In this day and age of cheap manual labor, finding the right parts for your bike can be a nearly impossible endeavor. As more and more bikes are manufactured outside of the U.S. it becomes more difficult to find quality bike parts when something goes wrong with your bike.
Recently, I bought a Beach Cruiser Bicycle from a bicycle website called bicycles to go. I was very pleased with my purchase and enjoyed riding around the neighborhood with my wife and oldest daughter. (My youngest daughter hasn't quite figured out how to assert enough pressure on the pedals to make the bike move. She has taken to running behind her older sister and her older sister rides around. Quite an amusing sight).
Unfortunately, as tends to happen in our ever fast society, my bike was left behind my wife's car one evening. In the morning she did not see the obstruction and effectively flattened the back wheel on my bike. I went to the nearest bike store to find a wheel for my 26" beach cruiser, but was informed that the store did not currently carry that particular back wheel and that I could try again in a couple of weeks. Well, being that I live in the northwest and the summer months are precious, I began a search to find a new wheel ASAP. I tried several places in town and on the internet, but was faced with either no matching product or exorbant shipping and handling costs. One of the sites I visited (I won't name names) wanted $28.95 for the wheel (which didn't seem too bad) and then they wanted an additional $24.95 for shipping. Now that's ridiculous!!
Well, eventually I went back to the internet site where I bought my bike to see if they could help
Bicycles2go.com. Their customer service department told me that they did not sell bike parts, but referred me to a sister company that they said might be able to help me. I went to their
Bicycle Accessories Website and looked through their website. At first glance, it did not look like they were going to have the wheel that I needed either. They had tons of different wheels, horns, seats, water bottles, frames, lowrider stuff, reflectors, mirrors, and many other items, but not the wheel I needed. Out of desperation, I decided to email their customer service department and see if they might be able to help me out. The customer service rep wrote me saying that he would see what he could do and asked me for the name of the manufacturer of the bike and the model type. I told him that the manufacturer was Firmstrong and that the bike was a Pink Pro Urban Beach Cruiser. Within 48 hours the customer service rep was back in touch with me and sure enough they were able to get the exact wheel that I needed. And the best part was that it only cost me $24.95 and shipping and handling were only $4.50.
In this day and age of mass production, it is nice to see that there are still a few companies out there that are interested in solving the little mans problems. After seeing all the stuff on the coltonindustries.biz website, I think that my next project is going to be to build a lowrider from scratch. It should be a lot of fun.
About the Author
Tonio Rodgriguez is a normal guy from the Seattle area who has made a hobby out of bicycling with his family. His latest endeavor to build his own Beach Cruiser is underway and he is looking forward to going to the Seattle Area Beach Cruiser competition this fall.
