Too often people are looking at the price and not the quality of the road bike when they are in the market to buy. Although price is obviously important, it is equally important to recognize the value based on the price you are paying for the bike.
Your search for a new road bicycle must begin with certain answers addressed first.
Used-vs-New
There are many places to find used bicycles today. You can find plenty of them for sale on Craigslist in most price ranges. If you finances are tight then this may be your only option. The obvious problem with purchasing a used road bike is that you don’t really know how many miles it was ridden and what problems the previous owner had with the bike. Even if the bike appears to be clean and in good shape there may still be small stress fractures that may cause a catastrophic failure.
You must look carefully at the components to see if you can see obvious wear on the metal. Naturally all bike parts will eventually wear out, it is the degree of wear that you must concern yourself with. The frame has to be looked at with a careful eye because if there is a small crack in the weld the bike will be virtually worthless.
Components can be changed provided you are willing to do the work yourself. You have the choice of having your local bike shop do this for you but it will cost you considerably more. These are just some of the concerns when you buy a used bike. Not to mention that if the bike has a structural failure while you are riding it you risk serious injury or worse.
Low Price vs Medium Price
You can categorize road bikes relative to their pricing so in this article we will focus on the mid to lower-range road bikes. Road bikes generally range in price from 200 to 400 dollars for the low range and 400 to 1200 dollars for the mid range. Now you may say that 1200 dollars is a lot of money for a mid range priced road bike but when you take into consideration that you could pay upwards of 10,000 dollars for a higher priced road bike it doesn’t seem so high.
The difference between these bikes is the quality of the frame, crank, derailleur, gears, brakes, tires, seat, head post, handlebars etc. So basically the overall quality of the bikes will be as different as night and day. Chances are both bikes will have a derailleur from Shimano but you certainly won’t be getting the top of the line Shimano on the less expensive road bike. This holds true for most of the components on the road bike. If it doesn’t matter to you then by all means get the inexpensive bike as opposed to the more expensive road bike. An example would be, if you couldn’t afford the more expensive Schwinn Laguna you could instead purchase the lower priced Lamborghini Rapido. Both are quality road bikes and for a beginner the Rapido may be good enough. If you can afford something in between, the Tommaso Monza road bike is the road bike for you.
Repair Costs
If you factor in the cost of replacement for the cheaper components you have to ask yourself what you really saved by buying the cheaper road bike. If you needed to replace the derailleur you can expect to pay somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 to 200 dollars depending on the cost of the derailleur and who does the work for you. This will be basically the same for most components. The total cost of replacement will certainly out price the original cost of the road bike.
The rule of thumb is that if you buy cheap you get cheap.
Recent Comments