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Comment by UnserMannInK | Hacker News Reader

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!

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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.

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

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)

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

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

Not to mention fuel.

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.

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