wiiztec

It's entirely for road use though mostly no smooth clean roads, my sidewinder has a suspension fork so I'm used to it besides switching to a rigid fork could introduce me to some new and exciting wrist pain for all I know. The reason it has to be this bike is because I don't have a budget for beyond walmart bikes and it was literally the only bike with mountain bike geometry thin 700c tires and 2 sets of bottle cage allen bolts (not gonna put up with no strap on velcro ****)

CharlyAlfaRomeo

Haha, I don't know why but my phone is being a little temperamental today.

no1mad 

Too bad you can't stretch that budget a bit- there's a couple of models from Bikes Direct that would serve your purposes better.
Example- Save up to 60% off new Comfort Bikes - Dawes Eclipse 1.0
Better- Save up to 60% off new Road Bikes - Gravity Avenue FB | Save up to 60% off new road bikes

LesterOfPuppets

You could get some 26" slicks or semi-slicks for the Sidewinder. 1.25" ones at Nashbar are only $12.00.

I like bar-mounted bottle cages, myself. Sunlite has one for only $5.00.

el_diabl0

Don't let these guys BS you...you'll easily be 20-30mph faster

wiiztec

I am not looking to stick with 26" wheels, plus I need a new bike anyway because my crank and rear wheel are falling apart

no1mad 

Your call, but if you think it's the wheel diameter that's slowing you down... think again. My bike is equipped with 26"x1.5" semi-slicks and when I first got it, I thought that either the wheels or the gearing was holding me back. Then I plugged the wheel size and gearing combo into Sheldon's Gear Calculator and found out the bike is capable of doing ~33 mph under optimal conditions. Then I got a cheap wired speedometer- I've never been able to crack 25 mph (and that was on a downhill- I feathered the brakes 'cuz I'm a wuss ). So it wasn't the bike, but the engine (me) that was/is slow.

wiiztec

I'm really tempted to buy this 2014 Dawes Eclipse 2 0 Hybrid Front Suspension 21 Speed 17 inch Mens Gold Bike | eBay the only things holding me back are the weirdly high looking handlebars and the ugly gold color, also the seller mentions something about paying a bike shop to adjust the shifters and derailers, do they really ship adjusted improperly?

I've gone 35 down a hill on my sidewinder, and I can do a 22mph sprint on flat ground according to my bell dashboard 100 which because of my fork shocks I can't quite put the magnet sensor at the very outside edge of my wheel. but it seems accurate anyway because it says my average speed is 12mph and I do a 16 mile route within 3 minutes of 80 minutes. I understand that a larger diameter wheel should have a higher & easier to maintain top speed due to greater rotational inerta at the cost of slower acceleration but that should be offset at least somewhat by the thinner tires right?

themishmosh

These bikes you are looking at don't seem to be all that different from what you have. Have you considered just swapping to touring tires?

LesterOfPuppets

Magnet doesn't have to be near rim for accuracy. It merely counts revolutions, so as long as magnet is close enough to switch and magnet is far enough away from hub for switch to reset for next rev then the accuracy depends on the accuracy of your circumference input.

Most magnet/switch combos work fine at midpoint on the spoke, even closer to hub than that.

About 80% of BD bikes are adjusted right out of the box. Probably a slightly higher average than Walmart bikes.

It's actually best to grease all fittings and bearings on BD and Walmart bikes before putting on big miles. Most of them don't have enough grease in headset, hubs, or BB (These that aren't cartridge).

wiiztec

Unless I can find a local place to go and test out the Dawes Eclipse's handlebars I'm probably gonna go with the Dual Sport. does anyone know if there's a "find Dawes bikes near you" thing where you enter your zip code? a rudimentary google search hasn't found any for me

LesterOfPuppets

Bikes Direct has at least one location in Florida, and I think I've read they have one in Texas. They're pretty much mail-order only.

The Dawes Eclipse 2.0 on eBay has an adjustable stem, so you can loosen it and rotate it down so the bars are lower if you'd like. Then rotate the bars so that they're re-oriented.

If find the position you like but would like to get a fixed stem, you can buy one later. This chart will help find the stem you need.

wiiztec

I know it's adjustable but lowering it would either move the bars closer or farther away from the seat. I wasn't asking where the bikes direct locations are, surely they aren't the only places that have Dawes Eclipses. I would only be going to check out the handlebars and if I liked them I'd buy the 2.0 on ebay

LesterOfPuppets

I'm afraid it pretty much is the only place that sells new Dawes in America. BD owns the Dawes, Motobecane, and Mercian brands. They sell some bikes that they don't own the names to but those three they do for sure.

Their other online outlet is bikeisland.com. that site is mostly for scratch-and-dents and parts.

I wouldn't fret too much about the handlebar. If you don't like it you could get the one you do like for $20 or so and swap it in about a half hour. Just figure those costs into cost of bike when comparing.

The bar looks like a fairly standard riser bar. Maybe 5 degree sweep and 2" rise. I'm not sure what you find oddly shaped about it but there are plenty of bars with no rise, or different rise, and different sweeps for $20 or less.

This bike will not make you faster, however.

wiiztec

So I ended up getting the dual sport, it seems faster though I haven't put on the speedometer to check yet. I almost freaked out when I found that the bike cage bolts were too close together, I had to use the top down tube one to fasten the bottom of the bottle cage. Why on earth would they make them impossibly close like that? How much would it cost to get a new hole drilled? also since the brake/shifter cables run along the bottom of the top tube I was thinking of drilling a third set of bolt holes on the top of the top tube. why do I always see third ones mounted under the downtube where you risk scraping your hand against the wheel to retrieve it instead of on top of the top tube?

intransit1217

Oh. I thought a sidewinder had a shifter on the top tube and a banana seat. I was going to say 1.2748732 km faster than the huffy clean machine.


Clearly I'm out of my league, here.

LesterOfPuppets

Wow, those are close, aren't they. Wonder if Schwinn markets a close-hole bottle cage.

Most people don't like a water bottle up in their junk and prefer the bottle to be at least semi-upright, that's why you don't often see top tube water bottle mounts. You could use under the downtube mounts for a pump, or a tool bottle, or a battery bottle. Some put a cover on a bottle and put it down low.

I think I'd get a cage with a solid piece of metal spanning between the holes and drill an extra hole in that, rather than go to the trouble of installing rivnuts on my toptube.

LesterOfPuppets

I'm also a big fan of handlebar mounted water bottle cages.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...RR2ATCRJ277J29

Have two of them on my Free Spirit.

wiiztec

How would it be less trouble to get an extra piece of metal? and what do you mean by "water bottle up in their junk" it wouldn't be that close to the seat

LesterOfPuppets

Don't need an extra piece of metal. Many aluminum bottle cages have a solid strip of aluminum with two holes drilled in, get one like that and drill a third hole in it. Easy as pie.

There are two common ways to properly install a water bottle mount in a frame tube. Brazing in a threaded 5mm boss or installing a rivnut. You can google those to check out what's involved.

Water bottle and junk proximity would occur when stopped at a stoplight, for instance.

wiiztec

I don't get what that would accomplish

Maybe if you have a noseless seat and the seatpost is all the way down. otherwise I can't see contact being possible

LesterOfPuppets

So you have two holes in bottle cage that are farther apart than holes on frame. Drill one more hole in the bottle cage that, along with one existing cage hole, aligns with frame holes. Slot it out a little bit and you don't even have to measure with much precision.

Much easier than drilling holes in frame. Bottle cage aluminum is usually so soft you could probably even do it with out using a punch before drilling., but I would anyway.

wiiztec

I don't actually, the holes in the frame line up with the bottle cage's holes but following the holes the positioning of the bottle cage would collide with the other bottle cage. I had to use the top hole on the frame with the bottom hole in the bottle cage to make them fit leaving the top of the bottle cage unsecured

LesterOfPuppets

Oh so top tube and downtube bosses are so close together that bottles interfere. I thought they had some kind of wacky new hole spacing over there at Schwinn, where the two holes were closer to each other, not the two sets of hole being closer.

How far from the bottom bolt hole to the bottom of the cage? Mine vary from 1-1/8" to 1-5/16".

You could probably slot out the bottle cage holes a bit with a rat tail file. If faced with the choice of altering bicycle frame or altering bottle cage, I'd go with the latter.

wiiztec

It's not a matter of such a short distance