Here endeth the Bargain Bike Challenge

You remember my Bargain Bike Challenge? The task was basically this: could I buy a cheap secondhand bike and turn it into something decent, rather than spend thousands on a fancy new road bike?

It all started with me spending £200 on a 2016 Giant Defy 2 in mostly original condition. I wrote my intial assessment of it here if you're interested but in a nutshell, the brakes weren't very good, the wheels felt heavy and I wasn't convinced about the Tiagra 10-speed chainset. As bought, the bike weighed 9.6kg and looked more or less like this:

Sixteen months later, I'm bringing the Bargain Bike Challenge to an end, with the Defy weighing 8.25kg and looking like this:

The changes, highlighted in green above, are as follows. Any costs shown exclude things that I would have bought for any bike (like a Wahoo mount, tyres, inner tubes, and so on) and any items that I already had somewhere in the shed...

• Saddle: replaced Giant Performance Road with secondhand Selle Italia SLR Kit Carbonio Flow (£78.34)
• Brake calipers: replaced unbranded short-reach with a spare set of Shimano Ultegra R8000 I had knocking about
• Wheelset: replaced Giant SR-2 with secondhand Mavic Aksium Elite (£100)
• Pedals: put my Shimano Ultegra R8000 SPD-SL set on
• Tyres: put new Continental Gatorskins on
• Tubes: fitted new Schwalbe Extra Light inner tubes
• Bottle holder: fitted secondhand Elite Vico Carbon bottle cage (£24.45 for two)
• Cockpit: fitted Wahoo Aero mount
• Handlebar: fitted new bar tape (£20)
• Bling: fitted Lifeline Professional carbon and titanium QR skewers (£18.99)

So excluding wear and tear items, things I would have bought for any bike and the sunk cost of items I had laying about in the shed, I spent a total of £441.78 on the project bike. But then I sold the old SR-2 wheelset for £40, so the net cost of the Bargain Bike Challenge was £401.78 - 400 quid for a road bike that is very comfortable, reasonably light and (with a better engine sat on it, rather than me) pretty swift, whilst also being an all-day endurance road-eater. All that, and without spending the couple of grand I was originally considering. Job done, right?

Well, maybe. For whilst I'm very happy with the results, and I don't have the budget to spend more, there are some niggles that I'd like to address. I'd like an Ultegra 11-speed chainset and I'd like 11-34 on the back. The Aksium Elite would take that, as would the long cage that's currently fitted, so who knows what the future will bring? Or what the future can afford?

For now, though, here endeth the Bargain Bike Challenge. It's been fun. You can review other posts in the series, including lots more detail about the various upgrades, with this link. Me, I'm off to do my first sportive on the project bike this weekend: 150 miles in a day on a "new" bike. What could go wrong?

The weigh-in

I still don't have a fancy bike scale like the one pictured left. Until now, every time I wanted to weigh my bike or any large component all I could do was stand on my bathroom scale with and without the bike, and compare the difference. Not the most accurate method, I'm sure you'll agree. But the fancy bike scale currently costs in excess of £77 over at Jeff Bezos's place ... so what's a cyclist to do?

Well, what this cyclist has done is buy a hand-held luggage scale, that's what. Specifically, one with a strap rather than a hook, so I can easily hang a bike frame from it. And you know what, it works pretty well; a bit of experimentation is required to find the bike's centre of gravity, to get a nice, reproducible weight reading, but once you've done that, weighing a bike with a hand-held luggage scale is a doddle.

What's more, the scale I found, also at Amazon, costs £7. Yep, one eleventh of the Park Tools super scale. Yes, PT is undoubtedly superior ... but eleven times as good? I doubt it.

Anyway, you know what's coming next, don't you? The big weigh-in! First up, it's the Blue Steed, Old Faithful, the flat-bar road bike I did LEJOG on. According to my luggage scale, it is currently running (no bags, no lights, no bottle) at ... drumroll please...

Not bad for a bike that rolled out of the factory at 9.8 KG, OEM.

Next up, the Project Bike, the bargain bike challenge that is very nearly finished (photos and final spec to follow soon). This currently tips the (luggage) scale at a slightly disappointing:

I might be able to shave a bit more off that, but I should probably concentrate on my belly first as the best place to lose a few grammes.

And finally, for a laugh, The Tank™, a steel-framed mountain bike that is nearly 30 years old yet remains indestructable. Unsurprisingly, it is the fat boy of my bike rack:

So, the moral of this story seems to be, you can weigh your bikes quickly easily, without jumping on and off bathroom scales, and without blowing nearly 80 quid. And as a bonus you can also weigh your hand luggage before your next flight too...

P.S. Feel free to tell me how much lighter your bikes are than mine in the comments. I promise to be grudgingly envious :)

Saddles... before and after

As part of the continued bargain bike challenge, I picked up a new saddle on ebay for a third of RRP. So here's a gratuitous before and after.

Before: Giant Performance Road saddle (OEM)

After: Selle Italia SLR Kit Carbonio Flow saddle with carbon rails

As you can see, according to the Kitchen Scales of Inaccuracy^TM, swapping out my saddle has saved me 209g - a weight reduction equal to very nearly five KitKats. And okay, I've yet to complete a long ride on the new saddle, but a very unscientific test (poking with my thumbs) suggests it is better padded than the saddle I did LEJOG on, so fingers crossed.

Bargain bike challenge update

So far, I've replaced both wheels, swapped out the QR swekers for some bargain super-light confections, switched the bottle holder for the very light one on my old bike, and removed extraneous items (notably the bracket that held an ineffective pump). Oh, and I've upgraded the brakes, fitting a pair of Ultegra calipers I had spare, and put a new tyre on the back wheel. The bike, which weighed 9.6kg when I got it, now tips the scales at approximately... (drum roll...)

Total expense so far, if you ignore regular maintenance items like tyres and tubes, is:

• The bike (secondhand): £200
• Wheelset (secondhand): £100
• New QR skewers: £18.99
• Total: £318.99

Everything else I either had already or has been swapped for kit on my old road bike, or is an expense that I would have incurred anyway if I'd bought a new bike as originally planned, like an aero Wahoo mount and Bike Register fees. Basically, I'm only counting costs that are unique to my purchase of the project bike, and that wouldn't have been otherwise incurred.

Anyway, the next job will be switch saddles, putting my superlight sliver of carbon on the proect bike. But that's a job for another day.

Leverage

"Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world."
Archimedes

Well, that's all very well, Archimedes, but I bet you never tried to remove a seized-on cassette from a Mavic Aksium Elite hub.

Yes, the same cassette I broke my budget Lifeline chain whip trying to remove, still won't budge. All credit to Wiggle, they replaced the broken chain whip with something more substantial, at no additional charge and with free next-day delivery. It really was perfect customer service. However. I still can't move the cassette, a seemingly lightly-used Shimano 105 eleven-speed 11-28T, even with an eighteen-inch breaker bar - the lockring just won't budge. So why not leave it on, I hear you say? Because the rest of my set-up is ten-speed, plus I much prefer the spread of cogs on the bike's existing 11-30T Tiagra cassette, that's why.

Anyway, the net result of all this is that the project bike is off to my LBS for them to have a crack at it. A cost I didn't want to incur, especially as I just saw a secondhand bike going locally this morning that wouldn't have needed anything doing to it to bring it up to snuff and which would probably end up cheaper (and better!) than the project bike is going to be, once it's all done. Oh well, in for a penny, in for a pound...

The immovable object

A mixed bag

Why yes, I have finally found a use for the spare set of Shimana Ultegra R8000 brake calipers I had knocking about...

And yes, I have fitted some Lifeline Professional carbon and titanium (and very aesthetically pleasing) QR skewers...

But also, yes, the Lifeline budget chain whip I tried to remove a cassette with did break on first use...

All of which goes to show, there are some things you can economise on and others (like those that need to handle in excess of 40Nm of force) that really reinforce the maxim, "buy cheap, buy twice." Or, in this case, send back to Wiggle in a bad mood.

P.S. For the weight-weenies amongst you:

• The front Ultegra caliper with stock pads weighed 181g, compared to 194g from the caliper it was replacing. However, I had to use the extra-long pivot nut from the old caliper because of the depth of my front fork, bringing the weight as fitted back to to 187g.
• The rear Ultegra caliper with stock pads weighed 180g, compared to 190g from the caliper it was replacing. All in all, I realised a 17g weight saving by replacing both calipers. More importantly though, I now stop much better.
• The combined weight of the Lifeline Professional carbon and titanium skewers is 45g. Yep, for the pair. This represents a saving of approximately 75g over the original pair, which is astonishing value given that these are currently reduced to just £18.99 (Wiggle) - be quick!

Worth the weight?

I wrote last time about changing the project bike's wheelset, specifically swapping out the stock 2016 Giant SR-2 alloy clinchers with a pair of Mavic Aksium Elite hoops that I'd sourced secondhand.

Well, I haven't done the back wheel yet, as I'm waiting for a new lockring tool to be delivered, but the results are in for the front wheel. And they are, truth be told, a little underwhelming.

The weight of the front Aksium Elite, bare except for rim-tape and skewer, registered as 882g on the Kitchen Scales of Inaccuracy^TM. The Giant SR-2 front wheel, in the same bare state, clocked in at 910g. So a weight saving, sure ... but 28g isn't much. I must admit to feeling a little disappointed. Part of the reason for this is that Giant make it very hard to find weight information for anything they sell, whether that's a stem, a wheelset or a whole bike, to the extent that you're reliant on reviews to find any weight data. Unsurprisingly, I hadn't been able to find any reviews of a six year old wheelset, just this comment on Reddit that gave the weight of the front wheel as 930g.

Anyway, it's not all bad news. Since I had the wheel off and the scales out, I weighed both skewers separately too. The Mavic skewer showed as 60g, the Giant at 56g. So the Giant skewer went on with the Mavic wheel. Another 4g saved.

I also took the opportunity to fit a light weight inner tube whilst I was at it, specifically a Schwalbe Extra Light. My size of choice is the 18c-25c with 50mm Presta valve, so I can tell you that size weighs in at 76g. As for the Vavert that came out of the tyre, well, it's quite hard to fit a deflated, user tube on some kitchen scales ... the only reading I managed to get was 125g. I'm not convinced that's right but, if it was, I made more of a weight saving changing an inner tube than I did replacing a wheel...

Oh, and since prospective Giant owners have to rely on bloggers and reviewers for weight data, let me reiterate the following:

A 2016 Giant SR-2 front wheel, bare except from rim-tape and skewer, weighs 910g.

The skewer that comes with a 2016 Giant SR-2 front wheel weighs 56g.

It's unlikely, but I hope that helps someone.

Wheel-y exciting

So, I wrote last time that the stock Giant SR-2 wheels on the project bike are fine and run true but seem heavy - you can certainly feel them when you try to spin up to speed quickly (like cresting a hill, for example).

Decent, light, robust wheels are expensive though, and I'm trying to build something half decent on a budget. So what to do?

What to do is act fast when you see something half-decent being sold secondhand, that's what.

That said, time will tell whether I've been wise, lucky or foolish but, for now, let me just report that I saw a Mavic Aksium Elite wheelset going secondhand, lightly used and in good condition, for £100. And I jumped in.

For comparison, the SR-2 wheelset run out at 2,130g for the pair, bare apart from rim-tape. The claimed weight for the Aksium Elite is 1,735g. So not super light but, in theory, offering very nearly a 400g weight reduction that will hopefully translate to better acceleration. And who knows, I might even save a gram or two on the skewers :)

I haven't fitted them yet though, so we'll see. I'm waiting on a delivery of a new tyre for the back wheel because, as I've mentioned before, the existing tyre has been flattened, presumably by lots of turbo trainer mileage. All I can tell you for now is that they have very cool bladed spokes. Other than that, watch this space to see how the new wheels (and tyre) go, and if I can feel the weight difference afterwards.

As a footnote, I should add that Mavic don't make the Aksium Elite any more. I'm hoping the fact that it had such a short shelf-life is all to do with the trend towards wheels for disc brakes, and the fact that the clincher market could no longer support both the Aksium and Aksium Elite, and nothing to do with some design flaw or inherent crappiness. I guess we'll find out...

Project bike green run

You'll remember from last time that I've bought a project bike for £200 rather than spending upwards of £2k on something new and fancy. My goal is, through judicious upgrades, to turn it into something to rival at least the Boardman SLR 8.9 105, the cheapest bike (at £1,150) on my original "What should I buy?" post. I'm calling this the Bargain Bike Challenge. Anyway, here's the bike as bought - the only thing I've done to it thus far is raise the saddle:

I say only but even that was a bit of a job - the composite D-Fuse seatpost is not round in cross-section but, as the name suggests, D-shaped, which means you can't really twist it to get it out if it proves stiff ... which it certainly did. I was just about to break out some form of lube, in the hope that I could channel some down into the seatpost, when it finally budged. Anyway, let's not digress. So this is the bike, a 2016 Giant Defy 2, in mostly original condition, as far as I can tell. The only thing that might not be original are these brakes which, correct me if I'm wrong, don't look like the original Tektro set that were on the spec sheet. Indeed, these are unbranded, and are shod with solid blocks rather than cartridge brake shoes. Having been out for a green run over the weekend, I can report that these are not very good at all, and will be getting replaced at the earliest opportunity.

The other thing to notice from the picture above is the state of the tyre. Now the project bike has come to me shod with Continental Gatorskins (great) but the back one, as you can see, is very worn. Indeed, it is worn flat, in a manner that suggests it has either been run woefully under-inflated or, more likely, has spent a fair time on a turbo trainer. Either way, new tyres will also be high on my list of things to do early doors.

What else? Well, I can tell you from my green run pootle around the village (in figure of eight loops, to even out the effect of head- and tailwinds, of course) is that the gearing is okay, and well indexed. Yes, it's only 2x10 Shimano Tiagra, 50/34 at the front and 11-32 at the back. But look, there's a long cage there, which provides some scope should I want to make incremental changes in the future. I think my ultimate aim, budgetary constraints permitting, is 2x11 105 or Ultegra, with 11-34 at the back, but that's a bigger job, for further down the line. Maybe I could experiment with 52/36 at the front too, although I fear this may be beyond the financial limits of the project. Just as well, then, that for now, at least, I'm happy to report that the Tiagra set-up here works well, and certainly well enough to see off a lot more miles. Plenty of life in that cassette yet, I hope.

Another thing you can see quite well in this photo is the stock Giant SR-2 wheelset. Again, I can happily report that both front and rear run pretty true, so there's no urgent imperative to swap them out. They are quite heavy though, and you can feel that when you try to spin up to speed quickly (like cresting a hill, for example). So in time I will look to replace them if I can find something equally robust but significantly lighter without blowing the budget. That just might be the biggest challenge of all. Either way, it's something I'd probably only do when I was ready to change the cassette too ... and that's a little way off yet.

The other obvious take-home from taking the project bike out for a green run is that I'm not going to be immediately comfortable on it, even though the saddle has been raised to something like the right height. Sure, it is basically a comfy machine, with a supportive saddle, a well-padded (if slightly ragged) handlebar, good damping from the seatpost and fork, and more. But I think I might need to shift the saddle back a little, and there are changes needed in the cockpit, for me - the stem is only 100mm, and I think I might benefit from 110. Plus the pitch is perhaps too low - I might start by flipping it over and seeing if that feels any better.

And whilst we're on the subject of stems, why, oh why, do Giant bikes of this age appear to have a coffin shape around their stem logo? Hardly inspires confidence in the exposed road cyclist, does it? Ride fast and die!

Of course, the other painfully obvious finding from the green run is that I have to adjust and get comfortable (and confident) too - I haven't ridden a drop-bar on the road since 1992, and it really shows. I'm depressingly timid around corners and in descents, and that'll have to change; after all, there's no point building a rocket if I ride it tamely.

So, the post green run verdict? Well, it's not a bad little bike, as it stands. My first priority is to swap the brake calipers for something better, and then to clock up some confidence-building miles. Check back here again to see how that goes...

The Bargain Bike Challenge ... or #bargainbikechallenge if you prefer

You may recall that I wrote recently about wanting to buy a new road bike and, specifically, comparing the options. Turns out that it's a fraught business - I have quite a specific list of requirements (light, fast, endurance-focused, hill-friendly gear ratios and aesthetically pleasing, to name but five). Indeed, the conclusion I came to was that the bike that best met my needs was the one most out of my price range ... and even that wasn't a perfect match.

Speaking of a price range ... yes, I accept that to some spending upwards of £2k on a bike is chump change but the reality of all this is that I am a middle-aged man on a modest salary, with a family to support, a mortgage to pay and a somewhat limited amount of disposable income for non-essentials. In other words, I can't really justify £2k on a bike. In fact, forget really, I can't justify it at all, or even the £1,150 current list price of the most affordable bike on my shortlist (the Boardman SLR 8.9 105).

So, what to do, what to do, what to do ...

What to do, it turns out, is comb the used bike market until you find a bargain that, with careful upgrades and judicious spending, can be transformed into something the equal of that Boardman, but without spending £1,150 ... of course! And so (drumroll please) begins the Bargain Bike Challenge! Or #bargainbikechallenge if you prefer.

The first, and arguably hardest, part of the challenge is finding the right starting point, a semi-decent used bike at an affordable price. Immediately I had to forsake the idea of a carbon frame - a carbon fork is the best I could do. Turns out that I also had to forsake a Shimano 105 or higher groupset, and internal cable routing. And note my earlier requirements about the bike being aesthetically pleasing. Anything that looked ugly was immediately discounted. And why, oh why, are so many used bikes black, white and red? If I wanted a bike that looked like a teenage boy's duvet cover from the mid-80s, well, I'd be spoiled for choice. But most of my cycling gear is blue or black with blue accents, and these things are important...

The upshot of all this is that I've just bought a secondhand bike - yes, today is n+1 day!

After a long search, I managed to find a 2016 Giant Defy 2 in metallic blue. Originally it was up for £350 but had been reduced to £275. I offered £200, on the basis that I'd had to travel a bit to get it (not too much though, under an hour) ... and to my surprise the offer was accepted.

So what have I got to work with? Well, the 2016 Defy 2 would have cost £799 when it was new - that equates to about £900 in today's money. Now even the most basic Defy in the current Giant range is £2,099 but then it's a very different beast these days - all carbon frame and disc brakes for a start. So perhaps a fairer comparison would be ... well, that's tricky, because of the current vogue for disc brakes. Maybe the Contend SL 1, albeit that has 11-speed 105. But it's close enough otherwise, and would cost £1,299; that's the kind of ballpark my new bike, henceforth the project bike, will have to operate in.

Of course I did my research before offering up my cash. This review, from the ever-reliable BikeRadar, proved very instructive, even though it was for an earlier incarnation of the bike. This article from Road Cycling UK also gave some good contemporaneous background.

My first impressions of the bike, having just ridden it to the end of the road and back? Well, it's completely stock, as per original spec, for starters, so that's 2x10 Tiagra with 50/34 on the front and 11-32 on the rear. It could benefit from some lighter wheels at some point, and a definite brake upgrade, replacing the unbranded block brake set-up with some cartridge-based calipers. New bar tape is a given, as is putting on my lighter saddle. I need to be a bit more scientific with weight reduction than I was on my current road bike though, as I made the front-end of that so light it got a bit skittish under fast cornering. But swapping the saddle out will probably save 150g at the rear, and that's no bad thing. Oh, and I'll put my SPD pedals on to replace the current flat pedals, of course.

Talking of scientific, I used the time-honoured method of standing on the bathroom scales with and without the project bike to determine that its baseline weight, pedals on, is 9.6kg - 600g more than the Boardman I aspire to rival. Still, I can work with that.

Bottom line: after comparing all those lovely carbon bikes that cost upwards of £1,150, I ended up buying a six year old mostly alloy bike for £200 instead, and called it a project. Watch this space to see what I do with it, and whether the project is a success or abject failure ... after all, what could possibly go wrong?

When the bike was new, it looked exactly like this ... just look at those dropped seat stays ...