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Used bargains or new, important thing is it delivered way above expectations.
Orange P7 2009
Paid £120 plus £8 on the train to fetch. Thing is a bit of a brute with Tora forks and midrange/budget mismatched wheels, OEM hubs, Alivio 9spd conversion to singlespeed kit. Juicy 3 brakes with corroded reservoirs. 2.4 tyres with a few chunks missing. Slipping rear sliding-dropout requiring nut and bolt to secure. It weighs a bit.
But ye gods it’s comfortable, and it works, and it goes fast, and it stops. All with the smooth certainty of a sorted thing.
It’s a lot of fun on the trails. Especially the switchbacks. I like it and do find it so far very hard to give up although sense says to move on as the (26er hardtail) flavour will likely prove to be a PITA to maintain/upkeep. It makes me feel stubbornly protective of it! Of course can’t stop tinkering so recently bought used bargain Sektors and Stans Flow for the front end, then somehow buggered up the headset and now it sits waiting in Rustville for funds (and my mood) to improve. IF it ain't broke...I’ll break it.
£250 on a Trek FS frame, built up for another £250 - love it. 29 rules!
£40 on an old steel frame bike. Rebuilt the wheels as fixie/freewheel and used it for commuting. Used some CRC bargain bin bits to finish it.
Rode it non stop for about two years before my brother bought the whole bike for £50 and swapped the wheel around so he could use the freewheel.
5quid Dawes kingpin. Or the folding 20that preceded it.
The ultimate streetwarrior for the mean streets of Glasgow.
The 20 was particularly good just left it in a folded pile locked to various items of street furniture... Ultrasecure
Freebies are the best!
Hand me down pinnacle Ramin frame with partially stripped bb threads donated by a riding buddy. Built up with mix of new and parts bin stuff. Excellent hardtail.
See also slot dropout inbred 26 and rigid forks have ended up in my shed after being in various mate’s possession. I’ve had it in various guises. Good winter hack or turbo bike.
Puts hand up. I got a £80? frame and fork pompetamine.
Built up with spa nidd saddle, 3x9 groupo, heavy duty wheels, fore & aft panniers plus carradice and turned into the most comfortable tourer imaginable.
All day long rides, wafting across France whilst being as comfy as a sofa.
I have an old Genesis Altitude set up as rigid and single-speed, the frame cost me just over £100 on eBay 9 years ago, and the forks are cheapies from CarbonCycles, the rest is made up of hand-me-downs from other bikes.
It's looking very well worn at this point and I keep toying with a more modern replacement, but it works so well that I can't bring myself to change it.
Depends what you class as a Pittance i guess. My PArkwood was £800 new and has done anything and everything i've thrown at it.
My T-130 was £900 and has been the greatest bike on the planet... I love it....
Both are exceptionally cheap IMO.
Mk2 inbred with the sliding drop-outs. Perfect for lots of uses - geared hardtail, rigid singlespeed, geared rigid trailer-puller, singlespeed 'race' bike. I gave away to mate after years of use and it's still going, albeit now pretty battered and rusty.
Aaaaaand I put in the wrong forum. *mods* soz
Good shout OP - I bought an '09 Orange Pure 7 myself and spent a lot of time on that bike, both as a winter ride and a commuter.
The frame cost me £120 and I fitted it with components from my spares box. However, it ended up dripping in Hope/XT with a natty blue powder coat. It still rode exactly the same though.
I bought a knackered kona shred for 40 quid. A few hours of fiddling & it's a great bike 😊.
Yes! Following a couple of calls out on here for cheap/free offload crappy commuter frames.
2 skip saves - 1st was a 1991 Bonty OR which looked like it had been left outside for 10 years. Nothing worked, it was basically a 24speed brakeless fixie. We got the freehub moving, I rode it from Walthamstow to Waterloo station, trainers on tarmac for brakes. Got it home, stripped it, built it up SS with parts bin stuff, couple of new bits - bars, stem and headset, P2s off here. painted it to match the front door. Ace fun, on road, off road with 2" slicks. Until the DT cracked. Not really a surprise - the frame was like a rainstick with all the rust flakes in there!
Next up after I asked again on here again was a 1987 Raleigh Randonneur, teasel off here was in his LBS 10 years ago and someone was upgrading to Ti F&F, didn't want the old one. teasel volunteered to save it for a good home (too big for him) and 7 years later, I ask and he gives me the Randonneur. Again, parts bin, few new bits - stem, bars, tyres, mudguards, wheels off ebay. 1x8.
And blimey, it's a lovely bike! So smooth, just wafts along. Gets used probably six days out of seven. Commuting, nursery pick up, errands, shopping, off road long-way-home rides, audax, holiday randonneuring (natch!)
Two lovely bikes. Both were supposed to be bikes I could leave anywhere and not be bothered if they went missing, but once you've tweaked them got them riding nicely, it's hard not to get emotionally attached, isn't it?
I bought my Malt2 from Merlin in 2008 for a not much amount of money and it is one of the few bikes that has ever felt just right. I use it every day to commute on and still enjoy the hell out of riding it.
Bike I rode and liked the most was a 2nd hand 1FG off Ebay...
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Bought a Spesh S-Works 120 Stumpjumper frame and shock for £200 in about 2002, paid TF Tuned to Push Tune the shock and built it up with kit of the Rockhopper I had at the time. Back then I thought it was bloody amazing and rode it everywhere. It was also the bike that got me out exploring too, as I stopped going to trail centers (mates got me into riding and TC's were their bag) in search of better, more natural riding.
I sold a Sanderson Breath for £220. Fox F120, Magura's, old hope wheels and Xt kit.
I met the teenager we sold it to at Comrie 6months later riding it like he stole it, not giving any shots and loving it. A wee whizz on it on the jump park reminded me what an awesome bike it was.
I've got an absolutely mint 531 tubed Carlton Pro-Am from late 70's, early 80's in the garage. cost me a whole £20 from the tip. Shame is that it's too small for me 🙁
Had "that call" from the LBS - the reason you can't get your gears to index properly is because your frame's bent. Irrevocably. Oh dear.
No problem, says friendly LBS, we've got this old frame in the cellar that should fit you fine. They built it up for me, swapping over what they could from my old one, finding a few more "just lying around" bits and charged me a pathetic amount of money for providing me with pretty much a new (to me) bike. They wouldn't take any money for the frame at all (I did put a contribution to their favoured charity though, I thought I should pay someone, something).
So, I'm still bombing around on an old bike - the frame's c.2007 I think, Marin Wolf Ridge. Cost me nowt, provides much fun.
Sadly, said LBS has since become a casualty of the prevailing retail climate. I might be able to get derailleurs cheaper from Wiggle, but they won't give that sort of service. Support your LBS.
#TheInternetCantFixYourBike
Another excuse to post this
Not a pittance, but £350 reduced from £500, felt like a steal! Has slowly been upgraded since and I'm always looking for excuses to upgrade further, definitely deserves new wheels.
Can turn it's hand to anything it seems, clearance for big tyres for s/s gravel fun, but could also build into a relatively light road build too. Thinking I might turn it into a pit bike for next year's CX season.
Will be the last bike I ever sell.
my best buy has to be my 2009 cannondale trail sl5. bottom of the range HT. i put my £60 bombers on it and it is a bloody amazing bike - jumps, pumptrack, 40mile XC, street rides, hucks to flat - its done it all and is still going strong. super low BB and longer than most other bikes made at the time. first ride was at a really gopping big dog on crappy xc tyres and it was amazing - bombing past riders on their posh rigs uphill and down was hilarious. it was never white again though!
otherwise its my £30 road bike thats too small and terrifying to ride but for some reason i think its great! i snapped the rear axle jumping stairs on it...
A guy I rode with once a few years ago (Bruce) went back home to Oz and left his Specialized Langster locked up outside the block of flats where he had lived in Putney.
It was there for a month or so until a mutual riding buddy messaged him and said what should I do with this? Just get rid was the response.
Langster was offered to another mate who didn't want it so I snapped it up; a total freebie. Nice.
Ratchet up the seat post (he was a short ar$e), fix a broken spoke, fit new tyres and lube the chain and it was good to go.
This was the start of March this year and since then I've used the Langster to cycle commute from Epsom into Canary Wharf and back numerous times and covered 3,014 km on it according to Strava.
I love the simplicity of singlespeed (not ridden it fixed yet) and the fact that as it owes me nowt it gets ridden hard then put away wet but is always ready to play the following day.
Okay, so the stock wheels give a bit of a wooden ride and I've thought about upgrading them but then I think again and realise that's not the point of this particular bike.
I love it
Not quite pittance but my road bike cost me £300 s/h in 2005. It was a nearly new cannondale caad4 r500, i.e. the entry level bike, but amongst the last of the made in the usa frames.
In the intervening 14 years its had a dura ace groupset, 1250g wheels, wcs finishing kit, carbon chainset etc. Still dont feel like replacing it. It just works, its comfortable, stiff, why pay a grand+ for a new frame?
My SS was a bargain charge cooker, although it needed a new chainset and drivechain. £120 + consumables for 2 years riding is good going. Now done about 1500 miles.
My SSCX is a charge plug, cost £100 with a spare front wheel and bar tape! Also needed a new brake and drivechain and i upgraded the wheelset and added a dynamo. But again, the original bike was doing just fine and the essentials to get it useable only cost me £120. Done about 1000 miles on it this year.
Also, any bike from on-one. They have their critics, and they're rarely the most headline grabbing (heavy, lacking features, whatever) but I think they have got the "designed well and built to a price" business model absolutely spot on. Dunno quite how they do it sometimes.
I bought one of the Orbea Alma 29er raw frames from RCZ when they were 30 euro a year or so back. Needed a slackerizer to make it a bit less twitchy but it's absolutely spot on, a proper keeper.
250 quid on a Charge Plug. Pretty much as new condition. Fired some 38c GravelKings and it's way more suitable for my work commute and road riding than my 1500 quid Endurace, which now just sits in the shed until I get my arse into gear and sell it.
Might need some cables at some point, and I did build it some better wheels, but other than that, nothing. It's great.
Spent about £70 on a 456 Evo2 frame a few years back, thinking it'd keep me on the trails while I sorted the bearings and shocks on my Rocket, then I could use it as a spare. After putting a sizeable dent in the downtube on the first ride according to Strava I've now done more miles on it than the full sus. Proper love that bike, it's great fun.
£45 on a used/missing parts/dirty Raleigh M-Trax 2000 Ti. Sold the groupset, narrow ti bars and wheels for £120 after cleaning so technically I was paid to have the bike.
I used it as an MTB for years, I toured on it. It was (is in loft at the moment) awesome!
£70 on a Ragley Blue Pig frame. It's now the spare mtb for my wife/anyone else who needs it, but i've had it for 5 years or so now and it's been my main mtb built up 1x10 with 140mm pikes, and a single speed big bmx type thing (which was awesome).
Also £350 for a Giant Trance X for my son, this was truly a bargain as it's awesome being able to ride proper trails with him.
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Spent a massive £315 on an unused On-One 45650b which was ace, swapped it for an even better frame in an ON-one Deedar at £100!
Rides better than any of my other bikes i've had (spent MANY thousands over the years 🙁 )
Try to list
Raleigh Mtrax TI
DAwes edge FS comp
Kinesis MAxlight
Dialled Prince Albert
Orange sub 5
Cannondale prophet
3 x Giant Trance
Cannondale rd bike
Planet X kaffenback
Titus FTM
Santa Cruz Heckler
Ragley Mbop
Santa cruz Nomad
Titus El Guapo
Spesh Stumpy
Giant talon
On one 45650b
On One deedar
must have missed some off there!
on-one 456 as a winter bike. £40 from classifieds for the frame. Built from classifieds, spare parts bin, repaired bits from others, bits scrounged from shops or given away by friends. The only new bits were gear cables. Total mish-mash, looked awful. <£200 all in.
Rode it for 4 years in all seasons everywhere in preference to my heckler and loved every ride. Eventually all the bits finally died and 26 was no longer a thing. Still have the frame though, can't bear to get rid of it as it just felt so right for me at the time.
On-One Whippet run as a single speed. Bought it with as an almost rolling chassis off the Classifieds here. Kept me sane through a couple of winters with young kids and even managed some XC races and commutes on it. Eventually sold it after it sat unused once life cranked up a bit more. I do miss it sometimes.
I bought a xl orange p7 this time last year. brand new too. for a tenner from a bloke in the pub. he said he had loads of different sizes.
it has been awesome................ ;o)
I paid ten pounds for a 1992 Marin mtb saved from a local tip. Spent about eighty pounds fixing it up. Has loads of tire clearance, a realively short original stem, and is very comfy steel, even though it is an entry level model. Swapped the useless cantis for v brakes, added a new chain, grips, pedals, bottom bracket and tyres. Added new ball bearings to the hubs and added a new saddle. It's rigid too as a bonus as all era forks were awful. Love it now.
Can't find pics easily - or post them. 10-12 years ago, Bought (£75) a modified Kilaeua off someone that still is around here I think, well a frame, rear wheel and P2 forks. As a singlespeed entry bike. It's still a fantastic bike, always make me smile!
Oh god, thanks to this thread I started researching new cranks for my Charge and found the BETD website. Can I really spend £185 on a new set of Middleburn RO1 cranks? I always wanted Middleburn as a kid, so it feels sort of justified...
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a whole FIFTEEN english pounds for the frame and bottom bracket. picked up some ancient second hand 140mm pikes and built the rest up from spare parts. Bloody brilliant little bike.
Kona Lana'i that was a couple of miles away down the road, advertised with an irrepairable flat tyre. Walked to collect it, paid £60, pushed it around the corner, pumped tyre up, rode home and continued to ride it for the next 6 months or so until somebody offered me £140 for it. The tyre never went down either. Basic bike yet it was lovely to ride. The instant I sold it I knew I had done something wrong in my life.
Some late 1980's Diamondback mountain bike at an Airbnb in the States 4 years ago, back of nowhere. Found it in their garage. Serviced it, got it going, rode it happily for a week out in the woods. Until somebody pointed out that the woods were full of animals that would eat me. The Airbnb owner wrote to me later on with thanks for getting the bike working again.
Bought one of the Crc brand x frames about 2 years on offer for about £90. Old skool 135 rear, highly un fashionable but has been a great hardtail/ winter bike. Cost a fraction of my full suss and often makes me smile as much when I ride it.
A 2nd hand Kona Steely, £65 of awesomeness. Ive only retired it as the head tube is flared and one drop out is well bent.
Raced it, crashed it in a spectacular fashion on the Slab. Awsome frame.
In the scheme of things, the Chromag Samurai frame I bought off Gordymac on here was cheap. It used parts that were otherwise in use on a bike I didn't love, and it was the first massively successful and joyful making mountain bike I had, that really made me fall in love with riding hard stuff.
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Planet-X Jack Flash bought for £28 offeBay.
Built it up with parts from a old bike and it was such great fun. Used it for loads of street stuff, local trails, just generally playing around. Just a plain good fun bike.
Then I tried to turn it into a DH bike, with bog forks and stronger wheels and completely ruined it. Sold it for a reasonable profit mind you.
My Calibre Dune is the cheapest new bike I've bought since the mid 90s and it's awesome. I did raid the parts bin to change some bits but in all honesty even if I just changed the brakes (even then it may of just been the low rent levers) it still would of been a cracking bike.
£80 broken frame (from STW):
Still going strong 5 years later.
One of the famed £150 London Road framesets:
Still going strong 4 years later.
Bought the frameset for this a few months ago for £30:
It's an ideal commuter/winter roadie.
The frame/shock/bb for this was £170:
All my bikes are a pittance...
Picked up a Vitus Nucleus vrx frame for £90 from crc as a bit of a post divorce stop gap whilst cash etc was being sorted. Was never enamored by the colour scheme, but I now cannot see what else I actually want from a bike as it's Bob on for the riding I do. Was a full on parts bin special, but like it so much that I treated it to a new fork, dropper and after xmas I may well treat it to a new groupset.
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Not a pittance in normal human terms - but a (new) full carbon, 140mm, XT/Raceface spec, Fox suspended, full sus 29er for £1800.. It certainly wasn't a Yeti or a Santa Cruz, but my Rocky Mountain Instinct has been the perfect bike for me.
£45 for this Trailstar Mk1.
Dumped the knackered XCMs, gears, mech disc brakes.
Threw some Holy Rollers on, few bits n bobs here and there and there you go.
The best bike I should never have got rid of...
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Saracen Zen about ten years ago. Looked round my spares and realised I just needed a frame for a spare hardtail. Only criteria was steel. Got it for £60 delivered, built it up and it instantly became my go to bike which I started upgrading pretty quickly! Only issue on delivery was someone had fitted the cranks at 12 o'clock and 5 o'clock, took a while to realise why it pedalled weirdly and longer to cut them off with a wee metal saw.
Still gets a run out every now and then or did until a Cotic Soul bargain winter bike arrived a few months ago.
My Genesis i0 singlespeed frame, cheap and cheerful but rides like a dream and has given hours of fun.
I bought a Thorn Audax frame and fork (one of the original 531 ones) off Ebay for £75. That was about 12 years ago and I've racked up many thousands of miles since, including LEJOG and the Med to the Channel. I'd say I've had my money's worth ;).
Double figures (£70ish IIRC) for a brand new Dirty Jo F-Creme frame. Loved it. Another one I shouldn't have sold (although the current Solaris is even better there was a big gap between the two where I wished I still had the DJ)
Actually, the Solaris probably counts, £180 for frame, seatpost, Hope headset, XT BB, brilliant bike. (Rest of it wasn't cheap mind so can't count the whole thing for this thread, 80% second hand stuff but still bizarely hit £2k, dogs danglies spec though so good VFM)
Ok not a pittance but compared to full bike prices now it was.
£400 pinnacle Iroko 4 full xt and pike fork. Ran it 2 years. Really got me onto longer lower slacker thing and I love it. Only swapped frame recently as I wanted longer lower and slacker 🙂
Pinnacle name hasn’t much kudos(god knows why) as the Iroko is a very well made frame
Not the cheapest but a £500 2016 boardman cx comp..changed the brakes to spyre tpr rd/hd semi hydaurlics, whacked on a surface 11-40 in 9 speed on the sora long cage and a tailfin rack and trunkbag(the new one) and swcabe marathon plus's in 35mm had it a year and ride when I can(3and a half thousand miles so far mainly used for getting around locally- as I font have a driving liscense) very little maintenance needed and can be utterly a abused without breaking..plus I can outride £1k+ bikes a good chunk of the time..even ride it off after a nasty off that nearly snapped the mech hanger of..still using said hanger..
Bike related, but not bike:
A free Daewoo Nexia from my cousin. Parked outside a dodgy pub in Moston and every panel dented by yoot walking over it on the way home.
Took me, the Mrs, bikes and camping gear all over the UK and bits of Europe, before finally expiring terminally outside my favourite pub.
Uglier and more reliable than a Doblo.
Cheaper and more reliable than an Omega.
RIP Shedric.
We will always remember you....
Genesis Vagabond F+F. Then a root through the spares box in the garage and I have a bike that does pretty much everything I want it to do. Yeah it is a frankenbike, but I like to think of it as the best of all worlds.
Absolute blast, I commute on it, bikepacking and even had it on the turbo with a 700c wheel and tyre.
A great way to recycle loads of old kit.
£450 on a saracen myst 2015 frame, and I still love it.
amazing price for a bloody good dh frame
Not exactly a pittance, but £250 for a handbuilt steel frame, one of only two ever made: my Inbred 567, a true hooligan hardtail, bare steel, just a thin clear matt lacquer over the bare metal. It was built up with all the parts from a titanium Cove Hummer, apart from the forks, which are a pair of 6” travel Nixon Platinums.
Such a nice bike to ride, although heavy, around 30lbs.
I just put this together as a commuter/spare XC bike. Frame came from a bike a co-worker literally rode it until it fell apart. The headset seized up so he tried taking it apart to "put some grease in", but it all fell apart in a pile of rust and he couldn't figure out how to put it back together. Everything else was equally rusted and knackered so he realized it was cheaper to just buy a new bike. I rebuilt it with old bits from the spare parts bin figuring I could use it to commute and sneak out of work for some afternoon rides on the hill behind work. Took it out on Saturday and it was surprisingly nice to ride. Only thing it really gives much away to my good bike is 80 mm forks versus 130 mm.
About 15 years ago I paid £5 for a beater bike because it had some parts I wanted for a build I was doing. It was filthy, rusty, and stickered as a Diamondback, ie looked like shit, crusty bearings etc.
The lugs looked interesting but crude and welded instead of brazed. I simply assumed it was some cheap gas-pipe Japanese production from the 70s. Bike got stripped, frame dumped at the back of the attic.
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Last year I had a cull of old frames, and took a car load to a swap meet to give away. No one wanted the Diamondback, not even free in a group of rabid bike hoarders. So a trip to the tip was its destiny.
As I was putting in the car for its final journey I bumped it against one of the struts for the boot, and the bike went 'ting'.
'Ting'? Gas-pipe doesn't go 'ting' like a bell, so for the first time I took a really close look. What I thought was crude welding blobs was actually hard (very) paint runs.
The Stallard style dropouts suggested UK origins, and the lugs suggested mid 50s Dawes. Unusually for that era it didn't have the special pump pegs cum cable stops on the underside of the top-tube, instead they were on the seat tube. Plus it had mounts for a special small rack (bag-rest) and that made it a Windrush, a bike Dawes made for the RSF crowd.
The irony was I was actively looking for a 1950s RSF bike, but had been concentrating on looking for a Rudge Pathfinder.
Anyhow after a bit of attention with cutting polish the rust just proved to be stains, then a rake through my attic and it ended up a nice handling 1950s gravel bike.
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It handles the Loch Einich run nicely, could do with better brakes though. 🙂
I haven't finished with it, it's going to get properly refinished. Probably my favourite 700c wheel bike.
Definitely a pittance, and yes I love it.