So, a bike shop offered up a 2006 Cervelo Carbon Soloist for $2000.

My questions are:

1) Is this a great deal? A good deal? A blah deal?

2) I'm just starting to ride and currently have a cheap entry bike. Would it be unwise to try and build it up myself?

3) How much would it cost to do a decent, not great build of this bike?

$2k for just the frame/fork? I have no idea if that's particularly nice frame or not, but for $2k I'd buy something that I really wanted, and not something because it was a "good deal." For that kind of money, there are many options, including a lot of custom frames.

If you do get this frame or another one, move your current components onto the next frame, and you'll have a cheap build. As time goes by you can swap out components.

Sorry, I should have said that I was really interested in it. I have about $2000 saved and I was going to just get the aluminum bike for around that but it seems to me that this may be a good deal to jump into the carbon. Problem is that I don't have enough experience to know how much to pay for everything else. I also wanted to keep my cheap components on my entry Felt.

You are near the price point for some decent carbon bikes. The Specialized Roubaix, the Schwin Peloton, the Trek 5200, the Felt F4, Raleigh's new line, Fuji's new offerings, etc. are all within your price range. I would seriously look these over. I love expensive bikes, believe me, but I think you'll do much better as a relatively new rider on something already built up for you. It'll save a lot of hassle also.
Some examples:
Leopard CL1 w/ Ultegra (mail order unless you live in Nor Cal) 2400.00
Fuji Team Pro w/ Ultegra 2700.00 but I've seen already on sale for about 2500.00
Giant TCR1 around 2400.00 to 2600.00
Specialized Tarmac with Ultegra around 2600.00
Lemond Zurich around 2700.00 (seen around 2500.00 though)
Bianchi 928 around 2700.00.

Thank you both for your responses. It's greatly appreciated. I probably got a bit overexcited and will continue to do research. I was leaning towards a Specialized Tarmac before Cervelo caught my eye so I'll keep looking.

Just curious, how much does everything else ballpark for (at around 105 level of compenents, wheels, etch)?

That's an extremely hard question to answer. You can use ebay, performancebike.com, etc. to calculate out what things are going for. Probikekit.com is another one. The prices are all over the place from MSRP at a shop to large percentages off when you shop online. Some people have found they can save a lot of money going to sites like bikesdirect.com, buying there bikes, and then stripping all the parts off. I guess it is that much cheaper than buying everything separate but you better be good at disassembling bikes and knowing what will fit and what won't. Building a bike up can be fun, but it can be stressful collecting all the parts from online dealers, ebay, etc. Your LBS will probably charge enough to put you into shock. Good luck.

That's an extremely hard question to answer. You can use ebay, performancebike.com, etc. to calculate out what things are going for. Probikekit.com is another one. The prices are all over the place from MSRP at a shop to large percentages off when you shop online. Some people have found they can save a lot of money going to sites like bikesdirect.com, buying there bikes, and then stripping all the parts off. I guess it is that much cheaper than buying everything separate but you better be good at disassembling bikes and knowing what will fit and what won't. Building a bike up can be fun, but it can be stressful collecting all the parts from online dealers, ebay, etc. Your LBS will probably charge enough to put you into shock. Good luck.


or like myself, buying NOS or barely used 9 speed gruppos on Ebay...I save a ton of money. I would say to build it yourself, it's a great and sometimes humbling experience, but then you feel like you really know the bike. It also gives you confidence to fix a lot of things. You'll love...be careful, you might get hooked and end up with 20+ bikes like TerryB.