Why Don't I like the 'good' bikes?

[Charlieboy28]

seek and ye shall find, the truth is out there

Thank you for your enquiry via our website...funnily enough you are not the only person to ask this question!?

You have pretty much answered your own question, the main reason that what comes out of a dog looks...well, brown...is because on the whole what goes into a dog is a whole lot more wholesome than it used to be and not loaded so much with additives and/or bulking agents.

Obviously I cannot comment on anyone else's products but in general there have been massive changes over the last decade in all food manufacturing for both human and pet consumption. Also, there has been a growing demand for 'organic or all natural' foods and increasing restrictions put in place by governing bodies such as the PFMA over what can and cannot be used in pet food has made for a better more natural food for your pet.

We are lucky in that Butcher's pet care have always had an 'all natural' philosophy, choosing to use natural ingredients rather than chemical additives plus you will never find Soya, cereals, gluten, preservatives, flavourings or artificial colorants in any of our foods. If you would like to read more on our products, ethical policy and company ethos please re-visit our website www.butcherspetcare.com

I hope this helps answer your face book group question - if you want to go knee deep in info? The Pet Food Manufacturers Association website www.pfma.co.uk has more than you'll ever need or probably want to know about the current guidelines for pet foods and labelling.

Best of luck

Kind regards

Lorraine
Consumer Services
Butcher's Pet Care Ltd

FROM BOB MARTIN;
Thank you for your email of the 1st July asking why dogs no longer leave white dog mess.



As people nowadays are encouraged to clean up after their dogs, the mess is rarely left around long enough to harden into a clay-like consistency. The reason for the colour variation is that tinned dog food was made largely of low-grade bone meal. These days, the canine diet has improved exponentially.



Once again, thank you for taking the time and trouble of writing to Bob Martin

 

[spike3]

Well I'm going to come out and say that the rubbish stuff is still a bike and can be great fun and for little more than the price of a half decent bottle of wine you can have a tactile piece of steel.

Yes the brakes will fade if you look at them and yes the gears choose your next gear for you but there fun cheap and get you from A to B.

But is it retro?
Well yes if its pre 1997 or whatever you feel to be the cut off then yes it is. Is one of the first ever really cheap mini's a classic car; yes it leaked really badly and rusted quicker than you could look at it but it has gone on to achieve a worldwide following , so yes again.

Is it desirable?
To some yes, it's cheap fun and not having to worry about damaging it makes it all the more fun

To others no it was awful when new and should never have been sold, any surviving examples should be scrapped immediately for the good of the nation.

Is it any good?
Simply put, define good, if we take it to mean does it furfill it's intended purpose of providing cheap useable transport. Then that will be a yes.

Conclusion
As when the bikes were new what appeals to one person is hated by another and there's no accounting for taste. Most importantly though no-one’s tastes are more correct than another persons.

 

[legrandefromage]

You are missing the point entirely. The press derided these bikes back then and there are sites to make people aware how bad these things are now. Two bottles of wine would get you much better.

 

[suburbanreuben]

I hate cheap stuff. Usually, it's crap.
My dear old grandad advised me,
" Buy the best you can afford; you won't regret it"
I do, and I don't!

 

[hydorah]

Another one to agree with the essence of elitism and snobbery that appears to be here, the same as I perceived bitd with the mountain bike magazines. But am currently sorting out a bike older than my own for a friend, not a restoration as such, but a rust stop and make sure everything is working so it can be used kind of thing, it's groupset is GS200 low range bitd, but I am impressed with it, very impressed as this is my first experience of it and to be fair, it does the job and the stuff I am messing with, has less wear than my XT. Perhaps the race mentality in the mountain bike world is the cause of this seeking the best, but we are not all racers are we being conned I wonder.

Funny that those steel 200GS chainrings will last virtually forever but that stuff weighs a ton

If you have loads of bikes with varying gruppos you can see as you go up the line towards the Deore flavours, the amount of steel used goes down as does weight, unsuprisingly

EG 200GS plastic coated steel chainset, 300LX alloy

300LX Rear mech steel cage both sides, Deore DX steel inside only

So you are getting something for your money!

But you can be canny about it, my last build cost me £265 all done

£100 of that was initial bike purchase

I deliberately steered toward pocket money budget, rather than a huge investment

And it's certainly covered in personal touches

In my whole 'stable' I don't have any far out exotica, would only buy some if a bargain came along, but wouldn't not buy it

I think there is a place on this forum for economic diversity for whatever reason

- I'm a bit put off by XTR though - it looks like grey plastic - I likes me shiney I does

Also I don't think you should refinish everything/cover everything in XTR, but if that's your bag and you've got the bucks and it makes you smile, go for it

Just don't try to pee on someone else's bonfire if they want to do something different

 

[hydorah]

I hate cheap stuff. Usually, it's crap.
My dear old grandad advised me,
" Buy the best you can afford; you won't regret it"
I do, and I don't!

My mum used to say: "Buy Cheap; Buy twice"

She was right of course

Perhaps this sums it up

If it's old school it's in ~ but try to have some common sense?

 

[silverclaws]

Just out of interest and in an attempt to demonstrate to a pal who will not get his bike out because he says it is too heavy, ( Raleigh Katmandu) that if weight is a concern, it can be shifted, I weighed my crankset and the 200gs, mine was half the weight, but that is what you get with all alloy as opposed to all steel. I then proceded to compare weights of other assemblies and showed my pal how weight if it is a concern can be removed.

But 200GS ST-M020 shifters, I am impressed, suberb build quality and they work well.

I was brought up with late eighties early 90's Deore XT2, so have little knowledge of lower range stuff, but now educated, I am not scoffing at this stuff.

 

[legrandefromage]

Well I'm going to come out and say that the rubbish stuff is still a bike and can be great fun and for little more than the price of a half decent bottle of wine you can have a tactile piece of steel.

Yes the brakes will fade if you look at them and yes the gears choose your next gear for you but there fun cheap and get you from A to B.

But is it retro?
Well yes if its pre 1997 or whatever you feel to be the cut off then yes it is. Is one of the first ever really cheap mini's a classic car; yes it leaked really badly and rusted quicker than you could look at it but it has gone on to achieve a worldwide following , so yes again.

Is it desirable?
To some yes, it's cheap fun and not having to worry about damaging it makes it all the more fun

To others no it was awful when new and should never have been sold, any surviving examples should be scrapped immediately for the good of the nation.

Is it any good?
Simply put, define good, if we take it to mean does it furfill it's intended purpose of providing cheap useable transport. Then that will be a yes.

Conclusion
As when the bikes were new what appeals to one person is hated by another and there's no accounting for taste. Most importantly though no-one’s tastes are more correct than another persons.

the mini retailed for less than it cost to manufacture. Minis won countless races and rallies and was the blueprint of the modern family car. The BSO is a poor quality pastiche of something that already existed. The rims are too wide for the brakes to provide optimum stopping - good luck having fun trying to stop in traffic. Taste doesnt come into it - simply safety and common sense.

 

[hydorah]

If you buy a half decent frame even with 100/200GS on it, you could go along getting kit for it and end with something really nice

But if you start off with a Townsend commando you can't even get there cos nothing will even fit and the forks don't even have cast drop outs etc etc/it doesn't function adequately enough to be reliable transport

- The Mini was a poor example to pick to justify cheap bikes

- The Mini was a stunning example of innovation and packaging, not a load of rubbish at all

And no one is knocking 'cheap' bikes per se

No one here says it's got to be made in the USA or Europe or it's poo

I've got a couple of bikes that were built in the far east and are cheap bikes and I ain't afraid to admit it!

Just if it's not good enough to commute on reliably then what's the point of fiddling about with it?

You're trying to polish a...

 

[silverclaws]

The problem is with bikes and specially bikes down in the lower price ranges is that to the uninitiated they all look the same, but just as there is some EEC directive saying that something can only be something if it relates to the region, there should also be legislation to say that if something is in the style of, then it should be something style .

In the case of bikes, something style, as a professional if there is such a thing in the cycling world should be able to say if such and such bike is upto the job it's name says it is. That should differentiate between something that can take an offroad beating and a street bike.

To me, its not weight, it's safety, can the bike in question safely carry a rider in the enviroment in which it is used. A rigid bike of old, be it cheap or expensive is good enough with proper set up of components, but suspension bikes scare me, as suspension implies something else, do what the bike looks like it can do and on some of the cheaper copies, the rider could be in real danger.

But I believe we have a CE mark, which seems to say that as long as a bike has reflectors and brakes, it is good enough, but are any of these machines actually tested, that is my worry, but anything that is to be used on the road, should be roadworthy from the start. Pity there is no control over what people ride on the roads, but if there was, it might weed out some of the unsuitable bikes that get foisted on the uninitiated as something, when it is clear they are not.

But, it's a cruel world out there, one when they do anything other than what nature intended, they run accelerated risk of coming unstuck. That being, I do believe there should be some control over exactly what constitutes what in the cycling world, and there have someone, a company or whatever to roast, when whatever it is they have sold to a customer is found to be unfit for purpose. When public liability comes into play, the junk has a habit of disappearing.