I just took my neighbor on a mountain bike ride today, and his bike... well, it didn't do so well. It's a full suspension 'Mongoose' with 20 inch wheels and plastic cranks.

His handlebars weren't tightened when it was put together, so in the middle of the ride they started to wiggle around. His rear brake never worked, and his front needs to have the lever pulled in to the grip to engage. He bent a crank arm and probably his derrailuer on some rocks, and he fell over and kicked his wheel, bending a spoke.
I do feel kind of bad for him, his parents refuse to buy him a bike costing much more than $100, so he has to suffer for it and save up to pay the repair bills. Every time I say anything about good bikes being worth it, he tells me I'm a snob, or some crap like that. I told him he should give up biking and do skateboarding, it's cheaper.

Do you buy a toyota tercel to go off road? Why are you people taking little $20 bikes off the road. Those bikes broke when we were kidsand rode them, when our kids rode them, and probably our kids kids cheap bikes will probably be crap too. Just because it has a shock doesn't mean you can drop no more than our bikes with the old plastic gas tank needed a filkl up. Give your heads a shake. If you plan on going on trails and giver heck then spend a couple hundred and go to a store that knows what they are doing. If you are buying trail bikes at WalMArt then don't bother with the helmet, it's too late.

So false advertising is the fault of the consumer?

The following is taken from an article in this months Moutain Biking UK magazine:

If a bike is cheaper than another in a well regulated market (ie the UK or the USA), the quality has been cut back. Your looking at crap components, a monkey metal frame, bird **** welding, **** forks and so on...

there is an almost linear relationship between price and value upto 1K

A £100 is enough for a good pissup on a friday night. If your bike cost £100 then it cost £40 when it landed off the ship from Taiwan. It won't last and won't give you as much joy. Your £100 will rot in the shed.

While I agree in principle with most of what you said, it is irrelevent where the product comes from. I don't leave the tire shop without checking to see that they put the lug nuts back on, the place that changes my oil puts up with me checking to see that they actually put the plug back in (and tightened it) before the truck moves off the rack and I watch to see that they remembered to put the oil in (or they don't get me back a second time).

Remember the old adage "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure"? Well, it holds true. I don't even pick up a salt shaker with out checking to see the lid is screwed on good. Ya can't take it back out, ya know. I don't care how well trained and professional a person is, they are at best....human. They are flawed, they make mistakes. I consider myself an intelligent, detail oriented person and have in fact made my living designing and building tooling and machinery. God knows I make my share of mistakes, and I don't think any one is above making his share either. For instance, the guy that runs the little one man shop that I use is a great guy. I really like him, and consider him a friend. None the less, when I took my tandem in for a tune up and it came back in worse shape than when I took it in, he got it back to do over. But I didn't just jump on it and take off on an overnight trip, just to discover that it didn't work properly. Or worse yet, send my kids off on it...I tried it out on multiple laps around my neighborhood. That way I was never more than a couple miles from home if I wound up having to walk it back.

Now am I saying that the xmart bikes are just as good as the others? Of course not. But I don't care if it cost 20 bucks or 2000, my kid ain't taking off down the road on it till I know its' wheels are attached properly. I've read post after post about how this or that fell off before the first 5 miles were passed. Well, sorry folks, but you should have checked it before you started out.

And here's something else for you to think about. Someone here mentioned taking a neighbor kid riding and described how the kid's bike practially disintegrated. Did it ever occur to any of you that should you decide to take the kid, maybe you should check his bike? If the average non-cyclist parent is that .....uninformed...... then it is up to you to make sure this doesn't happen. If you know the bike he's on won't stand the trip, either take him on a less hazardous trip, or loan him a bike that will work. Taking the kid out, and bringing him home injured, with his bike in pieces is not the way to educate his parents. All that will do is piss them off. If it's adults you are taking on the ride, then do a routine "safety check" and check every bike that's going. It won't take that long, and if you happen to find something wrong, offer tools and assistance to fix it. The person riding doesn't want to bust his face anymore than you want him to. And do it without making the guy on the crummy bike feel bad. The group I hike with does this with "pack-checks". The last thing we want to do is get out there and find that someone is missing some crucial piece of gear, or worse, he has all kinds of gear, but forgot his food or water. Just so we don't single him out, we check every pack from the most seasoned of us down the newest. That also lets you know what problems you may encounter along the way too. We had a guy come on a trip once that had a pack that looked just like one of the good North Face packs, but it only cost they guy about 20 bucks. He made it about half way through a 3 day trip and finished with a pack made primarily of duct tape.

Maybe I'm just over cautious, but the car doesn't move till all the seatbelts have been fastened, the boat doesn't move till everyone in it is wearing a PFD. And I personally check every child's to make sure that not only is it on, but that it is properly fitted. Won't help if it don't stay on.

My point is, don't let someone go out there and tear up his bike and get hurt, especially if it's someone that simply doesn't know any better, child or adult.

Do you mean that you don't change your own oil? What gives?

Amen. Kids' bikes are treated as toys by many parents. The bikes that our kids' friends ride to the house at times have been in dangerous condition: snapped or pulled-through brake cables, bent calipers/pads, play in the headset, and even one kid whose parents would have let her ride around forever on a flat rear tire if I hadn't run to the store to get her a new tube. Some of the kids think it's cool to throw their bikes down on dismount, for that matter -- sometimes right behind parked cars. One of my son's friends got a new bike back in March ... bragged about its 21 speeds ... left it outside through all the spring rain ... wears a confused look on his face now that it won't switch gears.

I suspect many, if not most of the scary "self-destructing bike" stories on this forum are related to this kind of abuse and neglect. As you suggest, most riders here keep their own bikes humming, but no one should ever assume that others do the same. It only takes a minute to check a kid's bike out.

You darn skippy! For 19.95, I won't crawl under one anymore!

In reality, I have a dirt driveway now with no garage, and now that I've passed 45, that stuff just ain't as much fun as it used to be. Besides, figure about 7 bucks for the filter, 1.50 a quart for oil (x5) that's thats 14.50, and for 5 more they grease the chassis, vacumn the floor, check all the fluids and dispose of all the used oil and filter for me.

Getting lazy in my old age. Even looking at a recumbent tandem to take the place of the one we have now.

My First Bike was a Huffy Sledgehammer. It got stolen after like a month, and I got a Schwinn Sidewinder to replace it. Haven't been able to look at an "x-mart" bike since.

My car likes Synthetic so my oil changes cost a bit more than $19.95 . That and I don't like the thought of some flunky at some chain lube place messing with my set of set of wheels.

That was my first bike to. What a piece of ****!

Wow, alot of reading. Here is a cool little article I was reading about Department store bikes -vs- Bike shops and it's qualities versus quantity.

https://www.bikesrnottoys.com

I at least got a better understanding and glad I did not go w/ the Wal-Mart route.

Take care, Mike

I have a Roadmaster "Mountain Fury".

Yes it is heavy, somewhat uncomfortable, shocks don't do much, etc. But there is a place for it.

I want a bike that I can tinker around with. I don't want to feel too bad about putting the bike on a ferry with gazillion others. And if I had to park the bike someplace, I would be putting only $59.73 at risk. And, a spare bike is always nice to have for anyone that visits and wants a tour of the neighborhood.

The assembly seemed OK. The drivetrain is not a hundred percent smooth, but the rear gears do shift without skipping or derailing the chain entirely. The front derailer is more interesting. It gives the appearance of being indexed, but is not. You shift gears by moving the grip shifter until the chain goes to the next gear, and you keep trimming your adjustment until the noise goes away. So far I have not noticed any safety issues with it.

My "real" bike is a better regarded Raleigh hybrid. However I would be loathe to treat it the way I treat the Roadmaster. There's way too much money invested in it.

[QUOTE=valbowski1980]My car likes Synthetic so my oil changes cost a bit more than $19.95 . That and I don't like the thought of some flunky at some chain lube place messing with my set of set of wheels.



Yeah, one of the guys I work with has some exotic Lexus sumthin-er-other that he has to take a day off work and drive 90 miles to the nearest dealer to get serviced. If that's what trips his trigger, fine.

I'll take my Dodge to the flunky at the chain lube place....but I do watch him!

i have a mongoose KO. like 1999... and i still use it every day. i have put this bike tru more hell then any of you would ever go....there is some rust on the handle bars but it is still the best i ever had.... the brakes are GONE! trees and weeds bashd them off....... i had a bad crash 2 days ago into a tree....... the path i was going down full spped made a HARD TURN. bike was fine...


i need to post somthing on how to fix busted brakes...

im 13, my first bike was a ****y gt aggressor. my bike now is a 8.2 harro escape, it cost like 1000, ..... im getting a 4ooo downhill bike because i thrash so much, im not bragging but i do some serious ass ****, im also buying it with my own money, for real.
but as to my gt, ****y as hell. wasnt even good, i hit a local trail and i made my rim go totaly sidways on the lower half, seriously it was an L

Southernlove, aren't you the one with the thread saying your too afraid to do anything, U might want to take care of that before buying a 4000 dollar bike.

Southernlove has swearing issues too.

My friend has a Supercycle piece of crap from Canadian Tire that he got in early 04. Lets see...he replaced the back rim, twice!, rear derailer is screwed really badly, front derailer causes the chain to fall off when shifting (so he keeps it in 2nd all the time), replaced back tire/tube several times, replaced crap pedals, bent the handle bars, bottomed out the fork, replaced broken brake lever and the chain is too big. Do I really need to go on?
Anyways my mom has never believed in X-mart bikes so every bike she got me has been from an LBS excluding the old CCM which she had to get fast because I outgrew it and she knew that it wouldn't be long before I outgrew that bike too.

your completly right, im geting the dh bike because i need a full suspension, and im not gona have any limitations at all, right now my fork hits my tire and throws me over the handlebar,s because4 ofr that i cant do any jumps, if i just sit on the bike and press on my bars it goes , krrrr, so im just going to do it, im doing hella races too, and its not gona help me at all with my bike, the dh corse at sea otter this year so so painfull....

and btw most of my problems have to do with jumping. riding isnt that hard, but somehtings are strating to make me feel like ......

I've never owned one. Even when I was 9, I had my $350 GT palomar from the LBS.

[QUOTE=mikeoverly] but many of them... ...serve as a great way to get people into bicycling. People who get hooked will always want to trade up.

QUOTE]

I couldn't agree more. I got hooked when I was fourteen. I alternated between a Pacific Coast (I think that was the name) and Huffy Technica. The Huffy was my grandpa's. It was brand new when I was riding it. Even though it was heavy I thought it was cool 'cause it had rapid-fire index shifters. Neither bike was nearly as good as the Rockhoppers my buddies had, and I knew it, but they never outrode me, not once. After a year or so my dad bought me a Trek 930. I thought I was in heaven.

I remember reading an article in a mountainbiking magazine- it would have been aroun '93 or '94- about a world class pro rider and how he got his start in mountainbiking. Some of you aren't going to believe this story, and it's quite possible that I'm mixing up the details, but if anyone has heard this help me out. The guy was from a scandinavian country I believe. He had a job like a paper route, only I think he delivered milk, on his bike. He towed the milk around in a wagon tied to his bike. The bike, of course, was a Huffy. He thought it would be fun to enter a mountainbike race, so he did. The race was some ridiculous distance from where he lived, like 90 miles or something. No, that's not a big deal if you're driving to the race, but it is if you're riding your bike there, which is exactly what he did. He rode his Huffy to the race, completed the race, got first place in his class -by a considerable margin- and then rode back home. I don't remember what class he entered, probably not pro, but whatever the case, he attracted the attention of quite a few folks- enough so that they wanted to see him race again. Like I said, I don't remember all the details, but he ended becoming one of the elite riders of the early '90s and he won his first race on a Huffy. I know, lots of you are crying foul on this little anecdote of mine. But I know I read this story in a reputable magazine and I'm certain someone out there knows who I'm refering to.

Recently, at work, I shipped 300 tonnes of aluminium to the wrong overseas destination. Very humbling. At best, it gives me bragging rights to the biggest mistake ever. As far as the bikes go, For some, an X-Mart bike may be the correct tool for the job.

I think the main problem is lack of information. In most places, bike shops have lack of presence and thus, cannot relay the information on bikes. Personally, I only knew of one bike shop were I used to live four years ago (Silver spring, MD), though I was only 14 at that time and wasn't really into cycling as I am now. Where I live now (Athens, OH), the bike shops have a bigger presence (smaller town by a huge margin).

When I was growing up, my parents were very poor. A bike every 2 years was hard on my parents (though it did get handed down to my brother). I remember that I was always excited to get a new bike as I had out grown my previous one and excited for the new 10, 12, 18, etc speed bikes, and the 20, 24, 26" tires. I think a lot of parents figure, the bike is going to be outgrown in a year or two, and the kids throw the bikes around after they get off it anyway.

Now I walk through walmart looking at how bad the bikes are and how I could buy any one of them with just one pedal off my bike.