Thursday, January 25, 2007

Buying Bike Parts. Wouldja do it?

    eBay does it, so does Craig's List and also MTBR. BUT why not ME!?

    Well I'm interested into, start selling some bike stuff, I figured this would be a great forum to do so. I wouldn't have to pay any fees other than the cut PayPal gets. I just wonder if people would be interested in some of my new and 2nd hand stuff.

    For instance, I got a great Trek full suspension sitting in my garage begging to be ridden. Somewhere on this blog, I have posted pictures of this bike. It's about 4 years old, it hasn't been beaten, I'm far from a huckster, it's been professionally been taken care of, tune-ups regularly and was given lotsa love. What would one wanna pay for something like that? Is it like buying a car, where it depreciates once it leaves the car lot or in this case, once it's been ridden on a trail? Or how about this concept called Trade My Bicycle. Where you trade your bicycle for instant store credit, I like the concept but I just wonder if it will really work. In the condition section of that site, I'd rate the Trek to be in "excellent to excellent plus" condition and it will probably see a tune-up prior to it being sold.

    I may also got some parts for sale. I got a pair of Eggbeaters sitting out in the garage. I tried to use them on 1 ride but I didn't like them and went back to using my Time ATAC carbons. I bought them because they were light and we the latest cool pedal out. I think they are the CrankBrothers Egg Beaters SL. They weight in at 266 grams a pair and that's pretty sweet! I also have Easton 2006 MonkeyLite SL riser bar.

    I will have to look around the garage this weekend to see what else I got to sell, I think I might have tires in there, maybe the Kenda Nevegal 2.1 tire. While yer on that link, check out the size of the outer knobs on the "King of Traction" tire, jeeze i could have used that mud tire last weekend.

    Has anyone had any luck selling outside of those forums mentioned above?

happy trails
~dirty bert

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I'm in a similar situation- I'm thinking of selling my '03 Trek Fuel 10, and I'm inclined to sell through word of mouth and the local community (I don't have a blogunity), but this sometimes takes a while. With eBay, you know that the sale will be over in a week or so, but eBay/PayPal take their cut each (though they are the same company), and then you have to pack and ship it out. It's also hard to get a great price at auction, since people can be leery of used bikes and parts, unless you're good at posting big, shining pictures.

I'm curious about your experience with your Trek- which model Fuel do you have, what kind of maintenance did it require, what do you like and dislike about it? I'm currently having some issues (shifting, brakes) with mine, and I would like to resolve them to make it more attractive to sell, but if I have to replace a bunch of worn-out parts, I might have to re-evaluate things. Right now I'm trying to find out about suspension bearings and bushings, and when and how to replace them.