[benj111]

Well I'm not African so I don't know.

I'm thinking that in the west we either have very cheap bikes that aren't really designed for long term use, and more expensive bikes tend to use fancier parts.

Off the top of my head. Steel frame, can be repaired / modified with any old welder. Designed so it can be taken apart with the minimum of generic tools. Standard bearings, brake blocks etc (probably brake blocks that you can shove some piece of old tyre in).

Front forks and the crank require special tools to remove. I assume the free wheel assembly would be the same. I don't know if it would be possible to modify these to be serviceable with basic tools, the point is an African could probably work out how to fix a bike, the issue would be affording tools and spares, and availability of those tools and spares.

[ErroneousBosh]

> Off the top of my head. Steel frame, can be repaired / modified with any old welder. Designed so it can be taken apart with the minimum of generic tools. Standard bearings, brake blocks etc (probably brake blocks that you can shove some piece of old tyre in).

So basically just your average cheap crappy Halfords Bike-Shaped Object type "bike"?

[benj111]

No. I politely covered BSOs

"very cheap bikes that aren't really designed for long term use"

You want cheap and reliable, not cheap with a load of doodads to make it seem expensive.

[ErroneousBosh]

Well you strip all the crap off, don't you? Just run the barest frame possible.

You still have the problem that the bits that you cannot just knock up out of old Morris Minor steering columns or AK47 barrels are the bits that break.

I know one person who has legitimately worn out a bike frame, in 40-something years of cycling, and it wasn't me. It was a guy who rode his bike about 50 miles *every single day* and rode from Edinburgh to Glasgow and back a couple of times a week. Eventually it started cracking around the welds.

[WillAdams]

The problem is BSOs tend to have weird/non-standard parts which complicate repair/replacement and the tools necessary for working on them.

[buildsjets]

You do know that it is possible to buy a durable, heavy duty steel bicycle that is not department store trash, right? We have hundreds of these were I work.

https://www.worksmancycles.com/indbikes.html

[ErroneousBosh]

They're actually surprisingly inexpensive, for what they are. It does look like they're single-speed which limits them to nice big flat sites, but they look like they'd hold up well.

[nephihaha]

Have made a few suggestions above. Obviously I don't see Africa as a uniform continent, but extremes of dryness and humidity can be found in different parts, in some areas roads are bad and so on. Also good places for bike locks (which we all need), maybe water bottles, cargo features and lighting (since some roads will be unlit (again a general issue.)

[nchmy]

Yeah, that sounds about right. I assume such bikes, parts and tools do exist. Can probably order it all on alibaba. I intend to investigate and do this in the coming years, but have to attend to other things first.

[aembleton]

Sounds like a Dutch bike would work well