Looking for ladies all-round hybrid bike

[SteelSky]

Just paid for a Liv 3, city disc, looks nice, with step through frame. (Julie's Cycles - really nice folk working there).

Cheers everyone.

 

[vickster]

Hope your wife had a good test ride

 

[SteelSky]

Hope your wife had a good test ride

Cheers!

 

[vickster]

Cheers!

Well did she?

 

[SteelSky]

Well did she?

Nah, no test ride. It's just very hard to get any bike nowadays. I'm happy as it is to get "something" that at least has some approval on this forum, and comes in a small.

 

[battered]

Thanks. You mention V-brakes: I always thought hydraulic disks were the de-facto preferred option these days - are there benefits to v-brakes, or it doesn't really matter too much?

Simple. Easy to service. If they work when you put the bike away you can leave it in the shed for a year and they will still work. V brakes are effective enough in normal UK road use. Cheap pad replacement. Discs are great when they work. Then one day they go spongy, you need a bleed kit. Not cheap, not very simple. Then one day they leak, and parts are obsolete if over 5 years old. New levers and calipers, £50 up.

 

[battered]

Great stuff, thanks very much everyone!

Another thought I came across yesterday - cannondale "treadwell" hybrid womens (tradewell 2/3/eq). These bikes seem to be classified as allround commuter/leisure bikes - a class I've never really heard of. Any thoughts on these sort of bikes?

an allround commuter leisure bike is exactly suited to the brief. It's an all round bike. It's suitable for commuting so it probably has mud dguards (or fittings at least), luggage mounts, it's going to be a comfortable geometry, it's going to have tyres suitable for road use and light offroad, so a canal towpath won't see you kinking a rim, it's going to have a wide spread of gears to get you up hills. It won't be the lightest, fastest bike on a club run, and it won't do a black run at Grizedale. You choose.

 

[SteelSky]

Simple. Easy to service. If they work when you put the bike away you can leave it in the shed for a year and they will still work. V brakes are effective enough in normal UK road use. Cheap pad replacement. Discs are great when they work. Then one day they go spongy, you need a bleed kit. Not cheap, not very simple. Then one day they leak, and parts are obsolete if over 5 years old. New levers and calipers, £50 up.

Thanks, very intersting and worth knowing about. My experience of v brakes when I was younger was that during the rain, the brakes were not that effective -but maybe thats the same for discs too - all in my head. OK, I bought the liv city disc now. I can be a bit ocd sometimes, waiting and waiting for the perfect bike, etc, but really there's not such thing - sometimes, I've just got to get on with it!

 

[SteelSky]

an allround commuter leisure bike is exactly suited to the brief. It's an all round bike. It's suitable for commuting so it probably has mud dguards (or fittings at least), luggage mounts, it's going to be a comfortable geometry, it's going to have tyres suitable for road use and light offroad, so a canal towpath won't see you kinking a rim, it's going to have a wide spread of gears to get you up hills. It won't be the lightest, fastest bike on a club run, and it won't do a black run at Grizedale. You choose.

Thanks a lot. I suspect most bikes mentioned in this thread can probably classed as commuter/leisure. Not taking anything away from the Treadwells - very nice bikes.