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Location: Reading
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Apparently, Asda recently ran TV advertisements for "Britain's cheapest adult bike" at £70.00. Unfortunately, the bike was shown with the forks fitted back-to-front and the advertisement was rapidly withdrawn. It seems, however, the bike has also been displayed in Asda supermarkets with the forks the wrong way round.
As a consequence of a newspaper reporter trying out one of these bikes, a blog, Bicycle-Shaped Object (BSO), has been started to highlight badly-assembled bicycles from various sources, typically supermarket bikes. The blog title hints that though these objects may look like bicycles they don't really deserve the name. Assembling the bike with the forks the wrong way round appears to be a common mistake, even from stores which should know better, selling relatively expensive bikes (and not a BSO).
An Asda spokesperson has said they sold 20 000 of these bikes in the first week they went on sale.
Stephen
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Rank: Advanced Member
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Following my article in the Autumn 2009 Newsletter which reported a badly-assembled bike on display at Reading's main Tesco store, I've been back again a few times to see if there's been any progress with the bike, a BMX bike with the model name Anaconda.
On my first visit, at the end of November, the bike was still on display, but moved to the entranceway of the store. The front fork and stem had been turned the correct way round, but, by doing so, the handlebars were the wrong way round, the brake levers were on the wrong side of the handlebars and the front reflector pointed back towards the rider. The front brake cable still hadn’t been attached. I asked to speak to the “Non-food Manager”; he appeared a few minutes later. I showed him the bike which he acknowledged to be incorrectly set up. He tried attaching the brake cable, but couldn’t. He mentioned these faults had been highlighted in a recent television programme, and said he’d have it fixed by the next day. I did go back the following day, and (looking from a distance) it did seem to have been fixed.
However, I returned to the store yesterday. The bike was now back in its original display position. Looking at it more closely, I could see the front wheel was the wrong way round: the "Rotation" marker on the tyre's sidewall confirmed this. I happened to see an assistant and showed this to him. He agreed with me the wheel was the wrong way round, and I persuaded him to allow me to correct it by unbolting the wheel from the forks and bolting it up the other way. This took us about five minutes.
While I was there, I noticed another child's bike (I think it was an Etna model), on display next to the Anaconda, had also been incorrectly assembled. The front brake cable passed behind the head tube down the left side of the bike and under the down tube behind the forks. It would probably not have been possible to turn the handlebars very far because of the cable constraining their movement, but I wasn't able to confirm this suspicion because of the tight space of the display area. The assistant and I fixed this fault. Finally, after the assistant had departed, I re-routed the back brake cable so that, throughout its run, it passed along the left side of the bike. (It had been brought across to the right of the head tube at the front of the bike.)
Stephen
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Rank: Advanced Member
Groups: Campaign Member
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Joined: 3/16/2009
Posts: 60
Location: Reading
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I like Mike Burrows' comment at the end of his article The long, the short & the tall in the Feb-Mar 2010 edition of Cycle magazine:
Mike Burrows wrote:And finally, for those of you who have picked up this magazine in the dentists and are not really cyclists but have just bough a dual-suspension 'thing' for £80 from the local warehouse: you should lower the saddle by about three inches. That way other cyclists will thank that it's not yours and that you have only borrowed it.
Stephen
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