Adventures in cheap

So, OK, I'm in one of the local Mall-Warts this morning, and there's
this 26" front-suspension MTB with a "clearance" tag marked $30.
There's another one just like it on the rack at full price, so I look
closer; yep, obviously a customer return, as it has plenty of pad
scrapes on the rims and a little bit of unwashed dirt on the kickstand
clamp.

"So", I sez to myself (quietly, lest people realize that I'm a little
off), "what's so wrong with this one that a customer tossed it back,
and why do they want to mark it down to such a bargain level?" I
commenced to give it the fine-tooth-comb treatment. First thing
checked; wheel truing. Perhaps I should call it "wheel falsing".
Okay, so the wheels are a bit wobbly; would a Mall-Wart customer even
notice? Maybe not. Continuing; brakes. Brakes? What brakes? Oh,
you mean those levers on the handlebars that move those rubber
thingies over so that they hit the high spots on the wheels? Are
those supposed to be *brakes*? Yup, cables won't even adjust out at
the levers enough to get a grip; that's black mark number two.
Shifters next. Hmmm. Front der drags on the chain when the grip is
twisted all the way down to the 1 position, cable goes super-tight and
the der runs the chain to the big cog about 3 clicks before the end of
the grip's twist range, so the stops and cable are *both* misadjusted.
And sorry, SRAM, but that *isn't* an indexed shifter, no matter what
the decals and markings might say; it's got three numbers on the twist
grip, but about 20 "stops". So, that's items 3 and 4 that they missed
on setup, and one black mark for the manufacturer as well. Rear der's
next; the stops are set almost close enough for a MIL-spec contract,
but the cable is misadjusted out the wazzoo; 5 positions give a random
choice of two gears each, although the top cog setting is hard against
the stop and fairly predictable. Strike 5 for the store's assembly
person. Too bad this isn't bowling, five strikes would make a decent
game. Looking even more closely, the quill's not *quite* centered;
OK, that's a gimme, not worth a tally mark. The crank's a one-piece
in an old-style BB; sheesh, these guys really went low-tech all the
way. The tube stem on one tire's at just enough of an angle to chafe
through in a few hundred miles; sloppy, and not a mistake that I would
have let go by if I'd done the QC, but probably not enough to get
flagged at Mall-Wart even if they were looking. No skewers, so they
didn't have much opportunity for a screwup on the axles, and no
apparent play in the hubs; score one in favor of the factory on that,
I'd say, though it's the first green check they get so far. That's
pretty much all of it; the rims were proudly marked as being steel
(and the paint scrapes from the pad hits identified the places where
the truing needed the most attention quite nicely) but the frame
didn't admit to being made of anything in particular. It *might* have
been aluminum, but I didn't have a magnet handy, and I rather doubt
that it was. The saddle (I use the term by courtesy) was essentially
decorative as far as I was concerned; about as comfortable as a piece
of two by four covered with carpeting.

Noting that the subject of x-mart-level assembly had come up here
recently, I decided that this might be a good time to see if my prior
information still held true; I asked. Yup, they typically adjust
*nothing* when they assemble a bike, unless you want to call randomly
popping the seat post in at no particular depth and sorta centering
the quill as "adjustments". Who does the work? "Well, whoever's
available that knows how to put one together." (I didn't press for
clarification on that point; I think it's safe to assume that if the
employee knows which end of the crescent wrench is used for pounding
in screws, they'll draw the duty sooner or later.)

This adventure has been chronicled both for your immediate amusement
and so that the next time somebody points out an amazingly low price
in a Mall-Wart bike ad in the Sunday paper, you'll be even more fully
equipped to explain why buying one of those is not your idea of a fun
thing to do this week.

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