Originally Posted by
777funk
I'm an occasional rider (trails mostly paved sometimes hilly terrain). I see non big box store brand bikes (Trek, GT, etc) on FB Marketplace and CL in the $75-200 range at times and when I look them up here or other places, most say... "Trash. Save your money."
Who says this? You would never guess from reading this site, but sometimes cyclists can be exceedingly opinionated and very narrow in their opinions. If you are willing to spend a little money, some used bikes are the best way to enjoy cycling for less. Each bike is going to be different .... and any $75 bike is likely to need a couple hundred (unless you can do minor work on the bike yourself) for tires, tubes, cables, maybe brake shoes, tune-up ......
Originally Posted by
777funk
Most of my problems with my Huffy are fixable (new cables, brake pads) for about $50 or less.
Expect any old bike to need this stuff.
Originally Posted by
777funk
Should I keep the Huffy or do I need an expensive bike. My requirements are:
1. Won't fall apart when riding. I'd want any injuries (God forbid) to be rider error and not mechanical failures.
2. Rides half way decent (I don't need that last 5% or maybe even 10% of ride quality, light weight, etc).
Will a cheap bike be good enough?
Whether or not Any bike will or will not fall apart has nothing to do with age or brand name. I could build a super-expensive bike badly and it would be a hazard. I can (and have) built bikes literally out of parts salvaged from the trash and rode the snot out of them safely. Your Huffy might be a decent bike which will give you years of service. Until I saw it I couldn't say.
Not sure what "rides halfway decent" means. Any bike you ride, the brakes and shifters need to work, the tires need to be straight and round, all the spinning parts need to spin and not shake ......
I have ridden a lot of very cheap bikes. My complaint with them is that they tend not to hold up to really hard use--cheap parts bend or break or won't stay adjusted. If you ride a few times a week and don't have a lot of hard impacts (which I wouldn't expect on mostly paved trails) and don't hammer as hard as you can all the time, you might get a lot of years out of a well-maintained Huffy. At the very least you should be able to ride it long enough to save up for a better bike.
Something a lot of people say here: Ride what you have as long as you can, so that you will know if you want a bike which can do more, and more of what you want it to do. If you buy a really expensive bike and ride it for casual fun three or four times a week, never go really fast for a long time, never go bashing over obstacles or trying stunts, never try to race with highly competitive people .... then you might find that you get all the joy you need out of that Huffy.
Maybe after a while you might wonder what a better bike might feel like, or wish you had better shifting and braking .... not that you need them, but you think it might be fun .... you might find that you are still riding that same amount and expect that cycling will be a part of your life for a good long time to come, so making an investment makes sense .....
So then you might a start looking at the classifieds for a "garage queen," a bike bought by a "dentist with a gold card" which has sat unused in his garage for a few years after the first three rides proved not to be as much fun as he had hoped .... or you might start looking at new bikes, and since you have year or two of experience, you can figure out what the ads mean and whether what they shops are selling might appeal to you.
I spent years riding whatever crap I picked up on the side of the road, and even though no one was ever impressed by my bikes, they were often impressed when they saw me 25 miles from home, hauling a load of camping gear on a bike most would throw away, or seeing me riding home with 80 pounds or groceries and laundry after seeing me ride to work that morning and ride home that evening.
(Of course, no one was ever impressed to see me walking him five or ten miles because of terminal bike failure.)
Cheap bikes can work, and if well maintained and adjusted, can work pretty well. The question is, can you enjoy riding the bike even though it has a "Huffy" decals ...... if not, scrape the decals off.