Box store name brand bikes?

Giant, Gary Fisher, and Jamis are a few others to watch for on CL.

You might even find a Klein out that way. Beautiful bikes.

that they are. I've got a friend with one of the last Klein dual sus mountain bikes. She bought it new. It has the most beautiful dark green to teal color shift paint I've ever seen. Someone will have to pry that bike from her cold dead hands.

I have two mountain bikes right now: a 1995ish Mongoose Threshold 18 speed I bought at a bike store, and a "Schwinn" (Pacific Cycle special) full suspension bike I bought at Target a few years ago.

The Mongoose was my main vehicle when I was a teenager. It is a very basic small tube chromoly frame with no suspension. I had a paper route, and I was on that thing every day in all weather. Only issue I ever had was a bent front wheel from going off sweet jumps and I replaced the rear tire once. It still rides beautifully and has never been back to the bike store or had a tune-up.

The "Schwinn" was an impulse buy. Looks exactly like this one: (obviously not my pic)

I saw it, did a quick Google search which lead to people saying it was one of the few big box store bikes with decent components, and bought the thing. It rides ok, but shifts funny sometimes. It was probably not assembled well, which is likely the issue. It's not as bad as some of the others I've seen, but I wouldn't take it on serious mountain trails.

I'd do as others said and find a used "real" bike on Craigslist. If you do buy a box store bike, have a professional go through it.

River City also has an outlet store. I've bought 2 new bikes and tons of accessories from them. They're great about test rides.

Woody wrote: You might even find a Klein out that way. Beautiful bikes.

In the 90s I was pretty heavy into mountain biking and Seinfeld. I love that Jerry had a Klein hanging in his apartment.

IIRC, he had a Cannondale hanging there for a season. I was MTB mad then, so yeah, the Klein was a fascinating piece of set decoration. I wonder who has it now...

I've got a Klein road frame hanging in my garage... it's one of the entry level ones but still before they sent production off to Trek... it isn't the best fit (little long top tube) and doesn't really fit 28c tires (smallest I can bring myself to ride) but I have problems bringing myself to trying to sell it... I wanted a Klein so bad back in the 90's lol.

my buddy that now owns my old LBS is known as KleinGuy online... in the shop he had prob a dozen of his old Kleins just hanging on the walls around the shop... absolutely gorgeous bikes...

The bikesdirect thing looks like a nice way to go if you can do the assembly yourself--you can pick the level of componentry and pricepoint. That said, I got a Trek Marlin 29er in 2012 and love it--the 29ers ride really nice. I would strongly encourage you to consider that.

A good friend of mine has a couple of Target Schwinns. One is a flatbar road bike, the other a mountain bike. He's got a couple thousand miles on both. My wife has a K-mart Schwinn with probably a thousand miles on it.

They all needed the shifters adjusted. The road bike had a recall on the wheels due to bad spokes. They sent him new wheels the same week and he had the old ones re-spoked.

That said, I bought myself a Cannondale cyclrocross bike after riding nearly every bike in the store as my newest bike. It fits me nearly perfectly and rides great everywhere I take it. A coworker just bought the same bike and he loves his.

So, if you find that the big box bike fits and you can tune it, its not a bad way to go. The local bike shop is always great too and they will be much more helpful and make sure the thing just works.

Fuji's mid to high end road and mountain bikes were also very good. If you see a bike that says "Columbus" or "Reynolds" steel it's a pretty good bike.

Glad people are still loving on the Bridgestones. I have an XO-1 that is a "cold dead hands" kind of bike.

I scoured every local pawn shop, thrift store, and bike shop today. They are out of their berkeleying minds. I'm talking $400 for a used, beat-up, Wal-Mart Schwinn. I saw the same one brand new in Wally World for $125 people!! The bike shops had new bikes (Giant?) that cost more than my berking 2005 car!!!

Back to hunting CL for a used one. WHo knew getting a bike to putz around on would be so hard?

In reply to JohnRW1621:

I've got thousands of miles on my Bridgestone RB that I bought at a police auction for under $100. It, my Torker BMX, and the pair of airplane bikes my folks brought back from Germany in the 70's will be fought over by whoever outlives me.

Boost_Crazy wrote:

It just sucks that I lost it down a waterfall on my first long ride.

C'mon, you can't just leave that hanging there like that!

Ok, so... The first year I had the bike I didn't have much opportunity to do any more than up and down the road. The next spring I finally get the chance to take it out and I go to a local state park, Buttermilk Falls in Ithaca. I park and start riding up the road to the upper falls. At one point I stop to get some pictures so I had the bike on the kick stand. A gust of wind knocked it over and into the water and down the falls it went as this was at the height of the spring thaw. I almost jumped in after it but I hesitated as my new iPhone was on my pocket and my warranty didn't include water damage. Had I jumped in I would likely have died, and I doubt my wife wanted to become a widow after 2 weeks.

Back to box store bikes, walmart now has a 32" cruiser.

I'm still shopping around for a bike myself.

i have an aluminum framed "Schwinn" mountain bike that i got at Wal Mart in the spring of 2002.. it's decent- i don't ride it a lot, but it always works and it still has the original air in the tires from when i bought it.. my nephew took it over a few sweet jumps (5 foot or so gap between ramps, as well as over some woops that they had in their back yard) and it didn't fall apart, and the only real issue i have with it is the shifters that are built into the grips- if you stand up and pedal hard, you can accidentally twist your wrist and downshift a couple of gears.

Javelin, a couple quick questions: how tall are you? And where do you plan to ride the bike...paved roads, around town, gravel roads, singletrack trails through the woods?

I will be happy to help if I can; we have two stores in Portland with a huge inventory of new bikes and closeout new bikes, but I am also happy to help you evaluate potential private party/used bikes to buy if you would rather. Feel free to get in touch either at work or through the board if I can help either on the clock or off the clock.

Oh yeah, used bike pricing in Portland is INSANE! I don't know of many other cities where used name-brand bikes start at several hundred dollars!

RI's used bike market on CL is pretty pricey. I flipped an '85 Univega Viva Sport for $200 and a Centurion Mixte for $160. Those were nice bikes in very nice condition, but nothing special. Decent stuff fetches $300 easily. Competitive market here because we have a pretty booming bike culture (which is awesome).

I want a cross bike, but I'm just going to get $550 Nashbar CX1 on a coupon deal because finding a used one for under $400 around here is near impossible.