Okay, should I do this? (2nd plan)

[I'm a person]

Hello, me again

I shared my first plan about 2 weeks ago. It was very specific. Unfortunely, there isn't any at my local walmart or on sale here in ontario, canada.

But, I have another plan.

I found a bike, heres the link

https://www.amazon.com/Polaris-Wooly-Bully-Tire-Bicycle/dp/B01N062VV3

Holy, wow! Those tires are huge. The bike looks heavy, though.

Heres my new plan.

The thing I'll replace is the rear sprocket, front crankset, tires, and disc brake.

Thats all.

I think this is an opportunity to learn about bikes more + excercise, + get into fat biking.

It's either that or the mongoose dolomite.

What do you think? (also, I do know that fat bikes have different cranksets)

 

[Wildcat]

I bought a Mongoose Beast when they first came out. It would go over anything. The tires were heavy, 7 lbs each! The rest of the bike wasn't that heavy. I geared it down to make it easier to pedal. My ride was usually 3 miles to work. I could average 12-14 mph on a regular cruiser, but only 7-10 mph on the fatbike. The spindle for the cranks is longer, but the sprocket and all are the same, so I used a chain wheel off a cheap mountain bike to get a lower gear, and kept the factory bearings and spindle. It was still heavy to pedal but looked good. The Polaris is a better quality bike than a Mongoose, hopefully the tires aren't heavy. They do make the fat tires that aren't heavy.
I think your idea will work, does shipping add to the cost?
Here's my Mongoose, I also added a better seat and larger handlebars. There's a laid back seat post and a shock stem too.

 

[I'm a person]

Thanks! I can't seem to see the image though.

 

[Phil Fink]

So, were you thinking fat tires as an alternative to steel studded tires? I believe that Kenda makes "Klondike" tires especially for Canadians, with their year-round snow, eh.

 

[I'm a person]

Yeah, sort of.

 

[Duchess]

I think offsetting the tire weight is why fat bike rims often have big holes drilled into them.

If you can find some used fat tires cheap, you could try studding them with screws from the inside. Not sure if the low pressures they run in the tubes would hold them in place as well as skinnier tires, but you could be the one to find out!

 

[I'm a person]

Alright, 3rd plan.

Just this.

https://www.walmart.ca/en/ip/26-columbia-rambler-mens-moto-cruiser-bike/6000198185147

Probably gonna add some cruiser handlebars and all that good stuff on there. It's a walmart bike but its good enough for me. Thoughts?

 

[Wildcat]

That would work! The hyper cruiser they have would work too, already has cruiser bars, same price.
I fixed up one and it sold right away. Just added different tires.

Any walmart bike will need everything lubed and adjusted. If you can find a quality old bike on craigslist for about the same price or less, I'd go that route first.

 

[RustyGold]

That Columbia looks a lot like the Electra Moto... which I like .

However, here are four bikes of picked up lately in the same ballpark, pricewise, recently...

'52 General (Monark built)

'39 Hawthorne

Felt Scythe

2000 Electra (7spd w/ coaster brake)

Three of the four above were cheaper than the WM Columbia you are looking at (one significantly cheaper). Three of the four are mechanically excellent (Hawthorne could use a rear hub rebuild). I think all four are better values than the Columbia (both in quality and price).

There are options out there, but it takes some diligent searching (and I'm not located in a good bike market it either).

Jason

 

[Raoul Dude]

Probably gonna add some cruiser handlebars and all that good stuff on there. It's a walmart bike but its good enough for me. Thoughts?

That would work! The hyper cruiser they have would work too, already has cruiser bars, same price.

That's the first thing I noticed: the Moto Cruiser has moto-style bars and what looks like a BMX stem which are usually sized for 7/8" (22.2mm) bars. To put a modern cruiser bar (which are almost always 1" (25.4mm)) on would mean replacing the stem as well so now we're probably talking an extra $40 or $50 on top of the sticker price.

Any walmart bike will need everything lubed and adjusted. If you can find a quality old bike on craigslist for about the same price or less, I'd go that route first.

I don't think that first part can be overstated enough -- there are dozens (if not hundreds of threads) around here talking about new "big box store" bikes that were assembled at the factory without grease in the headset, the bottom bracket, or both! These bikes are 90% assembled at Chinese factories by employees who apparently aren't paid enough to care, and then unboxed at the big box store by employees who mostly don't care. Those workers attach the seat and pedals, put the stem in the fork (and they often do that backwards, as many other threads here show) and wheel it out to the sales floor. It's almost a certainty that the brakes and/or derailleur will need to be adjusted to work correctly, and a toss-up whether things like headsets, bottom brackets, stems and pedals are too loose, WAY too tight, or somewhere close to "just right."

I have several "big box store" bikes in my collection that I purchased on craigslist for around 75% off the original price (and then lubed, adjusted, and fine-tuned) and think those bikes are probably worth that reduced price. IF Walmart bikes were assembled correctly in the first place, they might be worth the MSRP, but they almost never are! The shoddy assembly is probably why there are so many "gently used" or "only ridden three times" "big box store bikes" for sale in my area: grinding noises, handlebars that are hard to turn, wheels that don't spin freely because the brake pads are dragging, gears that don't shift or brakes that don't stop the bike.

I'll agree with @Wildcat and @RustyGold: if you can buy a quality used bike for the same price or less, OR find a used big box store bike for $50 or $60, that's probably a better starting point -- and you'll have to learn about bicycle maintenance whether you start with a used bike or a new one from Walmart! (Luckily there are sites like this and YouTube that can help with the learning part. )

 

[Duchess]

Sometimes the box store bikes have odd sizes, too, but that info might not be current. Junk like box-store bikes are a big reason for the criticism of Chinese products. There's nothing about the Chinese people that makes them incapable of making things properly (especially look at their inventive genius throughout history), it's that the companies ordering the majority of products that people interact with are built there to be cheap in the first place and to such a low price that there's no room for quality control, machine PM schedules, trained employees who care, good production processes, etc. Think of how cheap the bikes are and figure there has to be a profit built in with shipping from across the Pacific, cost of raw materials, outsourced parts, labor assembly, final assembly in the US, distribution, stocking space, etc. I would guess many of the machines used in production (where they don't just forgo them in the interest of cheap labor hand assembly) would be bought used and worn out from ancient dead manufacturers or cast off from better ones and only see maintenance when they're broken or so out of calibration that they can no longer be used.

Big box bikes were junk before they were made in China. When I was a kid, I had a Columbia BMX bike—low end, but bike store quality. I beat that thing up for about four years before outgrowing it while friends who didn't ride as hard had to get new box store Huffys and such every year and they were terrible riders from day one (and I actually built a frankenbike entirely from decent quality trash-scavenged parts that we used for really abusive riding and it lasted three years with minimal issues before it was stolen). I remember seeing "Made in the USA" stickers on their bikes and it's honestly a major reason I only drove Japanese cars for so long! On a positive note, keeping my friends' junkers going so that they could ride with me places helped teach me how to work on bikes and I think therein is maybe their redeemable value, though it's tough to really ruin a bike while learning to work on it, I think that if it's cheap and disposable (another thing I don't like about them, though I guess they help feed the poor metal scrappers), people have less fear to dig in and learn.

I certainly don't mean this as an attack on anyone here, as if implying anyone is saying Chinese people can't make things properly and I absolutely understand wanting to buy American or from countries with better labor laws (I like that my current and last car—the most reliable one I've owned within a series of reliable Japanese cars—were built in MI), but I do see and hear a lot of things that are borderline racist (and not so borderline) elsewhere and I guess I just kind of wanted to rant against that. Assuming we aren't hit by an asteroid/zombie plague/evil Clear Channel plot to drive everyone insane from bad pop music and ads blasted over megaphones, maybe in 20 years the Chinese will be producing more higher quality stuff and the low end will go to countries with less mature economies (it's already happening) and we'll think of junk products when we think of India or Vietnam or—who knows—maybe North Korea!

 

[I'm a person]

Hey everyone, heres an update. I got a bike now, its a beast but its pink, so im gonna vinyl wrap the frame.

More is to be posted of the bike, such as riding it, pics, etc

Thanks for all the suggestions and support!

(Its vimeo, so if it asks for a password, type in Ratrodbikes)

 

[horsefarmer]

Why use password to view video?

 

[I'm a person]

privacy reasons. Keep in mind im only 12.

 

[handyandy1100]

Glad you found some wheels. Now the fun begins!

 

[rowdyram]

Way cool dude. Can't wait to see the progress, and how it turns out. Congrats on the new-to-you bike, and on the new project. Looks like a very good starting point.