charlie the bikemonger – Member
Oh I have just invented something.

The amazing stem that points forward 100% accurately. Simply put, splined steerer and stem, so that you no longer have to live with the nagging doubt that your bars are not 100% right.

Sorry Charlie, beat you to it a month ago – and got rubbished for suggesting it

They’ve been around for years….

Buy a dual crown fork (not all of them are DH monsters) with a direct mount stem. [/problem]

29++

End of thread.

Some massive lawsuit taken out by hoi-polio, against the ENTIRE bike industry for bring pricks about wheel sizes.

Gearboxes (Pinion, Effigear) and ERW airless wheels/tires. (both are already here on deck in 2014)

We simply MUST shake loose from the 100 yr old grip of an exposed drivetrain and flat tires.

Pimpmaster Jazz – Member

…a decent bottom bracket…that screws in, is HT2 axle compatible…and with a lifespan longer than a week.

my gusset ext24 is coming up on 5000km’s, it’s been used in all conditions, it cost £25, it’s still running beautifully.

Over time, surely there’ll be a trend for lighter, stronger, stiffer frames and forks that use less materials for the benefit of the environment.

If you could combine that with lighter, stronger, stiffer wheels that accelerated better and required less rubber for tyres of a given profile surely you’d be onto marketing gold.

If you combined the bigger tyre theory with my futuristic proposals, my godless, you’d be raking it in.

(Has sudden eureka moment and rushes to patent office at thought of large volume tyres designed to convert 26ers to 27.5)

Oh and maybe a resurfacing of the mystery magic behind the Millyard bike with it’s enclosed drivetrain and special tank shock.

Like Tomd I’m getting my jollies being fat and rigid this year..

Gearbox drive solutions must be a good way forward but thats a BB area frame redesign…

All the lectrical shift and suspension ideas are a little too far out there for me… as someone said above, a warning light for variable servicing and what laptop for bike set up ?

ahwiles – Member

my gusset ext24 is coming up on 5000km’s, it’s been used in all conditions, it cost £25, it’s still running beautifully.

…and when it finally dies, you can fit the standard bearings of your choice, available everywhere, in about 2 minutes. Top kit.

I still think there’s room for suspension setup to be made idiot-proof. I’m not afraid of tweaking things but it has really surprised me the difference a few PSI in shock pressures can make to the ride quality, not to mention the fact I’ve been messing around with spacers too. Happy as larry with my bike set up at the moment, but it’s take a lot of fettling and faffing to get here and I’m sure a lot of bike buyers don’t go to that trouble.

Spesh have their “auto-sag” which i suppose is a start, but can still only work within the confines of their shock tune.

“Siri, please stop my bike blowing through its travel on big hits without spoiling the otherwise excellent small-bump compliance”

The problem with minimalism is that it only appeals to the cognoscienti.
See HiFi, photography etc.

Engineering simplicity just does not fit in with the mass market companies intended demographic.

The simplest and most elegant solutions are often sadly the most expensive;
Small batch runs and the almost mystical ability for niche designs to separate seemingly rational people from large amounts of money see to that.I agree and know from experience that that’s all true.

What bothers me about the cycling market is that the well made, everyday, do it all bicycle is now considered somehow unusual and priced accordingly.

priced accordingly, as in £500+ or £3000+? I have a rigid SS that cost more than my last car, but I could find something almost as good that I’d be happy on for £500-800. Some parts just may not last as long.

I think it’s about how much value is placed on small details of design or aspects of ride feel, that and how much you feel is acceptable to spend on things you value. Like bikes, nice Scotch or a holiday.

32″ wheels obv!

my gusset ext24 is coming up on 5000km’s, it’s been used in all conditions, it cost £25, it’s still running beautifully.

Have a gold star. 😀

I’m just a little jaded as I seem to kill HT2 BBs after every Dyfi, and have just killed a Hope BB bearing in six rides. OK, it’s been biblical, but still… Hope? Six rides?

It is a shame as otherwise I think the HT2 system is utterly brilliant.

priced accordingly, as in £500+ or £3000+? I have a rigid SS that cost more than my last car, but I could find something almost as good that I’d be happy on for £500-800. Some parts just may not last as long.

I think it’s about how much value is placed on small details of design or aspects of ride feel, that and how much you feel is acceptable to spend on things you value. Like bikes, nice Scotch or a holiday.

Priced realistially, as opposed to aspirationally.
I can buy a carbon framed, Tiagra equiped ‘wannabee racer’ road bike for less than the price of a basic cro-mo allrounder with lesser, outdated equipment and bar end shifters.

Why can’t I have a nice, quality steel framed road bike with the same equipment as the carbon one at a similar price?

Edit – seems I can if I buy an On One.
If I want a Surly it will be £500 more for a very similar bike (Kaff v Pacer/LHT/Cross Check.

An other vote for “half-fat” tyres around 3.0 with xc-thread. Simply because between A and B there must be a point C that is halfway there. between xc and AM (or what you want to call it) lies “trail”. Between AM and downhill lies enduro/freeride. Therefore a step between fully rigid 29er and fatbike makes perfect sense.

wouldn’t mind having one either…

I also wouldn’t mind having a short travel AM bike that was suggested in the beginning of the thread. Makes perfect sense for the riding where i live which is rocky and rooty but quite flat. Ragley did a prototype like that some years ago called the 10-4. Commencal hip-hop looks like an overbuilt version of that.

my money’s on Electric/electronic derralieur gearing. already all but ubiquitous in pro cyclocross, it can only be a matter of time before we see a DI2-XTR setup

…. swiftly followed by frame mounted gearboxes …. once they sort out the weight a bit, which is taking longer than I thought possible

I’m just a little jaded as I seem to kill HT2 BBs after every Dyfi, and have just killed a Hope BB bearing in six rides. OK, it’s been biblical, but still… Hope? Six rides?

Ever considered that it may be a problem with your end, rather than the BB standard. are you doing something silly when installing them? 😉

WTF is this thing…

The weird offspring when you mate an ant, an inline skate and a bike?

hishairyness – Member
The gearbox! This just has to be sorted once and for all. Its a no brainer and will happen, then all you need to do is strap it into a fatbike and we’re all sorted. The Ultimate off-road bike!!
I thankyou…I’ll get my coat.

electronic shifting – cordless.

The future is –
Carbon fibre brake mounts made of spoons

A space between “mountain” and “bike”? 😆

Tom_W1987 – Member
Seriously. The very next big thing will be wider tyres.
Surly have 3.0 and 2.75″ tyres, so not as big as a fat bike tyre, a nice sensible middle ground.

Why? The larger tyre has a tiny weight penalty for a significant increase in traction. So you can climb harder, brake harder, and most importantly corner faster. This is a serious advantage, and a lot of fun.

Why this has not happened before is a mystery. Why are surly (a fairly oddball outfit) dictating the next big thing? (They were on the 29 scene very early) Maybe it’s because most bike companies would rather sell you expensive shit that breaks, shocks and electrics, and remote this and that gizmos.

Let me see….hmmmm….

1) Increased rotating weight, 2.5’s can add a pound of it over 2.3s.

2) Increased rolling resistance, why would I need more grip if I don’t need it? A set of 2.5 minions is the most I’ll ever need.

3) Increased lateral instability or tyre roll. Why would I want that when I can have softer compounds on the cornering part of the tyre?

4) Poorer mud performance for downhill applications, thinner tyres cut through and grip the bedrock beneath mud more efficiently. Larger tyres do not.

Eeer, no, and….
1. 850g for a 29×3″ right now.. And it “IS WEIGHT THAT WORKS”. Other wise we would be using carbon track bikes offroad if weight was everything. My saddle and post weigh 500g, but I don’t leave them behind for the 500g weight saving. The 26×2.75 folding dirt wizards arrive this week.
2. Not necessarily. The light tread pattern of a surly Knard rolls very fast, getting its grip from the footprint. Why would you want more grip? Answer: You corner faster, and brake harder, you go faster in many situations.
3. Wider rims sort that out.
4. Yeah but no. Try riding a 3.8 Nate downhill in mud and you will see there is another point of view. And riding in the rain is tiresome, been too much of this recently.
5. Yeah I know there was not a five, but there is now. Actually I have just edited that out. You are not ready for five!

I did tell you I would bang on about this. Have a read of what Steve worland wrote about the krampus… In stw. And Steve knows his stuff, if he poo poo’d this semi fat thing, then I would not be here. He said something like… “If they made a ti krampus I would not need any other bike” ish.

Seriously this will be big, but just like 29ers did… it goes against what the MBUK have been preaching for years, it goes against the entire direction of MTB development, it goes against the lighter the better religion, and it will go against your techy belief structure.

Please no more electronic stuff that I can’t fix by with normal tools. The amount of electronic stuff I have lying around unused due to it randomly stopping working or being out of date.

I would love some super tough tyres with stiff sidewalls that did not pinch puncture or rip and were light weight.

I think the biggest change we will see in bikes is the de-centralisation of manufacturing. There’s little financial benefit to building bikes en-masse in the far east now, rising wages there and high import duties erase pretty much all the direct benefits of bulk assembly. Instead I predict over 3-5 years that assembly will move to regional hubs, which will allow for the custom speccing of mid-high bikes.

If you couple this with the pressures on shops caused by low price grey imports which make parts swap outs a financial PITA then we might find a lot of companies take this route. The process will be pretty similar to cars;

You will go into a shop and try a ‘base spec’ model. Once you’ve roughly decided what you want, whether in the shop or online (and delivered direct or via the shop) you will customise the bike to suit your needs.

The assembly plant will build that exact bike (right down to shock tunes to suit your weight etc.) and package and ship the bike to your chosen destination. Probably 7-14 days later.

This has some big benefits:

1) The need for model years goes. The model year doesn’t work for manufacturers as it allows for little flexibility in the supply chain, puts huge dependency on marketing to ‘drive’ sales, and generally means supply is limited at launch, and overstocked at close out, leading to huge discounting at the end of the year. All in all a bad state.

2) The shops are increasingly workshop dependent. Moving to this semi-custom model allows retailers to focus back on the sales of bikes without carrying huge stocks, and frees up valuable shop space for demo bikes etc. It also makes the little guy competitive again as they have the advantage of custom options without carrying insane levels of stock.

3) appreciation for fit and spec is ever increasing in the customer world. We want things just the way we like them. The rise of CRC and Wiggle shows our desire for changing everything is latent. Companies addressing this will do well. Those that persist in stock models will find their market ever more competitive.

4) companies like Canyon/Halfords/Decathlon/Go outdoors are eroding the market for mid price bikes from your LBS. LBS’es need something to ‘justify’ their existence (in the nicest possible sense). The ability to touch and feel something but still get a bike of your spec at a good price will be a huge driver to re-invent the role of the LBS.

5) JIT manufacturing techniques are well established now, and lead to lower supply chain costs, less capital requirements and overall efficiency in delivering the end product. Bike assembly will be able to take advantage of the lessons learnt from car assembly to produce a streamlined custom assembly model that actually saves money overall for the manufacturer.

Like I said, its the way car manufacturers have been doing it for years (except the regional hub bit – but thats an advantage bikes have as they don’t need mahoosive and very expensive robots), its only a matter of time before that model trickles down to bikes, and when it does, buying a bike will become a very different experience.

Oh and I agree on wider tyres. We’re stocking 2.4 on some lines as standard and will be offering 2.75 real soon 😯

Oh you’re getting far too serious.

I wonder if we’ll get as far as Neal Stephenson’s idea: No tyres, no rims, just self adjusting spokes with grippy ends, and radar that scans the ground infront.

Bit surprised it’s not made it on to this already (or did I miss it?).

A seat that doesn’t make my nuts numb would be nice.

As long as the “next greatest thing” ensures a steady supply of unfashionable-but-perfectly-suitable parts (e.g. 25.4 mm stems & bars) on Ebay, then I’m all for it… whatever it is. 8)

Rapid rise front derailleur…. 😉

B.A.Nana, that Nicolai is awesome. Belt drive and USD forks too!

Biopace cassette. Still keep the round front chainrings for that authentic mountain bike pedalling action, with all the benefits of Biopace (no dead spot) action in the rear. Trust me, this is just around the corner…….

Prototype Magura eLECT Rear Shock

I did mention this 3 pages and 4 days ago, good guess eh?

I did mention this 3 pages and 4 days ago, good guess eh?

aaaargghhh ! Another bloody battery to charge….. 🙄

Who cares….

Whatever the marketing people come up with so us suckers put our hands in our pockets!

The 26 inch wheel mountain bike 🙂

Hub gears and electronic shifting. Electro/magnetic dampers. Paul

Definitely this.

Rapid rise front mechs have been done by sachs.

Integration.

Full internal hose & cable runs (or hose and electric wire). Run everything down the inside of the bars, stem and frame tubing. Integrated electronic controls for dropper post, suspension travel & lockout.

Well I want electronic gearing that is wireless….why isn’t stuff like di2 on road bikes wireless? I’ve read an equivalent version is on the way for mtb (wired not wireless). Weight saving on cables, cleaner looking bikes. No faff with internal cabling, probably more aero, you could build the small shifter buttons into the bars or grips. Maybe the power draw means batteries need to be too big or heavy

Wont go into that. Lets just leave it at expense, nevermind the horrible horrible complications!