Where's the dividing line between a budget "proper" bike and a Junk BSO?

[roadrash]

It always used to the specialized allez around here. If you had a Btwin, you'd be a laughing stock even if they owned a Raleigh.

that's more what describes a person as a pr!ck, than what describes a BSO, SNOBBY FECKERS

 

[BrumJim]

Its difficult to compare it with cars. The only reason that BSOs continue to be sold is that they are at such a low price point, that when you get fed up of trying to get it in a ride-able state, you just put it in the garage and forget it, and write off the <£100 that you spent on it. However a cheap a car you have bought, it will clearly be a significant purchase, and therefore you will spend time and money getting it to be useable.

 

[summerdays]

A BSO is not classed as such due to snobbery... but because it doesn't serve the function it is supposed to do properly. For me weight Isnt the first consideration. Instead it's things like barrel adjusters made out of such a soft component that they quickly become managed, wheels constructed so poorly that the bearings are a mess after 200 miles.

Another example of stupid designs are the full suspension bikes for kids from supermarkets/toy shops, which have 1 inch of height adjustment! Kids grow so that is completely impractical, or even worse the motorbike shaped bike that you can't adjust the saddle height at all and it does weigh a ton!!! The kids bike market has improved tremendously over the last 10 or more years thanks to Islabikes starting a trend towards better designs for kids, and luckily lots of other brands are following.

However sometimes it's all someone has, and in which case I hope their BSO gives them satisfaction and freedom.

 

[Rickshaw Phil]

So it's about functionality?
My first "proper" bike I owned when I was a kid might be regarded by some as s a BSO today. It was a Raleigh Arena, a 5-speed "racer" with drop bars, but cottered cranks and all-steel components. I strongly suspect that it's frame was based on Raleigh's generic sports roadster design. It wasn't light, but it was tough as old boots and in my hands it took a beating without much ill-effect. My mate had a virtually identical bike only with a BSA badge. This was at a time BMX was getting popular and so a lot of other kids had Raleigh Grifters, which I personally thought were junk, so I bought a big-wheel bike for relatively decent road performance. That didn't stop us doing stunt jumps off wooden ramps propped up on stacks of house bricks along with the Grifter owners. My mate was really reckless and managed to trash his BSA so I bought it off him for a fiver, straightened it up, and thereafter used it as my beater/silly stunt bike to save destroying the Raleigh.
Looking back to those days, most mass-market bikes were relatively heavy, but they were solidly engineered and it took a lot of abuse to actually break them.

The bits I've emboldened above are what sum up the difference between old mass-market bikes and BSOs. A BSO simply won't take that kind of use and keep on going. The problem is that although a BSO uses components that look the same as the old robust ones, they are actually made of much cheaper materials so don't have the durability.

For a long time I've kept a cheap knockabout bike for those trips where I don't want to use the better bikes (bad weather commuting, trips into town etc). The current one is a Hawk Trakatak which as standard turned out to be awful - Horrible tyres, the drivetrain wore out very quickly (only about 800 miles), the pedals snapped in half, the back wheel snapped spokes, the stem broke when I was adjusting it, and so on.........

With this one it was always my plan to run it round until bits wore out then have some fun upgrading to my own spec. As it turns out that happened a lot sooner than expected and the only original bits left are the frame, fork and handlebar. It's still a heavy lump but it's quite a capable heavy lump now.

 

[SkipdiverJohn]

This is what I'd mean by a BSO: the brakes were wonky and didn't work, it weighed 19kg, the wheels were warped, pedals wonky, etc. I got it for free and it hadn't been used.

View attachment 382137

This is my £5 Dawes which probably just goes into the same territory:

View attachment 382138

I must admit, if someone gave me the full-sus yellow monstrosity, all I would have done is stripped all the mechanicals off it for spare parts and chucked the frame in the skip.
The Dawes is not so clear-cut. It's not a full-blown BSO in the same league as the Corona rubbish, I'd regard it just as a basic bike. I'm really surprised to see that brand name on the frame of what is clearly a cheap bike with the dreaded front suspension forks. When I think of Dawes I always think Dawes Galaxy, a bike I would have bought as a teenager if I could have afforded one at the time. I've never considered them as a MTB maker! .I really don't see the point of suspension forks and to me they are a gimmick on cheap bikes because at that sort of price point you can't possibly engineer them well enough to work properly. I must admit I steer well clear of any frame with suspension, and personally I would only skip salvage anything built with conventional fixed forks and tail end.

 

[Racing roadkill]

I must admit, if someone gave me the full-sus yellow monstrosity, all I would have done is stripped all the mechanicals off it for spare parts and chucked the frame in the skip.
The Dawes is not so clear-cut. It's not a full-blown BSO in the same league as the Corona rubbish, I'd regard it just as a basic bike. I'm really surprised to see that brand name on the frame of what is clearly a cheap bike with the dreaded front suspension forks. When I think of Dawes I always think Dawes Galaxy, a bike I would have bought as a teenager if I could have afforded one at the time. I've never considered them as a MTB maker! .I really don't see the point of suspension forks and to me they are a gimmick on cheap bikes because at that sort of price point you can't possibly engineer them well enough to work properly. I must admit I steer well clear of any frame with suspension, and personally I would only skip salvage anything built with conventional fixed forks and tail end.

Front suspension is useful, not just for riding on trails / terrain, but equally for riders, on any surface ( including roads ) who are less experienced, and need a bit more control from the front of the bike. A decent set of front sus forks will mean that the tyre maintains contact with any unevenness in the surface, more consistently, leading to less perception of ‘skittishness’ from the bike. They add weight, but for a relatively new rider, the advantages of having greater confidence / Control outweigh the disadvantage of increased bike weight. As long as the forks are not complete junk, they are a nice thing to have.

 

[gaijintendo]

I must admit, if someone gave me the full-sus yellow monstrosity, all I would have done is stripped all the mechanicals off it for spare parts and chucked the frame in the skip.

I'm looking really hard... Does the bell look worth keeping?

Edit: actually, I bet you could turn the back end into a single wheel trailer with a bit of effort.

 

[Bodhbh]

I'm looking really hard... Does the bell look worth keeping?

Edit: actually, I bet you could turn the back end into a single wheel trailer with a bit of effort.

Steam off the decals and stick em on your fridge.

 

[Blue Hills]

Once when I was coming home after a night on the sauce, I was in desperate need of more wine, so like you do I bought a corkscrew/bottle opener from a 24hr garage near me. It was in that weird section of the shop where they also have buttons and sellotape on display. It was one of those with the two arms on the side that move up as you screw the screw in and then you pull them down to lever the cork out. Well, I got it (and a couple of bottles of nasty wine) home and was all set to carry on the evening's frivolity, but the arms on this corkscrew just bent without actually levering up the cork in the slightest. It was like the thing was made of grey Plasticine.

I always think of this when the subject of BSOs comes up. This was a corkscrew shaped object which, because it was made of cheese or 'monkey metal' as my old man would say, actually did nothing of the corkscrew function. T.

Reminds me of my dahon speed pro. Not a cheap bike even discounted end of line as mine was and the latest version from the family was 1.5 grand last time i looked.
The lever on the quick release skewer just bent and bent and inevitably broke off ffs. Lesson? Don't buy a corkscrew from mr dahon. I believe, mercy me, his background was the aeroplane industry.

 

[Racing roadkill]

[QUOTE 5032005, member: 45"]I don't agree. They're unnecessary weight and complication that make a bike handle much worse. They wallow, and upset cornering and handling. On roads they bring no advantage.[/QUOTE]

Righto

I often have groups of riders with me, when I’m fulfilling my role as a BC ride leader, and the route includes a bit of road riding and a bit of trail / off road cycle way / canal tow path. I always choose one of my front sus hybrids on these rides, as trying to ride on the rougher stuff, with a fixed fork bike, is not a great idea, even for an experienced ride leader, let alone some of the novice riders we see regularly. If the forks are lockable, that’s ideal, as you get the best of both worlds, and the option of front sus if needs be, on the smoother sections / roads. I’ve had new riders turn up on mixed surface rides, on bikes that people on Internet forums and the like have ( wrongly) recommended they get, with fixed forks ( flat bar and drop bar ) and they have been struggling with them, so I’ve swapped bikes with them, and I’ve lost count of the number of times, they’ve told me they wished they hadn’t listened to the “idiots on the internet”, having tried the front sus bike, on the bit they were struggling with.

 

[welsh dragon]

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder they say. You can buy a bike that weighs a ton, looks a mess, and cost you £100, but if it got you off your bum and outside in the fresh air, then i'd say it's priceless regardless of what anyone else thinks of it.

Clearly if you pit a £100 bike and a £1000 bike against each other, then you will feeel the differance, but it is all about how you feel, what you think of the bike that matters.

Just enjoy whatever bike you have. Enjoy getting out in the fresh air, and having some fun, and don''t think about it or what anyone else thinks. It's only a BSO if YOU think it is.

 

[Racing roadkill]

[QUOTE 5032128, member: 45"]You're not talking about roads now, which was the part that I responded to.[/QUOTE]
“Mixed surface” includes roads.

 

[Blue Hills]

Agree mr paul. Had an expensive 'dale with short travel supension for roads. Nice bike nice system but maintenance became crazy. Swapped the components from its 1,500 list price bike to a nice bit of 90s ridgeback tange steel i picked up for £30 and never looked back. Rides like a dream, will probably last longer than me.

 

[Rickshaw Phil]

For what it's worth, my BSO took me up Asterton Bank today.

 

[SkipdiverJohn]

Righto

I always choose one of my front sus hybrids on these rides, as trying to ride on the rougher stuff, with a fixed fork bike, is not a great idea, even for an experienced ride leader, let alone some of the novice riders we see regularly. {

Isn't a lot of that down to riding style and lack of mechanical sympathy? When I was young I often used to ride my 5 speed Raleigh with 26 x 1 1/4 road tyres through woods and similar unpaved surfaces. You know, undulating mud/gravel surfaces with potholes and puddles. I rarely took a spill and didn't really get that many punctures either. Rather than sit on the bike like a sack of spuds and ride hard, I used to keep my weight on the pedals rather than the saddle on rough bits so the bike could move around a bit and I also kept my speed down rather than try to plough along as though I was riding on tarmac. It's the same if you need to mount a kerb; if you ride straight into a kerb under power you are going to damage wheels & tyres, people on cheap bikes are always complaining about buckled rims etc. Yet if you just lift the front wheel as you make contact, you reduce the impact and don't damage the bike or suffer jarring.