Overcomplicating the Most Efficient Transportation Machine
I started wrenching on bikes from an early age. From changing flats on my original Mongoose 20" bike to overhauling loose-ball headsets and bottom brackets on my dad's old Cannondale, wheels-up on the basement floor. Those times taught me basic but fundamental skills that landed me a job as a mechanic in high school, got me through almost a decade of working on bikes, and ended up with me here at VO. While most of those times and much of my early mechanic years were filled with changing flats, basic 7spd derailleur adjustments, and regreasing simple older tech, times are oh-so different now, and so are the bikes.
My dad's copy of Todd Downs' 2005 encyclopedia of bicycle repair- the foundation of my wrenching as a yoot
Even back then, as 11spd was beginning to make the rounds on production road and MTB bikes, the unattainably high end Dura Ace and SRAM Red gear that seemed so intricate and flawless then, now looks and feels no different than any other gear of its time when on a bike in the repair stand - especially looking through the scope of what's available on the market today. Much of which, folks are having a harder and harder time even approaching as a home mechanic.
SRAM Red 11spd rear derailleur. The best of the best at the time, while still taking design cues from far cheaper and simpler gear
Bikes, from the early stages of mass production through to the 1990s, had been largely the same. Rigid frame, pressed-in headset on a straight tubes, one-piece or three-piece cranks, and rim brakes. Nit pick and identify the outliers all you like, but that describes most of the bikes during that time. However, with the trickle-down effect of materials engineering into cycling in the late 2000's, things began to change - and get more exclusive. Suspension forks became normalized on off road bikes, cartridge bearings found their way into everything from headsets to jockey wheels, carbon became the gold standard for racing bikes, and model-year innovation became the standard.
I'm not one to groan about progress, though. Aside from the anecdote of "chasing the past," (e.g. riding a rigid hardtail mountain bike or pulling out your old downtube shifter bike) to gain some fleeting taste of the "good ol' days" of bikes, you'd be hard pressed to convince me that new bikes coming out today from almost any manufacturer aren't some of the best bikes made yet. Disc brakes, quality frames, excellent suspension design and kinematics, and tubeless tires offered in virtually every size imaginable. If you think about it, there are more options for folks looking to buy a proper bike today than ever before.
But with that innovation comes an increase in the level of technical know-how required to even attempt to maintain modern bikes. Shimano has a virtual school devoted to teaching mechanics how to work on their products. SRAM has something quite similar. Want to bleed your hydraulic brakes? You'll need to buy a proprietary kit and oil, and you better not screw it up or it'll be a mess. The same goes for suspension forks and frames. I've owned probably 5 full-suspension bikes, none of which I, personally, serviced the shock or fork on. I'm fortunate to have a shop nearby that specializes in suspension service, another area of bicycle servicing that has become specialized in the last 15 years.
This is on your bicycle.
Bikes of the 1950's to 2000's could once be stripped down with nothing but a tri-tool and a 15mm box wrench, assuming you hadn't lost your 10mm. Aside from a very short list of special tools (which you could pick up at any bike shop) like a crank puller, bb lockring wrench and puller, and a cassette tool, there really was nothing to it. As I started my time as a mechanic affordable two-piece cranks flooded the market, and with them came every bottom bracket standard under the sun. 142 Thru-axle spacing was quickly followed by Boost 148, and subsequently Super Boost and thus an arms race of new, bike specific tools and components began.
I type this all out not as a protest (though I come from a fortunate position of well over a decade of technical experience), but rather as an illustration of how complicated things got, so quickly. If you bought a road or mountain bike in 1985, you had a considerable number of options in terms of models, but you could take any bike home and maintain it properly yourself with a minimal number of special tools or specialized technical knowledge. Heck, that rings true even for bikes as new as the early 2010's.
My first 'real' mountain bike- a 2008 Vassago Bandersnatch, with SRAM X9 and BB7M brakes
Today, however, if you wanted to purchase a mid-grade road bike off a shop floor, you'd be likely ending up with something that uses a press-fit bottom bracket, internal routing that goes into a void, tubeless tires, hydraulic disc brakes, and maybe even electronic shifting that needs an app and special software for diagnosis and updating.
Heaven forbid you want to service your bottom bracket in a year or two. You'll need the proper tapered punch, an oversized bearing press, a torque wrench and bravery to take that on without fear you'd crack your carbon or destroy your aluminum alloy shell. It gets worse when you consider mountain bikes of today. We haven't even touched on e-bikes! There's just too much special knowledge and risk tolerance required for the average at-home mechanic.
An example of my most recent rig, a Norco Revolver FS 120. Quite removed from what now seem like "humble beginnings"
That being said, many shops offer lifetime free basic services and tune ups with the purchase of a new bicycle. They did at my shop at least, and it feels like this is the direction the whole industry is moving: "pay a premium up front, we'll cover you for most stuff." In tandem, the manufacturers are designing bikes that are less and less consumer-maintenance friendly, knowing that the customer is likely going to roll it into the shop 9 times out of 10 before attempting to fix it first. This makes the product more expensive, and leaves those of us who like to fix our own stuff hanging out to dry, in a way.
From an environmental perspective, making things obsolete or too difficult or expensive to fix, means that people will buy new things - which means more waste and emissions.
I think shops are going to be more essential than ever with the industry moving towards higher-end, direct-to-consumer business. It's just that their business model is being forced through a change, and they'll need to be mindful of that fact.
What are your thoughts? Do you work only on bikes of a certain vintage or are you able/willing to maintain all your bikes regardless of their complexity?
Well, I think this is (as any relationship) a story of two. The industry and the market. I believe the market is the one accepting and buying so many of these new crazy products and of course the industry is looking into ways to only offer what’s trendy and cool.
I don’t have anything against being cool or have certain technological advantages included into one of the most efficient machines humans created. But making it so dependant on all these artifacts? Seems a bit contradictory to me. Plus, I do agree with all the comments regarding the waste related to the short life of products. Equilibrium is important and users and manufacturers have to work together to reach this point.
I take as an example the bike manufacturer Vanmoof, I love their bikes but they started with normal mechanic bikes now… there’s not a single one that is not electric….
This really resonates with me, the barrier for learning and screwing up something is also really high with some of the new stuff and some of the things like re packing a hub doesn’t translate into say a modern cartridge bearing hub
The industry keeps things complicated for money. Giant has proprietary kickstands and hemisphere seatposts on basic hybrids so you have to buy a seatpost from them. I miss the days of simple interchangeability and nearly universal part swaps
I don’t have any hard data, just some intuitive experience, but I think a large part of it is that the industry is just riding along with consumer behavior, i.e., fewer and fewer people are even interested in how their “things” work, let alone bother to work on them. Even with “old” tech, ‘50s thru 90’s, I’m always a bit stumped by how many people don’t have any idea how to correct a simple issue. You don’t know how to stop that chain ticking on a derailleur, or how to stop a brake pad rubbing on a rim? Give me about 60 seconds on the side of the road and I’ll sort that out. In a separate but related issue, I own a car that doesn’t have a spare wheel or even an oil dipstick. Crazy to me, but here we are.
I’m tempted to tap into my forebears’ Irish, ehm, vernacular, as I consider just how far askew this has all gone in the interest of “integrating” your bicycle with your communications device. Which I’ve seen an actual, well-garbed rider doing as he waited for the swing bridge at Lock 15 to clear.
My principal get-around / commute / recreation bike is a 1968 Phillips with a medium-carbon steel frame (from the Raleigh works), with a Sturmey Archer AW hub, to which I’ve added a second, 28t cog, which is shifted to with an ancient Shimano Eagle derailleur (in steel!) via a stem-mounted Huret shift lever. 30 to 60 gear-inch range. Ancient steel forged rim brakes. With cables. That you clean out and lube every now and then. Ten miles a day, almost every day, barring ice and snow. Every year or so, I sit down at the workbench and dismantle the wheel hubs and the bottom bracket, clean (with paraffin) all the bearings and races, and put it all back together with some marine-grade axle grease from the hardware store. It’s a quieting time for me. And the fifty-year-old SA bearing cones and races, even with some brinnelling, roll just fine.
I patronize my local, independent bike shop for everything that he can reasonably get his hands on. I’ll fix anyone’s pre-‘87 vintage steel bicycle for the price of parts and a decent cup of coffee at the corner cafe, but then I’m no longer clocking in at the behest of Serving The Machine, and can make the time to put something, made be real people, in real shops, back into service. One Less Car.
The only reason I’d buy one of these outre’ high-end bicycles would be to ceremonially set it on fire at the end of a club ride, but the mess it would leave behind would be both regrettable, and sacrilege for contaminating the park grounds, and that would’ve been $600 better spent on spaghetti with Karen at Lunardis. But then, this “shift” to modernity in bicycling has all been consumerist sacrilege by intent, anyway. At least the old, steel Raleigh frames would rust away into the ground, or be turned into re-bar and wire gauge nails at the smelter. Thanks for the opportunity to get the bile gland going.
Tim Long, Just up the Hill from Lock 15
PS: I’d send a snapshot of the old machine (with your handlebar bottle cages!) if I could figure out where.
PPS: If you’d like a ready measure of just how enfeebled we are all now expected to be in our modernist land of the future, I’d suggest a glance through the 1946 Boy Scouts of America “Cycling” merit badge booklet to see what was routinely expected of a thirteen-year-old. Of course I have a copy :)
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