Used Bikes in Austin, TX

How to buy a used bike

Check out our guide for how to buy an inexpensive bike for basic transportation.

Yellow Bike Project

The Yellow Bike Project often has used bikes for sale..

Bike Shops that carry used bikes

• Bicycle Sport Shop. See their 3 locations.
• Clown Dog Bikes: 2821 San Jacinto Blvd., (477-4221)
• East Side Pedal Pushers: 2415 E. 5th St. (826-3414)
• Waterloo Cycles: 2815 Fruth (right off 29th & Guadalupe) (47-CYCLE)
  
• Austin Bicycle Salvage of Round Rock is closed.

Thrift Stores

• Salvation Army, Thrift Town, and Goodwill usually have used bikes
  See a list of thrift shops.
  

FrankenBike

Monthly swap meet of bike parts.

Our Free Classified Ads

Post your ad on the web forum and it will show up here automatically in 30 minutes.
Be sure to put "FOR SALE" in the title or it won't get listed here.

(dynamic list of posted bikes used to be listed here)

Other Online Ads

• Craigslist classifieds
• Austin Cycling Association classifieds
• Austin Chronicle bike classifieds
• Austin American-Statesman Classifieds
• Used recumbents on BikeRoute
• Used bikes in Austin on eBay
  
  

Bike theft and recovery

The UT-Austin police will stamp your ID number onto your bike for free on Wednesdays from 9:00-4:00 in front of Gregory Gym at 21st & Speedway. You don't have to be a student; it's open to everyone. In addition to stamping your license number, they'll put a registration sticker on the down tube. Sure, the registration sticker would be easy for a thief to remove, but the point is that when thieves even SEE the registration sticker, they may avoid stealing your bike because they know that it's registered and has your ID number stamped into it, so it'll be harder to sell.

Note that some cyclists are wary about having their bikes registered, because then if they get harassed by the police for any reason, the police could ID them with the state ID # etched into their bike.

We have a separate article about preventing bike theft, and recovery.

Old clamped frames

When I wrote an article circa 2000 on tips for buying a used bike, one of my tips was that you could tell a bike was cheap if it had a clamped frame, rather than a welded frame.  Well, these days even the cheap bikes have welded frames, thanks to cheap Chinese labor and robots.  But for what it’s worth, here are my old pictures of clamped vs. welded.

Clamped frame

The tell-tale sign of an old department-store bicycle is the part of the frame by the rear wheel. You can clearly see that it's two separate pieces clamped (pressed) together. (The vertical line is where the piece on the left slides over the piece on the right.) This is usually not a big deal, but if this bike goes off a lot of curbs or hauls a lot of weight, this part can break.

Welded frame

With a welded frame, so the connection is smooth and strong. (Incidentally, notice that this wheel is probably not attached correctly. The nut & axle should be further back [to the right] to fit snugly into the groove, and then tightened so that it can't slip out.)