>>1764045>I draw a hard line at a freewheel in 1992+30I kind of agree.
the freewheels they ship with are still ramped and pinned, so shifting is ok. Yes it's heavier with more drag and more difficult to change and the top end starts at 14t, but none of those are serious problems.
The issue is the axles are inherently more prone to bend, and then also, seeing as it's very cheap stuff, again so. But is it a serious issue? You'd think a Trek shop selling this as their flagship cheap hybrid would deal with bent axles a lot. I wonder if they stock a standard $50 cassette hub wheel to swap in when it inevitably bends. Or, if the threaded hub on the bike is actually a strong version of itself and the problem is rare. Or if it's a trick to make people upgrade the whole bike.
I also wonder if it actually saves them any money speccing this, or if they just do it to force tiers to their different bikes.
Also, it's the only way you can even get rim brakes, which is preferable for most use cases on a bike like this.
Having to spend <$100 to upgrade your rear wheel incase it possibly bends the axle is not a huge deal really.
With this kind of project mentality a good older cromo bike to start with makes more sense but some people want an easy start and a new bike is that. It is kind of worth upgrading when/if stuff brakes so if the chinky spec is too chinky that can be fixed. Though also, the ride of these hiten fork allum hybrids, is pretty garbage.
