CityCyclingEdinburgh was launched on the 27th of October 2009 as "an experiment".
IT’S TRUE!
CCE is 16years old!
Well done to ALL posters
It soon became useful and entertaining. There are regular posters, people who add useful info occasionally and plenty more who drop by to watch. That's fine. If you want to add news/comments it's easy to register and become a member.
RULES No personal insults. No swearing.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-43182930
Bike people already pretty good at replacing the minimal amount to keep stuff on the road. Parts of car industry good at this with reconditioned turbo units etc (not green but at least not making new part totally).
I've got a couple of old printers and want to do right thing. Of course the huge variety of model types / obsolescence maybe makes it harder with electrical goods to remake rather than recycle?
Excellent point @LaidBack. Some bicycles are designed to simply be repaired and effectively live forever, others are disposable toys.
There is a 1911 bike on the road in Edinburgh which still has the original grips and oil lamps.
That said a good bike is a light bike and a light machine is a delicate machine.
Also, very hard for a bicycle remaker paying UK wages and rents to compete with the Apollo Transfer shipped in from Godknows brand new at £150.
Islabikes recycling scheme -
http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/topic.php?id=17057I
That said a good bike is a light bike and a light machine is a delicate machine.
Similarly, Keith Bontrager's maxim, "Strong, light, cheap, pick two."
IWRATS' maxim: On time, on budget, as specced. Pick two.
“Strong, light, cheap, pick two."
Good summary of the inevitable balances of a making a new bike.
Most bikes are strong enough (ignoring superlight bikes for specific racing purposes and badly manufactured carbon ones).
Light of course is very relative. There was a time when a light bike was built round a quality steel frame with as much alloy as possible and skinny (sometimes fragile) tyres.
Then came Mountain Bikes and bike weights increased dramatically! (And people started a whole new process of ‘lighter’. Then came suspension: repeat.)
Cheap again is very relative. Over time bikes have got cheaper relative to incomes. There have always been bikes ‘built to a price’. I was at a bike show once where many “cheapest” bikes were £99. It was Budget day, VAT went up...
It’s long been debated about whether concentrating on ‘cheap’ has damaged ‘cycling’ or at least bike shops.
I suspect most (remaining) shops are happy to leave the bottom end to others (used to be Halfords, garages and Mail Order, then supermarkets. Now - Halfords survives, Decathlon has added a cheaper/quality option and there’s the Internet).
Some years ago £1,000 became a new “price point” because of the bike to work scheme.
Another ‘cheap’ option has always been secondhand. Ebay has helped a lot.
There are always brands that attract a premium (notably Mercian and top end Raleighs) but “Strong, light, cheap“ can be picked up for £200 or less - bikes that cost £500 30 years ago.
Unless you’re going for ‘full retro’, some benefit from better brakes, STI etc.
Things like Deore thumbshifters don’t need remanufacting, they (generally) just keep working.
Ebay prices on older bikes/bits seem to be less than last year too!
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