheels are el-cheapos and it was finally time to toss the rear wheel (axel bent, races gone, rim about to fail). I replaced it with a Sturmey Archer 3-speed fixed gear hub laced to a deep V rim. This new rear wheel is quite a bit more costly than the rest of the bike.

For anyone else, this would be a bad purchase; you can almost get an entire bike with that same hub for what I paid to build that wheel. However, she rode it on a ten mile errand today and is quite pleased with what I did to her bike. Silly purchase, FTW.

I bought a $19.95 Bell computer at WallyWorld for the mountain bike. The thing actually works OK, but it doesn't have an auto start feature. I usually forget to touch the button to start it after a pause in the ride, and it doesn't log miles when it's off. What do you expect for $20, right?
Next time, a better one.