Expensive lightweight bikes for commuting....is it worth it?

[Deleted member 1258]

It also comes down to budget , to some a £600 bike would be a dream bike .

That's a good point, I would consider both my Pearson, £630 three years ago, and my Kilmeston, £900 last autumn, as substantial purchases. In the past, with a mortgage and a growing family, I did most of my cycling, commuting, club rides and general running about, on bikes I had cobbled together from spare parts. Now the kids have left home, well one has, and the mortgage is paid of I've got a little money to spend.

 

[brokenbetty]

I total about 2K miles a year and my bikes cost between £100 and £400. I spend about £65 on a bike from ebay then upgrade various odds and sods to get what I want. My front rack cost more than any of my bikes

 

[ufkacbln]

I commute on a Rohloff equipped Catrike (due to security problems at work soon to be joined by a Rohloff HPVelotechnik Gekko)

The way I look at this is that I will do most of my mileage on the commute

Therefore I have no problem with a quality Trike for this purpose

 

[cyberknight]

That's a good point, I would consider both my Pearson, £630 three years ago, and my Kilmeston, £900 last autumn, as substantial purchases. In the past, with a mortgage and a growing family, I did most of my cycling, commuting, club rides and general running about, on bikes I had cobbled together from spare parts. Now the kids have left home, well one has, and the mortgage is paid of I've got a little money to spend.

Thanks !

43 years old with a 3 year old and a mortgage that runs out 1 month after the old 65 retirement age , bad choice? nope more like ..

1, trying for many years for a kid including 2 self funded ivf courses , looking at over £8 k in fees

2, hit by the recession and had to sell my house and downsize ,effectively starting again to keep a roof over our heads due to the comapny shedding 30 % of the workforce and a lot of us who had a job still losing about 40 % of take home wages for nearly 2 years.

I will be living on the breadline till i die so i i have had to learn to be very shrewd when it comes to spending anything, heck i just made my own fence panels out off a dismantled gate.

 

[buggi]

good points about where you store your bike. i wouldn't use my carbon for work if we didn't have on-site security! No way would I lock a £1k bike at the train station! or anywhere else that didn't have security!

If i had to do that, i'd be buying a £100 bike off ebay!

Even with my old bike i gave to my brother, i went and bought him a really good lock as i knew he was going to lock it at the hospital. it might be old, but i love that bike and i want it to stay in the family. It's not worth a lot to anyone else, but to me it is.

 

[zigzag]

lightweight fast bike is nice to have, but i wouldn't use it for my commute (5miles with 27 traffic lights twice a day). i needed a sturdy bike with disc brakes so bought £150 bike and customised it for another £150. it's a perfect commuter bike which is also capable of longer rides - if i want to. i did about 4k miles on it last year. my faster/lighter bike would also be ok for commuting, but it's rim brakes are not great in wet and it's much more attractive to thieves, so not safe to leave unattended. i've done some long rides on this bike last year including 1600k randonee and covered about 2k miles in total.
each bike serves it's purpose well and i'll keep it like that until my circumstances or way of riding change.

 

[shippers]

I've never been convinced that spending a big chunk of extra cash on a bike is really worth it. I have a Specialized Secteur Sport- £650. To lose 2lbs would probably cost a couple of hundred quid, but as I weight 230lbs...

Here's a not-very-scientific-but-quite-interesting study done by someone. NOTE- not scientific. Lots of holes could be poken in his findings. Etc.

http://www.bmj.com/content/341/bmj.c6801

Ta.

 

[Deleted member 1258]

Thanks !

43 years old with a 3 year old and a mortgage that runs out 1 month after the old 65 retirement age , bad choice? nope more like ..

1, trying for many years for a kid including 2 self funded ivf courses , looking at over £8 k in fees

2, hit by the recession and had to sell my house and downsize ,effectively starting again to keep a roof over our heads due to the comapny shedding 30 % of the workforce and a lot of us who had a job still losing about 40 % of take home wages for nearly 2 years.

I will be living on the breadline till i die so i i have had to learn to be very shrewd when it comes to spending anything, heck i just made my own fence panels out off a dismantled gate.

I was fortunate with that one, the second mortgage I had finished a couple of month after retirement, but I was living in an area of Coventry with high property prices and was able to sell up, buy a property in an area where the property prices were lower and pay the mortgage off. The trouble with the situation your in is it wears you down. I vividly remember the end of month bills coming in and sitting down trying to work out who I could afford to pay and who I could put of till the following month.

 

[BenM]

Just a quick observation on bike price... I have a not particularly light 'bent... when speaking to the young chap on the phone about insurance (It is covered, both at home and out on trips, under the house contents insurance by those nice people at Aviva for a whole £9 per year...) the conversation went a bit like this

Aviva: "How much is your bike worth?"
Me: "£1800"
Aviva: "Gosh, that's a lot for a bike!"
Me: "How much did you spend on your car for commuting to work?"
Aviva: "I hadn't thought about that!"

Personally I can't help but think of Sheldon who's comment about light bikes runs to the effect of "Why spend a huge sum on the latest titanium confection when any weight advantage it gives you will be eliminated by a Mars Bar!" but each to their own; some people buy a Ferrari then insist on driving it in the west end of London, where it is much quicker to walk!

B.

 

[Banjo]

A lot depends on how secure your bike is at work. As for upgrading, keep your best bike for weekends and you then have a spare if the commuter is off the road for any reason.

 

[MacB]

As BenM says some people drive around in cars worth tens of thousands, if not more, and some drive around in old bangers. Looked after properly they'll all do the job. The financial variance from top to bottom of the bike scale is a lot smaller than the car scale.

 

[threebikesmcginty]

...but I now have two bike frames that I expect to see out the rest of my life...

Snork...rest of the week more like! Keep your eyes on the 'For Sale' forum folks

 

[threebikesmcginty]

The good thing about bikes is that there are good bikes new and second hand in all price brackets. Providing you read up, ask questions, etc. to make sure you get what's right for you at a price you can afford, there's a bike for you.

 

[MacB]

Snork...rest of the week more like! Keep your eyes on the 'For Sale' forum folks

No chance, the Vaya is great and I've got the Burls Ti one now as well...no wheels yet mind

 

[GrasB]

As BenM says some people drive around in cars worth tens of thousands, if not more, and some drive around in old bangers. Looked after properly they'll all do the job. The financial variance from top to bottom of the bike scale is a lot smaller than the car scale.

I duno about that. You can pick up a cheap bike for £100 & spend well over £10'000 on a top-flight road or TT bike. Now the cheapest new car will set you back around £6'000 or so the same relative price would be about £600'000, that actually looks like a fairly similar price range to me. Remembering the mind works on a logarithmic scale (you'll put as much effort in trying to work out if you should go for the £40 or £60 shoes as work out if you should go for the £4000 or £6000 car).

Anyway are light high spec bikes worth the money, if you want to put it in pure cold financial terms NO, they never are. But it's not just pure cold financial terms we're looking at is it!