Argos Minivelo

First things first my thanks to @psg1ben who did this first and probably best here: https://www.lfgss.com/conversations/360236/

But yes I bought the £220 Argos minivelo to rebuild and generally tart up.

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I go to London 2 or 3 days a week on the train and cycle from Marylebone station to my office. My house is about a mile from the station and I'm fed up with walking it in spd shoes - but I live in a terrace house and my full-size bikes are in a garden shed, and it's far too much hassle to drag them through the house each morning and evening. BUT a minivelo could probably live in the (large-ish) cupboard under the stairs and be perfect for the short commute amd other errands and short trips.

I had intended powder coating the frame a more lively colour but my local place quoted £65 - sure it used to be about £20! So might resort to rattle-canning it. I am thinking orange. I've also ordered some carbon forks from Singapore.

This is gonna be fun

used to be about £20!

I feel this is a slightly rosy view of some dim and distant (non-existent) past. Really? £20? You can hardly buy a pair of tyres tyre for £65. Seems a bargain for powder.

I saw the brakes, derailleur and shifter go up for sale and knew this was coming haha

Maybe never £20 haha - on reflection I think it was £40 when I got my green inbred done at the same place

Wow.

Haha you can read the signs. Not sure there will be many takers on here, will have to take them to eBay I suspect

https://www.lfgss.com/comments/14236732/

I knew it was £40. This is the same company (although they have moved premises), inflation is a bitch

subbing in to live the vicarious minivelo dream

Carbon fork that I ordered from the far east has now been notified as out of stock and I am being refunded :( The search re-commences.

Found this Aliexpress fork ... likelihood of dentist bills?

I went for aluminium
Something close to this

https://a.aliexpress.com/_EuyzS5f

any update on this pls?
found myself thinking about minivelos and wasting money i don't have.

Did you ever get this built up @el_presidente ?

These are now £122 on Argos so I finally stopped kidding myself that I wasn't going to buy a minivelo despite definitely not needing one. Arriving on Wednesday...

https://www.argos.co.uk/product/2728067

Thanks for the inspo @D_Mars @psg1ben @beamo

It's still sitting in pieces in my house. I bought another cheap bike (with normal size wheels) that I'm using for the 0.75 mile ride to the station, so there hasn't been much motivation sadly.

If I bought one of these, what do I need to swap out?

From reading the various threads:

• Cranks (shit and really heavy)
  
• Bars/stem (heavy)
  
• Seatpost/seat (quick win)
  
• Wheels (shit/heavy but maybe not worth it - have 130mm rear spacing)
  
• Shifting (gripshift)
  
• Brakes, if you have some hydros lying around, otherwise the stock ones are OK apparently
  
  

I'm planning to leave it as stock as possible, but might swap stuff out to get the weight down a bit (bars) or if I have it in the parts bin already (seatpost, seat, cranks, brakes).

I definitely wanted to swap the forks, a) for weight and b) get a taller steerer so you can ditch the weird folding stem that it comes with.

Is the steerer 1" or 1-1/8"? I guess the latter?

yeah, from memory it's 1-1/8th straight

I’m just going to drop this here
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/176566358082
Is not mine and I’ve no connection.

Mine arrived today, is actually pretty solid and fun to ride out of the box, after a bit of fettling.

It passed QA in early 2021, safe to say they've had a fair amount of stock lying around for a while... guess the 'wishes-they-had-a-Neutrino' and and 'buys-bikes-from-Argos' Venn diagram is pretty small.

(sorry for hijacking your CP thread @el_presidente)