Team-BHP (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/)

-   Bicycles (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/bicycles/)

-   -   The Bicycles thread (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/bicycles/20785-bicycles-thread-128.html)

Sir I am thinking. Thinking a lot, maybe even 2-3 times of the above. And hence the hesitation for going for this bike. :)

Congratulations on the new bike. Wishing you miles and miles of healthy fun filled rides!

If that is the case, I would suggest you hold this 30K, save another 30K in the coming months, and go for a good road bike. With a budget of 60K, you should get a good mid-entry level road bike. If you would like to go this path, I can help with some pointers in choosing the right bike.

Any idea on where can i get wall mounts for my bike ? Checked at Decathalon , they dont have stocks for the same

I am all ears for suggestions and inputs on road bikes. Currently speaking with serious bikers otoo on the same. Keeping the budget open.


Btw I experienced your 5km gap with road bikers over a 70km ride in Bombay yesterday :) Was completely amused on how quick it came true for me.

There's a simple ceiling mount (hook) available (Park tools), you have to hang the bike upside down. Its costs less than Rs. 180/-.

http://happyearth.in/store/product.php?id_product=15

There are many points to consider while choosing a road bike. This is going to be a long post and may even be adding to your confusion. But I believe you would make the right choice if you know about these factors. The information is what I gained in the past month in various online forums.

Frame:
Leaving aside full carbon frames which can cost above 1L, you can either choose a full aluminium/alloy frame and fork, or an aluminium/alloy frame with carbon fork. Usually, the entry level bikes of any brand or series would be full aluminium/alloy and mid and high end of the series would be aluminium/alloy frame and carbon fork. The advantage of a bike with carbon fork is that it would absorb some amount of vibrations on rough roads increasing the comfort level.

Geometry:
There are two types of geometries, endurance and race geometry. Endurance geometry would give you a more relaxed upright posture and is considered suitable for longer rides, whereas race geometry is more aggressive where your posture becomes more forward and downward. This reduces the aerodynamic drag and provides you with more acceleration and speed. But the downside is that if you are not very fit and flexible, riding long distances would be difficult. There are also bikes that have geometries in between these two. Even if you buy a bike with a race fit geometry, you could change it towards endurance fit by reducing the stem length.

Frame Size and Fit:
Choosing the right frame size and fit is the most important part of the decision. If you buy a bike that is not a correct fit for your body structure, you will most probably end up hating biking. Roughly the size of the frame can be chosen with your height and inseam (the length of your legs measured from your feet to the crotch). Once you have the right frame size, fine tuning can be done by adjusting seat height and stem length.

There are many online bike size calculators that you can use to decide on the bike size. The simplest ones just take your height and inseam, and the complicated ones take more measurements like torso, arm length, thigh length etc. Even though you can arrive at a rough size estimate from these calculators, the best would be to test ride the bikes to decide if that size suits you.

Group set:
The important components in a group set are the gear shifters, front deraileur (the mechanism that shifts the front gears), rear deraileur (the mechanism that shifts the rear gears), crankset (the front gear wheels) and the cassette (the rear gears). Generally most of the bikes have Shimano group sets. The entry level group set is 2300 followed by the Sora, Tiagra, 105, Ultegra and Dura Ace. As you go higher in the hierarchy, you get smoother gear shifts and lesser weight. In the aluminum frame bikes, entry level bikes usually come with 2300 or Sora, mid end come with Tiagra and high end models come with 105 and Ultegra. I would look for a minimum of Sora. In the group I ride with there are many bikes with Sora and I get very good feedback on the performance of this group set. So, you should be fine with a bike with Sora group set.

The crank sets come in two flavors - triple and compact. In the triple, you have three gears in the front similar to most MTBs. The advantage of the triple is that you get smaller gear size (30) on the smallest wheel. This gives you better climbing power. The downside is that there will be many duplicate gear ratio combinations and also the higher weight. The compact has two gears - 50/34 is the most common one. When you choose compact, pay attention to the rear cassette combination. If the cassette is say 12-25, the gear ratio will be 1.3 in the lowest gear. For a 12-30 cassette, the gear ratio will be 1.13 which gives you more climbing power.

Other Components:
Other components include the wheel sets, brakes, seat post, seats, handle bars etc. When we buy stock bikes, we do not have much control on these components. When you get to a more advanced stage, you could consider upgrading each of these components to better ones.

Now coming to some bike choices. I am just doing a rough classification on the entry/mid/high levels. There could be overlaps.

Entry Level (40K-60K):
Trek 1.1
KHS Flite 300
KHS Flite 350
Scott Speedster 50
Fuji Sportif 2.1
Cannondale CAAD8 7 Sora


Mid Level (60K - 80K):
Trek 1.5
Fuji Sportif 1.3
Scott Speedster 40
Scott Speedster 30
KHS Flite 500
Cannondale CAAD8 6 Tiagra

High End (80K-1.2L):
Scott Speedster 20
Bianchi Impulso 105
Cannondale CAAD8 5 105
Fuji Roubaix 1.3

Price wise, the brands in ascending order are: KHS, Fuji, Scott, Bianchi/Cannondale/Trek

I heard KHS and Fuji are great value for money brands. Many riders in my group ride these brands. For the same group set, these brands would cost 10 to 15k less than the other brands.

I am attaching a spreadsheet I created to compare the bikes. This will help in a side by side comparision of features vs. price. Not all the bikes listed above are in the chart.

Good luck with your road bike hunt. Hope I did not do more harm (confusion) than good :)

Thank you. Some of the info was really quite useful, appreciate you taking the effort to put up such a detailed post.

Btw one of the feedback point I got from a experienced biker is it might be more ideal to go for high end hybrid than a race bike to avoid the chances of back pain issues. Although I found it weird he gave this advice, even when he recently upgraded to a high end racing bike, would be interested to hear other views.

He should have given you this advice considering you are a beginner. But if you are looking at getting serious with biking, road bike is the only option in the long run. A disadvantage with hybrids (and MTBs) that roadbikes solve is the riding position. Hybrids have only one ride position, whereas road bikes have three. So, during a long ride, you can keep changing between these positions (from relaxed to aggressive). Road bikes give you more options to tune the fit. With the same frame (provided you choose the right one), you can get a comfort position by reducing the stem length and an aggressive position by increasing the stem length. As I have explained in my previous post, if you go for a bike with an endurance fit, that will give you a relaxed position. Also, hybrids can never be as fast as road bikes. You may get a few kmph increase compared with your current MTB, but you would never be able to catch up with those guys on the roadies :)

So my suggestion is to stick with the decision to go with the road bike.

Stem length is not something you can change easily [physically easy to change, but you just cant put on very short stems on a road bike], and neither is it critical for difference between relaxed and aggressive fit. The single most important factor for that is the head tube length.

Totally agree with you about the head tube length being most important. However, for the same head tube length, changing the stem length from say 90mm to 120mm will give a fit ranging from relaxed to aggressive. Of course, if the stem length has to go very low, say 60mm or very long, say 130mm to get the right fit, then the frame selection was wrong in the first place.

Also, changing the stem length is not done often. I would expect this to be done during the bike fit process when you buy the bike. Summarizing, what I intended to convey was: provided you choose the right frame size, you have lot of room to adust the fit to perfectly suit you. For example, I have finalized a 54cm size Scott S30 (after a test ride of both 54 and 56) with a stem length of 90mm (stock is 110mm), which is comfortable for me now and gives a slightly relaxed position. When I become more fit, I would change to 110mm that will give a more aggressive fit.

^^Not really. Stem length affects reach, which is not as important [for determining aggressive/relaxed fit] as saddle to bar drop, which is decided by head tube length, steerer tube length, number of spacers etc.

An aggressive fit is when there is more drop, and stem length affects that very little.

If you get an aggressive geometry, it is very difficult to make it relaxed.

Hi Guys,

I see a lot of us talking about strava these days on this thread (revisited it after ages). Why don't we all connect over strava and see how all of us are doing. It would be a great motivation in this hot and sunny weather. PM me your email addresses and I will follow you guys :)

My bad. I was only considering the reach and not the drop for the aggressive/comfort stance. What you say makes complete sense. Thanks for clearing this up.

Pune cyclist folks,
If you have time to spare this Saturday, do join in for the event being organized by GIANT - ride to Mulshi.

The plan is as of such
- Leave at 5.30 from RTO junction towards Mulshi (~50 km ride)
- Reach by 10 (max) and have breakfast at the lake
- Setup tents at Paradise Resort and indulge in water sports/trekking/short rides during the day
- Night camping etc
- Next day morning ride back to Pune (~50kms)

There is a fee, but overall I consider it to be menial for what is being organized. The only call is to consider keeping Saturday free for the event.

Event Link

P.s. No affiliations with Giant cycles. Just that I'm going, and it'd be great to have fellow bhpians :)

P.s.s. There's also the 200km night BRM happening this weekend (Link). Now THAT, would be really worth it :)

Has anyone transported their cycle by Air India? The website T&C doesn't cover cycles under domestic travel. Other airlines (Spicejet, Indigo, etc) are quite clear on their policy wrt cycles. Would like to know if anyone has experienced this.