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Flat Pack Chainless Bicycle from IKEA

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Re: Flat Pack Chainless Bicycle from IKEA

#221

Post by Symbiote »

dripton wrote: post #62
woodruffw wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coaster brakes are somewhat common on city cruisers, but it is a little odd that they've chosen to go with the combination of the two. I reset my pedals when I'm coasting as well, and it's probably fair to say that we're not the target market. My guess is that it'll be popular among (shorter-distance) city commuters and college students who would've bought a Huffy or something equally shoddy instead.

I've seen the combination of a coaster brake and a front brake on some kids' bikes. I believe the thinking is that a coaster brake is friendly to novices, those with weak hands, and those who knock their front brake out of adjustment and don't know how to fix it. While a front brake gives riders who can actually get above 12 mph some actual stopping power for safety.

Two brakes are required by law in at least four EU countries I'm familiar with, very probably all of them.

What's unusual is having a disc brake as the second brake, but I like those much more than rim brakes.

Re: Flat Pack Chainless Bicycle from IKEA

#222

Post by Symbiote »

ams6110 wrote: post #104
david-given wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disc brake --- the rear brake is a back-pedal job, unfortunately, which makes it a write-off from my perspective; years of cycling ordinary bicycles mean that I tend to automatically move the pedals backwards while coasting to a comfortable position, and doing this with a back-pedal brake leads to unhappy experiences. I'm impressed by the add-on bicycle trailer, obvious being sold as a first-class citizen. A lot of I…

Why can't you just rotate the pedals forward to a comfortable coasting position?

You can only do that while moving; once you've stopped (e.g. at traffic lights) the pedals are stuck where you left them, unless you lift the rear wheel off the ground.

When I moved to Copenhagen from London, it took me several weeks to get used to a coaster brake rather than disc brakes -- I'd often stop with the pedals in the wrong place.

Re: Flat Pack Chainless Bicycle from IKEA

#223

Post by semi-extrinsic »

loeg wrote: post #154
hvdm wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For mountain bikes and race bikes, this might actually be true. I used to have an MTB with stainless steel sprockets. Never needed to change them. Nowadays, they are mostly aluminium, I think. Furthermore newer bikes have more gears typically. The rear cassette used to be 7 speed, now 10 or 11 is not uncommon. This means narrower chains. Also chain may be lighter now, especially the high-end ones. Lighter bikes are d…

You can still get 6-7-8 speed rear cassettes (which use a common 6-7-8 speed chain size) if you're worried about chain durability and don't care about the extra range. In general 10/11 speed parts are still more expensive than 6/7/8 or 9-speed parts.

The great thing about 10/11 speed cassettes is that you can go single on the front end. I did that three years ago, and man is it better.

So I sacrifised the very highest and the very lowest gear compared to my old 3x9, but this thing never drops the chain off the front end, there is no front derailleur that always gets bent and fails to shift properly, and there are no awkward momentum-bleeding crazy shift-down-one, shift-up-the-other moves. And you save money, weight and complexity, meaning less maintenance and less failures.

Re: Flat Pack Chainless Bicycle from IKEA

#224

Post by SwellJoe »

bane wrote: post #206
SwellJoe wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cheap bikes are much cheaper today (in terms of build quality, though there are some that are, inflation-adjusted, lower priced than the cheapest bikes when I was a kid). I mostly had cheap bikes as a kid, and they held up really well. The quality was lower than that of a "good" bike, but not remarkably so. My first two bikes, a Huffy (from K Mart) and a Ross Piranha (from Toys R Us) had Chromoly frames and forks…

Maybe that's it? Maybe the shitty bikes I remember from my youth were actually just better than the equivalently priced bikes of today? I sold my last bike for $50 after a decade of really hard city and trail riding, even taking a couple dives off the edge of a 20 foot fall and getting in a minor car accident. That owner kept it for another decade and outside of normal part wear and repair, used it well for some pret…

I agree; $500-$750 will buy a pretty good mid-range bike, today (probably comparable to a $300-$400 bike of 15 years ago). But, there's no such thing as a "pretty good $200 bike" that I've been able to find. Anything in the very low end is effectively disposable; made too cheaply to be worth repairing, and will need major repair to stay on the road within a few years.

If the frame and fork were decent quality, you could upgrade over time (which was common in my day, when solidly constructed Chromoly frame and forks were available on I don't understand the flight of American manufacturing well enough to know what was causative and what is merely correlation, but nearly all of the bikes when I was a kid were made in the US. As manufacturing has gone overseas, the quality has gone way down. I know that Chinese factories can make high quality bikes (because they make most of the high end brands, as well as the cheap ones); but, a lot of brands that used to mean "decent cheap bike" like Huffy and Schwinn and Mongoose mostly only mean "cheap", today (Schwinn still has some decent bikes in their higher end).

I've clearly got a lot of grumpiness about bikes! I may love bikes too much.

Re: Flat Pack Chainless Bicycle from IKEA

#225

Post by dpark »

valueprop wrote: post #207
abrax3141 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are bikes still getting stolen? So many bikes are stolen that you'd think the market for stolen bikes, and parts, which can't be THAT huge, would be saturated.

There's a demand, so there's a market. The problem is other people buy stolen bikes. I would also call those thieves, even if they don't do the stealing by themselves. As long as one buys something without original papers, they support the guys who do the stealing itself. PS: 2 of my bikes were stolen.

I have no papers for the bike I bought brand new at full retail from a bike shop. Who keeps "papers" for a bike?

Re: Flat Pack Chainless Bicycle from IKEA

#226

Post by Symbiote »

tehwalrus wrote: post #95
bane wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up with a slew of craptastic second hand, thrift store and K-Mart level bikes since it was all we could afford (and as I grew, the bikes grew). We used to beat the living snot out of those bikes and I don't remember any of them costing more than $150 new and they either never broke or were easy to repair. I would expect to pay no more than around $300 for a similar quality of bike these days. The last time I w…

I used to work in Halfords in the UK and they sold adult bikes in the apollo range for £75. They do still have one for £80 on their website. The apollo outrider (as it was then called) was always pretty shoddy, but mostly just for the look and feel of the components, a bit heavy etc. We didn't get that many of them back in for repair.

> We didn't get that many of them back in for repair.

But you don't know if they're actually used.

My mum and sister have cheap bikes from Halfords. They see less than 50km of use per year.

I used something similar (maybe Asda or Tesco's version?) and it was ruined with 1000km or so of use -- every bearing worn out, the wheel rims worn ... it was miserable to ride it.

Re: Flat Pack Chainless Bicycle from IKEA

#227

Post by Symbiote »

collyw wrote: post #94
fulafel wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You want to cover the non-ideal circumstances too. Wet leaves, gravel, snow/ice will make the front wheel slip out from under you if you only have a front brake. (This bike does have a rear brake too, so it's fine) Edit: About winter biking, cables tend to freeze in the winter if you're not meticulous about maintenance. So automatic gears and coaster rear brake are good for this reason too.

Its also a good way to go over the handlebars if you only use a front brake.

If, day-to-day, you only use the front brake, then when you need to stop suddenly, you'll be experienced with using the front brake.

The problem is someone who uses the rear brake 99% of the time, then grabs the front brake when someone steps in front of them...

Re: Flat Pack Chainless Bicycle from IKEA

#228

Post by exDM69 »

aluhut wrote: post #203
exDM69 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chains might not be what they used to be but the multi-geared sprockets with tight tolerances definitely aren't. It's cheaper to change the chains sooner than to wait until they wear out your sprockets badly enough that you can't fit a new chain on it and need to change both. 2 years of life out of chains sounds reasonable to me if you drive a lot . Exposure to dirt, salt (from de-icing), moisture, etc can shorten th…

I'm up to 900km (559miles) per year again. It this "a lot"?

2 years times 900 km sounds like a short-ish but reasonable life for chains.

Re: Flat Pack Chainless Bicycle from IKEA

#230

Post by trgn »

johnny99 wrote: post #119

I used to be a bike mechanic, and have gotten to work 90% by bicycle for the past two decades, so I'll take a stab at some of the questions: - Belt drives are great. They're sturdier than chains, cleaner, and something I love, quieter. The angle of the belt doesn't change, the way a chain does, which means you can add a chain guard, as this bike does. Which keeps it yet cleaner. You can ride to work without worrying…

Good list. I'd add two other pros: - unisex frame - upright riding position
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