Originally posted by San Bernardhinault
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I want to buy a road bike
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I always have thought if I am going to spaff money on a bike like I fly to the Hamptons at weekends I would get an ex-pro's bike. But that is probably why I would never be a person who was flying to the Hamptons at the weekend as I am still looking at getting something on the cheap.
As it is, I will spaff about half a million bucks sending kids through college and ride a bike which I can't get parts for if it breaks.
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Originally posted by caja-dglh View PostI always have thought if I am going to spaff money on a bike like I fly to the Hamptons at weekends I would get an ex-pro's bike. But that is probably why I would never be a person who was flying to the Hamptons at the weekend as I am still looking at getting something on the cheap.
As it is, I will spaff about half a million bucks sending kids through college and ride a bike which I can't get parts for if it breaks.
Anyway, surely you wouldn't cycle anywhere as you could run that far, in deep mud, with some kind of specialist $1000 sandbag in your backpack?
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Originally posted by San Bernardhinault View Post
Ah! Thanks for this perspective. I don't have any kids, so I can buy hundreds of top end bikes and not feel guilty. I've also never been to the Hamptons, so that's a few more bikes I can have.
Anyway, surely you wouldn't cycle anywhere as you could run that far, in deep mud, with some kind of specialist $1000 sandbag in your backpack?
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It's been quite odd, first dipping in and out of this thread and then looking at the odd article or YouTube channel, to see the prices of high-end bicycles these days. As a teenager I was an enthusiastic rider of a cheap all-terrain bike (a 1996 Diamondback Wildwood, for the curious), mostly on the roads around and outside the village I lived in but sometimes taking it offroad for a bit and often on gravel trails on summer holidays in Scotland. I dreamed of one day being able to afford a high-end titanium-framed Kona. The frame was about £1,700, I seem to recall (I think it was the Kilauea). Since we started thinking we might move to somewhere in Europe in a few years, I've been thinking: 'smaller city, closer to nature, closer to hills, more disposable income than I had twenty years ago ... I wonder what I could get if I had say €1,000. Probably something pretty nice,' and that amount will indeed get you something pretty nice. I was aware, of course, that it wasn't going to be the top end, so decided to have a look at what was the top end, and was quite taken aback by just how expensive it all was. Even taking inflation into account, I thought I must be misremembering the prices in the cycling magazines I used to buy, but sure enough a week or two ago I read an article by someone who, I'd estimate, is about my age on a cycling website saying pretty much the same thing, but from the perspective of someone who's been in touch with the cycling industry this whole time. The gist of it was 'why does a really good road bike now cost half the average UK salary?'
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Originally posted by Sam View PostThe gist of it was 'why does a really good road bike now cost half the average UK salary?'
One is marginal gains. Taking an extra 200g out of the weight of the frame makes a difference to professional riders. The response of a carbon wheel makes a difference. The shape of the aero forks or aero handlebars. The speed and cleanness of shifting helps you make a break or be exactly right in the sprint at just the right time. The costs of the materials to do this are really high.
The second is fat middle-aged (and over) blokes in lycra who have disposable income - people like me - who try out this new gear and discover that it actually does feel a bit nicer to ride. That is my experience with the Di2 electronic shifters. I loved riding with them but don’t need them. There’s a huge price difference between an Ultegra Di2 groupset (which I think is a bit over $2000 for just the shifters and cables, with no frame or wheels) and a 105 cable groupset with caliper brakes (which probably costs about $500). It’s nicer, cleaner, better ride with the $2000 stuff but if you’re not riding a couple of hundred miles a week it’s probably wasted on you. I’m going to upgrade, but feel guilty because I know it’s not something I need, and feels like a lot of money for what is effectively a frivolity Lots of other people have the money and buy this stuff when they need it even less than me.
Basically, people like me allow the companies to charge that kind of money.
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I can't sell my Cinelli Starship for love nor money. It's a serious bike, cost me €5,500, Columbus aircraft grade aluminium frame, Campagnolo SuperRecord group set Kyserium SL wheels - the works. But no disc brakes, everybody wants disc brakes. I tell those that enquire that SuperRecord brakes will stop you on a dime, but nobody is interested. No discs - no sale.
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I think I’d actually prefer caliper brakes to the hydraulic discs on the bike I’m looking at. Every high-end bike with callipers I’ve ridden has stopped fantastically. They squeak less and are much more versatile and easy to adjust and to not fuck up. But the frame I like doesn’t come in a disc-less version.
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One difference is that a really expensive bike generally doesn’t make an average cyclist into a worse cyclist*.
*with some exceptions about really twitchy rigid bikes making you more likely to fall off, and aero bikes being much less stable in a crosswind.
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Originally posted by San Bernardhinault View Post
So, I think the answer to this is basically two-fold but related:
One is marginal gains. Taking an extra 200g out of the weight of the frame makes a difference to professional riders. The response of a carbon wheel makes a difference. The shape of the aero forks or aero handlebars. The speed and cleanness of shifting helps you make a break or be exactly right in the sprint at just the right time. The costs of the materials to do this are really high.
The second is fat middle-aged (and over) blokes in lycra who have disposable income - people like me - who try out this new gear and discover that it actually does feel a bit nicer to ride. That is my experience with the Di2 electronic shifters. I loved riding with them but don’t need them. There’s a huge price difference between an Ultegra Di2 groupset (which I think is a bit over $2000 for just the shifters and cables, with no frame or wheels) and a 105 cable groupset with caliper brakes (which probably costs about $500). It’s nicer, cleaner, better ride with the $2000 stuff but if you’re not riding a couple of hundred miles a week it’s probably wasted on you. I’m going to upgrade, but feel guilty because I know it’s not something I need, and feels like a lot of money for what is effectively a frivolity Lots of other people have the money and buy this stuff when they need it even less than me.
Basically, people like me allow the companies to charge that kind of money.
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I went and did it. I have now just gone through the bizarre process of pairing my brake levers with my phone. If you told someone 30 years ago that this was a thing they wouldn't have the faintest idea what you meant, and if you tried to describe it they'd be utterly baffled.
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It was a bit of a gag about the brake lever. But the gears and shifters are electronic and are bluetooth enabled. So you can pair them. That means you can use the app on your phone to choose to change the functionality of any of the levers if you wanted to - if you want the left rather than right to shift the small ring, or to switch which shifts down or up. Or you can get a single button press to automatically downshift, say, three cogs. Or to shift to a particular gear every time you came to a stop if you have a ratio you're happier starting up with. All kinds of fancy functionality that I'm almost certainly never going to use.
The nice thing about the electronic shifters is that there's much less cable to stretch and therefore go wrong, and that everything lines up beautifully, and that the shifting time is so much less. I don't need to customise it more.
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That does sound useful in some cases, actually. When I bought my singlespeed I decided that, given the traffic in Buenos Aires and the fact that lots of people don't really know to ride bikes carefully or, for that matter, check before stepping into the street/bike lane when pedestrianising*, I wanted to have the brake levers the way round my instinct knows them to be, so I had them swapped so they're the 'British' way round. That's fine as long as I'm the only person who rides the thing, but when I one day give or sell it to someone else I hope I remember to switch them back or at least inform the new owner that they'll need to do so.
And I wasn't looking for very long, but I'm sure I saw some high-end bikes for not far off £20,000. Even 15k would be a bit lower than I thought but a hell of a lot higher than in days of yore.
*I was once riding along a rare, relatively tree-free-pavemented stretch of bike lane on a quiet day when a guy who was talking to his mate decided to run across the road to get something from his car. I was paying more attention than he was to what he was doing (they were clearly moving something into a building, because something had led me to twig it must be his car that was stopped across the road from them) and started slamming on my brakes as soon as he took off, and he stepped into the bike lane and turned to see me just in time, thankfully for both of us, to catch me round the chest as I came to a stop. I gave him an earful and he held his hands up and pleaded, 'I just didn't see you!' As I pointed out to him at loud volume between swear words while I rode off, the reason he hadn't seen me was that he hadn't fucking looked before pegging it out into the road.Last edited by Sam; 19-07-2022, 07:17.
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I’m feeling a lot better about my new bike purchase now. First up, the price seems to be roughly what Sam thought was reasonable for a top end bike in the year 2000 so it feels less of an obscene extravagance. And secondly, my old bike that I took in for to have fixed and all the drive train sorted appears to have a cracked frame so I’d have needed to buy a new bike anyway.
I am sad that my old bike may never be rideable again. But it’s had a lot of miles put on it.
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- Mar 2008
- 9759
- Tyne 'n' Wear (emphasis on the 'n')
- Dundee Utd, Gladbach, Atleti, Napoli, New Orleans Saints, Elgin City
Am now castless but wrist is very weak (and the physio exercise sheet makes it hurt like hell) so am still looking out the window at the weather and wondering when I can ride again
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