I'm totally new to biking and am looking for a fairly inexpensive way to get into the biking world. Unfortunately I live in a pretty rural area, so there doesn't seem to be tons of used bikes available very often. I recently saw this and am wondering if this would be a decent entry into road/gravel riding for $250. Thanks!
by CurleyPhotos
4 Comments
1×8 friction shifting is really bad at $250, personally wouldn’t pay more than $150 for that. For $300 you can pretty regularly find 2×8 or 2×10 road bikes with integrated shifters which are much more pleasant (and safer) to use.
I will say this seems like a pretty cool/fun retro bike, but it’s a terrible deal if you want to get into road/gravel riding.
It is an odd sort of MTB to road/light gravel conversion. I’m not sure I like what they have done.
* The wheels have been swapped out from 26″ to 29″ (700c) or maybe 27.5 (650b)
* That required the removal of the cantilever brakes and they were replaced with some 70s road brakes.
* The above two changes greatly reduces the tire clearances. I’m not sure the fender holes where the bolts for the brakes are mounted were designed to take the stresses braking creates.
* Swapped the flat bars for drop bars
* Road style brake/shifters. Apparently set up for friction shifting, usually they are indexed.
* Swapped the triple crankset for a x1 setup
* Swapped the cassette for one with more teeth. This is good as long as the derailleur can handle the range.
I would lean towards skip but I bet there is someone at /r/xbiking that loves it.
[Oldshovel has a restoration of one of these bikes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XRjH5DH81w) so you can get an idea of how it use to look before tinkering.
Try to talk them down any amount you can.
With that stem, it’s not a decent setup for anything.