Nevermind gears, at least it had brakes…
My god that bike is crap. I bought a used wal-mart bike last year for $75 and it wasn’t as poorly assembled and bent like a pretzel as this one.
That’s exactly how about 95% of them go out the door at wal-mart. They come to the store exactly as any other bike shop, except they don’t employ professionals to assemble and check over the bikes on the floor. When I was in high school a friend of mine was offered $10 a bike to assemble them. Of course at that point, it becomes how many can you squeeze out in an hour… and no one knew he wasn’t doing things right. A typical walmart bike needs about $60 in labor after it leaves the store to work properly. We regularly assemble “new” magna, pacific, etc. bikes at the shop I work at, because you can buy them in a box if you want.
At least those bikes get assembled properly.
Yeah, but Bike Snob’s Mongoose had the headstock installed weirdly, the forks were bent and there was something else mentioned. I’m assuming bike snob can handle assembly, but if the frame is poorly made, there isn’t much you can do.
I meant the one’s we assemble at our shop that people bring in. Yes we’ve turned away customers who have purchased damaged products…
Poor Mongoose. When I worked in a Bike shop (10+ years ago) they still had a BMX pedigree from the good-old-days and the shop sponsored the state DH champ and Australian Trials champ with Mongooses. Then another company bought them and they started appearing in Kmarts and Targets and the like, and the brand was diluted.
Now they are owned by Dorel http://www.dorel.com/product.htmwho also own:
Dorel markets its Recreational/Leisure products under the Cannondale, Schwinn, GT, Mongoose, IronHorse, SUGOI, Pacific, Dyno, RoadMaster, PowerLite and InSTEP brand names.
Under the Pacific Cycles link http://www.pacific-cycle.com/brands/index.php they state:
Like Schwinn, the Mongoose brand has proven powerful in driving sales. The brand was first introduced to the mass channel in 1998 with quality perception remaining constant
Can anyone in the bike business explain how this influences design? Are the different brands run like different companies or is there a central ‘design hub’? Do they come out of different factories? Cannondale in that list surprised me (does it mean Liquigas are riding Schwinns with the word Schwinn scribbled out and Cannondale written hastily in crayon?)