I started cycling when the lockdown started and my fitness levels have reached a point where I now actually look forward to cycling every day, so I'm looking to upgrade my bike to something a bit faster.
I currently have a touring bike with flat handlebars that weighs about 16.5kg and I think I'd like something lighter and racier with drop handlebars. What can I get for around £300 or less on the used market? Are there any good places to look for bikes aside from ebay/gumtree/facebook?
>Does the scheme extend to cycling to find work or is it just the employed who benefit?
Cycle to work allows people to buy bikes out of their pre-tax income, so it's neither available or relevant to you unfortunately.
If your current bike is in good working order, you can get a considerable speed boost just by upgrading the tyres and lowering the handlebars a bit. Weight only affects acceleration and has no impact when you're up to speed, at which point rolling resistance and aerodynamics are what slow you down. If your bike has thick tyres with a heavy tread, fitting a pair of narrower slicks will completely transform how it feels on the road. If you shop around, you should find a decent pair of tyres and tubes for around £30-£40. Lowering the handlebars will considerably reduce wind resistance, as will wearing tight-fitting clothes.
The second-hand bike market is a bit mental at the moment because of COVID, so you might want to bide your time until prices and availability return to normal. Decathlon's B'twin road bikes are excellent value and I'm seeing some on Ebay for under £300, but otherwise the pickings are somewhat slim.
If you see anything you like the look of, feel free to post a link here if you want a second opinion.
What's with these modern bikes? Those fat tires? That battery pack that seems to get smaller and smaller the more you see? That weird gear hub thing at the base of the pedals?
I'd really like a new, power assisted bike for cruising around on and potentially getting fit, but i don't know the first thing about them. Are they worthwhile, or should i stick with a regular mountainbike?
Good electric-assisted bikes are brilliant, but they're also bloody expensive - budget at least £1500 for something that'll stand up to daily commuting.
Fat tyres are more comfortable and (if they've got a flexible and lightweight casing) don't roll any worse than thinner tyres at typical speeds. You get all the advantages of suspension without the extra weight, complexity and unreliability.
Modern e-bikes use the same type of lithium batteries that are used in laptops and phones, which are massively more energy-dense than older NiMh or lead-acid batteries. They're now sufficiently small that a water bottle sized battery will do as much as a 100 miles on a single charge; some more expensive bikes completely hide the battery inside the frame.
The weird gear hub thing at the base of the pedals is the better type of motor drive unit. Sensors detect how hard you're pedalling and boost the power in proportion to your effort. You can select the level of boost on a handlebar-mounted control unit, so you can turn it down if you want a workout or turn it up if you're feeling lazy. The motor is legally required to cut out at speeds over 15mph, although you can disable this fairly easily if you so wish.
Bike shops are allowed to stay open during the lockdown, so if you're interested in an e-bike I'd suggest taking one for a test ride.
>>8904 When it comes down to that sort of entry level stuff, the frames are pretty much identical between all the manufacturers and the only real difference is in the assortment of components they've kitted it out with.
Given that you're buying a 4-5 year old carbon fibre road bike, I wouldn't worry about the brand at all, I would worry about the general wear and tear and how well it's been maintained. For example the cogs and the chain are likely to be pretty worn down and will need replacing, you might find that you come to adjust the height of the saddle but the seat post has completely seized inside the frame which can be disastrous.
You're probably far safer spending £300 on a brand new low-end bike, than the same on one that's a few years old unless you really know what to look out for. Plus low-end components actually tend to be harder-wearing and easier to maintain than the more expensive ones.
Felt are a good brand all round, and the sora components on it ar tried and tested, but buying used carbon is always a gamble. If you are willing and able to learn bike maintenance (you should, it's not hard) then used is not a bad option, but may end up costing you more than you expected. However a new £300 road bike is typically not very good and will likely put you off. It's a tough call, how handy are you?
£300 for a carbon bike with 9-speed Sora is a bargain, assuming it hasn't been crashed.
Check the frame over carefully looking for any cracks or other signs of serious impact. Have a close look at the gear cassette on the back wheel. Compare the middle sprockets with the biggest and smallest sockets - if the middle sprockets are starting to look hooked like saw teeth, it'll need a new cassette and chain (about £30). Lift each wheel off the ground, slowly turn it and look at the gap between the rim and brake block; if the gap changes by more than ~1mm, the wheels need truing - it's a reasonably easy DIY job, but it might point to more serious neglect. Apply the front brake fully and rock the bike forwards - if you can feel the steerer clunking about, the headset bearings are shot. Likewise, grab each pedal and give it a good wiggle to check for play in the bottom bracket.
If in doubt, don't be afraid to walk away.
>8905
>you might find that you come to adjust the height of the saddle but the seat post has completely seized inside the frame which can be disastrous
Carbon seatposts will seize in alloy frames and vice-versa, but a carbon post in a carbon frame is highly unlikely to seize. Carbon fibre is electrically conductive, so it tends to cause galvanic corrosion of aluminium. We use grip paste rather than anti-seize for carbon posts in carbon frames, because slipping is a far more common problem. It's easy enough to check for a seized post before you buy.
>Plus low-end components actually tend to be harder-wearing and easier to maintain than the more expensive ones
Sora is pretty much the sweet spot in terms of quality IMHO - any lower and you start seeing Chinesium parts that wear very rapidly, any higher and you're in the realm of diminishing returns.
Has anyone exploited this to create a true wireless shifter system that doesn't rely on radio signals? Not sure it's needed or even a better solution to regular wireless, but any excuse to spend more money on a bike.
Thanks for the advice lads. Google tells me the Felt F7 was on sale for £440 five years back, plus the tyres on this particular one look fucked and will probably need replacing, so £300 isn't really looking like much of a steal.
Could you tell us what bike you currently have? Depending your rims you can add slim slick tyres, drop bars, decent cogs and chain set etc. on your current frame and get more out of it instead of starting over. But it might be a waste, of course.
Triban bikes are second hand hot commodities (or rather, were before the 'rona) as the older models cost aropund £400 and are now down to £300 or less. They were really good starter road bike models so you get plenty of "one day I will" people selling them, but also a fair amount of "used it and moved on". Check the gear set for shark tooth issues as mentioned above to find the former.
So far, so good? Decide what you want to do with your bike. My main bike has slick tyres and drop handle bars, it's a rather heavy 12.5kgs but guess what: it's also a touring bike[1]. I urge you to decide your preferred riding position and your prefererred use case independentandly and marry what you want at the end.
[1] I ended up with a sweet bike I built up over 5 or so years with a front dynamo, old man comfortable drop bars and a decent rack and good mud guards.
>>8910 It's a Felt Provence. It has a thick aluminium frame that's actually too small for me if size charts are anything to go by, and the groupset is a Shimano Acera, which is apparently their entry level mountain bike groupset. At 16.5kg, I think I'd be spending far too much on parts if I wanted to substantially reduce the bike's portliness.
Basically I only want three things: a weight of around 10kg max, drop bars, and a frame properly sized for me. I've been scouring ebay and it looks like you can get a road bike with an aluminium frame, carbon forks, and a Tiagra or even Ultegra groupset for around £300-£400.
>>8913 Bloody hell, Cambridge looks odd without the hordes of fucking tourists. I bet the stock photo people are freshening their catalogues of scenic places all over, if that's typical.
>>8913 The thing with Maddie Moate is that she constantly talks like she's still presenting on Cbeebies, although it wouldn't surprise me if a few of you liked that sort of thing.
>>8915 When the industrial revolution happened a lot of slum housing was built to accommodate massively rising urban populations.
That and many. Hull city centre had a lot of beautiful architecture that was destroyed by the luftwaffe and replaced with concrete monstrosities.
OP here. I ended up buying a Focus road bike for £320. Carbon frame and forks, Shimano 105 groupset, weighs about 9.8kg. Very pleased with it, especially considering how this corona thing has driven up used bike prices.
>>8924 OP was bikethief all along. He nicked a bike, listed it on Gumtree and then bought it off himself; that way if the rozzers ever came knocking he'd have an audit trail saying he wasn't the one who pinched it and was instead another victim in this.
>Fucking hell. I've ordered a 9/16" tap, see if I can re-cut the thread.
If that doesn't work, SJS sell threaded repair inserts, although you'll need to drill and tap the hole out to 5/8"x24tpi. With that said, it's probably far less faff to just get a cheap crankset off eBay.
>>8928 While the bike is in bits, I've been riding on drops for ages but much prefer flat bars.
Anyone got any experience or pointers of changing drops to flats? I guess I'll need a new bar, set of cables, brake levers, and shifters, but is there anything else I need to be aware of?
You'll need road-specific levers and shifters, because the length of pull is different. Shimano offer a range of flat bar shifters and levers from Claris to 105. You might need to change the stem to get your desired riding position. 25.4mm mountain bike bars can be shimmed to fit a 26mm road stem, but not vice-versa. Oversized bars and stems are all 31.8mm.
If you don't want to change your entire cockpit, a good option might be moustache or bullhorn handlebars, which will work with drop levers but give you a wider and flatter grip. Planet X and Brick Lane Bikes stock a range of suitable bars. Drop bars have a diameter of 23.8mm while flat bars have a diameter of 22.2mm, but you can usually shim out narrower bars to fit drop levers. Another option might be super-wide and flared drop bars like the On-One Midge.
>>8931 Can't I just... tighten the bar holder, and cut the cables to the correct length? I'm saying this as I have the bars and shifter/brake levers from an old hybrid bike somewhere in my parents' garage; if I could repurpose those then that would be quite good.
However, the moustache option looks viable also as I'll be able to use my current brake/shifters. I'll have a think.
If the hybrid bike has a road groupset, it's just a straight swap. If it has a mountain bike groupset, you're shit out of luck - your brakes will be incredibly weak and your front derailleur won't shift properly. If you're not sure about compatibility, post some pictures of both bikes and I'll figure it out.
>>8933 Cheers, lad. Once I get hold of the hybrid parts, I'll post them here. I had no idea it could be this faffy; I just assumed you cut the cables to the right length and away you go.
Depending on your crankset, you might be able to find a spare arm, either because people have done what you have done on the opposite side, or have replaced it with a power meter etc. It's worth looking out for. Though if you have a budget crank anyway it's not going to be expensive.
What have you got on there right now?
Also it's too late for this information now, but the left crank is reverse threaded.
Any standard square taper double chainset will do the job - if it's got two chainrings and square holes, it should work. It's the kind of thing you could get for a tenner at any bike jumble, if we were legally allowed to have those. If your chainrings are still in decent nick, Spa Cycles have very good cranks for £25 that'll fit them.
You'll need a crank puller tool to get the old cranks off, but they're only about £4 on eBay.
There's something missing from my bike which means that the handlebars are super loose. It's been over an hour now, and I am still completely clueless on what to google to find a replacement.
I've tried "top cap and bolt" and that's got me the closest, but looks like the bolts that come with the top caps are maybe 20-30mm, in length, when it seems like the one I will need is 150mm minimum.
It looks like you've got an older type of handlebar stem called a quill stem. Accu will sell you a replacement bolt for a couple of quid if you can figure out what size you need, but a new stem will only set you back about £15.
Does cycling workout your upper body and arms, as well as legs? Initially I thought not but if you're pulling against the handle bars to push into the pedals more it must do something, right?
Riding a bike can be very good for your core - many newer riders suffer numb hands or hand pain because they're leaning their upper body weight on the bars instead of supporting themselves with their core. It'll do a little bit for your arms, as you say, when out of the saddle or pedalling hard uphill you will be giving your arms a little bit of resistance training, but not much. Mountain biking is a different story, though.
