Student looking for affordable racing type road bike

arachnid507

Ive been cycling to and from college for the past year and i feel my trek mountain bike is going to give up on me soon. im looking for a racing type road bike around the €300-400 mark that would suit my 16k trip 5 days a week. ive found a few vikings online about £200 but the dont deliver to Ireland. Does anyone know a website or store that would suit my needs

cunnins4

iirc those viking bikes are a pile of rubbish. Maybe someone else knows.

you'll be broke enough as a student-maybe save your cash and just put a set of slick tyres on the mountain bike and invest some time in learning how to fix the problems with it.

Also, colleges tend to be a breathing ground for thieving scum looking for bikes, so you'd be fairly screwed if you bought a new bike and it got nicked. I've had my rear wheel nicked in college and another time the bike was crashed into by a car or something ruining the replacement wheel I got. I rarely brought my fancier looking road bike for these reasons. I used a mountain bike with slicks for 4 years and it really took the punishment.

If your trek has suspension, try to stiffen up the forks-this will make it much faster.

For repairing your gears and brakes (which I'm assuming is all that's wrong with yours) you only need basic tools like allen keys and phillips head screwdrivers. Check out www.parktool.com and click on repairs help. Lots of great advice there and on here.

Good luck with whatever you go with!

07Lapierre

arachnid507 wrote: »

Ive been cycling to and from college for the past year and i feel my trek mountain bike is going to give up on me soon. im looking for a racing type road bike around the €300-400 mark that would suit my 16k trip 5 days a week. ive found a few vikings online about £200 but the dont deliver to Ireland. Does anyone know a website or store that would suit my needs

Have you tried this lot? www.rothar.ie
They'll even take your old bike off ya!

EASYbeingCHEESY

has anyone ever gone along and looked at the 2nd hand bikes rothar have?are their any decent buys to be had

EASYbeingCHEESY

im also int the same boat only my tops would be at the 300 euro mark

07Lapierre

EASYbeingCHEESY wrote: »

im also int the same boat only my tops would be at the 300 euro mark

300 yoyo's will get you a pretty decent second-hand bike. Rothar.ie is good for cheaper bikes (90-100). As your your willing to spend more, I'd suggest calling to your LBS and get a bike there or check out adverts.ie or gumtree.ie. You could also check out your local cycling club website. Most of them have a bikes for sale page. Remember "you get what you pay for".

EASYbeingCHEESY

yeah ive been looking at adverts.ie
wouldnt mind getting a real good one at around 800,(id have to starve myself for a couple months,

i bought a new bike for the start of college 3 years ago, it was a hybrid, and it flew. Unfortunately, it was gone after 10 days, lock and all, so i had no comeback either!

I then found my dad's old rusty racer, gave it a serious oil, new gear cables, chain and cottering pins (thats how old the bike is!) and used that for a year while looking out for an upgrade. I then bought a fantastic bike on boards here (2nd hand) for ~ €140.

Moral of the story, patience will get you a solid bike well within your price range. Try and see what fixes you can do to your own wheels until a bike pops up on adverts or someone on here is looking to offload.

Lumen

Extrapolating from the prices on this thread, a Trek 1.5 can probably be had new for about €650 from just over the border.

Or there's a used one for sale in the adverts subforum.

actually

just buy this!

http://www.adverts.ie/showproduct.php?product=148823&cat=52

arachnid507

cunnins4 wrote: »

For repairing your gears and brakes (which I'm assuming is all that's wrong with yours) you only need basic tools like allen keys and phillips head screwdrivers.

Its the gear changing mechanism that is broken i know its not exactly cheap to replace so i thought i would make a half decent investment in a new bike

arachnid507

Deleted User wrote: »

actually

just buy this!

http://www.adverts.ie/showproduct.php?product=148823&cat=52

Thanks for that im looking into it!

monument

cunnins4 wrote: »

Also, colleges tend to be a breathing ground for thieving scum looking for bikes, so you'd be fairly screwed if you bought a new bike and it got nicked. I've had my rear wheel nicked in college...

DCU is fine. You have a lot of people who don't have a clue how to lock a bike, but fine besides. Security are good, I seen them chace away people a few times.

Btw when your wheel was nicked, were you using any kind of lock on it?

cunnins4

monument wrote: »

DCU is fine. You have a lot of people who don't have a clue how to lock a bike, but fine besides. Security are good, I seen them chace away people a few times.

Btw when your wheel was nicked, were you using any kind of lock on it?

lesson learned.....

brianthebard

Hope this won't get me in trouble/bring the disapproval of members but... I know a guy who got an abandoned bike from security on campus. They have tons and do nothing with them, and would be glad to have someone take away something that's just using up space. You could also go to the local garda station and see if they do bike auctions I'm told some do. Some might not like getting bikes from these sources since they might have been stolen and dropped somewhere but perhaps they are also just abandoned by owners I'm not sure.

Doctor Bob

brianthebard wrote: »

Hope this won't get me in trouble/bring the disapproval of members but... I know a guy who got an abandoned bike from security on campus. They have tons and do nothing with them, and would be glad to have someone take away something that's just using up space. You could also go to the local garda station and see if they do bike auctions I'm told some do. Some might not like getting bikes from these sources since they might have been stolen and dropped somewhere but perhaps they are also just abandoned by owners I'm not sure.

DCU campus?

I heard recently that DIT is hoping to rehabilitate the old and abandoned bikes they find, and to start up a college bike scheme- college colours, logo, etc. Seems like a more sensible approach. Maybe suggest it to DCU? Alternatively, DIT might take bikes off DCU's hands?

brianthebard

Doctor Bob wrote: »

DCU campus?

I heard recently that DIT is hoping to rehabilitate the old and abandoned bikes they find, and to start up a college bike scheme- college colours, logo, etc. Seems like a more sensible approach. Maybe suggest it to DCU? Alternatively, DIT might take bikes off DCU's hands?

NUIG, but I'm sure its worth checking at all uni's and colleges, there's bound to abandoned bikes there (unless the security dept have skipped them).

Gavin

I asked security in DCU before if I could take away abandoned frames. Nothing back.