DIY or do you buy? Buy or build? Let’s do the math of time and money. If you do what we do as the baseline full restoration of a bicyle, then DIYing it would save you at least $300, and possibly a lot more if you don’t mind sanding and polishing yourself to your hearts content, and you have the right tools.
We fully encourage folks to DIY it. Notice that we leave retail on-line links to all the stuff we use to build bikes. We do not have any accounts with bike parts distributors. This is all modern internet based supply chaining via Amazon, AliExpress, Ebay, etc.
If the build spec of the bicycles are based on quality technology that has been adopted for decades sourcing quality parts is cheap and easy with lots of options. Older techs may go out of fashion but their demise is oft reported prematurely.
For example, don’t let anyone tell you that 26" wheels are dead. There’s still quality rims and hubs. Actually, we now know we want much wider aluminum rims than was normal in the 1990s. So, arguably 26" rims are better nowadays and those rims not going to disappear from the market. (Agreed, less suppliers over decades than in a tech’s heydey but the market will supply perceived demand and we’re talking open source patent free widgets.)
(because they are now out of patent and now we get the cheap knockoffs as we agreed twenty years ago when we gave you the patent. Your IPR was sunsetted from the beginning. Thank you. Nowadays, retail vs wholesale just means how many you are buying at a time. “Relationship” with parts distributor? Like did I purchase from them on Alibaba before? What are you talking about?
When we restore a bike that’s at least $300 in labor at a shop in Seattle, Bellevue, Tacoma, etc. At least. That’s for a mechanical overhaul maybe they wide the frame with furnature polish before giving it back to the customer. $300 will not cover the labor for a restoration of a decades old bike that might have been abused or just flogged to exhaustion mechanically, let alone any aethetic restoration which can just be a costly time consuming process.
On the other hand, if you already have a sweet old ride that hasn’t been beaten down, clapped out, or neglected to the elements, you could do it yourself nicely for less that $300 in parts:
- $30 all new cabling
- $30 Pedals, big flats, nylon
- $35 Handlebar grips, paddles
- $20 new brake pads, Kool Stop
- $100 new modern balloon tires, low nobbiness smooth rollers
The above totals to $250 in parts. And we left out saddle because that’s personal. You gotta find a saddle that you get along with. Pay up if you gotta for the one.
So, let’s call it $300 in parts.
That’s why bikes on Bicyclious cost what they do. $600 is $300 for labor plus $300 for parts, just to get started. That’ll get you a great easy to maintain bike ready to go for decades if cared for minimally. Depending on how
Then there’s the question of art and beauty and philosophy and other rich people words. Hold your wallet.
according to the going rate at a bike shop on the I-5 and I-90 corridors of Cascadia. And those prices assume a modern bike that hasn’t been on this Earth for decades possibly being horribly abused and neglected.
And the $300 is just the basics. You start getting into making things pretty and labor costs can get ridicious. Restoring and polishing decades old chunks of metal that have been out in the wild is just a drag, like painting a car. Expensive in either time or money.
Refinishing
But if you’re only going to do it at most a handful of times in your life, fuck it bikes are a lot smaller than sanding a whole car. Or fuck that, get it sandblasted and powder coated for ~$300. Now that’s a restoration meant to last decades and isn’t going to make you hate going through the process. DIY paint at home can be fun (just finish with 2K clear topcoat rattle cans , those LUNG DANGEROUS ISOCYANATES.) That’ll last for decades and only cost you about ~$30 or your lung capacity if you fuck up with the ventilation and/or quality air mask PPE and the isocyanates ruin your life. But the bike will look really good, if you don’t fuck that up learning how to paint with a clearcoat that’s really hard to take off.
Sandblasting is really nice results with professional application for ~$300. Sanding sucks but this should be a really nice frame we’re putting this money into. The powdercoater will have a rainbow of cheap colors so start dreaming with the palette they offer on their website. if you get picky and they don’t stock that color $$$.
Sandblast and paint is another option. Watch out for industrial blasters who don’t know high end cromo tubing is less than 1mm thick and blow away part of the frame. Ask if they’ve worked with bicycle frames before or are these guys mostly blast barnicles off hulls?