This may seem a bit naive - but I’m sure others have thought about this situation.
I am buying a road bike this winter and not sure if it makes more economic sense to buy the whole bike or just the frameset and then build it up.
I have a tri bike that may ‘share wheels’ with my new road bike. Besides wheels I don’t have any other parts in my garage that I would want to put on my new road bike. I am most likely picking up a Cervelo R2.5 Chorus, but the Soloist recently popped up on my radar so I have some thinking to do.
Bottom line - stock wheels can’t contribute THAT much to the sum total cost of a new bike, right? I think it would be better (cheaper) to buy the bike and have spare wheels rather then buying a frameset and buying the other parts ala carte. Anyone have any experience with this? Thanks…
Buy the whole and sell the extra wheels if you don’t want them… Winter training is murder on bikes so I would keep the wheels.
It’s much cheaper to buy the complete bike. Economies of scale dictate that the manufacturer can build and spec a bike much cheaper than you or I in most cases.
If you are patient and a bit flexible about mixing parts and using NOS, you can piece together a bike from ebay and other on-line sources cheaper, I think. A riding buddy just built up a sweet bike with NOS DA9 for less than a grand.
I built a bike minus the cost of a frame w/ DA and a high end fork, all bought off ebay or here at slowtwitch for $1100. The fork and seatpost was $350 of that.
too true. I got a set of '04 DA brake calipers from eBay for less than $200. I still contend it’s usually cheaper to buy a complete bike than to build the bike yourself from parts.