Is a 1 year old Carrera Crossfire 2 a good deal for £99

George_Walker

I was just walking past my local cash converters on my way to the rail station and saw outside of the store slightly scratched version of the current crossfire 2 with full length sks mudguards and a topeak pannier rack for the princely sum of £99, they were charging £75 for a carrera subway 1 2008 with no mudguards or pannier rack and they were also charging £110 for an apollo xc 26 s now I don't know over the two other bikes which are far suprior would consider buying the apollo. But anyway I just wanted a bike to leave in town and not worry about whether it gets stolen so I would just like to know people's opionions of the subway 1 and the crossfire 2.

thel33ter

I would go for the Subway

http://www.bikeradar.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=15236452

Carrera's are always much better than Apollo's.

George_Walker

Thanks for the advice, I mean the chainsets are the same the derailleurs are the same, they both have gripshift shifters unfortunatly, but the carrera crossfire has 24 gears over 14 but then again where I live in Cambridge the wider gear range is not nesacary due to it being completely flat. The crossfire has a lockout fork but it may be just adding on unnesacary weight. But it does have mudguards. I know carreras are far supirior to apollos as I mean I've never owned a bike from halfords as I have always had giaants or dawes but my father has always had problems with his apollo until he bought a trek 7.2

thel33ter

Carreras are decent bikes, despite the price tag, my dad still rides and old steel 531 tubed Carrera racer from Halfords. The cheap fork on the Crossfire will add a good kg or two for very little benefit, as for the gears, it doesn't matter how many there are, as long as they work, and mudguards only cost £10-£15 if you feel you really need them, I commute all year round with no guards.

The Rookie

Either Carrera is a good buy (the apollo is a tank) for a commuter the Subway is the better bet, but I'd say for what they are asking the Crossfire is better VFM.

As for mudguards, I use a rear (I hate a wet arse crack!)
and a front crud catcher on the downtube.

Which cash converters is this? :roll:

Simon

George_Walker

I was just looking for a bike to leave in town and go to the pub on and not worry about being stolen, I already have a dawes galaxy that I use for commuting and the cash converters was Cambridge but sadly to say I rung up today and they sold the subway so now all they have is the crossfire. Although now they have a 2007 Giant FCR 3 which I personally feal would be better as it has road bike components rather than mtb components.

flyingbanana

George_Walker wrote:

I was just looking for a bike to leave in town and go to the pub on and not worry about being stolen, I already have a dawes galaxy that I use for commuting and the cash converters was Cambridge but sadly to say I rung up today and they sold the subway so now all they have is the crossfire. Although now they have a 2007 Giant FCR 3 which I personally feal would be better as it has road bike components rather than mtb components.

I had a crossfire from my first experiment in the bike to work scheme. It will do just fine for the purposes of transporting you to beer if you are in flatsville, flatshire.

The fork doesn't quite lock out, just get's much greater resistance at the high end. The one mine gave out after about 8 months of mainly on-road / surfaced path commuting. Replacing it with a solid one was a major improvement as it was just dead weight that made the front end flop around whenever you weren't holding the bars. Headset cracked around a similar time and needed replaced, the 2 were probably related. I also fitted SKS mudguards and a topeak rack and with a pair of Schwalbe Marathon+ it did just fine for slow commuting and general pootling. I ended up removing the front derailleur and shifter as the bottom 2 rings were surplus 2 requirements as I wasn't going up trees. The chainrings are welded as 1 though so had to leave them on.

George_Walker

Went for the FCR3 in the end personally I prefer the shimano shifters to sram because I prefer shifting with both my index finger and thumb and in the end got it for £80 and for £80 its brilliant.

The Rookie

For £80, sounds like a damned good buy, you could probably keep doing an N+1 from them and selling for a profit on ebay at those prices!

Simon