My kids are back from camp and their bikes all suck. I have an amazing abillity to spend top dollar and get something that falls apart immediately. So how should I do it this time? Mom and pop shop in the neighborhood? Sears? ebay?
Any brands or stores to look for or to avoid? Anything else?
Speaking as a former bike salesman…
A lot of tihs depends on how old your kids are. If they’re about to hit various and sundry growth spurts, it becomes tricky since sizing is important. Not knowing this, I’ll answer your presented questions.
Where? Personally, I would vote for a local shop, locally owned. Ask cyclists for their opinions, then visit the shop. Is this seriously a place that you would buy a computer from if the product was different? See if you can look at the mechanics’ stations. Are they clean and well-organized, or is it basically a wooden bench with a pipe wrench and a mallet? Sears, ahem, is not a bike shop, and eBay, well, anything that dictates sizing and quality assessment… I’d avoid eBay.
Stores, again, personally I avoid things that aren’t local. Brands, avoid Huffy, Murray, Magna and the kin. Cheap bikes of quality can be had, but generally not from those brands (and IIRC Huffy’s actually gone now…)
Anything else is dependant on your price point, the age of your kids, and what kind of riding they’re doing.
If you can, tell me more and I’ll give more, as will prolly a heap of the other 2-wheel-minded.
Definitely go to a decent local bike shop. Might cost a bit more than Wally World, but the guys running the place are selling bikes, not boxes.
Fortunately, bikes are one of those things that you trully get what you pay for. A $400 bike is going to be tougher, lighter, and going to perform better than a $250 bike. It also seems that one company’s $300 bike is going to be a lot like another company’s $300 bike. It is usually minor differences which set them apart. These kind of bikes can only be obtained at a bike shop. It has been my experience that guys who work at bike shops really like bikes and seem to get some satisfaction from matching the right bike with the right person. Take your kid in, tell the bike shop guy what your price range is, look at a few bikes and do a little research on the internet if you want (if you want to get into component details). Of course, this is all dependent on the age of the kid as well. For example, I would probably buy a disposable bike for a 6 year old, and a real bike for a 14 year old.
When my boyfriend bought a bike, he also knew nothing about cycling. He went to the local bike stores in town. They helped him work out what he wanted, what he needed and what he could afford. All together. They also know what the heck they’re doing, and could therefore correctly size a bike for him, tell him how to maintain it and be a place he could call later on when something stumped him (in his case, it was how to work his pump-thing).
They also managed to get him to buy a nice lock that comes with a fancy insurance package. I don’t recall it being any more expensive than the other locks, and I feel a bit better about having some recourse if the thing gets stolen.
I’m hopping on the local bike shop bandwagon.
Not only has my local shop taken great care of me, working with bike manufacturer to make my customization work, but they were also great when I brought friends there to buy bikes.
One time, they actually recommended to a friend of mine that he buy the cheaper of the two bikes he was looking at because “based on the type of riding you say you’ll be doing, you won’t notice the difference.”
They really do want people to be happy with their bicycles.
Coffeekitten’s on his second Trek. Both were excellent bikes, and I see myself getting one for the Demitasse when she’s old enough.
As others said, go to a local bike shop. Not department stores, big-box sports stores or Walmart.
As for brands - except for high-end bikes (>$1000) or specialized models (recumbents, folding bikes, etc), all brands are pretty much the same. They all have aluminum frames made in Taiwan or China, and drivetrain components made by SRAM and/or Shimano. Go with whatever your shop recommends.
Slight hijack,
I was talking to our local independant bike shop owner/chief mechanic about Walmart opening in our little town. Sales from his shop didn’t change much but his repairs went up by a factor of 3. Seems the big box stores don’t just buy cheap parts, but also assemble the bikes quickly with little attention to quality. Often, bikes are in for repair within weeks of purchase.
I have 2 Raleigh bikes-one road bike and one mountain bike, and am very happy with both. Sure, they’re not Cannondale, but they cost a whole lot less. Yet another vote for the local shop. What impressed me most was their promise of “free service labor for all cycles they sell-no time limit.” When I wrecked the mountain bike a year later, I expected to pay for everything, but true to their word, all they charged for was parts.
This is probably the proof for choosing a local shop over a Wally World.
Local shop: Bikes are of reasonable quality for price, and assembled by people that know what the heck they’re doing.
Wally World: Assembled by people who may have once seen a picture of a bicycle, and use that as the manual.
Seriously, I’ve seen ads (I’d give a cite but I can’t find anything suitable) for a certain chain whose name begins with “T” and ends with “oys-backwards-R-us” where the fork was mounted backwards, the brake levers were on the trailing edge of the handlebars, but the STEM was facing forwards. To this day I have no idea how this picture made it into an advertisement, let alone how anyone could think that this was the way to assemble a bicycle.
Many :rolleyes: at box stores trying to sell bikes (although I’ll admit my first bike was a Murray).
What do they use the bikes for? How often are they used?
In Atlanta where I used to live, the kids used their bikes at the park (to which they and the bikes were driven in a car) or on holiday or possibly around the neighborhood a couple of blocks square. Bikes were mostly toys.
Here in Holland, we use bikes as a primary form of transportation.
There are lots of other uses for a bike. But I would start there before I decided what bike to buy. If a bike is really going to be used like a toy, I am going to buck the trend here and say that Wal Mart seems to me as good a place as any to buy a toy. When I was young, we used our bikes as toys and they all came from department stores like K Mart or something and none of them broke in any way that was not fixable at home. They were just fine. We enjoyed them.
When I bought bikes here, though, I did it the same way I would buy a car – I went around to all the local dealers (bike shops that is), tried some out (you can actually test ride a bike which I thought was sort of cool) and talked to the neighbors about what they had. Then when I knew what I wanted I went out and bought my bike and a bike for my eldest child secondhand. I lucked up on those two – Youngest got a new bike from a local shop because I didn’t find a good bike for him secondhand.
Getting a used bike is also sort of like getting a used car in that you ought to have somebody with you who knows the ins and outs of what to look for. But it also has fewer moving parts so there’s less to go wrong and you are more likely to be able to fix it if something does go wrong.
One other “for” on the local-bike-shop bandwagon.
If your kiddies are relatively rough-and-tumble, the local bike shop usually throws in a yearly (or at least one post-purchase) tune-up, where they’ll basically fix what’s wrong after your kids have done their best to destroy them.
I find that branding is a fairly good indicator of quality (really! I wouldn’t say that of anything else, really). I bought a Giant m-bike, and still get good miles from it.
Another good question is what typeof bike you’re going to get. A BMX bike (my first type, good for neighborhood riding, doing jumps with friends, off-road dirt-riding, etc.), a mountain bike (think bigger, more sophisticated BMX), a road-bike (think “10-speed”), or some hybrid.
Lastly, the guys who work at bike shops are total Bike Geeks (mean in the best way possible), and likely won’t skimp on your repairs or purchase advice.
-Cem
Yet another “for” on the local-bike-shop bandwagon.
The wife and I actually argued quite a bit over this. She wanted a ‘Sports Authority’ special for my eldest (9). I wanted to support the local bike store, which is local and stands behind their products.
two weeks of no penis ensue
Finally, I take the day off work and promise that I’d buy the lowest price of the same model. Wife gives me a Stern Look, but lets it go. First stop: local bike shop. 'I can put you in this right here in the color he likes for $100." Ok. Now we’re off to Sports Authority.
First off, they don’t have the basic kid’s model; the one they have has all the ‘stand on the axel and break bones like an MTV JackAss contestant’ trick parts on it. Price is $150. I tell them my son is just into riding, not doing tricks; how much less all that crap? “Oh, well we can take all that stuff off, but the price is the price, so you may as well keep it on.” :dubious: :dubious: :dubious:
So, I got him to write that on the circular, sign his name/title and the price, thanked him, and headed to the local bike shop.
The Wife? Well, she blew a gasket hearing I bought it at the ‘overpriced local bike shop’. Well, she did until I showed her how I saved 50% buy buying through them.
And after the kids were asleep, penis ensued. 
My best advice is to buy from a bike shop.
Remember that bikes ship in boxes, disassembled. So, your bike is never any better than the guy who takes it outta the box. At a bike store, your wheels will be assembled by a bike mechanic. With the proper tools. At Wally-Mart, it might ( :rolleyes: ) be assembled by a trained bike mechanic…or, by a 78-year-old Greeter named “Gert”, whose aquaintance with tools is summed up in the phrase: “I need a hammer to drive all these screws in.” I guess you’ll never know which, 'cause Wally-Mart puts their bikes together behind closed doors.
you meant $50 … or approx. 33%, right ? [/nitpick]
Yes. The sudden on-set of sex must have clouded my memory.
Buy from your local bike shop.
They are good people and depend on goodwill to stay in business. They can’t afford to screw customers with shoddy products.
depriving your poor brain of the blood it so desparately needs for maths …
And making it promise anything to get that precious blood back to it…