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| *Vultures Knob>>>Road Bike |
Has anyone built their own bike, is it worth doing? |
I am looking for a road bike and was considering building one. if you mean buying parts and putting them together then yes its worth it, of course. but if you mean making your own out of tubing and such, then it sounds like a badd idea to me. my dad when he was in his 20s had a job at a junk yard and used parts and eventualy built one but it didnt work and instead just bought one i dont recomend trying unless you know exactly what your doing I thought of doing this myself. But it's not really cost effective. A web site like www.nashbar can sell you all the parts you need to build a complete bike. It would be cheaper to buy one from a bike shop though. Unless you want the joy of building your own. That way you can pick 100% of the parts you want. One main problem is paint. It's not easy to paint a bike a do the job as well as a store bought bike. Cost wise it isn't worth doing. The skills and capital equipment required to join tubes of the exotic materials used today make a one-off impossibly expensive. The short answer is no, it's not worth doing, at least not from an economic standpoint. The total cost of buying the individual parts is usually more expensive than the price of a complete new bike, because the bike manufacturers get volume discounts on the components. Economics isn't everything though, and sometimes you want something so specific that the only to get it is to build it yourself. (I did this with my mountain bike, and I'm pretty happy with the results even if it did cost more than I liked.) I built a bike for triathlons. Started with a "Lamond" carbon frame off of E-BAY it was damaged so I got it for next to nothing and repaired it. Found some 'Spinergy Rev X rims on there also. Ordered the rest of the stuff from Nashbar and Performance Bike on sale. Ended up with a good bike, nice and light. Cost around $900 total. Not to bad for a full carbon bike with carbon wheel set. I saved most of the money with the frame though. Be careful on E-BAY with bike parts, some people get carried away and pay more for used stuff than you can buy new on-line. All said and done though you might be able to get a real good bike from E-BAY. I have bought two so far and were great deals. A like new Trek carbon/alum. Hybrid for $350. and a Trek Chrome Moly Hybrid also like new for $180. Both were awesome deals. Building a bike up from spare parts is difficult. You must have the correct tools. For example, if you buy a fork and frame, do you have a press to install the fork races? Do you have the spanner wrenches to install the bottom bracket? Have you ever done hard core maintenance on a bike? Do you intend to build-up a frame with standard modern indexed shifting? Or a frame with old-time friction shifting? Serious difference in the precision and know-how required. All that said, you can usually buy a good high-end steel frame on Ebay for around $150 (used or old stock). Then you will need to match that frame to a fork (keep in mind that this is a specific match in tube sizes and lengths). Do you know how to purchase the correct size frame, fork, stem and handlebar assembly? You have to be careful to ensure that all the pieces fit together and fit you. You can buy a used fork only if the remainder of the stearer is longer than what you need. Again, Ebay is a great source for older, out of date components (translation: cheap). I recommend Campagnolo stuff - Campy always maintains a stock of repair parts in case you need to rebuild a d茅railleur or shifter. The same can't be said of the competition. Make sure that you know the bottom bracket threading and dimensions. If you buy an old frame you can still find this information on-line (with some effort). Otherwise, I think building a frame up from random stuff to make a true frankenbike is cool. I just finished building a Waterford (Reynolds 853 tubing) frame with a straight blade threadless carbon fork, Suntour Superbpro front d茅railleur and BB, Campy (vintage 1997) 8-speed Record Ergo shifters, rear d茅railleur and brakes, Shimano Dura Ace cranks, Cinelli bars and stem, Aheadset headset, and Fizik Arione saddle. All total: $396.00 (the saddle was almost as much as the frame). I already had a spare set of wheels and pedals. |
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