Self assembling a bike

[weescott]

I noticed a friends bike sat in thier garage yesterday, I said to a their housemate 'does he know his seat post is on the wrong way round?' the response was ' meh, Halfords put it together.' lol

The logical approach would be to buy a bike from a local bike shop. Not Halfords.

 

[Showboat]

I bought a cheap bike from halfords, the guys couldn't even set it up so the chain wouldn't slip. After 4 visits to the shop i said i wanted a refund. They obliged and i went elsewhere.

I'd pay them the £20, you can at least get a good moan in when it inevitably doesn't work properly! You could also spend hours trying to assemble it.

Gan you link the bike?

 

[Gribs]

Unless it's a disc brake.
There's somebody who works in the same building as me riding a bike with the disc caliper in front of the forks
I dont know who's it is, it seems to arrive mid-afternoon at some point and is there when i leave.
Every time i see it i'm tempted to take an allen key with me and fix it.

You sure it's the wrong way round? There's a few forks with disc brakes mounted on the front and from an engineering point of view it's a very good idea if you're using quick release wheels and vertical dropouts.

 

[touch]

You sure it's the wrong way round? There's a few forks with disc brakes mounted on the front and from an engineering point of view it's a very good idea if you're using quick release wheels and vertical dropouts.

Yep, you can tell by the offset of the forks.
Calipers on the front of the forks are not that much better in terms of engineering/forces. They force the wheel up into the dropouts which is obviously better. But they also pull against the caliper bolts rather than push them against the mounting points on the fork. Those bolts can be put under a lot of stress as well because the calipers can get fairly hot on long descents and lots of heating/cooling cycles can fatigue metal quicker.
If it comes to it, i'd rather the brake falls off than the wheel, but either way, it's probably not going to end well.

I suspect we will see a lot more front mounted disc brakes when the pro road racers start using them. Most of them grind the saftey lip things off the fork dropouts that help hold the wheels in place.