The Back Up Bicycle

[Holgersen]

I'm looking to get a pair or a single back up bike for me and my wife and I'm looking for ideas. I've been thinking about this for awhile, but hadn't had any real need for them until my wife bent one of her wheels out of shape.

Since we both have two fairly heavily modified "hybrids," I was thinking that to not have redundency we should get some other type of bike. Mountain, fat, cruiser, single speed, etc.

Any suggestions?

[C40]

I'd recommend that you:
1 - Focus on keeping your bikes in good working condition. The cases where your bike is un-ridable, or where repairs take more than an hour or so should be really rare.
2 - If you do get back-up bike(s), redundancy could be better. Also, you might be fine just having certain parts on hand instead of an entire bike. Having 2 back up bikes means having a lot of extras for parts that are unlikely to fail (the frame, seatpost and seat, handlebars, etc..). So you could just keep some spare parts, in decreasing order of importance:
- Tubes
- Tires
- Chain
- Cables (and the little parts you need with them, end caps, housing, etc.)
- Brake pads
- Spokes
- Rear wheel
- Front wheel
- Front brake

Keeping these on hand is a lot less than keeping two entire bikes.

[Holgersen]

Valid point, but I'm not spending $100- $200 on a new wheel set when I could get two entire bikes off craigslist for the same price.

Any other suggestions?

[vexed87]

A back up bike has saved my skin a couple of times, its definitely the way to go when doing your own maintenance, as its easy to get stuck on a job your not familiar with, i.e. need new tools for hanger alignment, bottom bracket replacement, hub servicing or even just a catastrophic failure of a component that you don't have to hand.

I doubt you'll need a back up bike each though, one should do assuming your not two wildly different sized riders.

Because I ride a road bike mostly, I like to have a backup MTB prepped with studded tyres for when it's snowing/icy. There are other benefits to the redundancy of a different type of bike, as having a MTB will mean you can use alternate terrain if traffic conditions call for it, or ride off road for leisure.

[tommytebco]

Paying for nice wheels is entirely different than buying a clunker off Craigs list. If the present bike is decent I'd buy a wheel form BIKENASHBAR on sale.

I don't see "real bikes" on craigslist for 100/200 asking where I live in Florida.

[Holgersen]

Luckily where I’m from, I can find comparably nice bikes, though older, for about $150-200. If I go for an older ten speed, I can usually find them for about $80-90.
I fixed the wheel myself without much problem, though it had to wait a few days until I got off work. I work twelve hour shifts at a hospital and there isn’t much time for anything other than sleeping and eating if I’m working.

[vexed87]

In my area if you search for sub £200 bikes on craigslist you get BSO's (bicycle shaped objects):

https://bicycleshapedobject.wordpress.c ... -of-shame/

A 'real' bike, as jacob rightly put it in the ERE book only depreciates by about 50% if kept in good working order, so you can expect to pay at least £300 for a 'real' (quality) bike. Vintage is harder to come by in the UK as cycling hasn't always been as popular as it has been in recent years, and people are not willing to empty their sheds that often! If you are riding over 2 miles on a bike, you want to have a comfortable frame and quality components, especially if riding on the road! A BSO won't cut it if you're a dedicated commuter/utility bike user.

[Holgersen]

We're getting off topic.

[vexed87]

Back on topic then! If you already have two hybrids, it's a hard choice about which type of bike to choose next because they are so versatile themselves, you want to avoid duplicating utility to get the most out of them if it’s not purely about having an emergency bike. You need to think about what needs you feel are not already met and go from there.

I.e. Do your current bikes have eyelets for pannier racks/drop bars? If not, I personally would opt for a steel framed tourer/cyclocross bike with a rack, they are extremely versatile, fast when unburdened and can handle off road with their capacity to fit wider tyres, but take slim road tyres equally well.

Alternatively, I may opt for the full suspension MTB for weekend shenanigans in the woods, but if you’re not going to use a bike for that purpose, it’s not worth while buying into such a specific bike.

If you didn't have hybrids, the choice would be simple, road bike with rack for and MTB for off roading. The hybrid really is the jack of all trades, master of non, which is great if you most own only one bike, but not great for avoiding duplication with second bikes.

That said, you can never have too many bikes IMO!

[Natha]

If you mainly want the bike for backup, one argument for getting a single-speed bike, perhaps even a fixed-gear bike, is that they don't have as much that can go wrong as other bikes do, so the bike will pretty much always be in reasonable working condition when you need it.

You could also use the single-speed backup bike if the conditions are really gross (like when snow is melting), for the same reason.

A third reason to go this route: personally, I love the idea of single-speed bikes, and especially fixed-gear ones, but I haven't found them practical as a primary bike for getting around town (I've tried with several different kinds, now I just ride a hybrid). But every now and then, sure!

If you get a single-speed bike, I recommend against a classic fat-tire cruiser. Single-speed is already impractical enough without also adding huge tires to the mix. My favorite single-speed was a fixed-gear converted from an old road bike, with mustache handlebars.