Where's best for 2nd hand time-trial bikes?

FrankGrimes

While there's a regular influx of 'what road bike?' threads on here, I don't see many asking about time-trial bikes: I've searched on here and the Triathlon forum and didn't find much by way of recent advice, though maybe I'm missing something as time-trial, TT, triathlon are fairly common terms in those forums so it's hard to filter down a search.

Anywho, I've decided to start focusing on improving my time-trialling and want to get a time-trial/triathlon bike (I believe the difference between the two is minimal and mainly seat angle). I'm told that if I get into it seriously, I'll end up wanting an 80mm front wheel and a disc rear wheel so may as well go for them from the outset.

I've recently forked out a fair bit on bike gear so will have max a 1,500 euro budget. I was thinking there'd be a strong 2nd hand market given the massive rise in people getting into triathlons the past few years and many not sticking with it for long. But from the for-sale forum here, Adverts.ie and DoneDeal.ie, I didn't find all that many promising options and those that looked good had very optimistic asking prices. Looking for a 54cm top tube by the way.

Are there any sites people here have found good for 2nd hand TT/triathlon bikes? I was wondering if looking at UK forums/adverts sites might be worthwhile as there might be a good few used PlanetX TT bikes (which would seem a good value option), though obviously there's the shipping hassle and no chance to meet up in person so not straightforward.

I could use the Bike 2 Work scheme but options that come to mind would be the likes of PlanetX Ireland TT bike around 2,000 which would come in on budget, but I just felt there must be much better value out there in the 2nd hand market here or in the UK than my initial searching had uncovered, so thanks for any pointers.

Lumen

Your budget is probably insufficient. Most used TT bikes are sold without aero wheels.

Front trispoke (used), rear disc (used), aero booties, good skinsuit, decent TT bars (Profile T2). Maybe consider tubs if you're going to be driving to TTs.

There's most of your budget gone.

Or buy a powermeter.

catweazle

The USA is where the value is but its painful trying to get around the delivery with them. Anyone that is willing to post usually charges an exorbitant fee. I had my US based sister primed to post it on to her and then she sends it on to me. Some serious value on ebay and slowtwitch. For new I think Racycle post but you will be done for excise on top of it

I ended up getting a great value bike from my local bike shop, one of the triathlon guys had upgraded and left it in as a trade in. The BTW came into play as well at this stage so I was able to get the bling wheels as well.

With the UK ebay you might have a better chance of posting with the Parcel Motel, a good site to pick up 2nd hand is http://www.timetriallingforum.co.uk/ but you have to be approved to become a member and I don't think the admin is active in this area anymore

Adverts isn't bad, I see a nice specialized transition in there (although it a 56)

endacl

What about this stealthy lookin' beauty?

http://www.dolan-bikes.com/tt-triathlon/complete-bikes-tt-triathlon/Sram%20B%20Op/dolan-scala?product_id=666

Only a little over budget.

FrankGrimes

Yeh I hear ya about the budget, if I need to stretch it I can do a little but really am reluctant to as I've dropped a shedload with a recent road bike purchase.

That Dolan is an interesting option, will look into it.

I've been told that it's best to get minimum 2cm shorter top tube than your road bike so would be reluctant to go with a 56cm so that Specialized Transition on Adverts is probably out.

I might have a look at slowtwitch, I've got people stateside that I could ship it to and get them to ship it to me, not sure how customs is on that, but even with customs it can still be good value. UK would seem a good option though if I find the right spots to look (I've never really liked using eBay but it maybe worth it for this purchase).

Thanks for the advice folks, and any other tips are much welcomed!

Lumen

FWIW I'm faster on my road bike with clip ons and fancy wheels than I was on a dedicated (PX Stealth) TT bike.

Fit is absolutely critical.

The aeroness of the frame tubes is the very least important thing.

dedocdude

catweazle wrote: »

The BTW came into play as well at this stage so I was able to get the bling wheels as well.

You purchased a 2nd hand bicycle and a set of wheels on the bike to work scheme? Is this possible?

Beasty

Going a size lower on a TT bike is fairly common - My road bikes are 58cm and TT bikes 56cm.

TT bikes tend to be a bit pricey and I guess that once someone has invested in one they tend to be reluctant to upgrade, particularly as the actual time spent on the bike is relatively small - just looking back I'm typically on the TT bike for a few hundred km each year, probably around 5% of my total distance. The wheels are used almost exlusively in TTs. I run tubs on them but did end up with an 8km walk last year when one blew in a 50m TT (I was back to the car before the marshalls did a sweep-up at the end)

On importing from the US you would have to consider VAT on top of customs duty

Beasty

dedocdude wrote: »

You purchased a 2nd hand bicycle and a set of wheels on the bike to work scheme? Is this possible?

No, and tax fraud is not the sort of thing to brag about on the internet either

This is not a topic for this thread though;)

Craig06

What about this? Get it on the bike2work as well as its new. No fancy wheels though.

http://base2race.ie/products/giant-trinity-2-2012
Or
http://base2race.ie/products/argon-18-e-112-2012

dedocdude

its not an item that lads around here change too often so thats why you are not seeing many of them for sale. The "forsale" forum on the above mentioned www.timetriallingforum.co.uk is probably most active place for them, its also where I got my TT bike.

Another idea is if you know anyone in your local triathlon club, put the word out what you are looking for and this might prompt someone that is thinking of changing to go about changing if they can off load their current bike to you. Worth a try.

Best of luck with it.

Diarmuid

I picked up a s/h PlanetX TT bike a few years ago. It spends most of the time hanging up in the shed. Impossible to justify it in hindsight.

FrankGrimes

Didn't get a chance to come back to this over the weekend. Thanks for the input.

I guess my hunch was there would be lots of people out there kinda in Diarmuid’s situation where they’re either a racer with an underused time-trial bike, or one of the tons of folks that have taken up triathlons in the past few years but only did one or two triathlons and now have a bike gathering dust in the garage. I get the point that racers will probably hang onto it as for the few times they use it, they do care about their times, but I did reckon there’d be more former triathletes selling on their bikes. But there’s not that many on the market on here, adverts.ie or donedeal.ie.

I checked out the UK time-trial forum linked above and it looks a good place to keep an eye on – there’s not loads of them on there and they get snapped up pretty quickly, but I’ll keep an eye on it. I’ll probably try clip-on bars on my road-bike for now, but if I do buy a TT bike it’ll be because I’ve decided to focus on competing in time-trials – I’ll be thinking about that decision over the next few weeks so that’ll give me a bit of time to keep an eye out for decent deals that might pop up in the meantime.

RockWerchter

Built this up http://www.ribblecycles.co.uk/sp/road-track-bike/frames-frames-tt-ribble-tt-frame/ribbfrat600 for 450 quid, not including wheels, which i had from racing and it has served me very well so far. Also very easy to justify.

cornet

Take a look at the AL Speedmax range on the Canyon Outlet - all around €1.5k mark.

thebionicdude

watch out for the scammers on ebay if you go down that route ... they are to be found where there are big ticket items. they will monitor a legitimate auction and then pretend that the final sale fell through and that you are the next highest bidder. one guy tried it on me when I was eyeballing the TT market but as I had already talked to the seller I knew it wasn't the same guy. he used the same email address as the seller but for one letter ... of course, some crazy talk about having moved country in the interim and to western union him blah blah blah ... all the usual warning signs but sometimes the adrenaline rush of getting a wanted bike at a nice price can catch people out.

unichall

Take a look at the facebook page tri and sell, some good bits and pieces pop up on it every now and then