What bike should i get?

Trigger_del

I am going to start commuting to work and to the gym. At the moment I have a Giant ATX 870 and I have just ordered schwalbe city jet tyres for the time being until I can decide on what bike to get.

I like going as fast as possible (average at moment 20mph with knobble tyres), my journeys will be the mainly road riding but I need the bike to be robust enough for mounting kerbs and be able to put up with numerous amounts of potholes and sunken grids.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated

Many thanks

Andy

meanwhile

How much can you spend? Do you like dropbars or flats? Are you riding in traffic, do you plan on riding in the rain, and what distance journeys will you be doing? What sort of hills, if any, do you have to ride?

Trigger_del

How much can you spend? Upto £1500
Do you like dropbars or flats? Dropbars I think had them on my road bike but it was not robust enough for bad roads.
Are you riding in traffic? Yes, everyday.
do you plan on riding in the rain? All weathers.
what distance journeys will you be doing? Only work 2 miles away. haha. But will be cycling everywhere like to the gym and where ever else I need to go so each day I will be doing a minimum of 20 miles. I also want to get into it as a sport for road racing, in time What sort of hills, if any, do you have to ride? There are ever few steep hills around the wirral.

Many thanks in advance for your help

Andy H

spen666

Trigger_del wrote:

I am going to start commuting to work and to the gym. At the moment I have a Giant ATX 870 and I have just ordered schwalbe city jet tyres for the time being until I can decide on what bike to get.

I like going as fast as possible (average at moment 20mph with knobble tyres), my journeys will be the mainly road riding but I need the bike to be robust enough for mounting kerbs and be able to put up with numerous amounts of potholes and sunken grids.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated

Many thanks

Andy

WHY?

meanwhile

Trigger_del wrote:

How much can you spend? Upto £1500
Do you like dropbars or flats? Dropbars I think had them on my road bike but it was not robust enough for bad roads.
Are you riding in traffic? Yes, everyday.
do you plan on riding in the rain? All weathers.
what distance journeys will you be doing? Only work 2 miles away. haha. But will be cycling everywhere like to the gym and where ever else I need to go so each day I will be doing a minimum of 20 miles. I also want to get into it as a sport for road racing, in time What sort of hills, if any, do you have to ride? There are ever few steep hills around the wirral.

Many thanks in advance for your help

Andy H

For a £1500 bike, I hope your gym has safe parking...

Ok, tough but fast drop bar road bike, needs to be able to handle kerbs and pot holes (so wide fast rolling tyres), up to £1500, used to MTBs. Easy answer: the Cotic Roadrat. Look up the review of the flat bar version on Radar, look over the drop bar version on their site, then mail Cotic with what you're after and if you ask them they should come up with a custom bike spec for you, down to extra strong rims and fast but bouncy tyres. On your budget I'd ask about disc brakes and an alfine internal gear hub. Midge bars might be more controllable than regular drops if you're really into rough riding.

Other options are Cyclocross bikes in general, but I'd rather have the Rat's geometry if I was planning on mounting kerbs. What with being a boy, if you get my drift.

Dropbar Rat built up as a singlespeed with v-brakes:



Pretty!