Originally Posted by
Maelochs
We have had this discussion countless times. Walmart (and other big box) bikes are Cheap. They are often poorly assembled, and never manufactured to very close tolerances (I have ridden enough--to destruction---to know this.) Yet, they serve numerous purposes very well.
Many are bought by people who never intend to ride far or hard, and who enjoy the bikes very much because they never test them to capacity. Many are bought by people who need transportation and cannot or need not spend several times more to just get around. Many are bought to please kids who think the bikes look cool, and who would beat the snot out of any bike .... and will outgrow it in a season anyway.
As I said to OldTryGuy, their quality has gotten much worse in just the last few years. Their quality wasn’t all that good before but they weren’t prone to failures that could result in injury. The spindle picture I posted isn’t the first broken crank spindle I’ve seen on a relatively new HelMart bike. They have reached a point where they are so poorly made that they can’t serve the purposes for which they are intended safely.
For a huge segment of the population (I think something like 75% of all bikes sold are from big-box stores, but anyone who cares more can refute or support that) a big-box bike gets the job done. And for many people, the cost of replacing the bike every season or two is still a better deal than paying a lot more money for a better bike.
And why should we even care?
We should care for many reasons. Most of us here are enthusiasts in the true meaning of the word. We want to share our enthusiasm about an activity that brings us joy. I don’t want to see people trick into buying something that will spoil them on the idea of bicycling. If a bike doesn’t work properly, people never get the chance to enjoy the activity. If the bike breaks and causes injury, it may cause someone to actively get others not to ride bikes.
People who play sports aren't going around scoffing at sneakers, saying how they would never stand up to the stress of pro sports, or competitive cross-country running, or whatever .... because sneakers are not serious athletic shoes. They are fashion items, or more so (as with K-mart models (which I wear) ) simply cheap and effective footwear.
A sneaker from HelMart isn’t going to fail and possibly cause injury. The broken spindles I’ve seen can. A broken frame or broken fork could cause even more serious injury.
Big-box bikes cannot be compared fairly with even cheap enthusiast bikes because they were designed and built to do different jobs.
Making false equivalencies and then pointing out how those falsely equivalent objects aren't equal .... seems a bit silly to me.
I understand the need for a less expensive bike. I volunteer many hours per year at my local co-op to work on the worst bikes on the planet. Co-ops are the places where people take the HelMart bikes that don’t work because bike shops can’t work on them. I have no love for HelMart bikes nor am I under any illusion that they are diamonds in the rough.
I keep them running as well as possible but they also tend to be the bikes with the most problems and need the most care. I don’t tell people that their bikes are crap even though I
know that their bikes are crap and are going to be coming back to us often. I won’t, however, tell someone to go out and buy a HelMart bike of any kind for any reason. They are just wasting their money.