"Cheap but good" - feature for Cycle magazine

[Bmblbzzz]

overpriced kit that you'd never see on a CTC ride.

To be fair, you don't see many Cycling UK members on CTC rides either. I think it's around 15%, which sounds about right for my local MG. The magazine ought to reflect the membership, good luck to anyone who can define that.

Apart from all the other problems faced by what I've termed the dead-tree press, the above is about the target readership of the CUK mag. AIUI,The aims of the charity are to encourage people to take up cycling (my words) and that's not achieved by making it sound complicated. Plenty of people, including several posters above, regard cycling as something just to be done, with any hint of technical details a barrier to that goal. I think it's fair to say that that's what led to a lot of the CJ type stuff being ditched. That reduces the interest to readers who valued eg CJ's input.

This would all be OK if the bike trade concentrated on the likes of the Raleigh Superbes so highly regarded by the late Sheldon Brown. But it doesn't. It's all change, as frequently as possible. Reflect on how many posts above give tips for continuing to use kit considered obsolete by the trade

Is there a market for a mag aimed at people encouraging would-be cyclists?

Thinks: How many would-be cyclists ready to plough through this "Cheap but good" feature?

CJ himself has said on this forum that now, with rapid change and with access to the internet, the role of a CTC/CUK technical advisor would be somewhat redundant.

[Biospace]

A Samsung S5 for inexpensive route finding and route guidance, £15-40 on eBay. The batteries are replaceable in seconds, spare batteries are around £5 and the phones have more than sufficient processing ability, very clear screens and last well. They're lightweight and reliable, showerproof but not fully waterproof.

Paraffin/kerosene (or some heating oil, if that's what your home runs on) and an old rag torn into strips together with a toothbrush for cleaning. Catch the excess which will settle in a jar to form clean liquid with sediment at the bottom, reuse. A litre can last a very long time.

[Tinkerbell]

Keep an eye on the Middle of Lidl. The Crivit stuff is well priced and seems to last. Our local CUK group share WhatsApp messages when it comes in to our local shop.

[interestedcp]

Fibrax for brake and gear cables (£1 a piece for galvanised, £2 for stainless), also make brake pads. UK made - I once heard it said that they used to make the much loved Koolstop Salmon pads under contract, and use the same formula in their own red rim brake pads. Any truth to that?

That seems highly unlikely for several reasons. It is much more likely that Kool Stop made brake pads for Fibrax, since making OEM pads for other brands is part of what Kool Stop does. I have never seen anything else than "Made in the USA" on my V-brake pads.

[cycle tramp]

Dickies bamboo fibre thermal long Johns. Warm, not itchy, still available for about 20 squids.. just the thing for cold winter days under your trousers....

[mattsccm]

Almost all tools can be found cheaper at your local tool factors. Some cycle specifics are need of course but generally they are the less used ones so don't need to last as well.
Buy in the sales and in advance is a god tip. Overshoes in the summer etc.
Winter gloves as best bought from the outdoor "pile it high" places like Millets etc Or work wear from ebay.
China provides most of our kit. Go direct.
Buying to last is great but only if it does. Good stuff can wear as fast as crap. Over shoes toes are a good point. Also you can get bored with a product if it lasts forever. If you then ditch it it wasn't a good investment.
Wool vests are best avoided. Buy thin merino sweaters from M&S or the charity shop.

[slowster]

There seem to be three distinct categories for suggestions in this thread:

1. Products that are not cycling specific, which are an alternative to a cycling specific equivalent. The cycling specific product may have been designed for cycling, e.g. clothing with particular features or cut to suit cycling for which satisfactory equivalents might be found in general outdoor or walking clothing ranges. Alternatively the cycling specific product may just be a generic product which has been re-badged and sold for a higher price than the generic version, e.g. I think Park Tool's folding allen key tools are made for them by Bondhus.

2. Mostly cycling specific products for which a cheap version made by one or more brands is as good as - or at least offers better value - than the premium or mainstream brand version. An example might be cycling clothing from Aldi or Lusso compared with equivalents from Castelli or Endura. Another example is the loop bars available from Planet X and Cinelli, which are copies of Jeff Jones' design. The latter example is arguably a case of 'knock-off' copies, and that is something which the OP might want to address in his article. In many cases the 'cheap' part of the 'cheap but good' formula is achieved by chinese factories copying the designs of western brands, and companies like Planet X buying them, saving themselves the development and marketing costs because they are able to exploit the market built up by the original designer and manufacturer, and the offshore/chinese catalogue manufacturing model makes it impossible or prohibitively expensive for the original designer to legally protect their intellectual property.

3. Cycling specific products for which it is possible to improvise or DIY an alternative. For example a spare wheel with a non-thru axle hub can be used as a derailleur hanger alignment tool by screwing the hub into the derailleur hanger (they use the same thread).

[Nearholmer]

4. Secondhand.

5. Buy in sales, which often means 180 degrees out of phase with the seasons.

[Cugel]

Some attitudes or behaviours can be adopted to reduce cycle equipment spends. One significant such adoption is to ignore the pay-for-the-label con trick perpetrated by the advert svengalis upon those daft enough to think that being fashionable signifies anything more than that one is a dafty who cares too much about what other dafties of a similar outlook think of them.

Not to say that some labels don't signify a genuine better quality but many, as a previous poster mentions, are just re-labelling of things that are identical but far less expensive under another brand. "I must have a Fark tool 'cos Ollie the cycling 'journalist' says they're really good".

Paying a premium to a manufacturer who claims intellectual property as a reason to charge more (supposedly for the R&D) can also be a con. As often as not, the designs involved are as old as the hills and the "R&D" results in only the inventions to disguise these already extant designs with some spurious marketing glamour-hype.

Not always, of course. There's been some highly innovative cycle-stuff manufacturers, with Shimano an obvious example. Personally I'm willing to pay the premium for Fazua e-bike gubbins because of its splendid design features.

Other attitudinal cost-savers have been mentioned in this thread: buy the no-longer fashionable that's still functional; second-hand; broken but can-be-mended; sales; etc..

Best one of all: don't buy what you don't need.

Personally I find I don't need any kind of electronic cycling gizmo on the bars, on the smartphone or, for that matter, a phone, smart or otherwise. Some seem to spend far more on gizmos and software services to run on them than they do on a bicycle!

On the other hand, if your hobby is primarily collecting useless data to measure yourself for no reason except feeding an obsessive compulsion, rather than riding a bike for the various cycling pleasures, why not buy an expensive static bike, a huge screen and a subscription to a "You're not as good as the rest of us on here" virtual cycling app? Expensive, mind - as many will know. And utterly boring compared to cycling through the real world.

Cugel

[jb]

I could make two pairs of pliers, both identical in looks. One would be made frome close grained high quality steel hardened and tempered in all the right places to make the handles tough the blade keen and the jaws hard -but not too hard.
And to be their owner they would relieve you of £25.
The others would be mild steel case hardened for a bargain price of 50p.
Which you Gona go for?
Of course without knowing the process you couldn't know the expensive tool was properly made but you can be dam sure that 50p doesn't cover the costs, but they still sell.

[slowster]

Something which technically might not meet the OP's criteria is the hub vice as detailed by Brucey in this post viewtopic.php?t=134390#p1424792, with a further link to Sheldon Brown's article on the tool. It is purely a DIY tool which is assembled from whatever suitable bits and pieces you have to hand; there is not a more expensive alternative in the form of a proprietary version of the tool.

I also see that in Too Good To Lose there is a whole thread with detailed opening post by Brucey on whether cheap pedals can be any good - viewtopic.php?t=124951. A couple of other posts of Brucey's on good value inexpensive pedals:

viewtopic.php?p=1381590#p1381590

viewtopic.php?p=1499041#p1499041

[st599_uk]

Whilst not cheap per se, i bought some Tungsten All Weather lube based on testing here: https://zerofrictioncycling.com.au/wp-c ... r-v1.2.pdf

It lasts for ages - I have to relube the chain 1/2 as often as I used to and the chain remains clean. There's no grinding paste effect, even after 500km of dusty EuroVelo 15 (where the dark blue bike looked white).

With the cost of cassettes, chainrings and chains rocketing, I'm hopeful that the cost saved on replacement parts will out match the cost of the decent lube.

[zenitb]

Given one of the main barriers to cycling is rain the Decathlon £20 waterproof trousers are excellent. Mine have outlasted my £40 Altura ones which split at the cr0tch. They have double velcro at the ankle to get a snug fit and I forget I have them on on my commuter bike and tandem.

Generally Decathlon hit the knee of the quality/price curve for me. Solid cycling products at a v.reasonable price

Another bargain is their set of workshop allen keys.

[Bmblbzzz]

attitudinal cost-savers ...
Best one of all: don't buy what you don't need.

Cugel, for whom words are evidently free, has hit the big one here.

[slowster]

Two posts from Gattonero and Mick F on making your own chain whip.

viewtopic.php?p=1179776#p1179776