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Comment by hedora | Hacker News Reader

The main reason to buy a ~$500 bike vs. a $100-$200 Huffy at Walmart is that you can't get parts for the Huffy, so you'll be buying a new one every 12 months.

A secondary reason is that they don't seem to make Huffy's for people over ~ 5' 10".

(The $500 bike will probably handle better too, but not 5x better, and I'd recommend getting something more expensive if you can afford it.)

Examples of $100-$200 adult bikes: https://www.walmart.com/browse/sports-outdoors/huffy-bikes/4...

The cheapest repairable "large" adult bikes at a bike chain that is common in SV have a starting non-sale price of $500: https://mikesbikes.com/collections/bikes?sort_by=price-ascen...

Anyway, my point is that if the eBike people prevent you from repairing or customizing your bike by using non-interchangeable parts, then they're asking to be disrupted by low-end landfill bikes.

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> so you'll be buying a new one every 12 months

That's a silly exaggeration, they'll all last 5+ years at the rate most people ride their bikes.

If you store it inside and don’t ride it, sure.

If you leave them outside, the non-standard and irreplaceable bearings will seize in about a year.

If you ride them regularly, then the cheap non-standard chain, freewheel, or brake pads will wear out much faster than on a normal bike.

Nah, 5 years sounds about right to me for a cheap Dutch Omafiets.

I use my bike almost daily in all weather conditions, and it is only stored indoors at home. Chains and brake pads are wear items and are not too difficult to replace - just like tires.

I believe my previous one lasted me about eight years, and I only replaced it because the gears wore out and it wasn't viable to replace those. My best estimate is that it lasted 15.000-25.000 km, which isn't too shabby for a €200 bike.

My daily bike wears out the chain and thus also external gears, in about 2 years. Short trip, but all weather conditions.

But just looking form the pictures it seems the walmart bikes also have shimano gears. Wonder why thread-OP things they are not replaceable.

Today I will get my internal gear with belt drive bike. Lets hope that last for a long time.

I believe i wore out about 5-6 chains before I wore out the gears. To be fair, I rarely oiled my chains, and gear wear was probably minimized by it being only a single-gear.

> The main reason to buy a ~$500 bike vs. a $100-$200 Huffy at Walmart is that you can't get parts for the Huffy,

My (cheap department store) bicycle had a sudden critical failure that caused my front wheel to lock, throwing me over the handlebars. That's the main reason I'll never buy one of those again.

Of course, that was in the early 90s, and I'm open to the possibility that cheap bikes have improved since then, but it was an abrupt lesson about getting what you pay for...

I assume the cheapest bike you can get at the bike store is going to have awful failure modes too, with the main difference being that you can repair it with better parts after such things happen.

I might be overly pessimistic about the $500 bikes though; I’ve never owned one in that price range.

You can buy a basic Specialized with all standard parts for $500 (ish) on sale without an issue; I just did for my child’s first MTB. Nothing oddball on it, and it was available from XS to XL.

Everything in it is solid quality; Shimano hubs, aluminum hoops, micro shift drivetrain, threaded BB, decent headset and fork.

I rode a Felt Brougham daily for years, a steel frame single speed bike that just didn’t have any fancy parts. Do the normal maintenance you would do on any bike and it was solid. If you require anything like rack, fender, or water bottle mounts, then not the bike for you, but solid for commuting in the city.

> with the main difference being that you can repair it with better parts after such things happen.

Unfortunately not. I thought the same but they usually come with very old parts where the manufacturer only makes that grade. Stuff like a 7s cassette: to get any better you need to drop £300-1200 and install an entirely new groupset, for example. Even upgrading your wheels starts from £300.

It’s only around the £1000-1500 point where you start getting into the realm of upgradable complements that are worth doing.

Those low end bikes are horrible from an ecological perspective and they also give people that buy them the idea that bikes are unreliable.

Agreed.

However, if high-end eBikes go the same way, then they will be even worse.

I've yet to see that happening other than with Van Moof, but there is a fair chance that someone will again try to pull an 'Apple'. Bike savvy consumers have fallen for this once so there is a chance that some will fall for it again, especially in places where Van Moof wasn't popular but here people have - at least in my circles - quite soured on the concept so let's hope that sticks and they don't sell another bike. (Too bad for Lavoie).

Actually you can get parts for Huffys, direct from the manufacturer online. Mine has had replaced tires, pedals, crankshaft, and chain.

> The main reason to buy a ~$500 bike vs. a $100-$200 Huffy at Walmart is that you can't get parts for the Huffy, so you'll be buying a new one every 12 months

This statement has no relevance to ebikes.

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