Bike snobbery - or is it?

[one-eyed_jim]

thinking about it , my first ever bike was a BSO
a dawes kingpin (shopper) that my mum bought to ride to work

A quality, hand-brazed, made-in-Birmingham steel frame? The Kingpin was a classic! If you call that a BSO, we're not at all on the same page.

I had two Kingpins as a kid. I wanted a Grifter, and did everything I could to break the Kingpin. My parents said it was unisex, but my friends knew it was a girl's bike.

Eventually I snapped the frame in half while jumping ramps in the street. My dad got a replacement from Dawes under their lifetime guarantee...

 

[john]

Good to see this debate has stayed civil.

I had two Kingpins as a kid. I wanted a Grifter, and did everything I could to break the Kingpin. My parents said it was unisex, but my friends knew it was a girl's bike.

Eventually I snapped the frame in half while jumping ramps in the street. My dad got a replacement from Dawes under their lifetime guarantee...

That raised a genuine lol.

 

[mikee]

i bent mine just at the downtube /b/b brace junction

i wanted a chopper ,but the dawes was better for dirt tracking

i suppose it was a bicyle of quality

 

[velomaniac]

I destroyed my mothers BSO shopper BITD, Czech built Twenty wanabe, jumped it off a kerb, forks failed and frame twisted several degrees to left at the headtube. Mother would have been really angry if she hadn't already confined it to the back of the shed as a silly excercise idea she'd shelved.

That bike was a BSO or KSO(Kingpin Shaped Object)

 

[Tazio]

My first "adult shaped" bike was a Raleigh tourer that I thrashed to hell and back and it never broke. It got cowhorn handlebars put on it and the mudguards taken off so it could be used on dirt tracks as MTB's didn't exist at the time. I spent most of my time fiddling with the Sturmey Archer hub.

Oddly it had a sticker on it it saying "Handbuilt in Great Britain, imported into Canada" My Dad had a few pals who worked in the docks

 

[nathanman]

I had numerous cheap BSO's as a kid, my parents couldn't afford a "decent" brand. Raleighs were the standard decent brand in my street and every lad wanted an activator. One christmas (think i was 13ish) i got a second hand Dawes Kick Back with a reynolds 501 frame, Sti's and 400lx kit - all those raleigh boys were properly jealous

 

[Rod_Saetan]

hmmmmm.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Shougun-ARC-1...UK_Bikes_GL&hash=item4158342654#ht_500wt_1156

 

[hydorah]

Left out

Never really had a BSO

My first MTB was a Puegeout Trail,

I thought it was a BSO at the time

It had a Sachs 18 speed drive train (plain cut cogs on a freewheel) Maillard hubs, Weinmann brakes, Weinmann rims(?) memory fails...

Sounds better through the mists of time, but was fairly bad news at the time and not what I wanted - I wanted a Peugeot Scorpion 531

Mountain LX throughout, 21 Speed, Hyprglide, Mavic rims proper gear

But the Trail was exactly the same colour scheme only a good deal cheaper - Predictably resulting in festive disappointment

The Trail survived many crashes and ultimately got stolen so it was desirable to somebody

Got a Scorpion now

 

[hydorah]

hmmmmm.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Shougun-ARC-1...UK_Bikes_GL&hash=item4158342654#ht_500wt_1156

Haha corker

How about this:

Disk brakes & full suss It's actually SELLING too!

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Shockwave-XT-950- ... 25624cf3e9

£72? You can buy a bike for that!

 

[highlandsflyer]

Disk brakes & full suss It's actually SELLING too!

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Shockwave-XT-950- ... 25624cf3e9

£72? You can buy a bike for that!

Yeah, but it is from a 'smoke free' home.