Bikes Under £100

Only £100 – well in 1938.

Being the kind of cyclist who spends £50 on a tubular, and £500 on a wheel, it’s hard to get my head around the idea of buying a bike for £100. If you bought the parts separately, they would certainly add up to more than £100.

There are bikes on sale for less than £100. This will be from the likes of Cycle King, Amazon and Asda. As you can imagine you get what you pay for. It’s hard to maintain the bike as the plastic parts are more difficult to adjust. The tyres will be thin and more prone to puncture. It will feel heavy and unresponsive and could put you off cycling.

If you really are determined to get a bike for less than £100, I would suggest the second hand route. If you live in a reasonable sized city, there should be a few places offering second hand bikes for less than £100. Take care you aren’t buying a stolen bike and use this tips for buying a bike second hand.

After saying all that, I did buy a cheap new mountain bike for £90 from Halfords. It was actually reduced from £150. It was great during the snow. However, after lending it to a lodger it got three punctures in a short space of time. It was also quite an ordeal to change the inner tube and adjust the brakes. They just felt very plasticy and hard to get in line. A very different experience to adjusting a quick release wheel and high range Shimano or campagnolo. (BTW: If you ever lend a bike, you have to know that you will still do the maintenance when they get a puncture..)

The punctures were from small flints, they would never have got through my armadillo tyres which I use on my commuting bike. This is a good example of a false economy. If you are actually going to cycle regularly, don’t try to get away with the cheapest tyres, get the best, you will save yourself the cost of inner tubes and time repairing.

Get A Paperound and spend £200.

If you really have no money to spend on a bike, why not get a paper-round for a few weeks and save up another £100 to buy a half decent bike for £200? At least at £200 you can get something reasonably road worthy and semi – enjoyable to ride.

I’m always suspicious of bike shops which sell bikes for less than £100, – mind you I would love that £70 – 19 gram carbon fibre bottle cage….

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