5 October 2011

Aldi's doing bicycles!

| johnboy
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aldi toolkit

Thinking of getting a bike? Aldi’s got everything you could ever need to get started with the most efficient (and fun) form of transport known to man (bikes, helmets, lights, locks, high vis gear etc).

I bought this toolkit for $40 and trust me buying these beasts individually from the bike store would set you back many multiples of that.

Let me hear no more the pathetic excuse “but I don’t have a bicycle” when we promote bicycle based events.

[This is not a paid ad (sadly) it’s just news that this stuff is available at these prices]

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MonarchRepublic10:45 am 06 Oct 11

Just be careful with installation if you buy the light set – as gentle as I was coercing the handlebar mounting bracket on, it snapped clean in half. Good basic lights for around town though.

Gerry-Built said :

…anyone know if Aldi have tyres and tubes for a MTB?

I’ve seen tubes there on occasion. Don’t recall seeing tyres.

As JB said, they’re not standard product lines so only appear once or twice a year.

only if you buy a whole bike I think. Also Jamo had all the gear, just been in Civic and they only had bits and pieces.

…anyone know if Aldi have tyres and tubes for a MTB?

knowing what me set of tools cost back in the 90’s; this set is a bargain. This isn’t a bad set for basic home-based maintenance; and if you find yourself using a tool to pieces – you can replace just that one with the better quality, more expensive version. Pretty much the same advice as with any tool set; if you use it often, buy good quality… if it is just to have it in case you need it (or for occasional use) the cheaper one will do. The weekend DIYer doesn’t need a kit of Makita or Festool…

I hope they still have this set when I race off to my local Aldi…

Buying this set may finally motivate me to fix up my bike. It’s a total wreck, though I’ve been riding it around like that for years now. The steering wheel is loose, the mudguards are loose and twisted, the gears are badly adjusted…

But maybe the lack of maintenance saved me from losing it when I parked it out the front of my house unlocked the other day. A neighbour found it in the bushes a few hundreds metres from our house with a flat tyre. I wish I could have seen the thief swear when he discovered he couldn’t make his getaway.

In all honestly i’ve probably used 4 of those tools on my bike in my entire life.

Crank puller is very handy for freakbike building, ditto headset spanner!

That exact tool kit is available for similar amounts of money from the likes of Torpedo7 (in their case, in blue instead of red and with the brand name SuperB.)

If you have a bike and no bike tools, get one and it’ll pay for itself the next time you need to do minor servicing. Alternatively, paying a few more bucks for the particular Park / Pedro’s tools you actually need isn’t a bad idea.

If you don’t already have a decent auto toolkit (with lots of socket set bits, key keys to 10mm, etc) then get one and a bike multi-tool (EG Topeak) and some bike kit as above, and you’re set for all kinds of house, bike and car work.

To criticise though – all the parts here are not especially sturdy. The chain breaker is OK until it breaks, the spoke tool didn’t have the one of my wheel’s nipple sizes, the crank and BB pullers are no good for a variety of Race Face / external BB / BB30 cranks, some of the other items are useless to the vast majority of bike owners, and cheap pressure guages are not accurate. (Get a track pump with one built-in instead.)

They’ve done bikes for a while – I got a cheapie “Crane” from them a couple years ago. It’s alright – they use a lot of low durable materials in them (eg bits are plastic rather than metal – and promptly broke after a couple of rides – however none appear to be critical to the operation or immediate safety so on I go).

You don’t actually need much to assemble an Aldi bike anyway. I got myself into more trouble messing with it with extra tools.

Aside from the staples al I stock tends to be around just one week a year, hence the editorial interest.

My own bike tool needs are a bit more advanced than assembling a kit bike, that tool box is frankly amazing for the things it includes, but not for everyone.

The $10 light kit however is just amazing value!

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