Give it to be straight, how bad did I do? How many components do normal replace within the first month of getting new custom bike?

Any new bike project that results in less than two bikes worth of components is a success

This seems to be pretty normal. You don’t know what you don’t know. Your bike and the gear will never be “complete.” It’s a piece of art that will always evolve and keep your bank balance low.

The amount of money a bike rider (any other lifestyle, fill in the blank) spends on upgrades is directly proportional to the amount of time the person spends perusing upgrades on Reddit, YouTube, etc.

fine i think. i built up a new bike recently and have had three bars on it, which required three stems, two things of grips/tape and two sets of levers/shifters. also im swapping racks. if i was made of money id be swapping tires more often too. i have a lot of experience building up bikes, which is partly why i keep fiddling to really dial it in, i know when it’s a centimeter off of a good fit or the bars are too wide or whatever.

if you’re not going bankrupt you’re doing fine. you don’t always know how something will feel until you buy it and install it unfortunately.

As long as you can actually afford to do all of these changes, I think you're doing just fine.

It is prohibitively expensive to try every bike part out there, so it's hard to know exactly what parts you would prefer. That is where review websites that have testers that try out all of the new gadgets come into play. And while reviews help, there is still so much subjective preference that it's still impossible to know how you're going to like a certain things until you try them. I also struggle with reviews because it seems almost every review nowadays is glowingly positive.

The more stuff you try, the more you find out what you like, and the less stuff you'll have to swap out the next time you build a custom bike.

Sounds pretty normal. At least you got the cheap rack as the starter. I’ve had customers get a $200 rack and then realize they like a different brand of bags that offers integration with racks and need to buy another $200 rack… at the end of the day you don’t know exactly how and what you will use a new bike for and how your existing gear will or won’t work in practice on a new bike.

I’ve had my frame up build for 18 months and I’m still trying different saddles, stems, bars, of which I’ve spent at least $700…

Whew thought it was just me. I have a whole bunch of stems, bars, light systems and sleep systems, including about 4 pillows. And, probably, a whole bike that I no longer like. There is just no way to be sure you will like X without using it for a while.

I think people dial in their setups over years, and even then are never done tweaking.

You good, man. This is normal

You’re doing just fine. It also depends on the bike. For whatever reason, I found my full suspension to be pretty great from the factory. The only adjustment needed was a slightly longer stem and a smaller oval chainring. Then there’s the consumables, like tires, pedals, and seat, brake pads, and a new dropper. Yeah, replaced them too. And the bags, well I started off with a Blackburn handlebar cradle that totally blew out on the trail, and the Ortlieb seat bag got chewed up by the rear tire because I’m kinda short. So I got an Aeroe rack. Custom Rogue Panda frame bag is holding tough so far. Hhmmm. This is an expensive hobby.

One thing almost noone will tell you is: In order to make any decision, be it the bike, the components, the bags, the rack, the tent, the sleeping-bag, etc, you need to have experience. If you start out, you don’t have that. That is why some suggest, just go out with what you have, because with experience, the more you know what works for you. Be patient, and everything will be all okay. However, making “mistakes” is part of the journey and will bring you closer to what really works for you. Cheers and good luck out there.

Zero except saddle. Why would I pay twice for the same thing? I know what I want from the bike.

The amount of fiddling you can do on a bike is endless. In order for it to not get out of control, you need to kind of triage it. Mine kind of goes like this.

Is the part necessary to get the bike to work safely? (e.g. you've spent your chain, cassette, chainrings, or your tires are bald) that's priority one.

Is the part necessary to prevent discomfort/injuries on me (e.g. fit issues)? That's priority two.

Other things that may be nice to have, but not necessary (e.g. oh I kinda want to try a swept back handlebar, i kinda want to try a suspension stem) or things that aren't ideal but you can probably live with the bike as it is now (in your example, it'd probably be the dynamo hubs, rear rack. For my case, an example is I'd prefer my cranks to be 165mm instead of 170mm, or I'd like to have tyres that are more aggressively knobby than right now). Those are the last priority. If i get some bonus from work, or find the part that I want used, I might jump on it, but otherwise these kind of stay in my fantasies for a bit.

When I’m building bikes and am not sure exactly which components I want, I try to buy used, cheap components that I can use to dial in fit etc and then either recycle or sell/return said components. That way I get to try a bunch of different shit without breaking the bank. I only buy ‘dream build’ components when I’m 110% sure of the spec.

Brand new high end tandem in our world got new grips, new rims (so newly rebuilt wheels), new skewers, new brake calipers, new saddles, 2 new racks and to top it off 2 new sets of panniers. I'D say you're moving along at about par for the course.

Sounds kinda normal to me. After a while, I ended up with a set parts that I liked. These got transferred to new frames as time went on. Some parts like those associated with the drivetrain I consider disposable. Others like hubs, frames, racks and bars I splurge on because they seldom wear out.

When I first started I went through a ridiculous amount of trial and error. I bought several racks and bags and other things that didn’t work for me. I always kept the original packaging and resold them on EBay. I didn’t make all my money back, but it helped cut my losses considerably.

I'd say the only mistake you are making is going with some cheaper options here and there. Buy once, cry once.

Somewhat normal but for anyone trying to avoid this, don't buy a custom bike until you've had two or three off the shelf bikes. Or start small with a resto-mod of a classic mtb. There are so many options; custom builds are unnecessary for most riders. Buy something close and swap a few things. That applies doubly for custom frames. There are so many off the shelf options. If you're certain that specific geometry doesn't exist then you know who you are and don't need to be reading this.

Old Man Mountain rack, Vecnum stem and Outbound lighting.

Contrary to others here, I'd say you made some risky/ poor choices in the beginning and should have taken a more conservative and proven approach to begin with. Moloko bars being the biggest red flag LOL, I have never once seen anyone rocking those IRL.

Focus on learning as much as you can on what your preferences are and which components will align with your tastes. My advice would be to start listening less to others opinions and begin forming your own based on experience, observation and evidence.

Although there are likely a lot of LBS enthusiats here, learning to be at least a novice bike mechanic, and being able to do the maintenance/ replace or swap out parts and relying less and less on the LBS is in the best interest of your time and bank account as well. It is a business after all and they make money selling you products and labor and usually you can do everything much faster yourself. Buy the tools, watch RJ on youtube. Of course shop local, but do your due diligence.

I bought a pre made bike and still had issues. For single parts hit up second hand places, even Facebook marketplace is a good spot. If you’re buying new, you can always purchase a few different options then send back the things you don’t need. Time to start being vigilant, otherwise it will really end up hurting your wallet.

I'll echo the chorus of similar experiences.

I wanted a gravel bike and figured the vintage Trek frame would be great for the conversion, just swap the bars and call it good. So I bought the bars, brifters, cables and housing, etc and started the swap. The front brifter didn't play nice with the derailleur that was on the bike already so I got a friction shifter and a road brake without the shifter. Get it all put together and the whole setup is real uncomfortable, the bike was too large for the conversion. I adjusted the seat as much as I could and went through 3 stems and just couldn't get it to work.

So I just spent all this money for the drop bars and everything and still wanted a comfortable gravel bike so I figured I could buy a smaller Trek frame and just swap everything over to the new frame. I got a bare frameset, this time a Trek 850 instead of the 800 I had been working on and started to swap it all.

Turns out the steer tube diameters were different sizes and I needed a different quill stem adapter. The rear wheel spacing was different as well so I needed a new rear wheel too. The seat tube was a different size too so the old front derailleur didn't fit well.

I ended up putting the first bike back to it's original state and just buying new parts for everything on the new frame. Finished it past week actually and I couldn't be happier with how it rides and feels. I had some regrets with the purchases I made and how much I spent, but I also wouldn't get nearly this much satisfaction out of a bike that I hadn't dialed into my needs despite the extra money.

If you have the money then its fine you know? Just sell the old parts or keep them around so if that dynamo breaks you could get the old hub reinstalled(although rebuilding a wheel is expensive)

(All of this is general guidelines for someone who doesn't want to spend a lot. Building custom can be excellent if you have put in the time on a bike already. I have only been seriously biking for a little over a year but this is kinda what i feel could be a good guideline to follow)

It seems like you didn't ride enough before building custom. I saw this on another post. You should never build a bike until your 3rd or 4th bike or riding for a couple years consistently.
You will pick up on things you want, as well as notice pains or uncomfortable feelings as you ride that will allow you to more precisely pick things like stems or saddles, etc to change so you fit better on the bike. and over time slowly put in research to build out your perfect bike.

So you kinda messes up only in the fact that you will be spending more money to figure out what works for you rather than just roughing it and slowly upgrading till you just know exactly what you want and get the perfect thing after a few years. (Imagine this, you riding and riding, and every time you stop you gotta un hook everything and put it back on and it's slow. So you start looking for solutions with quick release, instead of just buying the first thing someone tells you, you should be doing some research and then after a little while you purchase those things and use em, maybe they don't work exactly like you want but they are good enough till you go one level deeper and find something more fitting)

Me for instance have ridden for over a year and now I know I want a drop bar gravel bike that can do 650b and 700c as well as a bit more race oriented geometry as opposed to being more upright. A little over a year ago when I got my trek fx2 I NEVER would've thought I'd want those things in a bike you know?

Please never (with rare exceptions) use headlamps as bike lamps. The angle they spread the light is way too big and blends everyone on the opposing side. I nearly crashed a few times, because I could see shit and the other side for sure thought "the more light, the better for (selfish) me".