The old bicycle is showing signs of wear and tear, mostly rust from the salty humid air, I suspect. The bell (yes, bell) is now rusted solid. Now that I am on the OZ-sourced inner tubes, I do not have to pump the tyres up every 2 days and I have gone more than 2 weeks without an inner tube failure.
A couple of months ago, one of the pedals snapped and I have now moved onto the $5 all metal locally-sourced version. The bearings seem to have a problem already and these will not last long.
Early on, I bought the cheap locally-sourced lock and chain. Within 2 months, the lock had rusted up and was unusable. So I bring back into the country a flash, expensive, guaranteed-for-life lock and chain. Last week, the chain snapped right next to the built-in lock. So I am back to the cheap, locally sourced variety.
My bike seat started deteriorating rapidly a couple of weeks ago and accelerated until bits of foam underneath started poking out. It is now held together by black linen tape ($2 at Oceano).
But I can’t say I am not getting my money’s worth.
I have similar instant-rust problems. Noticed some on my spokes a while ago, and scrubbed it off — but it seems I wasn’t quick enough, and now all my spokes have hairline fractures at points where the rust made them brittle. When one snapped entirely I found a bike shop that miraculously had the right length in stock — but at $3 to fix one spoke, looks like I’ll be buying a full set of replacements in Australia and replacing them myself.
Come to think of it, the spokes look dodgy. Not brown rust but like teeth plaque. Maybe I will wash the bike and see what falls off.