What really is cheaper .... A whole bike or from Frame up

colintrav

Average price of a decent bike starts from 500 up wards going by prices advertised

For those that have built there bike from using your existing frame upwards how much has it really cost you ???

El Capitano

A lot more than £500...

The Northern Monkey

£1600+ for the NS (including tools, spares and delivery etc etc)

The Rookie

All new parts will cost more, you don't have the buying power of the bike 'manufacturer'...

From good quality used parts (classifieds and well known online auction site), you should be able to build it for circa £300 plus frame.

Simon

Skonk

BIke manufacturers are able to buy in bulk and buy OEM parts (without retail packaging); both of which reduce the cost of these parts dramatically.

End result is that it is generally more expensive to buy the parts and build up a bike yourself and even if you have a frame to use, may well be cheaper to buy a complete bike, and strip it down for the parts and then sell the frame on ebay or somewhere.

dave_hill

El Capitano wrote:

A lot more than £500...

What he said.

If you reckon £135 for an On-One frame, £135 for a pair of Mavic Crosstrail wheels and £200 for a set of semi decent forks - that's £470 for starters.

supertwisted

Cheapest route to building it yourself is to buy the frame you want, then find a heavily reduced bike in the sales and buy that too.

Strip it for parts and sell the donor frame on to recoup some more money.

You just have to be sure all the parts will fit.

meesterbond

I guess it depends how much stuff you have lying around and how clever you are on ebay / classifieds etc...

I'm in the process of picking up components for my 456 build and whilst it definitely won't be cheaper than an entry level bike, I have got a few bits and pieces in the shed, will be reusing the wheels off my current bike and the rest should be doable for about £450...

I'm not sure many people set out to build a bike to save money though... particularly if you build the cost of tools in as well...

Skonk

I saw a new Mongoose Teocali Super, 08 model i think with full XT group set 5 or 6 months back, forgot how much it was on sale for but I was in the market for some parts at the time and I worked out that if I had bought the same XT parts seperatly, it would have cost more than the entire Mongoose bike, let alone adding the cost of a frame to that.

Didnt have the cash for it at the time though sadly otherwise I would have snapped it up.

The Big Cheese

I added up the other day how much in total it has cost me to build my Marin (inccluding frame), came in at £2,871.91p :shock:

But in this case it was cheaper than what a pretty much identical Team Issue would cost in the states (approx £3200 or something..) but this instance is difference, as I am working with $'s rather than a bike bought in the UK

And some of that stuff was on offer! And it was all bought over time, not in one go as a few bits were on previous Marin.

Need to stop spending

Northwind

I choose not to think about it But I took my Carrera Kraken and upgraded parts, then replaced the frame, then upgraded it more, then replaced the frame, then upgraded it more, then some more, then again...

But, I did build my Idrive out of bits of that old kraken and some other leftover bits, for the sum total of £215- frame, seatpost shim, headset, used crankset and some cable inners, plus the remains of that Kraken. And some other nicer bits which were just laying about, but let's say £700 in total, compared to a grand for a new one with a lower spec.

llamafarmer

This thread might interest you, although it was with a lower budget in mind:

http://www.bikeradar.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=12660529

supersonic

I've had a few goes at speccing builds on the cheap. Links may be out of date now though.

http://www.bikeradar.com/forum/viewtopi ... udget+bike

http://www.bikeradar.com/forum/viewtopi ... udget+bike

http://www.bikeradar.com/forum/viewtopi ... dget+build

http://www.bikeradar.com/forum/viewtopi ... dget+build

The Rookie

I've just built a new commuter, I've totted up how much I bought every part for (even those used on the previous commuter) its 1x9 (which only saved £20 as I bought the front shifter and mech anyway which will now go on the new MTB) and it came to £240.38.

Now obviously that's not all new stuff but its all pretty good quality such as deore shifter, XT shadow rear mech, shimano hubbed wheels (alex/Mavic rims), deore cranks, alloy chainring/bolts etc etc, it would have cost the same for an MTB as (apart from the frame which is hybrid style anyway) all the finishing stuff is MTB, in fact I could swap it all straight onto my Kraken frame (using the middle chainring ILO of the big!), swap tyres and it would be an MTB (and would be £4 cheaper as that's the difference in in the price of the frames!).

Simon

Panter

I've just built up a "cheap" Enduro using an old frame from fleabay and 2nd hand parts.
Time I'd bought all the bits and upgraded/changed things, multiple trips to the LBS etc, it worked out at a cost of about 48 million pounds.

Ok, thats probably a slight exageration but I could've probably bought a Pitch Pro way cheaper....... :oops:

P-Jay

My one and only 'custom build' came to around £4500.

It depends how you look at it. An off the peg bike is usually cheaper than the sum of it's parts, but if you - like me - have trouble sleeping if there's s part on it you don't like and you end up upgrading loads of bits, it cheaper in the long run.

But really, there's nothing cheap about custom builds.

supersonic

My Zaskar Carbon was about £1100 to build.

Anonymous

my enduro came in at about 2700 and for the spec i reckon thats not too bad.

the older stumpy was about 1500 quid with some smart buying

the new one was 1600 to buy but then cost about about a further 450 quid so about 2 grand is fair enough i reckon

the orange came in at about 350 quid at the end but this is because most of my parts were out of the spares box, a full price build would have been closer to a grand.

luckily i havent been too fascinated with changing anything on the 2 road bikes!

building is always more expensive in my experience. not least cause the bike is never worth what it cost you to build if you want to sell it at some point. ive got about 8 grands "worth" of bike in my shed but i would say its only worth about 4 grand second hand (but then im a realist unlike many folk trying to sell their old stuff)

Chrissz

My Orbea has cost me just over £4k and I'm currently plotting to get it up to 11 speed SR :!:

Not cheap and I'll never get even half my money back but that's not the point (for me) - it's the joy of buying new bits and the satisfaction of fitting and riding the fancy gear