GlenDAustin

Well my experience with the used bikes has been underwhelming, most are too old or worn with pretty major repairs needed. The good ones used are $300-400, so when you put in the $200 for tuneup, tires, and such you’re at the price of a starter Trek bike new. Maybe one day, when I’m independently wealthy or shredding up a mountain in Colorado, I’ll buy the Diamondback with hydraulic brakes and such. Until then, I’m fine with my bikes. Thanks.

livedarklions

There should probably be a pop-up window that asks "Are you sure you want to reply to a post that is over 4 years old?"

Maybe it should pop-up every time somebody tries to reply to something more than a year old. Reviving a zombie thread like this rarely results in anything interesting.

Interestingly, the carrying capacity of the Target bike seems to have decreased by 90% in the intervening years.

GlenDAustin

Yes, conversations over a year old should be closed. Or no activities for 3 months.

Phil_gretz

I'm not sure where the OP is, but in the DC market, there are decent hardtail MTBs in the $400 range on Facebook marketplace right now.

That Target bike will quickly disappoint. Crap fork, heavy frame and components, revo-shifters...it's the kind of MTB you must ride in nightmares...I'd wake up sweating and shaking.

GlenDAustin

Then what specific brands and models do you recommend looking for? My budget is about $250 max if I'm going to have to put another $200 in maintenance into it.
If we go much over $500, then I can get a new one $600-700. I'm not looking for a $2000 mountain bike here. Hell, in Texas, there's just no mountains in my part of the state! I'm looking more for light trails, gravel, and some wet riding occasionally.
They were recommending the Trek DS2 at my LBS, but I think I'd like to go a little larger on the tires. BTW, I'm 6' 1" 270 lbs, effectively a football player trying to ride a bike.

Wilfred Laurier

The issue,a s has been said over and over, is that Target and Walmart and the like do not generally assemble the bikes properly, and as you ride with imporerlyy adjusted bearings and gears, stuff wears out quickly, and your $300 loses $300 worth of value in short order.

A question I have is which 24" wheel Walmart bike is selling for $600 on eBay? That may be a very very optimistic 'Buy it Now' price, but I doubt there is a market where that sort of money is being exchanged.

I think the mistake you are making is conflating 'features' with 'quality'. I can buy a Nissan Micra with air conditioning, heated steering wheel, and leather seats, or I can pay three times as much for a Lexus with the same stuff. The Nissan seems like a good deal, but just because it has the same features doesn't mean it's as good of a car. Same goes for bikes - A Target bike with disc brakes and suspension fork is not in the same league as a bikeshop-quality bike with disc brakes and a suspension fork.

bakerjw

From what I've seen, some of those assemblies cannot even be called bearings. Cups and cones are crap and usually not a lot or grease in them. The last bike of that caliber that I rode, I yanked out the BB internals and put in cartridges.

Tombaatar

Herd = an assemblage of hoofed animals.

phughes

In many areas, mine included, retailers like Target and Walmart use a service that assembles the bikes. The company sends employees to the respective stores to assemble the bikes. That being said, they are not necessarily highly qualified to assemble bike either.

GlenDAustin

They did ok assembling our bikes, no parts upside down or obviously broken. But, I have scheduled a mobile bike repair company to come and review the assembly and lubricate everything. We like these bikes, but we want to maintain them as well as we do our cars. The mobile guy is $60 per bike, while our LBS is $130. The LBS is a regional chain that sort of has a monopoly on the area. They control all Trek and Specialized sales and service, and some other brands too. The other shops have Cannondale and some off brands. We had our son’s Vilanus bike done and it was over $200 with tires and brake pads. I did the Trek 820 tires, tubes, grips, and pedals myself for that reason. And lubrication. The parts were still over $110.

phughes

Do you work at a Target or a Walmart? I am not clear on what bikes you have had assembled. Good to hear they worked out for you, but hiring a mobile bike service to check their work seems redundant. If you need to pay someone else to check their work, and lubricate things, it seems it would be monet better spent to hire the mobile bike company to assemble the bikes in the first place.

Miele Man

I've looked at a number of high priced department store bikes here in South-Central Ontario, Canada. I did that just for fun.

What I noticed is that very few of them are assembled properly or adjusted properly. I've pushed down hard on front suspension forks and they've bottomed out right there on the showroom floor without a rider on the bike. Most of those suspension front forks are not adjustable either. Derailleurs are usually pretty low end as are the shifters.

Yoy said the bike you looked at was 21 speeds. I'm willing to lay odds that the rear cluster is ona freewheel not a cassette. If the bike does have a freewheel then rear axle is more prone to bending or even breaking than it would be with a cassette on a freehub as found on better bikes in a bike shop.

Another thing I saw was that the disc brakes were also quite low-end. I don't think the pads or even the rotors would last very long.

In short regarding ANY department store bike no matter its price; BUYER BEWARE!

Cheers

VegasTriker

I looked up the listing for the bike mentioned by GlenDAustin. The current Target price is $349. It has a lot of the bells and whistles that make the bike attractive - nice graphics, semi-decent weight (29 pounds), and no crappy front suspension. However there is one specification that screams, "don't buy me!". That is the one-size-fits-all 18.5 inch frame. If you are lucky enough to actually fit this bike then good for you but people come in all sizes and simply extending the seat post isn't going to work for everyone. When you buy a brand name bike from a bike shop you often get the choice of up to 5 or 6 frame sizes so that the bike can actually fit you. If you ever get the chance to ride a really fine bike that is properly adjusted and fits then you will understand.

The comparison of your new bike to an older Trek 820 is like comparing apples to oranges. Mountain bikes have a lower gear range than road bikes. They are set up so you can climb steep hills. Yes, you will run out of gears on the top end using it as road bike but it wasn't designed for that. As to used bikes, there are bargains to be had but you must be able to separate the good ones from the trash bikes. If you need to hire someone to assemble and adjust your bike, you are not the right person to buy and refurbish an old bike. Labor is too expensive to justify having someone else do the work. Plus it is not rocket science and there are numerous tutorials available for those not familiar with the procedures. I've done many for kids in my Scout Troop and never spent a hundred dollars to refurbish a decent quality bike. New tires and new brake pads are a must but other than that, is is usually just cleaning, lubricating and adjusting the brakes and gearing. What they get is far better than anything sold by the mass merchandisers like Target.

It's funny because my neighbor's girlfriend asked me yesterday if I could fix her son's bike. The rear tire was flat. When I removed the tube there was a 2 inch long gash. The bike is obviously brand new as there is a tag hanging from the bottom of the seat and not a spec of dirt on the bike. It looks like the assembler caught the tube between the rim and the tire bead. Great assembly job Walmart! It's exactly the type of bike I would recommend against buying. 36.5 pounds, front and rear suspension, and over-engineered frame. Stick a modest size kid on this bike and it will be tough to pedal any distance.

rumrunn6

I once bought a bike from Target. stuff broke & I replaced stuff. so what? lots of ppl spends THOUSANDS on a bike & still replace stuff before even riding them

but would I do it again? highly doubtful. I'd much rather buy a better bike, that's been used, not abused. lots of ppl out there buying good quality bikes & decide riding is not for them. those are the honeys I shop for

wojowojo16

Its junk...take that $350 got to LBS and get a used quality bike...

grindher

Did you work for NWS?

K5_489

As a kind of alternative viewpoint, as a kid/early teenager in the early to mid 90's, I had a Huffy mountain bike. Couldn't tell you at this point where it was purchased, but I'm sure it was some kind of big box store, and being that I lived in Michigan at that point, most likely it was a Meijers store. For those not from the area, it's like a regional version of Walmart.

That bike was one of the greatest things that ever happened to me. Seriously. I rode it like any high end bike, because I didn't know any different. I had absolutely no clue what-so-freaking-ever that there were much better bikes out there. Yeah, it skipped gears occasionally, dropped the chain off both ends of the chainrings and cogs. Tires shredded in short order, wheels occasionally bent. It all seemed fine to me, as I didn't know bikes weren't supposed to do that. So I can certainly understand where the OP was coming from 5 years ago, saying that his bike would sometimes skip ONE gear, as if it was no big deal.

I learned how to work on bikes because of that thing, and it lead me into my first job at a bike shop as a mechanic. I distinctly remember the manager, Kurt, saying if I can make a Huffy work right, I should be able to do amazing things on real bikes, lol. Turned out that I was stupid fast on a "real" bike as well, as I grew massive leg muscles pedaling that overweight pig up Michigan trails. Made a heck of a difference when I dropped 30 pounds off the bike with that old KHS Pro, and went from a frame that was closer to a wet noodle to a frame engineered properly that actually got the pedal power to the ground. One of my best memories is still the time I ended up tossing an entire XTR groupo on that Huffy frame then rode it around an expert loop at Pontiac Lake Rec area. I was surprised, it actually rode quite nice!

I too have gone through the department stores from time to time just to browse the bicycles. I too have had those shaking my head moments, looking at the exceptionally poor way these bikes have been assembled and adjusted. On the other hand, my dad, to this day, still doesn't see the problems - "It pedals, rolls, and stops. What more do you need?? It's a bicycle for Pete's sake, not a Ferrari!" He also never understood why I don't have a problem spending $1,000 on a used bike when he thinks it's absolute insanity to spend even $500 on a brand new bike.

On the other side of this, those cheap department store bikes also made me a LOT of money when I started selling bikes. We always made sure to have a couple of the current higher end versions of the department store bikes to have a side by side comparison with our bikes. Yes, "higher end department store bike" is a bit of an oxymoron. This was 25 years ago now, so I don't recall pricing off the top of my head, but I want to say the department store bikes we had were typically around $200, and our entry level bikes were around the $300 mark.

The biggest thing then, and still holds true today, was that assembly was dismal on the department store bikes. After showing the customer how a bike is _supposed_ to be assembled and adjusted to shift and brake properly, and comparing it to the department store bikes, it was very common that I could tell a customer to go ahead and go back to Walmart/Target/Meijer. Shift the floor bikes, squeeze the brakes. Feel the difference in their bikes, and how mine were set up. Notice how my bikes that weigh 20 pounds less were still much stiffer than store bikes, which means it's much easier to heave up on the rack or into the back of the van and how it doesn't seem to take nearly as much effort to pedal around, or stop. How the brakes are much smoother and easier to modulate. How our suspension forks actually worked, and included things like oil controlled valving, or controlled bump and rebound. As opposed to department store bikes being nothing more than spring inside a tube. How our wheels left the shop with pre-stressed spokes and true wheels.

Then I would run the numbers with them. Compare the prices, and show how yes, the department store bike appears cheaper on paper...at first. But once they bring it to me or another LBS to have it adjusted properly after the cables take the first stretch and set, and the spokes settle in throwing the wheel out of true, the cost difference between the department store bike and mine suddenly becomes MUCH smaller. If we have to replace any parts, such as cables that were cut too short at first, or wheels that were ridden on with loose spokes, the "cheap" bikes just became MORE expensive than mine.

Korina

If you spend $500 on getting a vintage steel mtb. up and running as a gravel bike, you're going to have a much nicer bike than the Trek DS2 or any other new bike. I've put $600 into my Specialized RockHopper (parts and mechanic), and it's an excellent ride. YMMV, of course, but early to mid-'90s steel mountain bikes have the same geometry as today's adventure bikes, and can be built up into pretty much whatever you want. Just my two-hundredths of a dollar.

Leinster

If the OP is still around, or if anyone is interested in this topic, the KevCentral YouTube channel is a good resource. The guy buys big-box and mail order bikes, and gives them honest reviews about what is worthwhile about them and what isn’t. He also gives tips about how you can go about upgrading a Walmart bike and turn it into something comparable to a name brand bike.


Well worth watching a few of his vids before considering paying for a big box bike.

Miele Man

I know a person that bought a drop-bar road bike from a well know Canadian department store. He flatted before he even got out of the parking lot. He walked the bike to my place. I took the tire off and there was a lot of brass filings in the wheel channel and there was a small disc ratling around between the walls of the double wall rim. The disc was the section of rim punched out to make the valve hole. Incredible!

Like others have mentioned, many department store bicycle assemblers work on paid per bike assembled ie piece work and thus don't take much care in their assembly as they just want to get them assembled as fast as possible. Heck I've even seen bikes on the floor read for sale that had the forks on backwards.

Cheers

dedhed

What they should do is return the feature they removed in the last (or previous to last?) software "upgrade" that showed the original date of the thread right on the title.

Miele Man

OOPS! I missed that. I guess I'd better get my eyes tested and get new glasses and also read the first post in threads I want to reply to.

Cheers

VegasTriker

If you want to know if a thread starter is still active on this site just look at his profile by clicking on his name at the left and choosing "view public profile". That shows the OP last posted in December 2014 and hasn't logged in to the site since 12/9/14. Final Decision 2014 Mercier Galaxy AL Vs 2015 Motobecane Mirage Tour

It's obvious that he hasn't taken the time to learn much about gear ranges and the like from reading his final post. I owned a Motobecane Le Champion from the time they were made in France. Back then the Mirage was the lowest grade bike they offered. I bought one at a garage sale for $20 to use as a beater bike stored at work. It wasn't anything I would ever buy new but was in workable condition.

Darth Lefty 

Maybe someone killed him

JanMM

I guess that could somehow tie into a Zombie Thread.