Screw this

Somewhere along the line, I lost my inclination to suffer on the saddle of a cheap bike.  I rode the Next Challenger perhaps four or five times, and that was four or five times too many.

Writing about the original Bike of Doom was fun and challenging.  This time around, it’s just a chore, and I don’t have the stomach for it.

So, last week, I gave the bike away.  I had intended to take it downtown and leave it unlocked.  It looks new and shiny and bike shaped, I’m sure somebody would have wanted it.  Before I could take the BOD on its final ride, my daughter chirped up that she would take the bike.  She said she would use it once or twice a week, on very short rides to her music lesson or choir practice.  Although I explained how lousy the bike was, she insisted.

So, the BOD is off my plate.   The infrequent trips my daughter puts on it are probably all it’s designed for.  In fact, she may be the Next Challenger’s perfect owner.  We’ll see.

For myself, I’m done with department store bikes.  I can’t recall having had less fun on a bike than when I was sitting on the Next Challenger.  Well, maybe once, cycling 40 kilometers back from Lockport into a 50 KPH wind.  But that’s about it.

So, what does that mean for BIKEOFDOOM.COM?   I don’t know yet.  I may let it expire.  I may turn all the BOD blogging material into a static website.  Or I may just leave it up as my cycling blog.

Either way, my Department Store Bike story is over.

Bike of Doom 2 – First ride is an eye opener

Next Challenger, $78 at Walmart, regularly priced at $98.

Next Challenger, $78 at Walmart, regularly priced at $98. Even at regular price, it's 1$ cheaper than the Supercycle 1800.

I picked it up the Next Challenger yesterday, and the feelings of regret and disappointment arrived about 15 seconds after wheeling it out the door of Walmart.   I rolled the bike home and gave it a quick inspection and setup, and here are my initial thoughts:

1) Quality of materials is lower than the Supercycle 1800.  For example, it looks to me like the pedal cranks are actually some kind of molded plastic rather than steel.   I can’t be 100% certain without cutting into them and I’m not going to do that.  But when I stepped on the pedals and added some torque there was a little give, even a little slip.  Not a good sign.

2) The twist gear shifts are annoying.  I’ve had these once before on an old Raleigh, and I was forever shifting gears without intending to while riding over bumps.  Same thing here.  Annoying and uncomfortable.

3) The saddle was attached only loosely.  Even after tightening, it doesn’t sit completely firmly.  Will have to look at this, but I am in no rush to do so, or to fix it if it needs it.   My tackle may take a pounding.  Of course, that may push me over the edge.

4) Overall impressions: a true piece of crap bike.  It makes the Supercycle 1800 look like a piece of quality workmanship in comparison.  Still, it’s shaped like a bike, and I took it out for a quick 15 km spin without incident, so it may do the trick.

I’m predicting that I’ll have a hard time getting 1,000 km out of the Next Challenger, based on my first ride.   I could be wrong.   Stay tuned.

Bike of Doom 2 – Next Challenger

The $78 Next Challenger - the new Bike of Doom

The $78 Next Challenger - the new Bike of Doom

Well, I found a Bike Shaped Object I think will do the trick for another Bike of Doom experiment.   I considered getting another Supercycle 1800… still $99, five years later… but figured if I was going to do this again, I might as well try something new.  I remembered that Walmart used to carry a Huffy in the same price range, but they no longer seem to.  Instead, they had the Next Challenger 26 inch men’s Mountain Bike, for $78.

$78?   I’m surprised you can make a bike that will actually roll for $78, but apparently Next makes a fully functioning Mountain Bike Shaped Object for that price.

I don’t want to follow the path I followed with the Supercycle.  I invested at least a couple of hundred in parts, and countless hours in labor, keeping it on the road.  It was too much work, and proved only that you can keep any piece of shit bike running if you upgrade enough and perform weekly repairs.  There are at least two other blogs that prove exactly the same thing, and succeeded far better than I did:

Budget Cycling, in Canberra, Australia, and Maple Leaf Test Rides in Toronto, Canada.  MLTR is still going, in fact, with 22,000 + km on his Supercycle 1800!

Anyway, no point in in doing that again.   And I really don’t have the inclination to throw good money (and time) after bad.  So I’m taking a simpler approach this time.

I’ll pick up the bike this weekend, but I’m put a DNR order on the new Bike of Doom in advance of buying it:

  1. No upgrades
  2. No extreme measures
  3. Minor repairs/maintenance only

By “minor repairs”, I mean just that: I’ll do simple repairs and maintenance that you might expect on any bike:  flats, oil and lube.  Maybe some wheel truing.  But other than that, nothing.  When the bike dies, it dies.

How long will a BSO last under ordinary cycling conditions (commuting) if you don’t make upgrades and extraordinary repairs?   I have no idea.  I’ll keep you posted.

 

Fate of Doom

R.I P. - Bike of Doom

R.I P. - Bike of Doom - 2007 - 2010

Did I mention the Bike of Doom died?  Winter cycling took its toll.  More on me than on the bike.  I lost my passion for doing weekly repairs.  The bike languished, needing a new drive train, wheel repairs, and a lot of TLC.  The thought of investing another $100, not to mention many hours of time, into keeping a $99 bike on the road seemed ludicrous.  So, in the spring of 2010, with some regret,  I put it out in the back lane with a “Free bike” sign on the saddle.  It was gone in a couple of days.

That was two years ago.

Did anybody ride it after that?  I don’t know.  I can’t imagine anybody having the patience to repair it.  More than likely it ended up in the landfill.

I think the problem was more with me than with the bike, in the end.  I just didn’t want to invest the time or money into keeping it running.  I’d already put more into spare parts and upgrades than the bike cost.  Even so, I had a lot of fun with the BOD.  I rode almost 5,000 km of daily commutes on it.  For awhile, I preferred riding it to my better bikes.

Although I would never recommend a department store bike to anybody who was just getting into cycling, I keep thinking that I wouldn’t mind another one for myself.

I’m thinking about it.

 

A man, a bike, a chainsaw…

Ben Niven of Troy, Missouri passed along this story of his little bike experiment. The chainsaw is a nice touch.

I’d been away from bicycles for many years, since my BMX goofoff days as a pre-teen. I spotted a 16″ BMX bike at the recycle yard a couple years back and grabbed it out of a pile of discarded bikes, thinking of my son. I ended up feeling sorry for all the other bikes and went back for them (about 6-8 of them) and brought them home. I got thinking it might be fun to have a bike of my own to bomb around the farm on, and take short rides up to town for groceries and exercise. This bike happened after a week or two of experimenting and brushing up on bike repairs.

It’s a 24″ Magna mountain bike from the early 90s. It was a 10-speed model, but the clunky plastic-and-rust-shrouded chainring and seized front derailleur were a turnoff. I tossed them and the related cable and shifter, and put on a longer set of cranks (175mm, I think) and a 36-tooth single chainring from a girl’s-frame BMX bike. Early rides as a 5-speed were fun because it felt agile like a BMX bike and had a pretty decent ride on gravel roads. To make it fit me better I made a taller seatpost by inerting one post into another and welding it up, and swapped on the weird bars from another old BMX oddity. With the long cranks and sprung seat (from an old Murray 3-speed) the bike feels very comfortable to me.

Later I took the boingy forks and a truer set of wheels from a newer Roadmaster 24″ MTB, and a giant pie plate/freewheel from an old Nishiki road bike, which has a 34T low gear. Big improvement on soft or rough ground.

The Topeak rack on the rear and the battery-operated LED lights all together are probably worth more than what they’re bolted to, but I don’t care. I have to lube and adjust the bottom bracket bearings once in awhile but that’s easy. I’ve had to adjust the top gear limit on the rear derailleur once to smooth the high-gear shift, but that’s easy too. Eventually I’ll have to install the spare tires that are sitting around here, and I’ll need to replace cables. But I am pretty tickled with this odd combination of parts and how it turned out to be just the ticket for my needs. I’ve found it pretty pleasant for 10-mile pavement rides and this year I’m going to try going farther once or twice a week.

SC1800 out of ice, on the road

Odometer

Three weeks makes a big difference in the Spring. The snow is gone. The SC1800′s bonds literally melted away. I brought it inside and gave it a little TLC. Brakes and derailers needed a little work. The BOD has been parked outside for over two full years, 50% of that time covered in snow, or frozen in ice. It responded remarkably well to some lubrication and adjustment. Both tires needed air. Note that the odometer is still working.  That’s some kind of miracle. Temperatures were in the minus 40 range for about a month this winter, and the last. I can’t believe the tiny little battery in the odometer still has juice in it.

BOD first ride of year

This year’s first ride was practical. I mapped out a route to school. 23 Km round trip. I’ll start doing that on Monday. Felt good to be back on the bod. Took a couple of pics. This is Omand’s Creek, at the point I crossed every day on my old commute. Spring flooding has left the bridge underwater. The river walkway is completely submerged. Don’t know when that will appear. But I worked out a reasonably nice route along Wolesley, across the Assiniboine River, down Wellington Crescent, over the Maryland Bridge, through The Gates, along Westminster, across Osborne, down Assinniboine, through the Forks, down Riverside Drive, then into the Exchange District where the UW off-campus building is located. Should take me about 30 minutes each way, without sweating too much.

Omands Creek

Breaking into the icy bicycle tomb

Frozen Lock

As recent posts may have led you to believe, I’m working through the urge to put the SC-1800 back on the road.  The big problem at this point is the icy tomb in which it is encased.   The hardened steel Master Lock with massive chain is just one of the barriers to beginning this cycling season.  The lock is frozen.  After three days of efforts to open it, I finally caved and squirted a generous dose of WD40 into the keyhole.  Half an hour later, with some strong language encouragement, it finally popped.

Unfortunately, the covering of snow you can see in the photos in the last post is only camouflage for the deeper, harder, apparently impenetrable layer of ice in which the bike’s wheels are currently embedded.

Enough for one day.  Tomorrow, the shovel comes out.

Bike of Doom Under Snow

Bike of Doom Under Snow

The Bike of Doom has been resting for some time now. Some might consider this an ignominious fate for such a worthy beast, others might relish the thought of a well deserved plague of rust. You know who you are. In any event, cycling season has not yet arrived in Winnipeg. These photos were taken this morning.

BOD odometer still working

Interesting note: the odometer is working! The bike has been stored outside for two years, in all weather, including a reasonably long stretch of near -40 temperatures this winter, and the cheap $8 odometer is still working.

This could be a sign of the apocalypse.

Vintage SuperCycle Rider

I received this recently from Shane Costantino, the proud owner and rider of a vintage 1989 SuperCycle. I wish I shared the “zero repairs” experience, but I followed a somewhat different path, particularly with the bottom bracket. The lubricating with 10w-30 motor oil isn’t as crazy as it sounds, at least for cycling through a long season in -40 conditions.

8<============

Vintage 1989 SuperCycle

Vintage 1989 SuperCycle Derailer

Steve,

Thanks for the great blog!  I am the proud owner of a 1989 Supercycle.  I was doing some adjustments to the shifter on the weekend.  Last year I treated it to some new tubes and tires (they were the originals until then).  It has been the best bike I’ve ever owned and has needed 0 repairs over the years.  I have only ever used 10W-30 motor oil on the chain and it’s pretty dirty since I’ve always just added more and never cleaned it!  I’m unsure of the km’s on it but as a kid I went through 3 speedometers each of which stopped around 1000 km.  Then I went for a few years without speedometers.  The bottom bracket is still tight as can be.  Here are a few pics!

Shane

Department Store Bike horror story

Although I often claim that my $99 SC1800 is a reasonably good bike and has done me well, I’m forced to admit that, hey, I may just have been lucky.  I got a good 1,000 Km out of it before it needed any repairs, which is not bad for such a cheap piece of machinery.  Is my experience typical?  Hmm.  Let’s just say “No.”

After expressing an interest in possibly beginning cycling, my daughter’s boyfriend received an SC1800 as a gift from a family friend.  He knew my story and thought the bike might not be bad for piddling around town, commuting and the like.  He picked it up at Canadian Tire, cycled away, and had gone barely 100 yards before the cassette disintegrated.  The gear assembly slipped away from the core of the cassette (which remained attached to the rear wheel hub), spilling micro-steel-balls all over the road.

He took it back to Canadian Tire,  who told him, “Sorry, you can’t return it if it’s broken… we’ll have to send it out for repairs.”

When I heard this, I was a bit angry.  The kid had barely taken three pedal strokes before the machine blew up!  Anyway, to save him the trouble of taking the thing back to Canadian Tire and conceivably being without bike for a month, I made the repair.  The remnant of the cassette was removed with an adjustable pair of pliers.  The hub was in good condition, as was the wheel.  I had a couple of spare cassettes of the right size sitting around, so I installed a new one and had him back on the road in less than 20 minutes.

Three things here.  First, if that had been me, and I’d come back and received that answer, there would have been a scene.  Let’s just say it might have gotten ugly.  I think my money would have been back in my pocket within a minute or two, or I’d be walking out with another bike at the very least.  They bullied my daughter’s boyfriend because he is a quiet guy and didn’t raise a fuss.  Second, to address this before it comes up in comments, if the bike had been bought at a Local Bike Shop, I’m not so sure they would have taken it back, but at least they’d have been able to make the repair on the spot and perhaps throw in some extra equipment for the inconvenience.  Third, despite my enjoyment of the cheapo SC1800, there’s no getting away from the fact that it’s a department store bike, and the almost the cheapest one you can buy, at that.

And the moral of the story is, I guess… you get what you pay for.