My Ali Express Cycling Shopping Haul

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Hello and welcome to another video. So recently I’ve been building myself a winter bike from a frame that I’ve had for some quite some time. And in future videos I am going to show you around the bike and show you what I’ve done to the bike. It’s been quite the process and it’s took me quite some time to do. But it is riding now and it’s up on the road. But while I’ve been building the bike, I’ve been building it with the budget in mind, which has then got me thinking about the budget end of the market and the budget components that are available out there. Basically, to keep the cost down because it’s a winter bike. I don’t want to be spending a lot of money on this bike. I wanted it to be as cheap as possible in stark reflection to my treadone that I’ve got, which I absolutely love. And the reason I built a winter bike is to protect the the monone over the crappy winter months that we get here in the UK. With that in mind, I decided to go rooting round on the internet. Now, one marketplace that I have used significantly quite a lot for random bits of things which I’ve never shown on the channel and in hindsight now I wish I did. So that’s why I am now going to show you. This is AliExpress. Now, don’t get me wrong. I’ve had some things on there that have been absolute rubbish. And then I’ve had some things which I’ve had for years and I still continue to use to this day. So, I’ve been on a spending spree on AliExpress to try and find some components to put on the mome to make it more comfortable and test out some different components to yeah, bring that comfort and make it a more pleasurable ride over the winter months. So, with that, let’s start with my components that I have been buying. Now, everything on the bike is aluminum. It’s full alloy and I wanted to bring some carbon onto the bike which got me looking at carbon handlebars. Now these what I’ve got here I can’t remember the exact exact price but it be popping up here were £26. Now how much carbon’s in there I don’t know. And this isn’t a review. It’s just me showing you what I bought is I bought these toe seat bars. It’s not focusing. There’ll be pictures popping up here of the components. Anyway, is these bars. So, the carbon, they are 40 mil on the tops and they’ve got a bit of a flare. So, on the bottom, the 42 mil. I’ve got I haven’t measured them at the minute. Even comes with a sticker there, a quality control sticker. And yeah, so that’s them. I’m going to be fitting them onto the bike soon. They do feel pretty like Yeah, there’s no flex in them at all, but they should, in hindsight, be more comfortable than my alloy bars that are on there at the minute. And if they do go and fail on me, then I guess it’s only me that I’ll um that I’ll be paying the price. But yeah, I’ve got them and hopefully they bring some comfort. Now, along with them as well, I’ve also bought some bar tape off there. Now any that recognize that is the kush sign the sticky cush. I’ve actually got the genuine stuff on the mome. Um now it’s not and it’s not listed as genuine stuff because sticky cush we all know that the bar plugs they’re metal on on there and uh on these yeah it’s just a plastic thing. But yeah, I’m going to be putting that on the bar on the bike. And they was that those this roll was I think it was 2 or3 pound. It weren’t a lot of money. It weren’t a lot at all. So that’s the handlebars sorted out. I’ve also got myself although I don’t need to fit it because the bottom bracket I’ve gone with a Shimano one and I’m owing and on whether to fit this, but they do get some real good reviews. There’s some big companies out there that make these and it is a thread together bottom bracket. So, it’s press fit my bike and this is a press fit bottom bracket. But what it does that the Shimano one doesn’t, the press fit one that I’ve got on the bike, you press it in and that’s it. It’s just the friction going into the frame that holds it in place. With the thread together bottom bracket, it it does what it says. It’s a little bit like on if you’ve got a threaded bottom bracket is slightly like that. So, as you can see, there’s threads there. [Music] There’s threads on that side and then there’s threads in there. And the idea is is that you put that into your bottom bracket and then as you turn it, it presses itself in. You have to press one side in. I’m going to do a video installing this if I decide to fit it. It was about £9. Um, yeah. So, you press one side in and then you thread the other side in and then it not only does the friction hold it in, also the threads hold it in place as well. Now, apparently it’s got ceramic bearings in there. I don’t know how how true that is, but they do feel pretty free. Um, it’ll be interesting to see how long this lasts over the winter months. If I can get a winter out of it, if I decide to fit it, I probably am going to fit it. I just I don’t want to pull the other one out because it’s working fine. But for testing purposes, I think this would be a good test because, well, bottom brackets are so expensive at the minute. There’s some companies out there like Ceramic Speed that are putting them out for like3400 and I’ll be honest with you, I think that is excessive. Um, if you’re looking for them performance gains, then yeah, I get using it. But, you know, my Shimano one was 20 quid, 20, 30 quid. And my experience of using Shimano bottom brackets is that they’ve last a long time. If you get one 12 months, you know, you could do 10, 15 years using a Shimano bottom bracket uh over using the ceramic speed one and God knows how long that’s going to last. But yeah, that’s my views on that. So yeah, I’ve got the Zitto bottom bracket. In addition to that, on my bike, I’ve got a Specialized Roman 3D printed saddle, which is super expensive, and I don’t want to pay that kind of money to put one on my winter bike. I want to keep it on the mome because I’m going to be using that on the turbo, and that’s where I want that ultimate comfort. Ultimately, when I’m on my winter bike, I’m going to be doing two, three, possibly 4 hours when we start coming out the back end of winter. No more than that. I don’t need the saddle which is going to keep me comfortable for 8 10 hours. However, in saying that, and there’s been a lot of these popping up online recently on AliExpress, I’ve actually got one which I got off um a subscriber. And that saddle was the same firmness all the way throughout it. When I do a review on this, I will show you that. And I decided to go for this Riot 3D printed full carbon saddle. comes in a bag. Don’t know why. I think it brings a I think they think it brings a little bit more premium feel to it, but it’s this this Roman 3D printed saddle. Now, it’s got a full carbon base. Um, one thing this has got over the one that I was given off a subscriber is this has actually got different so a 3D printed saddle when you get a high-end one like my and I’ll show you when I fit this in the next video or in the video when I fit it or I do a review on it is um it’s different pressures. The the firmness of the saddle is different at the front and different at the back and on the edges and this has kind of got that feel in it. So, at the back here, it’s quite soft. On the edges, it’s quite soft. Here, it’s pretty firm. And then even on the nose of the saddle, it’s a little bit softer. Now, it’s not the same softness as my Specialized one, but again, I’m really interesting to interested to see what this is like. As I said, it’s full carbon. Um, it’s got the 7 by9 seat rails. I don’t need to adapt them on my winter bike. So yeah, I thought give that a go. That’s actually the dearest thing I bought. That was £66. But in contrast to the 3D printed saddle that I got from Specialized, it’s a massive saving. And actually, if this is comfortable, potentially I might put it on the MONE. Um cuz yeah, the 3D printed saddles, if you’ve never r one, they’re super good, super comfortable. So yeah, that’s that. It don’t end there. There’s more. Honestly, I’ve been on a right shopping spree, but not spent much money. Tubeless tires. I use the diner plug system. Now, any of you that do know do use that dino plug system will know how expensive the refills are. They’re like £18, £19 for five. And it’s been paining me to buy them. It really has. And I’ve used not that many this year in all fairness. But I thought if there’s a cheaper alternative out there that I can get my hands on, then I want to go for it. And I come across these. Now, they don’t they’re not listed on there as Dino Plug. I just randomly found them just browsing on AliExpress. And as you can see, it looks very similar to it. You get five of them in the pack and I think I’ve paid £9. Hopefully, it’s sometime before I have to use them. But if I do have to use them, I will come back to you and let you know how they are cuz I don’t want to be popping a tire just to try and test them out. But yeah, £9 and you can actually buy the full dino plug system. Again, not listed as a dino plug system on AliExpress for like 20 quid and I think when I bought mine I paid £45. So yeah, that’s hopefully is going to be good value. Then I needed a saddle bag for the winter bike because I don’t want to be swapping bags around from the winter bike to the summer bike and vice versa. So I’ve bought this which is very similar to my Silka saddle pack uh X Tiger. Now I was speaking to someone the other day who said that they’ve used these and said that they’re pretty good. It’s quite big. It should fit under the saddle nice and easy. I hope like that. I just need to find a way to mount my uh my radar. But yeah, I’ve got that. And to go inside it, I’ve got myself some now that was £9. I’ve got some um patches which were a quid, I think, and they looked on the pictures like the thin ones. Then with that, I’ve decided to get myself a multi-tool, which I’ll be honest with you, it doesn’t feel like great quality. Actually feels terrible. So, that doesn’t look good. Um, I hope to god this doesn’t bite me in the ass when I’m out on a ride, but it’s got a chain breaker tool on there. Um, this was only a couple of quid as well. The prices have all been popping up. It’s got Allen keys on it. I may not use this. This was a bit of an impulse purchase. I have got another I’ve got a Rock Bros one that I can put in that saddle pack because if the tolerances aren’t right on the Allen keys, you can actually strip the the head of the Allen key out. So, I might not use this. I don’t know. We will see. I might test it on small bolts before I decide to put it on the bike. But yeah, that doesn’t feel as good a quality as it felt as it looked on the on the pictures on AliExpress. I’ve also got a internal cable routing tool because I the one I’ve currently got I borrowed off my mate Phil uh Croet MTB and I need to give him that back. So I decided to buy myself one which was like £4. And then last but not least, and next time I clean the winter bike, which is due soon because the chains filter, I’ve decided to have a go. In the past, I bought park tools, chain cleaning tool, and I’ll be honest with you, they’re not very good. They don’t last very long. They soon wear out. I’ve not had to use one for quite some time because on my mone, I’ve got a wax chain. So, I thought for these seem to have quite a lot of good reviews, so I thought I’d give it a go. Now, I’m going to save this. I can’t be bothered taking it apart, but yeah, I got in the pack, I got this uh chain cleaning tool. I got that chain cleaning tool. And in there as well, I got some brushes for cleaning the cassette and the chain. They feel all right. But yeah, that’s just a quick video. Not a quick video, quite a long video on my AliExpress shopping haul. Uh some things I’m really excited to test out and try. One being the saddle, and I’m probably a little bit more nervous about running these uh the handlebars. But I think it’s going to be interesting to see how some of these products are on AliExpress. If there’s anything that you want my honest, unbiased opinion on, leave your comments down below. And if I if I see value in buying that product and testing it, then I will I’ll buy it and get it on the channel and I’ll test it on my winter bike. And if any products are good, like the bottom bracket, I may buy one for the MONE because they do do a T47 one. They do bottom brackets CTTO in all different sizes. And actually these cut that plastic cover comes off there. And again, I’ll show you in a video how easy it is to pull these out and press new bearings in with a bearing press, which I also got off Express, which I’ve had for some time, which I got to tell you is a top bit of kit. Anyway, on that, I’m going to leave it. Uh I’m going to leave this video here. I will be back to you in the next video. Hopefully not too far away. Um, and yeah, thanks for watching and I will see you in the next video. Take care, guys. Bye.