mfennell wrote:
Flight Service wrote:
You mean like this $99 Fixie/Freewheel hub basic bike?
The crank set and lack of rear brake are the only things that I don't like on this thing. The welds are in good shape, bearings seem OK.
Just a solid basic bike.
How about that? If only I had scrolled down... :)
I went back and looked at that thing again and the crankset really is junk.
I really like the Vilano Wave Freestyle
This is a cool bike with cool features (I like this blue better than the other colors) You can find it in the sub-$250 category all day.
It's got that weird GT triangle frame. I've never understood that from a mechanical standpoint, it's not like seat stay angle is a critical frame dimension that needs to be different.
A fixie with front brakes just seems weird to me, but I've never paid much attention to them so maybe it's totally normal.
Keith Tanner wrote:
It's got that weird GT triangle frame. I've never understood that from a mechanical standpoint, it's not like seat stay angle is a critical frame dimension that needs to be different.
A fixie with front brakes just seems weird to me, but I've never paid much attention to them so maybe it's totally normal.
Just looks different. No real mechanical reason in that one.
I like it.
I can't remember whether it's from old GT "literature" or just my built-up assumption, but I figured the idea was to make a more rigid assembly by effectively shortening the seatstays, while also anchoring them at multiple points and tying the seat and top tube together, possibly reducing lateral flex in the top tube.
In reality, it mostly sounds ludicrous; a bunch of hot air for rationalizing a marketable styling flair. Now you're putting the seatstays' loads into the seat and top tube in bending... And IIRC the seatstays went past the seat tube, tied only by a couple of spindly standoffs...
Yes, I wanted a Zaskar badly once upon a time 
My first real MTB was a Karakoram with that arrangement. I recall my friend used to break their lightweight steel frame with some regularity - can't recall what it was.
Against my better judgement, I bought a Ferrari-branded 16" bike for my daughter from ... Walmart. I did a little research first. Original MSRP was something like $500 and it's on Amazon for $220. Apparently built by a subsidiary of Colnago. They must have overbuilt and the things ended up at Walmart. I figured that, even accounting for the Ferrari tax, it might be better than the typical crap and I thought my daughter would like the idea of "her" Ferrari.
What a piece of E36 M3. It weighs EXACTLY the same as my large S-Works 29er, which can easily lose 2lbs itself. Maybe it really is better than typical Walmart stuff, I dunno. It did come with a nice multitool. :)
Uggh. Now I have the urge to work on my '73 AMF (Raleigh) Westpoint.
