{"id":10783,"date":"2014-07-27T21:36:50","date_gmt":"2014-07-28T01:36:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/?p=10783"},"modified":"2014-07-27T21:36:50","modified_gmt":"2014-07-28T01:36:50","slug":"beater-bikes-review-and-requiem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/2014\/07\/27\/beater-bikes-review-and-requiem\/","title":{"rendered":"Beater Bikes: review (and requiem?)"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve heard people complain (still) that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 a good bike shouldn’t cost more than $100<\/em>\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. When I heard the news that Dave Chant was closing up\u00c2\u00a0 Beater Bikes<\/a> and liquidating his remaining stock of bikes for $100 each, I thought I’d give it a try.<\/p>\n

Through no fault of Dave’s, Beater Bikes never quite got the traction in Canada they should have done. I blame the outdated tariff on imported cheap bikes; Canada no longer has a domestic industry to protect (someone, please<\/em> prove me wrong). We still have the tariff to shore up those long-gone jobs at CCM\/Supercycle, though, so importing bikes into Canada was too expensive a proposition.<\/p>\n

The bike still cost me a bike more than $100, though: $100, plus $120 shipping, plus $58 UPS brokerage \u00e2\u20ac\u02dctax\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 (grar), so a total of $278. Still cheaper than almost anything you can get from Canadian Tire, and as the original retail was around $450, still decent.<\/p>\n

\"beater<\/a>So here’s the box it came in; beaten up and retaped, sure, but with an appropriate logo. Inside, apart from a few loose parts, there was this:<\/p>\n

\"how<\/a>Although well wrapped, the bike had been dropped at one point, and there was a colossal ding on the back mudguard that stopped the wheel turning. I managed to flatten it out enough that the wheel ran free, but it’s still visible under the carrier.<\/p>\n

After a couple of hours of fiddling and tightening, I ended up with this handsome steed:<\/p>\n

\"assembled!\"<\/a>The basket is an old Wald<\/a> I had lying around, attached with enough Ty-Raps to add a significant cost to the bike. The only bits missing were most of the screws to mount the rear reflector. One screw plus duct tape did the job.<\/p>\n

\"Ashtabula<\/a>The bike has a particularly nice kickstand. Coupled with the steering stabilizer, it’s a bike that’ll lean against a wall without falling in a heap. It’s also my first bike with a one-piece\/Ashtabula crank, which is more a matter of where I grew up \u00e2\u20ac\u201d only BMXs had them in the UK.<\/p>\n

It’s quite a handsome bike, despite the Beater concept of a bike that won’t get noticed or stolen. It’s very basic, but solid. I don’t know how long the chainstay-mounted Beater Bikes nameplate will last on mine (it came partially unglued on my first ride) so maybe the bike will be an anoymous beater sooner than expected.<\/p>\n

\"beater<\/a>It rides well, though I have to say that riding a bike with only<\/em> a coaster brake is a little off-putting.\u00c2\u00a0 I haven’t mixed with real traffic on it, and our shed has developed a bruise from where I shot up the driveway, completely forgot how to stop, and collided with the shed. Only pride hurt.<\/p>\n

Starting with a coaster brake is also weird, as you can’t haul the pedals back to a good starting place. I’m resolutely right-footed, and I’ve had several nopenopenope<\/em> start offs from junctions. Until I heard about the rolling the bike backwards<\/a> trick, I was pretty stuck.<\/p>\n

\"bikeshadow\"<\/a>Compared to my cushy and sprung Batavus, the Beater has a harsher ride. Its low gear is higher than I’m used to, so I start off slowly. I’d definitely agree with Velouria<\/a>‘s assessment that it needs a front brake. I’m much slower without one.<\/p>\n

It is, however, a very decent bike for the money I paid. I hope that Dave got something positive from his foray into bike sales, as it’s a fine concept, and better executed than flops like the Kronan<\/a>. The one thing it does do far better than any of my other bikes? The Sturmey-Archer rear hub still makes that lazy tic tic tac tac<\/em> noise in top gear, which can only be the sound of summer freedom on the open road.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve heard people complain (still) that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 a good bike shouldn’t cost more than $100\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. When I heard the news that Dave Chant was closing up\u00c2\u00a0 Beater Bikes and liquidating his remaining stock of bikes for $100 each, I thought I’d give it a try. Through no fault of Dave’s, Beater Bikes never quite got […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9],"tags":[2817,77,2814,2169,79,225,2816],"class_list":["post-10783","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bike-stuff","tag-100bike","tag-bike","tag-coaster","tag-review","tag-roadster","tag-sensible-bicycle","tag-unboxing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pQNZZ-2NV","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10783","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10783"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10783\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10916,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10783\/revisions\/10916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}