Road cycling

[Dan D]

I see you want to buy a new bike but here is a different idea you might want to consider.
Take the frame of your old bike or buy an old racer frame or take a frame someone else has thrown as trash into the roadside ditch, and add new bike components and such create your own bike.
That is what I have done recently and I am a happy man now. I had this 25-30 years old bike relict from my wife's dad which I had found in his garage after his death, the Kettler „Daxi“ Alurad, a not-cool senior citizen bike but with a very light aluminium frame. Kettler were among the first to build aluminium frames and I thought that it would be a shame to not use the bike. So I removed all bike parts and took the frame and built a single speed bike which means it has just one gear: „fast“. I have added stylish Vuelta USA rims, Schwalbe „Kojak“ (bald) racing slick tyres (very cool), the Shimano biopace chainring and saddle from my sisters old racer, new brakes, a single speed conversion kit, a new single speed chain, a new handlebar and now I have a very mean machine. The front chain ring has 52 teeth and the rear cog has 18 teeth, I will probably try out 16 teeth or even lower. I still can't believe how fast that thing is as a single speeder and I am grinning all the time when riding my new bike. It is too fast for the city. I am using it for long speed rides on the county side, my new sport. We don't have mountains here.

I have read a lot in bicycle freaks internet forums. There you can learn a lot.

Bike components are cheaper if you buy them from onlineshops or you go to a bike shop and you tell the folks there that you have seen that component cheaper on the internet and they will lower the price.

I have spent about 200 € on bike parts and had finished my project after about 2 weeks. My guess is that is probably cheaper to buy a ready- made bike than to build one. But to build one is more fun with reading around and carefully making a decision which one to buy with every bike part. You can upgrade anytime and buy the even better bike component, e.g. buy rims for 3.000 €. There are no limits.