Walmart asked not to sell bikes

[GTs58]

You are correct. Pacific Cycles needs to be responsible. I think that’s who owns Schwinn and other mfg now.

The bikes Walmart has on sale for less than $100 are generally not Schwinn, from what I've checked on, but did come across one that Walmart discounted. Kent is one of the biggest and oldest "distributors" in this game and they've been distributing imported junk for as long as I can remember. Huffy is in that lineup with an old established name and have multiple pieces being sold for under $100. I had a Kent department store bike that was a 1961 26" model 3 speed lightweight named the Londoner. I saw it at a local box store and wanted it for Christmas! It was a cool looking 4 bar cantilever bike but I soon found out it was a POS that started giving me problems right away. After two years riding that bike I started saving my money to buy a Schwinn. Today's market is full of junk bikes and at $100 or less, what are the profit margins for the one's engineering, manufacturing, distributing and selling these $100 pieces of junk? It sure the hell can't be much.

 

[bloo]

https://www.1stbikes.org/2014/12/how-wal-mart-destroyed-huffy-bicycle.html

Imagine a 90s Huffy not being cheap enough.

 

[Archie Sturmer]

Sometimes a government will subsidize an industry, when the quasi-free market fails to create the demand, at current prices.

For example, a government might choose to subsidize the local bicycle manufacturing industry, (say to fight “global warming”); instead of paying rich people to purchase electric vehicles.

 

[T. W. Day]

This is an interesting discussion and brings to mind the discussion I just had with my wife this morning. We’ve decided to buy a mens and women's Schwinn bikes from the sixties and renovate or restore them for our daily use. As far as I’m concerned todays stuff is just a POS.

 

[GTs58]

Sometimes the government will subsidize an industry, when the free market fails to create the demand, at current prices.

For example, the government might choose to subsidize the local bicycle manufacturing industry, (say to fight “global warming”); instead of paying rich people to purchase electric vehicles.

The word is, some of the manufacturers in China are heavily subsidized by the government. Some years back I needed some spring pins for my watch bands and found a plastic box of a 100 that was full of assorted sizes for a buck fifty, shipped free from China. I still can't believe it.

 

[Fritz Katzenjammer]

Government subsidizing defined: An associate of mine was visiting China to check the progress on some automotive tooling they had subcontracted to a shop over there. He said when they arrived at the plant they noticed a large number of fairly late model high end machining centers, mills, lathes etc., sitting in a field beside the plant just rotting in the weather. He asked about them and was told the government helped them out by buying them all them all new automated machining centers from Europe and Japan every few years, all the best stuff. The stuff beside the plant was the “old”stuff, he said it was all only about 4 to 6 years old and it was all stuff he would kill for.

He had arrived a day early so they hadn’t fully prepared for his visit. When viewing the tool he noticed they had taken the time to build a duplicate tool for there own use along side his own, they just hadn’t had the time to move it or cover it up. Seems a lot quicker than reverse engineering, since we’re dumb enough to have them build the tools for the products we design they just build duplicate tools.

 

[Fritz Katzenjammer]

This is an interesting discussion and brings to mind the discussion I just had with my wife this morning. We’ve decided to buy a mens and women's Schwinn bikes from the sixties and renovate or restore them for our daily use. As far as I’m concerned todays stuff is just a POS.

I just went out and spent too much money on a Dutch bicycle, a Gazelle Populair with rod operated drum brakes and a three speed hub. Actually made in Holland and covered with quality components, it seems to represent the quality that was once ours here in North America.

I’ve had it out a few times when the weather allows, it is winter here in Canada after all, and found it to be a lovely smooth thing to ride. It promises many years of happy use.

 

[J-wagon]

My mass merchandiser pile. Inventory to practice disassemble down to bare frame.

 

[Superman1984]

Sometimes it's not the actual Walmart bike but the damn labor who is lazy or doesn't care. Much like the dumb asses who install forks backwards

I mean you take a job only to 1/2 ass it from the start and quality isn't appreciated when you have to pay more for it twice

 

[bloo]

My suspicion is it's worse than that. I have one of them here, and I just remembered I left it outside. Oops. Last week we got 3 feet on snow. It had been parked in my neighborhood with a "free" sign on it for a few days.

Watching bike mechanics rail against them on youtube, you might think the main problem is the assembly. Things like no grease, misadjusted or misassembled bearings, forks on backwards, etc. Maybe at some point I will figure whether it is just terrible assembly or if it is rotten to the core. I have a sample here. It is a 24" full suspension mountain bike.

I had never heard of the brand, and I can't remember in now. At the time I got it home I looked it up. It turns out to be a Walmart exclusive from around 2008(?), and IIRC some of them were part of a CPSC recall for fork breakage. Mine was not part of the recall, either a little too new or too old.

At first glance it looks OK. I figured I would true the wheels, grease the bearings, etc and see what its like, find out if they are really that bad for myself. One obvious flaw, the saddle is a spandex one in shreds, no big deal.

When you look closer, some things are a bit off. The front wheel just looks too far back. The rear suspension at first glance did not appear to have a good enough pivot to be stable under weight and in motion. The suspension fork does not look terribly stable either. I think it's bent. Maybe the frame too. If the fork is bent, I wouldn't expect it to still move up and down, but it does. The bike has twist shifters. That's bad enough, but they are crappy ones and I have my doubts they can even be made to work. As I recall, nothing about the gearing was functional. I probably won't find out any more until spring. Maybe I'll get some pictures then.

Apparently this one was too cheap for Walmart to even put a Huffy badge on, but at least it doesn't have a plastic stem.