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Comment by leke | Hacker News Reader

I got into bikes after moving to a cyclists' town. I know the pride of riding something you've fixed up like the author mentioned in the article. Bikes are truly a marvel. My town and bikes have provided me with a higher standard of living and health than I would have had in some other town.

Bikes are for everybody. You can ride a beat up bike for years with just basic knowledge, like changing an inner tube and oiling a chain. General and advanced bike maintenance was a mystery until YouTube came along. Now I get to pass this knowledge directly to my kids.

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>Bikes are for everybody. You can ride a beat up bike for years with just basic knowledge, l

That is true. But what changed most sceptics, that i met, mind were bikes that actually worked. I understand the fear when people see the price tag and think they could buy a second hand car for that, but once they sit on a good bike they just enjoy it. And if they then learn how to do basic maintenance themselves so that it just stays good and doesn't creak all the time, they fall in love with them. I love bikes.

True, the price tag might buy you a second hand car. But if you factor in the maintenance cost of cars it comes in cheap in comparison. I’ve just had to replace the clutch in my car (~2200€), whereas having the whole transmission (all sprockets and the chain) in a bike fixed is around 250-300€. Less if you do it yourself.

And being able to do it myself feels really good, I couldn’t agree more!

Not to mention fuel.

Do you have some exotic luxury car? What kind of clutch costs 2.2k euro?

Post-inflation labour cost most likely. The clutch will be a small fraction of that.

Nothing exotic, a Peugeot Traveller van. The spare parts were 700€, rest was labor. Took a whole day to take apart the transmission/front axle and put it all together again.

I think to be fair, if you’re going to include labor costs in the “total cost” of a car, you should include the price of a skilled bicycle mechanic in the cost of a bicycle, just to compare apples to apples.

IMO not enough people have the know how to fix their own cars. And I am surprised that this is not changing given 1. how ridiculous the price of auto mechanic labor has gotten and 2. the wide availability of DIY info on YouTube. Even just basic, basic stuff. I have friends who take their ~5yo cars to a mechanic (or worse: the dealer’s service dept) for routine maintenance like lubrication and filter changes, and they fork over $1500 for this! We are talking about $150 in parts and consumables here. The mechanic inflates this to $500 and then charged $1000 for his labor.

That would indeed be fair. On the other hand, I couldn’t repair the clutch on a car on my own whereas taking a bike apart and putting it back together can be done in my living room if need be.

On DIY: absolutely on anything not safety related. I‘d never touch the brakes. Changing oil is perfectly doable for a reasonably skilled diy person. If you like that kind of thing and have the access to the necessary infrastructure (especially for oil disposal), go for it.

But I like to take the car to a mechanic for another reason: in Germany you’re required to get regular technical inspections (TÜV), if the mechanic does it chances are better that it goes through without problems.

you don't need a skilled bicycle mechanic to ride a bike the way you need a skilled car mechanic to drive a car. i've rebuilt a volkswagen engine, but i still wouldn't dare to try to do all car repairs myself on anything more complex than a model t. bike repair is something anyone can do—badly, yes, but not so badly it's not a viable option

It's not the clutch ... It's 100+ €/h for a skilled worker who replaced that clutch.

> It's 100+ €/h for a skilled worker who replaced that clutch

I'm pro-bike, but this issue also applies to having a bike repaired at a decent workshop.

Our daughter's hand-me-down bike (previously "owned" by both her elder brothers in turn) had new brakes and brake cables fitted recently, and the repair bill was the best part of €150.

The difference is that a talented bike mechanic can get most jobs done in less than an hour. Its hard to imagine a bicycle job that would take more than 2 hours of labor, whereas most car jobs start at an hour and can stretch into 10 plus hours for more complex ones.

The equivalent job of replacing all of the brake lines and brakes on a car would be a multi-hour job with several hundred in parts alone. By comparison, having a competent mechanic completely overhaul and inspect the most critical safety system on a bike for €150 seems like a pretty good deal.

> having a competent mechanic completely overhaul and inspect the most critical safety system on a bike for €150 seems like a pretty good deal

Absolutely, and I was happy to pay for the brakes to be sorted!

€150 is a fairly substantial repair cost relative to the new cost; remember that this is a child's bike suitable for an 8-10 year-old.

Having all the brakes replaced on a car might well cost thousands, but cars cost tens of thousands new.

> €150 is a fairly substantial repair cost relative to the new cost; remember that this is a child's bike suitable for an 8-10 year-old.

In that case, if you bought a top of the line racing bicycle for the child, it would be a much lower proportional cost for the brakes! (joking of course)

Right, but you realize that comparing a bike to a car is a bit ridiculous, right? They're for very different use cases.

I agree. But if the use case is „take one person for a <10km commute“ then the comparison is fair.

True, but if those are your only needs, a car is massive overkill.

They are complementary. I don't love riding bikes, but if the choice is riding a bike for 7 minutes through some parks or driving a car for 15 minutes because I can't take the shortcuts and an stuck in traffic ... I'd rather commute by bike

On the other hand my commute is now 50km one way, which is just not possible by bike.

For the price of registering a car for one year in Australia, one can buy a really awesome bike new.

With insurance you get get two. Of course if you have two, that's not enough. I think the correct number is N + 1. Everyone says Sydney is the worst place in the world to ride a bike, but, it's still better than any other form of transport for a short distance.

Ugh, that is why I have always done my own car work. Many potential downsides, but for me the upsides have outweighed the downsides.

A decent second hand bike costs 80 euros in The Netherlands

'decent' yes. But true, if you get a bike that's not full of electronics and motors and gps and what not, you dont have to spend a fortune. between 100 and 200 euro you ride a solid bike that does not fall apart with every bump in the road and can be repaired at home.

In the Netherlands bikes are free if you have an angle grinder lol

Hm, yes, 'lol'. That has not been my reaction when I found my bike missing.

In rural Sweden - where I now live - they're free when you find them in the ditch, notify the police about your find with identifying data like frame number etc and wait for 3 months. Assuming that the bike does not have a label identifying the owner - in which case you should contact him/her - they'll send you a letter confirming you're now the owner. Those bikes often need some work - how does a 30-speed MTB end up chainless in a ditch in the middle of nowhere? - but that is all part of the 'game'. It is hard to get closer to re-use, reduce, re-cycle than cycling on re-used bikes.

I feel that a good build is just as important as a high price. Above the very cheapest bso (bicycle shaped object) a reasonably priced bike can be amazing, but it might need striping and rebuilding properly. There could be a correlation here between higher priced bikes being likely to have been assembled by a more competant person and them 'being better'. It wouldn't take much to ruin a badly built expensive bike and it wouldn't be nice to ride.

I have a shitty bike that I bought for 150 € ten years ago. It creaks everywhere, is hard to ride, and a thief once actually moved it out of the way to steal the bike behind it.

I use it every day but I'm not going to get a better one, because I don't want to be constantly worried that someone will steal it. I want to use it as transportation, leave it wherever, and know that it will still be there because it's not worth stealing.

Plus, being hard to ride means I get extra exercise for my fixed-length rides.

I love this aspect of old beaten things.

A couple of years ago, I've found a gem of a bike. It looked maybe 15-20 years old and was clearly heavily used - frame was full of scratches and such. The color scheme was pretty ugly and was just a tad too small for an adult. But I noticed that all the components were actually decent - mostly Shimano XT, obviously very old models. After servicing it, it rode very well and I didn't have to worry about thiefs since it was pretty cheap and even more cheap looking. I still locked it, but the peace of mind was nice.

Hmm, this is a great idea, I might get an old/ugly bike with good components myself, thanks!

Related, when I had to live in a certain area that had a high bike theft rate, I got myself a pink bicycle. In the year I was there, it was never stolen. Well, except for the seat (which was black).

That's practically a sleeper! "Boasts high performance while having an unassuming exterior"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleeper_(car)

Not sure what price range you have in mind, but you get diminishing returns very quickly. You can get a very solid bike for under 1000 EUR/USD.

Sure, most people can get a great bike for ~1k€ or less than that. I am just a spoiled bike enthusiast, i have to admit. I wouldn't want to ride a bike that does not have very decent breaks and a good shifting system. Plus if you want a nice weight, you are very fast at 2k€+. But you are right. Still you can get a car for 1k€. Maybe 20+ years old, but they can still get you from a to b

I bought a 100€ used MTB almost ten years ago, still ride it weekly, and the only major work i did on it was swapping tires from tasseled to road ones. Still, I can smoke people riding ebikes since they are locked under 25km/h in italy. Spending thousands on a bike is understandable if you are really into it but not necessary at all

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