N+1 got ridiculous

Cee-Jay-Cee

I was browsing an FB Buy&sell page a few months ago and spotted a lad selling a Merida Ride 100. He lived a 2 min walk from my work place and so I arranged to go and look at the bike. He described it as almost new with no other details other than price, €280 (had been reduced from €350)

Anyway I walked over to his house and met him. He showed me the bike which was in the sitting room. It was split new, not a mark anywhere on it, the cassette was clean and oil free as was the chain. The tyres still had the molding hair running along the middle and there wasn't a speck of dust anywhere on it. It was my size (M/56cm) and it had a set of cheap pedal straps on it. I took it for a spin along the road outside his house and it rode fine, gears needed indexing but it rode fine.

He told me, he bought it on the BTW scheme the year previous as he had great aspirations of getting fit and cycling everywhere but what happened was he cycled it 150m to the end of his avenue, felt wobbly as hell on it and thought 'this isn't for me' and parked it under his stairs for 15 months and said the guilt of looking at it unused every day got to him and there was only one thing he could do....sell it.

I asked him what was his best price and he said if I took it today, he'd let it go for €220. I told him I have €160 in my pocket, take it or leave it as that was as much as I was spending as I only wanted it to stick on a Turbo trainer and he agreed! He gave me the original receipts for a local BS (€820 for the bike,pump, helmet, shorts, tool kit, water bottles and cages) too and threw in the track pump and tool bag/puncture kit. He was also offering me the helmet but I told him I had enough helmets.

It has a Claris 8 speed GS which is actually very good, the gear changes are slick and precise and other than the cassette is an 11/32 and extremely gappy, I cant fault the bike. I plan on changing the cassette to 12/28 which should reduce the jump between the gears slightly. It also has internally routed cables which make it look more expensive than it was.

One major failure though was the brakes, they were downright dangerous, pull the brakes and nothing happened and that was in the dry! They were some no name generic brakes (I doubt they were even cheap Tektros) I fitted a set of Ultegra pads but it didn't make much difference, you could actually see the caliper arms flex when you braked.

I kept and eye on ebay and last week bagged a set of nearly new Tiagra 4700 calipers for €20. I fitted them with the Ultegra pads and the difference in massive, theyre comparative to the 6800 brakes on my 'good bike'

I also fitted an aliexpress carbon seatpost and a Fizik Arione saddle.

I was out today on it for its maiden spin ( its been on the turbo trainer up until now) done 45km and its such a nice bike, very lofty riding position but very comfortable and compliant over rougher road surfaces. It has Maxxis Detonator 25mm tyres and they seem fairly good. The stock Alex wheels on it are probably the weak point but they'll do for what I need them to do and from research the Ultegra version of the bike (think its the Ride 400) has the exact same wheels so they cant be that bad, the spin nicely and true which is the most important thing for now.

I plan on leaving it in my mother in laws house for when we're in (most weekends) as I already have 3 bikes at home.