upgrade or new bike?

Juc

Hi all,

I have a budget of about £500 for a road bike (for leisure / commuting). My current bike is a Giant OCR3 (I think 2009). http://tinyurl.com/c8q9y6b
After moderate use and no crashes in 3 years I think the Giant frame is still fine - so would it be better to keep the Giant frame / forks and spend the budget on new wheels, chainset etc (and any labour to put it together) or should I forget about the old Giant frame and just get a new bike such as http://www.wiggle.co.uk/felt-z95-2012/ ?

Thanks!

crescent

It's a diffcult decision when you have a good, reliable bike to start with - been there! I would suggest that the Felt bike you are looking at, although perfectly fine, is probably not much of an upgrade on your Giant. Without sounding derogatory, £500 is towards the budget end of road bikes. If it were me, I would probably work on building up the budget a bit more and then upgrade to something with a more significant change in specification.
For what it's worth, I ended up keeping my original bike and bought a new frame, groupset etc over a few months and built my new bike that way. Admittedly, not everyone's cup of tea but not a bad way of going about it if you fancy a bit of DIY and it lets you phase the spending as well.

Cheers