On Jan 2, 3:01 pm, John Byrns wrote:
What sort of bicycle should I purchase? That is one of my three resolutions.
Oh, definitely a bike made of tubes.
If you're just taking up cycling, the thing is not to be a fashion
victim, to give the racing bikes and the extreme offroad bikes a miss.
You'll never be comfortable on them.
What you want is a none too extreme bike on which you can sit
comfortably, which won't give you back pains and knee pains etc. A
Dutch city bike like mine
http://members.lycos.co.uk/fiultra/B...%20Smover.html
would be ideal but the Stateside versions like the Electra Royal 8 are
a bit pricey for a first bike.
A dirty little secret is that you can make something very near. The
Trek I'm showing is a pseudo city bike, unlike the Gazelle Toulouse
elsewhere on my site which is the real thing. The Trek was made by
taking a common Trek mountain bike frame (Navigator L300 as sold in
the Benelux with internal hub gears) and dressing it up. That means
you can buy a common and cheap Trek mountain bike frame and dress it
up.
In sequence:
1. Buy a Trek mountain bike with front suspension.
2. Throw off the uncomfortable saddle. Get a seat like my Cheeko 90
(called something else in the States)
3. Get a steering tube extension so that you can raise the handlebars
several inches. If necessary get a short stem to bring the handlebars
closer to you.
4. Get North Road or roadster type handlebars to replace the straight
bars of the mountain bike.
The seat, the steering tube extension, the shorter stem and the curved
handlebars are all intended to help you sit straighter, so you'll be
more comfortable on the bike. If you're not comfortable you'll hate it
and soon give up cycling and your money will be wasted.
If you want to get involved in cycling, and the design of your bike,
in the same way as you are involved in tubes, you can, but it will
cost twice as much as buying a common Trek mountain bike and adapting
it:
1. Buy a Surly Karate Monkey frame and fork.
2. Shop German Ebay for a built rear wheel with a Shimano Alfine
internal gear hub.
3. Shop German Ebay for a built front wheel with a Shimano Alfine hub
dynamo.
2 & 3 are often offered as a set. Or just go straight to Poison Bikes
and buy the wheels from them. Poison bikes also sells several
alternative frames to the Karate Monkey, but in the States the KM is
much cheaper than anything PM sells.
4. Shimano hub gear and hub dynamo wheelsets with the earlier than
Alfine hub sets are now very cheap indeed. The premium 8 speed
internal hub gearset is fabulously good (I have two).
5. For the rest of the parts, shop the discounters on the net. Shimano
makes fabulously good parts at very attractive prices. Buy the
cheapest Shimano part, try it out, and if you don't like it throw it
off and get something better.
6. You can buy a box of tools but you don't need all that many tools
to do your own work on a modern internal hub gear bike, just a few
Allen Keys and less than a handful of specialist tools.
A new custom-built bike is on its way to me from Germany; I hope to
publish pictures to drool over by the week after next.
Andre Jute
http://members.lycos.co.uk/fiultra/B...20CYCLING.html