Catweazle

Surprises me that nobody has yet made the distinction, especially considering that you're looking at the 'green' aspect of bikes, between Wallyworld bikes and bike shop bikes.


Most 'bikes' sold are the chainstore WallMart/KMart/Whatever cheap imported jobbies. Those are most certainly not "green" because they last about two minutes before they're broken, left to rust behind the shed or whatever. In comparison, even an entry level brand name cycle from a cycling shop will remain useful for year after year, so long as it is maintained.

Yeah, cycle manufacture is wasteful of resources. But primarily because the bulk of people outlaying cash for a 'bike' are buying a throwaway toy rather than a real bike!

Sixty Fiver

I have a bike, (or bikes) from every decade going back to the 1930's and all these bikes are servicable and all are ride-able.

A few were garage queens and had pretty low mileage while others like my 1962 Peugeot and 1973 Raleigh Carlton Gran Sports showed signs of being ridden a great number of miles due to the high degree of wear to the components and in their replaced parts but the steel frames on all of them have held up very well.

wahoonc

Somebody made a comment about setting up a bicycling recycling plant? Why? Just break them down to the their component parts and recycle them...I do it all the time. AFAIK the average non CF bike should be close to 100% recyclable. I do it all the time. People give me bikes, many of them are the inexpensive BSO (Bicycle Shaped Objects) that have sat outside their houses and are basically worthless. I strip them down and sell the metal for scrap. A Xmart aluminum frame is worth a good $7-$10 at current scrap prices. Tires I take and drop off at my local tire store, they get tossed in the bin with the car and truck tires.

As far as the lifespan? I don't think anyone can put a solid number on that...too many variables, just like cars, and as someone pointed out the numbers will be skewed by the volume of xmart bikes. I know I have a 35+ year old Raleigh Sports that has not been treated with kid gloves and it is still going strong. It had an odometer on it at one point, the last time I knew it had over 15,000 miles on it. The only thing replaced has been wear out items like; tires, brake pads, brake cables, a chain and possibly a rear cog. It still has the original chain ring, wheels, hubs, etc on it. But then again it was built for daily use.

Aaron

frymaster

some questions you should ask and, more importantly, answer:

1. my grandfather once told me that he had owned the same axe since he was a boy, although he had "changed the head and handle many times". the same thing applies to bikes as parts are easily end-user swappable. first, you will need to define what you mean by "bike". is it just the frame? the frame plus wheels?

2. are you looking to find out what the theoretical maximum lifespan of a "bike" is or do you want the actual? there are all sorts of reasons why perfectly good bikes and bike parts get ditched long before they die. i mean, when deep-vee's suddenly stop being hip, there's going to be a lot of still good wheels in the trash heap.

3. why are you judging lifespan in years? as has been stated a couple of times already, a bike stored in a heated basement and never ridden will last dozens and dozens of years. km ridden is the best gauge.

4. what are you going to include in your "average" bike calculations? if you include children's bikes, your average lifespan is going to go way down since a) kids wreck bikes and b) they outgrow and disgard them more quickly than adults. same for bmx. just about everyone here probably rides a commuter or a roadbike of some sort (or a 1930's track bike with fancy new wheels. man, i dream about stuff like that...).

5. are you willing to pluralize "anecdote" as "data"?

meanwhile

You might want to comment on integrated headsets and other integrated, often manufacturers own brand, components. When these are installed bike life can be much reduced, as they're a devil to replace.

Sixty Fiver

On that recycling thing...

I work for our local bike co-op and we recycle nearly everything... we presently have a small mountain of unusable frames and bins of steel and rubber that will be going to the recyclers on the weekend.

Besides that we have a yard full of bikes, many of which that are well over 30 years old and are still considered to be more than serviceable.

frymaster

props on that. if we remember what we (didn't) learn in school, waste generation and resource consumption is reduced using the "4 r's" model. that is, in order of effectiveness:

reduce: the amount you consume. bike co-ops put a dent in the demand for new bikes -- especially cheap, x-mart new bikes -- by offering refurbished rides at good prices (at my co-op it's $15 for the bike plus $5 per part you want to change or add). every 1980's raleigh that gets bought at the co-op is one more brand new piece of crap that will break in two years that's not being bought from a chain store.
reuse: old stuff instead of throwing it away. when you see the kids coming out of the co-op on a bike older than they are, that's reuse.
recycle: what you would otherwise have to throw away. all bike co-ops i know of ship the unusable metal and other stuff off to some scrap metal joint.
recover: waste material into energy. this is the one 'r' that bike co-ops really fail at. i am trying to convince my local co-op to install an incinerator so we can burn torn saddles and old bar tape to run an electrical generator... but people keep blocking.

CritEastwood

I have a 1941 Schwinn DX that probably has a boatload of miles on it over its years.

zonatandem

Mileage rather than years!
Have bicycled a quarter million+ miles.
Here are the outstanding mileages on some of our custom tandems, before we sold them (yup, some were ridden for many more thousands of miles).
64,000 miles. Assenmacher custom tandem: Reynolds 531 tubing (db steel single racing bike tubing); broke frame at 50,000 and 56,000 miles (had broken tube(s) replaced).
56,000 miles: Colin Laing custom tandem. Reynolds 531 tubing (db steel; mixed: racing bike/tandem guage). Broke experimental steel fork at 15,000 miles.
57,000 miles. Co-Motion custom tandem. Tange Prestige db tubing.
19,000+ miles (to date so far): Zona custom full carbon fiber tandem.
Many worn out components replaced, but here are some outstanding ones:
1 Phil Wood bottom bracket and hubs on Assenmacher lasted the lifetime of ownership (64.000 miles). Other Phil BB was replaced after 30,000 miles.
Syncross BBs lasted liefetime of ownership (57,000 miles as did Phil Wood hubs and front Mavic rim.
Durac Ace headset (late 70s) lasted 30,000 miles.
2 pair of Vittoria SuperLeggero pedals lasted between 80,000 and 90,000 miles (composite parts broke).
Cannondale computer (1980s) lasted 80,000+ miles.
Things like handlebars and stems and cranksets (replaced chainrings only) lasted for as long as we owned the bikes.
Moral: Quality lasts.
Bikes/cars are recycleable, to some degree.

pwyll99

The other thing I don't think anyone has mentioned it reusing the frame. My hardtail mountain bike is 5 years old now and is mostly used for commuting and utility purposes. In those 5 years I've already replaced both wheels, brakes (upgrade to disks), and the cassette. Now the suspension fork is in need of replacing (corrosion on one of the stanchions). But the frame is still in good shape. So I'm considering using the frame as the basis for an xtracycle. So the lifetime of a frame can be very long.

The thing that hurts the reusability of frames (IMO) is that once you need to replace most of the components you might as well buy a new bike. I've already spent as much in upgrades on the hardtail as the bike originally cost.

I question the longetivity of carbon frames which is why my roadbike is an alumunum/carbon SS design. I'm too worried about cracking the toptube or downtube in a crash or locking it to a bike rack.

Even the Xmart bikes can last a while, my old one was converted to a few alternate configurations by the kids until it was stolen (why anyone would steal it was beyond me).

metzenberg

You have a great paper topic. You don't say what level of the education system this paper is for (high school, college?) or what field (economics, urban planning, environmental design?).

I own several bikes, one of which (my urban utility bike) is a 1970s era 12-speed, now upgraded to 16-speed. It has had several bottom brackets and rear wheels, and an upgrade to the entire drive train. The cranks are originals, as are the dia-compe brakes and stem mounted analog shifters. Built of chrome-molybdenum steel, the frame may last forever. But the 27 inch wheels have become difficult to find a really good tire for. Other than that, there is absolutely nothing obsolete about it. With a good tire and chain, it's just as much fun to ride as my custom titanium touring bike.

One thing that bothers me is the extent to which cheap and badly designed bikes that incorporate the latest fashion in frames or suspensions dominate the market. How many mountain bikes are ever ridden in the mountains? They are so not the right bike for fast urban commuting, yet they are the only bike that many Americans own, if they own a bike at all.

Cheap bikes usually contain cheap components that need a lot more maintenance. After a thousand miles, the hubs are probably finished, but instead of being maintained, the entire bike is allowed to deteriorate. Before long, that bad bike becomes a disincentive to a good ride.

Most people who love bikes buy several good ones, and often maintain them very well. Those are the kind of people you will find here.

Have you thought of contacting a bike co-op. Last year, while I was touring, I visited two great bike co-ops in Ohio. The Oberlin Bike Coop (located underneath Keep Coop at Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio) is one of the originals. Search for them online at www.oberlin.edu. The Ohio City Bike Co-op in central Cleveland has a mission to recover bicycles and teach city children to ride them safely and maintain them. They are at www.OhioCityCycles.org, and the director's name is Jim. Bike Co-ops often recover the cast-off and forgotten bicycles from garages and dumpsters, giving them a new lease on life.

Howard

jgedwa

Anyone who flips bikes can explain this observation. Here is my attempt to articulate it:

Most bike purchases are made by people who are not serious cyclists. Probably most are whim purchases. Since riding a bike actually requires some modest pedalling work, a large percentage of those bikes get ridden a handful of times or a season or a couple of seasons. Then those bikes are left to gather dust in the garage. The owner no longer uses the bike, so it really ought to be sold. But, it will not because it was fairly expensive to begin with and also selling it would be a psychological admission of defeat. So, the dormant bike is kept on for a long time.

Then, at some point the equilibrium shifts. At some point, the shame in selling off the bike is finally outweighed by the silliness of keeping a large metal object in the garage or basement.

In my humble experience, for most people and their garages, this shift takes about 25 years. Finally, they can tell themselves that the bike is old. Finally, they can get rid of it at a loss and not acutely feel like a fool for spending the money in the first place.

Therefore, one should expect to find the bikes that people bought 25 years ago to show up in large numbers at garage sales, thrift stores, and in dumpsters.

So, my paleo-flipper theory predicts that we should be seeing the bikes from 1983 this year. If my memory of bike history is correct, there was a bit of a lag between the wave of bike-boom tenspeeds that crested in about 1980 or so and the rising wave of MTBs that began in 1982 and really did not reach large proportions until 1986 or so. That means we will see all those missing MTBs in large numbers about three years from now.

Come back in 2011 and tell me if my theory is substantiated by observations then.

jim
head of the department of paleobikology

jgedwa

Oh yeah, one more point:

I am also cross-appointed in the department of Bike Nostalgia, and so I should point out that the time lag for lusting after old bikes lags just a little bit behind the bike abandonment wave.

Go peruse the C&V forum. Heretofore, the C&V discussion has almost exclusively been a discussion of road bikes. It takes a while for people to look back fondly on the contraptions of their youth. That crowd (of which I am a proud member) looks at a 1977 Nishiki International (for, example) as a nice bike to own. Maybe because they had one. More likely because they had a Varsity and always coveted the Nishiki the annoying kid down the block owned. We watch a homeless guy cruise down the alley on a rusty Peugeot with upturned handlebars and cringe.

So, if you are hoping to make money flipping those old MTBs need to get ready to pounce, since the window that opens when they flood the market and closes when they are assiduously snatched up by nostalgic codgers is about 5 years. Today, the C&V crowd looks back a few years and wistfully remembers when one could buy a cool lugged frame on Ebay for a song. Those were the glory years of collecting old road bikes from the 70's and 80's.

Get in your starting stance brothers and sisters, there will be a sprint to hoard 1992 GT Tequestas that will last a precious short time.

jim

adjunct professor of Flippery

p.s., I have about 15 such MTBs and frames hanging from my rafters already. You are behind already!

gregam

The theory sounds about right, I just picked up a beautiful 1982 Peugeot PH19 Mixte for $40 on CL two months ago.

gcottay

It's my impression (only, no solid data) that it is rare for a bike for wear out. Most hit the trash due to abuse or sit neglected. As other posters have already mentioned, a decent bike will last about as long in years or distance as the owner decides. If bikes were necessary for transportation and if they were expensive in relation to our income, they would last for many years.

Tires, though, might be a different story.

metzenberg

I'm delighted to see that another professor from my university is answering questions here. I have an appointment in the School of Bicycle Business, where we give out the MBA degree (Masters in Bicycle Advertising or Manipulation of Biking Awareness). We want to help our graduates get jobs, so we have to teach them all the ins and outs of the business world, like planned obsolescence.

Back in the late 1980s we realized that bicycles had suddenly become a fashion statement, not a mode of transportation, so we began teaching our students new trends of perception manipulation. We figured, if the bike gets put away after the third time you ride it, why not come out with a never-ending series of high maintenance doo-dads that will stop working after you put the bike into the garage for even one year. The suspension system was born. That way, we could sell a new bike every year, to anyone keen enough to want to try riding.

By the 1990s, we recognized that wheels were the next frontier, so we added bizarre spoke patterns, aerodynamic spokes, biometric cranks, and various silly rims and hubs to accommodate them. Make sure that if it breaks, they have to buy a whole new bike.

So, I hate to throw a wrench in Professor Jim's spokes, but his theory is going to stop working in seven more years, after the last good hard-tail mountain bikes of the 1980s come out of basements and garages. Get the last of those good old bikes while you can.

Professor Howard
Chair of Department of Ethical Manipulations
School of Bicycle Business

jgedwa

You mean we are passing "Peak Bike" now?

Crap

jim

Rogue Leader

I just have to take issue with this comment. As an owner of many many American cars that I have easily repaired and restored myself, and also an early 90's Volkswagen Fox that I still have that has been nothing but the bane of my existence every time i have to repair it. From special tools to get out certain bolts (2 out of 3 bolts that hold in the alternator are standard, but one which you cant see because its inside the timing cover, requires a special VW only bit), to an ignition switch setup that practically makes you remove the whole steering column from the car, VW/Audi are the most home mechanic unfriendly cars on the planet. Mechanic friends confirmed they would rather have you bring it to a VW mechanic than fix it yourself as it will always be done "right" and make the cars seem more reliable than they are.

Sorry for going OT, but I would change that comment that bikes are like old American cars, very "people repairable".

Sledbikes

i wish we had a co op like that around here they ask some stupid prices for bikes that need well over 50$ to 100$ in parts you all know this place as Working Bikes the labor rate is beyond ridiculous too

Treespeed

I hate to break it to you professor, but there are still plenty of non-trendy frames and components out there if you are willing to look. Further most of the trendy bikes that you deride are usually ridden tens of thousands of miles by enthusiasts who may just have different goals and expectations of their equipment than your idealized 1980's hard tail mountain bike.

mrchaotica

The person you were replying to was talking about "the real volkswagen." A real Volkswagen is air-cooled, such as the Type 1 (aka "Beetle") or Type 2 (aka "Bus"). Those real VWs really were easy for people to work on. For example, my boss tells me that a person could lift the engine into and out of a Beetle without a hoist or other equipment.

Sixty Fiver

Some of the local shops don't like us and one in particular would rather toss serviceable bikes in the metal bin than send them to us or have us pick them up as we do put a big dent in their business although we do send folks there for parts we don't have in stock.

We visit their dumpster regularly.

This bike was built completely from recycled and salvaged parts with the exception of the new tyres, rear spokes, and newchain. The bars are wrapped with cloth (hockey tape actually) and shellacked which is both economical, long wearing, and environmentally friendly.


1940 CCM

This bike was also built with recycled / salvaged parts and the only part that was purchased new was the chain and brake pads.


1962 Peugeot

This bike is 75 years old and is in remarkably food shape.


1933 CCM Rambler

Shall I go on ?

Carusoswi

So, is that unfriendliness due to the car design or the fact that the design is not as friendly in the market where you use the car? I drove my 71 VW bug 235,000 miles - bought it new as a result of my having swallowed the marketing hype about what a tough (if ugly) little car it was. I paid for every one of those miles because, compared to US made cars (and I live in the US), service for the bug was best left to the dealer or, at least, someone who specialized in the VW.

If I knew then what I know now, I could have run those 235k miles much more economically (and many who were, at the time, more mechanically inclined than I did just that).

We could disagree with the previous poster's analogy on a factual basis, but the VW was marketed with the image he/she painted, and it's the analogy that probably adds meaning to his/her post.

If I knew when I bought that VW how much cheaper and more pleasing it would have been to purchase a lowly manual shift Dodge dart, I could have owned a bigger, more comfortable car that would have been cheaper for me to run, with fuel economy that met or exceeded that of the VW.

Owning the VW taught me to take care of my cars. It wasn't perfect - cylinder #3 caused the engine to need a valve job every 80k miles or so. Owning my Spirit of 76 model Dodge Dart (slant six 4 on the floor) taught me that properly maintained "junk" from Detroit could be economical and fun to drive for as many or more miles than the imported stuff (put 300,000 miles on that car before giving it to my sister who added another 100,000) and I could fit my '74 Schwinn LeTour in the trunk with room to spare.

Caruso

Sixty Fiver

The Chrysler slant 6 was one of trhe best engines ever designed and it was sad they were housed in such poor cars... they were smooth running, offered reasonable power and were relatively economical to operate.

I owned two cars with these engines and they were pretty much bombproof.

Carusoswi

To the OP:
There is much offered here that should head you on your way to a good paper. With respect to how long a bike will last, my guess is that most bikes, even the 'walleyworld cheapies' are built to last forever if given even basic care. In my lifetime, I have owned three bikes, personally, and have purchased another half dozen for other members of my family. None ever wore out. My son abused his mountain bike, running it through mud and sand (without telling dear old dad who would have run him through the same mud and sand!!). Because he kept that harsh treatment a secret, the bike feels and rides like a piece of junk. OTOH, if I replaced the BB, replaced/lubed cables, chain, cogs and chainrings, it could be brought back to as good as new status. That will not happen by my hand, because my son is grown, now, and going through that period in his life where riding a bike is not an avid pastime. He still likes to ride, however, and no doubt will catch that bug at some future date. But the bike has always been garage kept and will, no doubt, outlast both of us.

I spent more upgrading my Schwinn LeTour than it was worth when I rediscovered biking for myself almost a decade ago. A new and better drive train, lighter, more modern wheels, new seat, clipless pedals, etc. make it one very capable road bike. I probably put a couple thousand miles on it when I was in college, another 10k after upgrading it in its second life, and, now, it sits unused except when I want to go riding with one of my grown children when they visit.

I will leave it to them or their children along with other well-cared for, but worthless possessions, one day.

My new (couple years old) bike, a GIANT TCR carries me 3000 or so miles per year. I regard it as indestructible, and am not concerned about UV damage. I don't store it in the sun, only ride it in the sun (on sunny days). It will not rust, and, unless I crash it, doubt that the frame will ever wear out.

I crashed my Cannondale cross/disc, and the crossbar and downtube both folded. The frame of that bike now hangs from the ceiling at my LBS as a reminder that cycling has its risks. I visit the shop often to testify by my presence that the risk is a reasonable one.

So, my answer to your question would be that almost all bikes will last forever unless their owner decides otherwise or until they get smashed in an accident (I think you could say the same about cars, too).

Caruso