Raleigh or Ridgeback

[Scraggles]

Been to 2 dealers, one is a Raleigh only guy and the other sells what he wants to, the raleigh bike is a metro, more or less what is here

http://www.raleigh.co.uk/b_details.aspx?id=2693 Cost approx £190 from the dealer

http://www.ridgeback.co.uk/index.php?bikeID=24&amp... Rapide speed for about £250

For some reason the latter guy was sgging off raleigh as being poor build quality etc

Local area has 1 gentle hill of about 2-300 metres, so most use is on cycle tracks and the odd bit of dirt track or grass. Hybrid bike is what I like, the cycle king steel thing that I used to have is cheap, but not as good as it could be. The above are both aluminium frames afaik

Wonder what people think of the 2 brands, don't suggest I go out and spend £500 on some bike as it is d-locked to an external wall in a public area, ie anyone can walk up to it and not enough space to leave it in the house

If anyone knows of a similair brand, more than welcome to check it out, must come with mudguards and the shelf on the back to dump stuff on

[wildoliver]

Neither bike is anything awesome, but both are far better than halfords bikes, raleighs seem to go on for ever, basically I would choose whichever you prefer.

[t_rifles]

I had a Raleigh Matro when I started up cycling again early last year. It was NOT money well spent.

The bottom bracket lasted 3 months and is very low rent.
Left pedal crank kept coming undone.
Inner tubes punctured from spoke ends. Needed much better rin tape.
The bike is very heavy.
The twist indexing is not great.

The are much lighter and better equiped bikes if you can increase your budget a bit. If you can find a 2006/07 model reduced down from 350 to 250 for example you should get a bettre long term prospect.

[Nick_F]

Cartridge-type bottom brackets and threadless/integrated headsets are reasonable indicators of quality; if a new bike doesn't have these, but instead uses a cup-and-cone BB and threaded headset then odds are that it's nasty as well as cheap.

I was sorting out my mother-in-law's cheapo bike the other day and discovered that the locknut for the headset was cast aluminium - utterly useless and, frankly, dangerous.

[Gooby]

Which one rides best?

[Scraggles]

that is the question indeed, just come back from a fun filled trip to the south coast, ridgeback seems a better option, but will check out another shop or two when have a free weekend

[rdjohn]

I have had a Ridgeback hybrid for about 14 years. It is not excessively used but is still in excellent condition. It felt great the first time I rode it, but I did have a bigger chain wheel set put on it.

I would certainly buy another Hybrid bike from them and saw it recoomended as a Sunday Times "Best Buy" once.