Why I keep fixing my bike | Hacker News Reader

Why I keep fixing my bike

jcfrei.com

55 pointsjcfrei44 comments

Interesting application of a 1970 paper entitled "The Market for 'Lemons': Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism" by George Akerlof. This paper was the first to clearly define and study what are now everyday economic concepts: adverse selection and information asymmetry. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2001 for this paper and other contributions to the study of asymmetric information.

As the author suggests, there are definitely some start up ideas buried in solving the problem of information asymmetry.

The paper, if anyone is interested in skimming through: http://www.econ.yale.edu/~dirkb/teach/pdf/akerlof/themarketf...

Putting aside the fact that derailleurs are relatively cheap and buying a new bike to replace a seized derailleur is not economical (unless you get stuck on an upgrade path that makes you also replace the shifters). And putting aside the fact that bicycles needs regular maintenance and regular riding to stay in top condition (seized derailleur only happens if you basically leave it sitting in the rain, or never change gears)... The lemon issue only really applies to bikes that you buy sight unseen. You want to check for cracks in the frame and a worn drive train. Both of these are relatively easy to learn how to do.

Having said that, I wouldn't usually buy used either for a variety of reasons. If you are buying a quality bike, the damn component manufacturers keep improving the components in incompatible ways. So if you want to replace components with new parts (for example you wear out the drive train and you want to replace it), it can be difficult to find them. This puts you on an upgrade path, replacing everything so that it is all compatible again. However, bike manufacturers get steep discounts on components and it is almost always worth it to buy a brand new bike rather than upgrade all the parts of your old bike. Buying a fairly low-mileage used bike will only delay things for a while because eventually you will have to replace worn components.

Of course you can buy used components to replace your worn ones, but it is harder to asses the quality of the components unless they are attached to a bike. Also, there is a huge market for stolen goods and as a person who doesn't want their bike stolen, I also don't want to buy stolen goods. Used components are practically impossible to verify that they aren't stolen. Either someone is replacing the components because they are worn out (in which case you don't want them), or the components are stolen (in which case you don't want them) or the person is upgrading to new components before their old components wear out (very small number of people).

So basically, you are stuck with:

- Maintain your bike properly - Ride it a lot - Replace cheap worn compnents with new parts - Buy a new bike when you get stuck in an upgrade path

(of course you never throw away the old bike because then you would have one less bike and who wants that???... so you upgrade it with new parts too... sell the car to pay for it since you are riding so much you don't need it anyway)

You can blame Compagnolo for the 'group' concept.

That's why you can't just replace one element of the drive-train with a random other, you'll have to find a compatible piece and this can be quite hard after a bike gets older and that particular 'group' is no longer supported or serviced.

The idea behind a group is that chain, front and back dérailleur and the two sets of gears form a unit which work well together. The main driving force behind this is that if you add or reduce the number of gears on the pinion you're going to want a wider or narrower chain which affects the dérailleurs.

So there is some logic behind it but it can indeed be very frustrating to have to replace all of the drive train just because one small part is impossible to source.

While it's true that concept originated with Campy (which is why we're still calling it a "gruppo" after 40+ years), but Shimano owns an enormous chunk of the bike component market, more than 80%, so they have really made incompatible product lines into a way of life for the industry (with some sniping from SRAM, who make Shimano-compatible parts that often work better than the originals; I have a SRAM chain on my other wise Shimano drivetrain, for example).

Stolen bikes and parts are indeed a major category of "lemons".

I have, however, bought some second-hand parts which are clearly legitimate, i.e. credibly documented and not stolen:

- parts that someone has bought new over the net (often from abroad), and then found out that they don't fit their bike, and cannot really return

- parts that someone has bought, tried, and didn't like or need them, even if they did fit their bike.

Generally, these are shipped in the original containers and come with paperwork, which means they were not from a stolen bike.

The stolen bike market is big here (north Europe), though. Or at least the number of stolen bikes is huge, though I wonder who buys them. (My son-in-law had his bike stolen, then a few months later spotted a similar bike for sale on a net site resembling Craigslist, and went to "buy" it inviting the police with him. He got his bike back but I don't think the thief got anything but a stern telling off by the police, so he's back in business.)

I couldn't have said it better and I'm still a cycling newbie. Props!

I might be misunderstanding, but I'm having trouble imagining online bike markets as the dominant form of selling bikes. Wouldn't shipping cost be a big problem? Or are they city-specific markets, where people meet up in person for the actual exchange? The linked site seems to be for all of Switzerland, which is definitely not within biking distance.

In Copenhagen people mostly buy used bikes from: the monthly police auction of abandoned bikes (good for cheap bikes of random-skewed-towards-bad quality), used bike shops, for-sale flyers posted in apartment lobbies or offices, word of mouth, postings on Facebook, etc.

In SF the way most people sell their old bikes are via craigslist. are they city-specific markets, where people meet up in person for the actual exchange? - Yes.

In my experience both selling and buying bikes this way its not been not as difficult an experience as stated in the article. My wife has sold two bikes on craigslist, she sold them for a fair value (She knows bikes well) and everyone has been happy. As a buyer I can get a pretty good assessment of a bike's value based on some pics and a description. You can actually find a lot of good value in the used bike market if you're comfortable doing some repairs yourself and you know what to look for. There's a lot of sellers who have an old bike in the garage they're just trying to get rid of when they move that might be a nice steel frame commuter once cleaned up.

I agree--It's truly difficult to buy a bike online. Things like seat height, comfort, handlebar, gears, etc. cannot be easily assessed just by online materials. You cannot adequately assess a product without doing a test ride.

While I am an occasional bicyclist and have a limited understanding of what bicycle enthusiast looks for, I can't imagine anyone willing to shell out serious dough for a bike without looking at it. Heck, some bicycles cost as much as a 250cc-650cc motorbike. As a motorcyclist, I would never complete a transaction without first looking at the bike and kicking the 2 tires, or at least being able to ride the bike within the limits of the law on a public road.

There's a similar problem in an area of interest to me: Musical instruments. A possible issue in common between bikes and instruments is that with a little bit of care, they can last forever, but with no care, they deteriorate rapidly. I would absolutely have to see a bike myself to be assured of which case I was dealing with.

Aside: I'd have fixed or replaced the derailleur too, and I'm not that short of funds.

I operate a site that is a popular destination for pricing used bikes (and other things)[1] and this is a pretty big problem. We get our pricing data from listings for bikes, but without ever seeing the bikes it's hard to come up with a way to infer quality that will lead to more consistent pricing.

The fact that sellers shade the quality of their bikes isn't the only problem (although it's a significant one), a lot of times they don't even know the quality of the bike they have, whether the derailleur is close to failing, for example. In a way, it's worse than the auto market, because with the auto market the price has been enough to justify the creation of services to certify the quality of used cars. I think you could probably ask for an inspection from a bike shop on the quality of the bike, judging the shop based on the Yelp reviews or how trustworthy they are considered in your particular community, though (many people trade bikes in online enthusiast forums, in the same way that cars are). But this would only be worth it for very high end bikes.

1: http://www.statricks.com

The big issue the author misses is that there's no such thing as a "lemon". The whole concept of the "lemon" is one that ignores that a machine like this is the sum of it's parts, in their working or non working order.

In the auto world, some states have odd qualifiers like "3 times in X months = you bought a lemon", which in reality means, "I did not know enough about the individual parts of the machine I purchased to fairly assess their quality/condition/or appropriate place in the larger machine".

I can understand this, in the automotive world, as these machines are in fact quite complicated. A bicycle is not. The most complicated bicycles on the market may be, with electronic shifting, etc.. but those come at such a premium they're legitimately intended for racing users only. If you can't spend a few minutes to see how simple moving parts should work, take care of exposed parts in the elements, and educate yourself, how dare you compare your simplistic, cheap machine to a car legally.

We have enough problems trying to ride our bicycles without people trying to act like lawyers when they don't know how to clean their front derailleurs.

> how dare you compare your simplistic, cheap machine to a car legally

The article is using the term 'lemon' as an economic term, not a legal one. It suggests that the 'lemon problem'(economic term) in used car markets also occurs in used bicycle markets.

The use of the term in economics goes back at least as far as 1970, so 5-10 years before the first 'lemon law' in the US.

These guys have a nice solution to the "lemon market" for used cars: https://www.beepi.com

Could be cool to apply a similar expert scoring mechanism to used bikes, but you may have to find a different way to do it because the margins are probably so much lower.

I came here to mention Beepi. I bought a car off them this week. We had spent multiple weekends driving to a bunch of used car dealerships to find the cars that were in bad condition, had obviously belonged to a smoker, or that were way overpriced.

Beepi is pretty much an online dealer, but hypothetically their 10-day return policy and the fact they arrange delivery means that have an incentive to make sure the car is as described.

The author should point out he's talking about the low end bike market.

It's definitely possible to assess the value of bikes and determine the quality and condition of the components.

And with low-end bikes the reason there are so many lemons is they are manufactured to be disposable. If the frames were built to last 30 years then there'd be more of a market for used bikes.

As an aside, I thought the author would say the reason he keeps fixing his bike is because... it's a fixie! (rimshot)

The frames of even cheapest bicycles last 30 years. The other parts do not (or at least they appear ugly due to rust).

Comparing bikes with lemons? Ugh.

Assessing value and quality is certainly a concern and a challenge for those who aren't bike geeks. I nearly bought a carbon framed bike from a woman in San Francisco a few years back, but I noticed a problem where the bond between one of the carbon seat stays and the steel dropouts had come loose (visible movement). She didn't even know about it and was bummed, I passed on the bike.

One place to take a first pass at bike prices (for many commercial bikes) is:

http://www.bicyclebluebook.com

As for Craigslist, you have to be careful, many stolen bikes end up there.

Edit: CL comment

Dictionary entry for lemon:

4. Informal. a person or thing that proves to be defective, imperfect, or unsatisfactory; dud:

"His car turned out to be a lemon."

The thought experiment in the article is certainly an interesting read. That said, I don't see used bikes or the fact that bikes have parts that wear out as being in the same category as lemon laws applied to cars.

Wow -- I would never think of writing an elaborate explanation of why I replaced a derailleur instead of buying a new bike. I guess that's why I'm still riding a 1985 Univega :-)

@Scott

I thought this to myself as well. Is this the outcome of the new society were in? Nobody knows anything beyond what they do for a living? .. Aren't willing to watch a 5min youtube video entitled 'how to buy a used bike' .Whatever happened to googling and figure it out?

Is this where the big bucks are now? Solving things people could google? ..

Nobel prize winning papers applied to buying a used bicycle.. I thought april fools was over. A bold new era.

Well if you have to write a piece of advice not to buy a new bike because it's dirty... I think you're so far off the normal world that I can't even comprehend.

That the author didn't even know how to clean it. There is the old Sheldon website there is even a stackexchange for it http://bicycles.stackexchange.com/questions/692/what-to-use-....

Secondly indeed it's hard to buy a used bike if you don't even know how to clean one. And because you personally can't take the 5 minutes to learn some easy bike essentials doesn't mean it's a lemon market.

This reads like hey I learned about lemon markets. Let's write an essay to show I understand it. Well you didn't.

Sorry to be a bit harsh.

I don't think that this is a huge problem when it comes to selling relatively expensive and bulky items like bikes. First you get to buy see & try the bike. Most of the time the seller will not ship it. There is a huge incentive for telling the truth on a product you sell when you get to actually meet the buyer : it's an awkward moment for the seller when the latter realize, after a 30 min/1 hour trip that the item was not described accurately. I won't say that it never happened to me as a buyer but it certainly happens more often when you buy a used item that is shipped to your place.

Also the buyer knows where you live, and is relatelively close to your home. Some buyers being complete morons hidding the flaws of an item is definitely a bad idea.

I'm amongst the 'sellers with high quality bikes' and I've given up trying to sell my bike.

Here in Melbourne, Gumtree is the go-to place to sell bikes.

Most buyers would be trying to not buy the lemons.

The BicycleMarket group on Facebook is the place to sell high quality bikes in Australia (no affiliation, just used it successfully before)

Thanks!

Some markets don't need to be global, so don't need to be impersonal.

If I am buying a second hand bike I will search for one within local area and friend networks. Then any new connection is close enough to visit, or anything I am just taking on recommendation is being recommended by someone I know.

However fixing your bike is good anyway. You improve yourself and your bike.

The flip side to this - as someone who bikes infrequently - is I'd like to be able to buy a bike that doesn't require any maintenance. Tyres would be foam or solid so they don't puncture. More parts might be made of plastic or stainless steel so they don't rust. Bolts would not need to be tightened.

They already exist, and you see them everywhere in Europe. The Dutch would call them "omafiets" (granny bikes), we call them utility bikes. They come equipped with hub gearing and brakes that never need adjusting, a chaincase to protect the drivetrain from rain and the rider from chain oil, and Schwalbe Marathon Plus tyres that are almost impossible to puncture. They're heavy and slow, but are a comfortable and practical way of getting around town. Save for occasionally pumping up the tyres, these bicycles only need servicing every few thousand miles to replace parts that have worn out.

Just buy a new bike any time something breaks.

I don't say that to be glib, I say it because I suspect it is actually the cheapest path to what you want.

It might make sense to hire someone to come and take the bike and change the tubes every year or something like that. Or perhaps hire them to deliver a new bike once a year, and take the old one away (depending on how much easy money they smell when you ask them about this, they might even give you some of the proceeds from selling the lightly used old bike).

hire someone to come and take the bike and change the tubes every year

What do you guys do to your bikes?

The biggest maintenance I've ever had to do on my 10yr old bike was putting on new tires and brake shoes. Any bike shop will change those for you and give you a full check up for like $30 (materials included).

Unless you leave your bike outside in the rain all the time it should last pretty much forever, needing little more than some air, oil, and re-fastening of the odd screw.

The comment I replied to expressed a desire to do nothing and I presumed that they also did not want to deal with an inconvenient failure.

I don't think either of my suggestions are particularly sensible (unless maybe you are in a situation to have your butler take care of it), but they are possible, which compares favorably to the idea of a maintenance free bike.

Bikes that are rarely ridden don't need a lot of maintenance, as long as they're stored indoors. You mostly just have to pump up the tires.

Solid tires are available, but the reason you rarely see them is that they ride like bricks.

The used bike market as a whole factors in lemons. This is why the bid/ask spread in used markets such as bikes is quite high. (Because of the risk you may get a lemon.)

I am not sure how this is different from most other used markets. Or if he is using the term lemon in the sense we are expecting for that matter.

I've had good luck with craigslist for buying bikes. Admittedly, I'm not super knowledgeable about bikes, but the ones I went to go see all seemed in pretty good shape. And pretty much anyone you're thinking of buying from will let you ride it before buying it.

You've got some typos: "tesitfy" and "byciclist"

The secondary market for bikes varies from area to area. My feeling toward the article is that lemons is based on the how the buyer interprets the value/time.

Some things should still be purchased in the physical realm.

Agreed, but then finding some kind of market, going there, and looking at several bikes will probably take longer than just fixing the old bike.

You should never buy anything mechanical without examining it first hand. Period.

You don't understand what a market of lemons is and how it works.

Actually, a friend of mine claims that this is what happened on the job market (it has become a market of lemons for employers AND employees).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com