Building Your Own?

Pross

Just wondering - is it cheaper to buy everything for a new bike seperately and building it yourself? I had assumed it would be but when I've added everything up it seems to come to more. I can do the spannering but in general it appears that the ready assembled bikes benefit from economy of scales and work out cheaper. Would like to be able to specify my whole bike including colour but in this post steel frame world there don't seem to be many companies doing it and those that are seem pricey. My current bike was chosen from scratch through Ribble but even they don't seem to offer choice of frame colour anymore

Slow Downcp

Comes up quite often - worth doing a search, this is a recent one:

http://www.bikeradar.com/forums/viewtop ... =own+build

APIII

You could always try asking Ribble if you can buy an unpainted frame and then take it to someone like Argos cycles or Atlantic Boulevard to get painted to your requirements.

I built my last two bikes myself, and I think you can do it marginally cheaper on a like for like basis. But....obviously, you need to pick up the components at the right price and this can be down to luck and timing sometimes. I got my groupset in Ribbles xmas sale when they had 20% off everything, but then I waited 3 months for the frame to arrive, so I had plenty of time to source all the parts.

top_bhoy

By building your own what you get is a bike which is customisedwith better components and suitable sizing which is 'right first time'. I don't think there is any great cost benefit savings to be made building your own unless you want to buy the same cheap components as used in many 'off the peg' models but what then would be the point in building your own?

aracer

Depends what you want. If you're happy with the specs on a ready built bike (tends to boil down to whether you're happy with factory wheels :roll: ) then ready built is likely to be cheaper. If you're more demanding in your spec then you're better off building yourself than buying off the peg and upgrading - though to get the best deal you'll have to shop around for individual bits.

mostly harmless

A good question which there is no simple answer.

The main advantage of building it yourself is you'll remove the stage of swapping the sub par stuff that the manufacture has put to to keep the price down (usually tyres and wheels) or the stuff that just isn't quite right like bars/stems/saddles. The other advantage is you can upgrade in bits for example my best bike got new wheels and groupset in 08 and the frame replaced in 09 which allowed me to spread the cost.

I reckon with careful shopping around I can build a bike cheaper than most manufacurers with a better spec. For example a Racelight T is £900 with Tiagra but I built one with 105 for ~£650 (last year, admittely before the exchange rates went silly, probably be ~£750 now).

The adavantage of buying ready built is you can take advantage of the buying power of a large organisation. For example I've costed builds for a couple of mates and can't touch the Ribble Audax (£750 with full 105) or the Planet X SL Pro Carbon (£999 with full 6700). These can also be customised so the swapping sub standard bits phase should be avoidable.

Hope this helps.

Monty Dog

The margins on complete bikes is significantly less than for components - 25-30% vs 50%, so buying a whole bike will generally be cheaper - OEMs get bigger discounts on groupsets too - you can by a complete Planet-X bike with Ultegra for the rrp of the groupset. It really depends on your choice of frame and components and whether you can get near your spec. I generally buy the frames and components seperately - I have an eclectic taste in parts and frames and I can budget for a new frame, groupset or wheels every year and through a programme of rolling upgrades.