Older Dawes Discovery 401 vs cheap halfords hybrid?

jsmoke

jsmoke

jsmoke

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17 Jun 2012
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Just seen a second hand one of these, cheap, don't know the year but a fair bit older, maybe 10 years old. Would this be a piece of junk, I think Dawes is a good make, the bike is in one of the New start places and he obviously be professionally services/tuned etc. It takes panniers, just the price and name got me, do you think I could do some serious touring on this?

After a quick google I looks this this bike.

26233w6.jpg


Halford's also have a cheap Hybrid bike down from £229 to £99, here, http://www.halfords.com/cycling/bikes/hybrid-bikes/real-clifton-mens-hybrid-bike-18

What would you go for, between these two?
 
The Dawes is a better bike.
Depending on what you mean by "serious touring", you'd probably be better off spending more money and get something more modern. I expect the reliability of the Dawes would be fairly good but if something does break when you're away from home it might be more difficult to get replacements for the old parts.
 
jsmoke said:
How about this bike, http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/3324202.htm ?
Click to expand...

No.

What do you mean by "serious touring"?
If you're just going for shortish day trips, the Dawes is a good choice.
If you're talking about multiple days riding carrying all your kit, reliability becomes a big issue and if your bike breaks and is unrepairable*, it'll ruin your trip. You'd need to spend somewhere around £600-1000 to get something decent.

*as i said before, there is nothing particularly unreliable about the dawes, just that availability of replacement parts might be a problem.
 
I don't know about "need". It's a pretty big jump from a cheap used bike to a mid range tourer. What riding are you specifically planning on doing? You can quite happily do most touring on any half decent road bike that you can fit a pannier rack to.
 
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