Which Bike - Limited due to BTW scheme

NeedsTraining

Hi All,

Your advice would be greatly appreciated.

My company is now offering the bike to work scheme and I would like to partake.
Some background on my biking. During the summer, averaged about 120Km per week - 2 x 30 km and a 60km weekend cycle (some weeks more, some weeks less). Unfortunately I am currently not riding due to injury.

Our scheme is restricted to the cyclesuperstore. I have been looking at 3 road bikes and a TT bike.

Opinions, feedback, alternative bikes would be very well appreciated. If there are any pros/cons for these bikes, I would appreciate your feedback.

I currently have a Giant SCR 4, hence looking at the TT bike.

The bikes I am looking at are

Cube Agree Pro Bike '10 https://www.cyclesuperstore.ie/shop/pc/viewPrd.asp?idcategory=35&idproduct=31857


Pinarello FP1 Road Bike Tiagra '10 https://www.cyclesuperstore.ie/shop/pc/viewPrd.asp?idcategory=35&idproduct=32857

Lapierre Audacio 500 Bike '10
https://www.cyclesuperstore.ie/shop/pc/viewPrd.asp?idcategory=35&idproduct=31035

Giant Trinity Tri Bike '10
https://www.cyclesuperstore.ie/shop/pc/viewPrd.asp?idcategory=270&idproduct=30706

Many thanks,

NT

P.S. I know the btw scheme is only for €1000, but I am willing to put more to it to get a good bike.

Lumen

Is the Giant Trinity a TT bike?

NeedsTraining

Lumen,

The Giant Trinity is a tri bike.

Thanks,

Lumen

NeedsTraining wrote: »

Lumen,

The Giant Trinity is a tri bike.

Thanks,

Right, but you said you wanted a TT bike, not a Tri bike.

AFAIK you can use a TT bike for Tri, but not vice versa, although maybe it doesn't matter at entry level.

edit: I am very far from an expert on this, just trying to clarify for my own understanding.

NeedsTraining

My mistake, sorry.

I thought they were one and the same.

Diarmuid

Lumen wrote: »

Right, but you said you wanted a TT bike, not a Tri bike.

I'd doubt a tri bike you'd buy for €1500 is UCI illegal. And even if it was, I doubt the OP would really care.

I'd have to question if you really need a TT bike?

NeedsTraining

Agree that I don't particularly need a tri bike.

I was just putting the idea out there for the tri bike vs the road bikes.

Anyone have any pros or cons for any of these bikes?

Which would you recommend?

RMD

Unless you plan on competing in TT or Tri's I'd avoid the Giant, for the other bikes I'd go with the Cube, good kit on it, only thing that you might want to upgrade in the future is to a Carbon frame but the finishing kit / groupset is perfect until broken.

blorg

Sort of depends on what you are going to use it for, e.g. do you plan on doing a lot of triathlons. In such a case then a tri bike would make a lot of sense. Not so much otherwise.

Other than that I would probably go for the Cube but the prices on all of them look painful. The Giant probably the least so.

To be honest I'd probably just buy a Planet X and forget about the bike to work scheme until CSS have a particularly good sale on something at the end of next year maybe. You get a better bike for more or less the same as what you would be paying after tax on any of those.

NeedsTraining

It would probably help if I said what my intentions are for next year.

Plan on doing a lot on the bike, with a view to competing in a number of triathlons (fingers crossed for a HIM).

My thinking was one of the roadbikes or
stick with my Giant SCR roadbike and get the Tri bike for race days.

Dr_Colossus

blorg wrote: »

Other than that I would probably go for the Cube but the prices on all of them look painful. The Giant probably the least so.

To be honest I'd probably just buy a Planet X and forget about the bike to work scheme until CSS have a particularly good sale on something at the end of next year maybe. You get a better bike for more or less the same as what you would be paying after tax on any of those.

This is my dilemma also, I'm so pissed with companies only offering the CTW scheme through the CSS who I find are one of the worst stores in terms of value for money. Yet another kick in the teeth for the PAYE worker who doesn't have the freedom to shop around for the best deal when the scheme itself allows it.
I'm pressurising my firm to try and relax their policy but it's a slow process which they said they might review again in Jan by which time the Planet X deal will be sold out and I'll have to do all the bicycle research again.

blorg

Remember you only get tax exemption up to €1,000, so if you are looking at a €1,600 bike 600 of that is coming out of your post-tax income. So the €1,600 bike presuming you are higher tax band will cost you circa €1,100, not €800.

It is really very bad for a company limiting it to only one shop.

Lumen

NeedsTraining wrote: »

It would probably help if I said what my intentions are for next year.

Plan on doing a lot on the bike, with a view to competing in a number of triathlons (fingers crossed for a HIM).

My thinking was one of the roadbikes or stick with my Giant SCR roadbike and get the Tri bike for race days.

If you're going to race on a Tri bike you need to do at least part of your regular training on it, since the geometry is different.

OTOH you could quite happily race Tris on your SCR, and buy no bikes at all.

Or you could buy a nice road bike and use that as your dry training bike and for racing, and keep the SCR for mucky training, commuting etc.

Arguably the Giant the best VFM, since a Tri bike needs to properly fitted and you'd have more difficulty doing that over the internet (as you could with, say, a Planet-X road bike). If you're going to buy a bike locally, CSS is probably as good as anywhere price-wise, although I'm not sure how much they know about Tri fit.

None of the road bikes look great value TBH. However you look at it, you'll be spending about €1k of your own money on a Tiagra equipped aluminium road bike not much different to the one you have already.

You could always buy outside the scheme and hope that they relax the rules in time for your next bike.

NeedsTraining

Thanks for the feedback so far folks.

Anyone else got any pros/cons for these bikes? Or any alternatives I should be looking at?

Plan on heading out to CSS at the weekend for a look.

Is the bike list restricted to what is online? Seems a very small selection.

Diarmuid

From my brief experience on TT bikes I found them to be very "nervous". Great for going fast in a a straight line on the flat but I wouldn't fancy descending a mountain on them or riding in big group. However if you plan on competing in tri events then I guess it's the best option.

Lumen

NeedsTraining wrote: »

Anyone else got any pros/cons for these bikes? Or any alternatives I should be looking at?

The Cube has the highest spec groupset, but I'm puzzled by the use of a press-fit BB on an aluminium bike. They're often used on high-end carbon weight weenie bikes to save weight, but from a purely functional perspective I'd rather have a threaded one.

The Lapierre has a triple crankset, the Pinarello has a compact double. Search for endless discussion of this.

Of the three I'd probably take the Pinarello, but only because of the Cube BB.

NeedsTraining

Hope you can excuse my ignorance, but what is a press fit BB?

Still none the wiser on which to buy.

Anyone want to give their opinion?

ednwireland

no threads


fits no thread frame



probably means definite trip to bike shop who know what therir doing for replacement BB

teufelswerk

blorg wrote: »

Remember you only get tax exemption up to €1,000, so if you are looking at a €1,600 bike 600 of that is coming out of your post-tax income. So the €1,600 bike presuming you are higher tax band will cost you circa €1,100, not €800.

It is really very bad for a company limiting it to only one shop.

Just to further this BTW scheme, A 1600euro bike will cost you
Firstly. 600 euro excess of 1600-1000 (tax credit), plus either 2 or 3 below

2. The 1000 is effectively a tax credit which will mean that the saving is made at your marginal rate of tax. If you pay the higher rate of tax this amounts to a 450 euro saving (not sure about the PRSI rates on the tax exemption but assume you still pay the PRSI). This means you pay 550. Total cost 1150.

3. If you are on the lower rate of tax you save approx. 200euro. This means the bike is back to 1400euro. Not that much saving.

From what i've seen you can shop around and get these types of savings anyway. Chainreactions have a BTW scheme for the ROI at the bottom of the homepage but I'd be surprised if any firm would take up the logistics required to sort this out.