Safe Speed Forums

Asda's initiative of getting more bums on bikes with their budget £50-£70 range has come under attact from the Association of Cycle Traders who have been inundated with calls from bemused new owners trying to assemble these bikes.

It seems it's very easy to get the forks the wrong way round

But then - the Asda bike's teethign problems fade when the ACT mentions others in its "Hall of Shame" ... the Montana Mohawk costs £120 and per the ACT needs a further £80 spend on parts to make it "roadworthy" The director of the ACT doubts that these low -budget bikes will get more cycling for long term habit.

Perhaps it's still best to visit the local chap on the High Street who has a range of affordable bikes as well as the racier models after all.

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I fail to see how you can justify spending £80 on cycle parts to make a bike roadworthy, I could build a complete roadworthy bike for that. Do you have a link to this article?

Don't worry, I've found it, and from what I've read so far the ACT know about as much as ASDA when it comes to assembling a bike.

They claim this is due to the wheel being out of alignment.

Looks to me like someone took the brake block off and didn't know where all the washers went.

and this they say is....

Utter tosh, the brake lever is perfectly good, the brakes simply need adjusting (and probably assembling correctly).

The £80 seems to be made of mainly extortionate labour charges and charging for a damaged in transit front mech, which surely should have been claimed back from the carrier?

I know who I'll be avoiding..... the so called cycling experts.

There has to be something dubious about selling a "flat pack" bicycle to a non technical person, though. I have bought a couple from Halford's and there were some puzzles even for my very experienced brain.

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
When I see a youth in a motor car I do d.c.brown

Agree dcb.


OK - admit . I use my local bike shop . (small but specialised trader) This guy knows his stuff.

I have to wonder if the instructions of "flat pack" are on a par with IKEA etc.


Let's just say . I gave up. I went to ye olde worlde timber yard. Bought what I needed for less than IKEA tat.

Got out trusty Black and Decker stuff . from loft/garden shen Appiled brain and brawn. Now have "nice computer room"

I think these bikes at same level . OK maybe OK for a learner but if you want a decent bike to commute. your local dealer can supply at similar prices for much better quality. Bikes are like cars. You buy what you can afford and those wheels become prized and muc loved possession! I love cycling as I love driving. I want to do both to my best ability.

Oh.. no robot. Normal chap who caes about others.

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Take with a chuckle or a grain of salt
Drive without COAST and it's all your own fault!

A SMILE is a curve that sets everything straight (P Diller).

A Smiley Per post
FINES USfor our COAST!

Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon - but driving with a smile and a COAST calm mind.

There has to be something dubious about buying something which requires assembly if you have no idea how to assemble it. You wouldn't buy a kit car if you'd never held a spanner would you?

Sorry, I just don't subscribe to the cycling snobbery of that site. I have equipped my whole family with perfectly good bicycles, which have covered 100's of miles over the school holidays, for less than they would have you spend on a single unit, and little more than they would charge you for fettling one you couldn't put together yourself.

These cheap bikes also have a huge advantage, you can leave them locked up somewhere without the use of a chain twice the weight of the cycle and have them still there when you return. Especially if you buy them 2nd hand and keep them looking a bit tatty.

As a kid I got my introduction to cycling on a cheap catalogue bike which required some assembly, that bike covered 1000's of miles.

Go take a walk around Amsterdam, you won't see many £1000 cycles there, you'll see lots and lots of old, cheap, but perfectly serviceable cycles, and these are people who know a bit about the subject.

I might if the marketing said "no skill needed" which is often the tenor of the flat pack vendors marketing.



You have equipped a whole family for less than £239? That is what my current bike cost from Halfords. And a very good machine it is, not least because it has only twelve gears.


And mine on a bike that cost £5 second hand. Took me a year to save that.



Horses for courses. You wouldn't want to ride the End to End on a typical Amsterdam bike. Nor commute across the Peak District hills.

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
When I see a youth in a motor car I do d.c.brown

i've come across someone on another forum wanting to try getting back into cycling.... bought one of these despite various sceptics.

it lasted one ride before the apparently plastic (?????!) front mech broke and it was returned.

Aye That appears to be part of the problem. Some of these bikes can be good value for money - whilst others just don't hack it.

_________________
Take with a chuckle or a grain of salt
Drive without COAST and it's all your own fault!

A SMILE is a curve that sets everything straight (P Diller).

A Smiley Per post
FINES USfor our COAST!

Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon - but driving with a smile and a COAST calm mind.

Well that's part of the problem. I doubt many of these would have held a spanner in their lives and maybe wonder what to do with a B&D workmate




Nowt wrong with secondhand nor even a a "lived in look" (I'm proud of me laughter lines.. it shows I've lived/./ laughed Had some fun!. I )




But when you bought that bike as a nipper .. it was made of sterner stuff My boyhood bike (purchased when I got into Grammar School as a reward) is stil going strong. I still ride it occasionally As dcb says - Amsterdam's nice .. flat and urban with nice cycle lanes etc. By the way .. my parents saved up to buy us such stuff and help us through educations. Other stuff I wanted . my parents would simply turn around and tell me to get a paper round and save up .. and that if I could not afford . then I simply could not have. Best advice given to me ever and I've lived life accordingly. Might be why I keep optimistic about life and human nature despite the job I do

But .. some of us will be riding on terrains to test as the norm. The Asda bikes would be perhaps fine for short urban commutes - but you'd need a bit more sturdiness for really long hard rides." I'd be looking for cheap but able to stand the pace

_________________
Take with a chuckle or a grain of salt
Drive without COAST and it's all your own fault!

A SMILE is a curve that sets everything straight (P Diller).

A Smiley Per post
FINES USfor our COAST!

Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon - but driving with a smile and a COAST calm mind.

And if you told young folk today they just wouldn't believe you. Actually when my son at University realised that his debt was becoming worrying took a year out and got a job at £15K - my parents genes are still going strong in his generation.

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
When I see a youth in a motor car I do d.c.brown

Hi dcb. I know we are perhaps just a few school years apart .. but are kindred "baby boomers" in the generation following on the 60s trend setters who set the scene for freedom of spirit

My parents. firm.. avant garde .. I think for their time. Crikey , my Dad (also medic) drove an E-type Jag Raged at Barbara Castle ovet 70 mph limits in his day.,

He also rode a bicycle and a horse. He was firm.. but approachable and kind , even when disciplining us on occasion . I still ask him for his advice just as we ask Wildy's parents for their takes on stuff.

OK we have a pop at Brake and Roadpeace extremities.. but we do not really undermine their real message of safety led and genuine advice which is worlds apart from doctrined "speed camera nonsense" I think we are mature enough to accept and concede some points of view - which puts us above Brake and Roadpeace in that we look at things straight in the eye .. evaluate and give a serious debate over. By such debate . we forward a comrpehensive and sympathetis road safety manifest ,, or have a lobby strategy as result which suits all more

back to topic . you get what you pay for. You have to know what you want the bike to do .. just as you decide on which car suits your family needs. OH sure .. I'd love a two seater TVR or similar.. but I have a huge family here.

I joke that I need a ruddy bus,. Reality . I NEED a ruddy bus But we make do with the means available to us and we require value for money too, We try to teach our kids what our parents taught us, I suppose that makes me and Vrenchen seem really weird and not normal to some. We don't care. We know we have done what would be right as we steer our own and fosters to useful and respected and fairly comfy lives for them as best we can.

I try with IG and my wife and others to get folk out there to think about training . COAST . good practice.

We got undermined on PH by pretend cops. and you only need look at comments on the blind man's complaint over selfish parkers to realise this. Read the thread. Disgusting and I am now ashamed to think I gave that site any credit. I hate to say it. but SPINDRIFT was perhaps right in his evaluation and although we will never agree on speed cams . I would like to apologise to him for supporting PH as I once did.

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I wish.

It was built of the same stuff they use for takeaway trays, but at least it's endless breakdowns helped me learn how to put things back together.

And people were no better at assembling them. We often had a garden full of other people's bikes in various stages of repair, ah if only I'd thought of charging £80 for a bit of light fettling.

One problem is today few people know how anything works or is put together.

When I was young you learned how to put a bike together from your dad or your uncle. They showed you how wheels were built, how to fix a flat tyre, adjust the gears and if you did not have a repair kit you packed the tyre with grass to get you home. As you got older you spent the summer holidays making up a bitsa. A bike built from bits of this and that scrounged or found in the shed. Today most people have very little mechanical ability unless it is their trade.

As others have written you only get what you pay for. Add the two together very little knowledge, a cheap bike and yes potential disaster.

Today people throw out a bike because the tyres are flat and they dont know how to adjust the brakes!

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“It has never been the rule in this country – I hope it never will be - that suspected criminal offences must automatically be the subject of prosecution” He added that there should be a prosecution: “wherever it appears that the offence or the circumstances of its commission is or are of such a character that a prosecution in respect thereof is required in the public interest”
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