a subjective view on buying a bike

pab_lowe

Hi all. I want to throw some thoughts out there and apologies if its been brought up before.

Our company is taking part in the bike to work scheme. I mountain bike regularly and would like to use this opportunity to get a road bike. I am learning bit by bit about components for a bike and am familiarising myself about what constitutes low, medium and high end bikes. I have asked bike people about what I should look for in a bike and consistantly I have seen that Shimano 105 with aluminum frame, carbon fork and possibly carbon seat post is what I should be looking at.

I view the bike the work scheme as an opportunity where I can get a bike I would not normally consider and so I am prepared to max out, ie use the whole 1 grand.

So I have a couple of questions:
Is there somewhere in Ireland where I can get a bike for 1k that meets the above spec?
If not, what spec am I looking at to meet that price?
For someone who is not going to be cycling every week, what level of bike, componentry should I be looking at .

With the greatest of respect of those who are 'proper' cyclists, I feel that it must be difficult to recommend lower end products when you use the good stuff regularly. Therefore I wonder could I be happy with a bike that costs a lot less than a grand, ie one that uses Shimano Tiagra or Sora components.

I cycle to work regularly (22 km per day) and mountain bike so I am not a novice to biking but I am a little tentative about where to dive in on the road biking thing.

Many thanks for reading,

pab

DePurpereWolf

I think you are wrong to assume that this one purchase will be it. there's a "I should have left my credit card at home" thread here for a reason.

I don't think going with Tiagra and then upgrading later is a bad idea.

So, you can go for an alumnium fork and then get a carbon one later for instance.

we

triv88

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