>>1391533I would recommend finding a DIY or collective sort of bike shop. I'm not sure how common these are, but where I live there's a place that sells used bikes and has a free workshop with tools where you can fix it up. There are people there to help you out and extremely cheap used parts for sale. I ended up spending about $100 and a weekend or so to fix up a $100 road bike I bought off craigslist which would be nominally worth ~$600. Bikes are simple enough to be low-entry DIY but complicated enough to be satisfying to work on
