Testing testing...

richardfj

There's a lot of talk in the forums about taking fancied bike on a test ride before purchase, can i ask what is the consensus about what this should entail..how long should you expect or ask to test ride, over what hills and flats...what else should you look for apart from the ride or is that it?

I ask because i rang a lbs to enquire a about a £2k bike and was told that i could test ride, in their car park so long as a dry day...that made me feel as though if i didn't know instantly from sitting on it thats it's an amazing bike that i must be a complete retard...

....that said it probably is and i probably am..i still want to ride it a bit first though!

Evil Laugh

I'd say at least 15-20 mins per ride if they're serious about giving you decent service and making sure you get the right bike and fit. Evans get a bad rep on here but Waterloo branch let me take loads of bikes out, some for three rides until I found the right one. Tested loads, got down to 3 and then eliminated one at a time
in back to back rides, so I was quite a PITA .

hopper1

20-30 mins on open roads should be sufficient.
Bearing in mind that you will want to cane the bike a bit, to se how it responds. So, doing so, if you test 3 bikes, that's potentially a hard 1.5 hours!!!
I know, I did it at Epic Cycles, quite hilly, nearly killed me!

markmod

You should be able to feel the differences in bike style and handling fairly quickly depending on how different they are. Remember if you are are looking at very similar style of bikes they may will also handle very similar too because of this. It may then come down to colour, looks, price and desireability. You may also want to try different groupsets, levels of groupset. The feel of the shifting between them can be felt too.

If you are spending 2k you want more than a car park wheel round.
I too test rode at epic, a Scott Cr1 and a Viner Magnifca. The important piece of this is that the bikes you try should be set up as closely to one another as possible, so that you are testing the bikes feel not it's suitability for size between models

The Scott felt racy, alive and hard, and the Viner felt more comfortable but not as racy.... I went racy!!!. I also tested similar priced groupsets from different manufacturers and decided to go with 11 speed Campag, even though I used to ride Shimano but the feeling during the test gave me confidence to go with it. I haven't been disappointed!