So my long-time family friend’s have 2 bikes I’m trying to snatch up from them.
One bike is what looks to be an early 80’s late 70’s pugeut (I speak french and will never remember how to spell that shit) with horizontal dropouts which I will most definately turn into a SS/FG. I don’t need another one, but I’d like the experience of converting a bike.
The other bike is a mongoose bmx bike. I really want a bmx bike, but I know mongoose is a shitty Wal-martesque bike. It needs some work, I’m not sure how much I’m about to go over there and check. Point is I don’t wanna polish a turd. I don’t wanna dump a bunch of money into a bike that will suck for whatever reason, which brings me to my question…
What exactly is wrong with these super-cheapo bikes? I mean I’m sure the components are shitty and plastic and heavy and blah blah, but what about the frame itself? What makes these bikes so horrendous?
A friend of mine’s roomate just moved out and left some cheapo off brand mountain bike and I saw it and said it was a piece of shit and when she asked why, I really had no reason other than it was an off brand with shitty components.
This post has come out much longer than I wanted. Someone please yell at me to use the search.
The main thing for me is that shitty components are annoying to work on, and require constant attention to maintain in proper working order. As far as frames go, there’s really nothing critical other than BB threads, but why not start off a project with a decent canvas?
The Dept. store bikes are junk because: always put together incorrectly, and never adjusted even close to correct, poor quality parts and materials, steel wheels on a lot of them, full suspension that is absolutely useless and just a gimick, and heavy as hell (varsity heavy). I work at a shop and we fix everything so we see tons of junk dept store bikes. They have been brought to us brand new from Walmart, Meijers, wherever they were just purchased from and were barely ridable and definitively not safe. When working on some of them they are impossible to get adjusted correctly. Often they will use brake housing on shift cables that compresses so it barely will shift. The “suspension” has so much play it will ghost shift the bike on its own, and I have seen the chain skip because of the “suspension”.
As for the Puke-o (I know how to spell it, but chose not to) you might be asking for a lot of trouble. If it is an earlier Peugeot it could be french threaded. Meaning if the headset or BB are in bad shape you are searching for hard to find replacements ($$$ on ebay). The stem is also a non-standard size (22.0mm quill instead of normal 22.2mm). Pedal threads could be different and seatpost could be a non-standard size (24.0mm WTF!). French bikes are not worth the trouble in my experience. Unless they are a high end racing one then it is only worth it to part it out on ebay.
they are ok for the type of riding people who buy them do.
when i was 13 it took me one summer to mangle a “royce union” bike from toys r us. rigid mtb. i’d go on 30 or 40 mile rides a couple times a week
it wasnt toooo bad, and it did last a fairly long time, but like others have said, it needed constant maintenance, which was actually a blessing because i learned how to work on bikes that way. that and rebuilding cruisers.
the brakes never worked that great, derailer had to be readjusted all the time, it had a 3-piece crank and the metal the crank arms were made of was too soft and came loose all the time and i ended up having to use loctite and lockwashers to keep them on there. that’s all that went wrong with it but that was pretty annoying stuff.
for something bmx-specific, go here and read the bottom of the page:
There’s no way a francophone would mix up “pugeut” and “peugeot”. Those words do not sound alike.
I call shenanigans.[/quote]
I learned through emersion from the ages of 5 until i was about 10 so I can barely write (and my grammer is balls too). I can also barely spell in anglish.
[quote=“room203”]they are ok for the type of riding people who buy them do.
when i was 13 it took me one summer to mangle a “royce union” bike from toys r us. rigid mtb. i’d go on 30 or 40 mile rides a couple times a week
it wasnt toooo bad, and it did last a fairly long time, but like others have said, it needed constant maintenance, which was actually a blessing because i learned how to work on bikes that way. that and rebuilding cruisers.
the brakes never worked that great, derailer had to be readjusted all the time, it had a 3-piece crank and the metal the crank arms were made of was too soft and came loose all the time and i ended up having to use loctite and lockwashers to keep them on there. that’s all that went wrong with it but that was pretty annoying stuff.
for something bmx-specific, go here and read the bottom of the page:
They put gimicky shit on them when at their price point they could still be a rideable simple nice form of transportation then they squeeze shitty suspensions, gel seats, riser bars, bar ends, etc on to the bike and then you have to make compromises elsewhere on the components and you end up with a unridable pile of shit.
[quote=“duckwars”][quote=“room203”]they are ok for the type of riding people who buy them do.
when i was 13 it took me one summer to mangle a “royce union” bike from toys r us. rigid mtb. i’d go on 30 or 40 mile rides a couple times a week
it wasnt toooo bad, and it did last a fairly long time, but like others have said, it needed constant maintenance, which was actually a blessing because i learned how to work on bikes that way. that and rebuilding cruisers.
the brakes never worked that great, derailer had to be readjusted all the time, it had a 3-piece crank and the metal the crank arms were made of was too soft and came loose all the time and i ended up having to use loctite and lockwashers to keep them on there. that’s all that went wrong with it but that was pretty annoying stuff.
for something bmx-specific, go here and read the bottom of the page:
That disclaimer on the link is pretty incredible. Also good to get information from someone who actually owned one of these bikes.[/quote]
And the picture of Tony Hawk is pretty fucking hilarious. Smug motherfucker’s like “I don’t give a fuck. I’m makin monaaay!”
I’ve seen about every model of bike at Wal-Mart (employed with there) and I have to agree with some of the above posts. In general the components are worthless and the frame assembly questionable. Also, if you’re not a mechanic yourself I wouldn’t bother. Many of them seem to need work right off of the shelf. Just my two cents though.