Getting a few things off my mountain biking chest.
Sometimes it’s good to moan. It can help get rid of frustrations. A problem shared is a problem halved and all that. Clear the air and move on.
With that in mind, these are the 10 main things that have been bugging me with bikes for the past few years.
Semi-lightheartedly, here goes nothing…
Carbon (apart from rims)
Let’s kick things off with a biggie. Aside from the ecological argument (that I don’t want to get sidetracked by), I just don’t think carbon is worth the money. The amount of extra £-pounds you have to spend to save one or two lb-pounds is faintly outrageous. Arguably most of that weight saving is due to the bike industry seemingly having given up on even trying to make metal bikes light(er), especially North American brands. And a lot of the time I think it’s a worse performing material than metal. The one exception is wheel rims. Carbon rims can be the best rims available. Still loads of money, mind.
High-set helmet peaks
I’m going to pin this one on Specialized. Although other brands are hopping on board this aesthetic, I think Spesh was the first to bring out helmets with peaks set bizarrely far-too-high. High to the point of actually being pointless. Even if you don’t live anywhere that sunny, these high peaks now make dusk rides an exercise in squinting and, quite frankly, dangerous.
Thru-headset anything
Yep, the classic. People may be bored of moaning about thru-headset cable routing but we need to keep up the pressure. Not only does it add complexity and cost to routing service jobs, it doesn’t even look better than regular routing. It’s a disease that’s drifted over from dropbar bikes and it can drift off back there thanks.
Torx bolts
Is it just me, or are torx bolts more prone to rounding out than Allen key bolts? Especially on items that aren’t disc rotor bolts. Any test bike from torx-tastic Scott, for example, usually ends up heading back post-test period with all of the torx bolts looking scratty and mashed. Hex FTW.
Disc mounts on chainstays
Am not exactly sure if brands are putting calipers on the chain stay for suspension-v-braking reasons but I am sure that such a location makes it much more difficult to get at the caliper mount bolts, especially with a multi-tool. And as for the introduction of the patently awful flat-mount standard coming in from roadie world… No. Just no. Can’t we just bring back I.S.? That was clearly superior.
Tokenistic adjustments
One reason why I don’t pick on brands that don’t offer proportional chainstays or flipchips, is because the brands that do offer these things very rarely do it to a sufficient degree. 11mm difference in chain stay length between Small and XX-Large? 0.5° change in geometry via a flipchip? Hardly worth it. If you’re going to market sizing/adjustments, at least make it justifiable.
Curvy rates
Whether this is suspension frame leverage or air springs, I rarely get along with curves that aren’t consistent. I can get them to function okay but in a world where most riders (understandably) don’t want to spend hours and hours setting up a pushbike, these curves are often a recipe for extremely poor bike setup and thus handling. The marketing idea of ‘supple at sag, rampy at the end’ is not what a lot of riders end up sat on.
Silicone grippers
Helmets. Knee pads. Liner shorts. Any of these that have silicone grippers frequently get on my wick. Sometime literally. Essentially using hot glue to keep cycling apparel in place. Ugh.
Car industry aping
All these ‘Works’ bikes. Or eebs with stronger motors in the top tier models. Feels very Beemer M Series. Naff.
And finally…
The tenth slot is open to you. Add your suggestions below!
With you on the pointless helmet peaks, and exactly same manufacturer; I bought a Specialized helmet with a large peak specifically for commuting as large sections of my commute in either direction had the sun in my eyes. The Specialized peak was literally 100% useless.
The Fox helmet I have OTOH, is brilliant, so I suspect it’ll be discontinued six months before I decide to replace it, and due to the actually functional peak, people will snap it up inflating the price of any remaining stock.
That’s it. Discontinuing product lines that actually work well for those on smaller budgets because they’re not in line with the latest & greatest.
Peaks are there to serve as go-pro mounting points rather than sunshades, grandad(s)
Not a terrible price to pay if you want cycling media to survive though, surely?
STW do a good job of marking their advertorial stuff anyway.
Torx is ……… divisive. Fundamentally it’ll strip the tool before it strips the bolt, rather than the other way around. And I hate how loose the interface on some fastens feel, the suspension mount on my motorbike are great big 1/2″ 8.8 bolts, and the T45 bit feels very precarious in there. I know it’s designed like that, it’s original USP was that it could be driven in at an angle, but it still feels completely wrong. IT actually works/feels much better with a proper ratchet set and bits where you can push the bit in with one hand and apply torque with the other. With keys the ‘bit’ tends to fall over at an angle when you turn it.
So on the one hand if you mash the tool you’ve still got a 2nd chance. On the other hand a similarly sized hex would not have slipped in the first place and if the bolt is stuck then trashing several tools before taking the grinder to it isn’t any better than rounding it off and taking the grinder to it.
There’s a commercial logic to it though.
Say you’re a big brand and need to produce low, mid and high tier component ranges. Not a niche company that only makes high end components.
If you make just those three, then your R&D budget only needs splitting 3 ways (probably skewed tot he top end). If you need to make XC, Enduro and DH versions now your top end budget is split 3 ways and the lowest tier budget barely covers the graphic designers crayons. So it very much depends whether spending 3x more on the top end R&D results in a crank that isn’t any heavier than the XC version or weaker than the DH version you would have developed.
When the fashion was towards lighter bikes, plenty of DH riders were running XT cranks. And I remember a race report in Dirt where Sam Hill bent his Truvative cranks every single run of the weekend. Srams DH cranks weren’t as strong as Shimano’s ‘XC’ offering! The light/cheep/strong mantra is still true, but you can make it cheaper just by economies of scale.
I have an 8 on the rear of one bike! Most multitools don’t have an 8!
It’s not even sensible.
Tiny, barely adequate 4mm bolts on a stem to save weight, then things like brake levers get 5mm bolts that barely need to be finger tight. Or worse, a mix of 4 and 5 on the same stem! Component brands really should have standardized on 5mm for everything on the bars then just made the brake/shifter/dropper clamp molts from aluminum.
Same goes for other components like suspension and saddles – just call them “good" , “better" , “best" , “pointlessly expensive but in our range because someone will buy it". For suspension I’m familiar with the RS naming and just CBA to try to understand Fox etc. Also looking for a new saddle and some come in different variants of the same shape but with small differences – just makes it harder to work out what you actually want.
What a weird article. Says that carbon frames are shit and carbon wheels are great. Absolute garbage on both counts
Ahhh, the young. My first MTB still had 8mm nut/bolts to pinch the cables and 14mm to clamp the saddle rails IIRC. Stem was still an expander, 6mm hex.
First *road* bike was about 50% imperial and 50% metric… needed something like 9 and 11/16th" cone spanners and a 14mm bolt to hold the crank on. Once i’d removed the 1/2″ cotter held on with a 5/16 nut, then the 1/2″ bolt to adjust the expander wedge in the stem, and the 32mm nuts for the headset too… ah. Such joy.
BMX pretty much standardised the 5mm (I think, maybe 6mm) allen key for the whole bike a long time ago. I wonder if it lasted? Probably, because BMX is smarter than this side of the bike industry. Simplify and do simple well. I wish more BMX people/brands would get into rigid 29er design. Chainstay mounted brakes .. new ISO tests will be helping get rid of those, or at least encoraging them back to a more sensible place for any bike that doesn’t use racks and guards (edit, suspension bikes get a pass if they have pivots there). And even if you do use racks and guards, just adapt them to fit around a better frame / brake layout. Priorities.
I still have a 32mm headset spanner from the 90’s for adjusting the somewhat bombproof XT cartridge headset…don’t make em like they used to etc etc..
+100. And bike brands or events teaming up with car companies. F the car industry.
High Quality carbon rims are available from reputable Chinese OEM’s for $150. A lot of what you’re paying for from a Western brand is the warranty support when you smash it on a rock (apart from DT Swiss). Carbon rims definitely make sense on a road bike but I’ll stick with aluminium for mountain biking.
Two of my bikes still do have the cranks held on by 8mm hex bolts! Square taper rocks. Although, to be fair, Shimano BB external bearings seem to last a lot longer these days.
“and just CBA to try to understand Fox etc"
Is Rhythm, Performance, Performance Elite and Factory really that difficult to get ones head around?!
I would agree that Torx bolts need to get in the sea – they’re a PITA compared to a (decent) allen key/head. Star fangled nuts are barbaric too, while saddle rail clamps are the devil’s work.
But you kinda see the point. What part of a fork/ shock used for MTBing conveys “rhythm" to you? Surely you want the opposite of rhythmic suspension – you want “pillow" suspension
Fox’s fork line-up is ridiculously easy to understand compared to the array of different forks that RS offer.
I can have a Lyrik with various levels of damping poshness (which they keep changing the names of), or a Yari which uses the same chassis and has more basic damping… but hang on, now they do a Psylo, where does that sit? And there’s a 35 as well – that looks pretty similar but I’ve no idea what’s inside it.
I’m not particularly a Fox fan, but at least they don’t make a “bad" fork. Just got a secondhand bike with a 38 Performance and it’s comparable to the Zeb Ultimate I was used to riding.
Was about to give a hearty “amen" to that, but then realised you might be saying something different to what I thought you were saying…
Anyway, the DTSwiss warranty on carbon rims is indeed a joke
Agreed, saddle rail clamps are intensely frustrating.
My 2p: If you can’t design internally routed cables without them rattling, then don’t bother.
Will nobody think of us hamfisted gibbons? I much prefer Allen bolts, but then I’m a klutz with cheap tools.
… on the other hand I always use Pesta valves, and I’ve never yet bent one.
Bikes are brilliant. Bikes today are brillianter than bikes from even a few years ago. Ebikes in particular are getting brillianter and brillianter.
I’d like the bike industry to carry on doing what it’s doing please, because as far as I can see it’s doing a brilliant job.
Needing to buy an extra shed for tools. Because there is a ridiculously diverse set of tools needed for essentially the same part and sometimes the same part and manufacturer. It’s annoying!
It’s a design that made sense from 1890 to 1990, but as soon as rims grew wider than 21mm it really should have been ditched.
The trouble with arguing " I’ve never yet bent one" is that when you do, it’ll be when you get a puncture miles from anywhere and because you were so sure of your own superiority in not bending them, you probably didn’t take a spare.
This reminded me of a Youtube review of a Furch guitar. (A Furch Yellow G-CR* iirc). The reviewer complained that he couldn’t understand Furch’s naming convention. The models range, from bottom to top, Violet, Blue, Green, Yellow, Red, Rainbow. Fairly straightforward if you know your rainbow, I’d have thought, and much nicer than Furch 1,2,3, 4** , or Furch Good, Better, Best.
In terms of Fox, how difficult is it remember that factory is Best, Elite, is Almost Best, and then, if you really need to remember this stuff, you have two models to memorise?
*G-CR is Grand Auditorium (the size), Cedar and Rosewood (the woods that it’s built out of.) Extremely easy to work out. D-CM would be Dreadnought, Cedar, Mahogany, etc.
** Is 1 the best or worst?
On the other hand I always use Presta valves and have bent them, snapped them, seized them up, ripped the head off in a pump. My main bike currently has a slightly bent and leaking valve. If I wasn’t so lazy I’d replace it, but you know, it takes the occasional pump up and all is fine.
I’ve broken way more carbon frames than carbon rims… and all four of my current bikes have carbon rims, they are ruddy ace, and direct from Ch they are not even expensive anymore. My previous FS frame to my current carbon one was Alu… the Alu one was lighter for a similar design and much nicer to ride as the carbon one is overbuilt and is so stiff it has the feel of riding a girder.
Convince me I’m wrong.
So many things many already stated
one frame to do everything from short travel to enduro is clearly going to be so compromised to be useless
6mm front axle 5mm rear
pretending to be green. There is nothing green about riding bikes in the woods for fun
why are bikes getting so heavy, do bike companies not employ engineers anymore
SRAM first generation of any product will be bobbins as thy are still test product
The number of bikes that get given to YouTubers that the customer will be f7nding and then anyone expecting us to think they are independent and no5 just part of the marketing strategy