Forum menu
They've discontinued the Lefty fork now and introduced the Righty. It's not compatible with the Lefty but according to the marketing it's 5% stiffer.
I’ve just moved house this year and got a nice big new garage, my car fits in really well but what I’m struggling with is where to fit the MASSIVE 29″ wheeled, long wheel base, wide barred trail bike. I love it when I’m riding it but it is such a pita shape and size.
You put your car in a garage?
#weirdo
- internal cable/hose routing that hasn't been executed properly. FFS
- kids bikes with suspension at either end. They don't need it, really.
- Giant/Liv di2 battery-holding wedges. Seriously, who designed them..
- garages with a car in
Bikes spec'd with a rear mech that's posher than the rest of the drivetrain so it looks good on the bike shop floor
Rubbish tyres on new bikes
Forgetting to disengage lockouts
Pinarello
I have no idea why I have a strong dislike for recumbent bikes with a little orange flag on them.
Whyte love making stupid decision, the 929 was a stupidly good bike, that they made for one season then dropped in favour of dumbed down 7/6/529. The 929 sold out before it hit the shops, yet no point in making any more, was there..
The storage thing is a good one! I have 3 bikes to store in an Asgard 29er shed and by heck with wide bars is it tight! Somehow I've had to move 2 of them around recently. They fitted very nicely before and now, for some reason, getting the last one in is a nightmare! It's not actually a problem, because they do fit (just) but christ it's annoying when you just want to put one away!
While we're at it. Di2. Nice when it came out, now completely pointless. A pain to install, expensive and not particularly neat either.
UK designed bikes with poor mud clearance/mud shelves behind the bottom bracket.
Bikes that don't come in XL (i'm 6'4")
Steel full suspension bikes (I don't see what benefits they have over alu or carbon)
Bikes with rearward facing seatpost slots
Another one:
When non-bike brands try to make a mountain bike because they want to eschew a 'sporty' image. Urgh. Bonus annoying points if they call it a 'concept'.
they want to eschew a ‘sporty’ image
[Insert Inigo Montoya meme here] Eschew means to reject or to abstain from....
Steel full suspension bikes (I don’t see what benefits they have over alu or carbon)
They look nicer by a massive margin in my opinion. The Swarf Contour is a thing of beauty and the Starling bikes look great too. No fat bits or hydro-formed weirdness. Just nice clean lines made form a material that will take a massive beating and last for ages
Eschew means to reject or to abstain from…
Oh yeah. I probably meant espouse, but even that doesn't really fit. Project.
Any bike with 141mm QR rear axle.
Cup and cone bearings. I hate the bloody things, from too loose to too tight in 1 18th of a turn.
Cannondale’s Lefty forks…. WHY!? There’s no need and no point and they just look s**t.
There is actually an engineering reason for this. In most forks the lowers move up and down on bushings which can be prone to stiction. So Cannondale thought about this and realised if they had two square tubes sliding inside each other they could run on needle roller bearings with zero stiction (a concept I also invented back in college, but never implemented 🙂 ). This ends up being quite heavy, but then they realised that if the tubes were square they could get away with only one leg thereby saving weight - because it can't twist. Guessing the headshock comes from the same idea.
And Lefties are indeed very plush with great small bump sensitivity, although these days lubrication, materials and design have caught up mostly with traditional forks. They have made some pretty light ones in the past too. The current top model is a touch heavier than a SID but I'll bet it's got better small bump compliance. But then, it's apparently not that important to the market since you don't see that many being ridden.
Snotrag you lost me when you said you put an actual car in your garage 😬😬😬
All the bikes with rim brakes.
In this age and time all rim brakes should be dumped into history landfill and buried as deep as possible.
Nasty, ineffective, dangerous stuff of the past...
Cheers!
I.
In the dry my campagnolo rim brakes have better modulation and work better than many disc brakes. They weigh less, look better and mean my wheels are also lighter. It also means I don't have silly massive brake hoods.
I don't ride that bike in the wet...
10k road bikes annoy me - they really don't need to be that much.
All the bottle bosses. not a fan of the text either. Sorry cotic
All the bikes with rim brakes.
In this age and time all rim brakes should be dumped into history landfill and buried as deep as possible.
Totally agree with this but our road based brothers fear change. It will come in time. Changing road standards is akin to sneaking up on an Antelope at a watering hole. Move slowly, pause a lot and don’t frighten them or they’ll bounce off in to the sunset
They weigh less, look better and mean my wheels are also lighter. It also means I don’t have silly massive brake hoods.
Are we going to derail this thread then? 🙂
I don't think rim brakes look better, they just look old fashioned
The big brake hoods are one of the best things about my 105 levers - vastly more comfortable than old ones
Rim brakes are crap!
*runs away*
Cannondale’s Lefty forks…. WHY!? There’s no need and no point and they just look s**t. Funny how no one else has ever felt the need to make a mono-leg. Reinventing the wheel and if it ain’t broke don’t fix it spring to mind!
I think they look great. Leftys are usually structurally stiffer, with better small bump compliance. Although modern forks are catching up. Running on bearings rather than bushings they also don't bind when cornering or braking. Something most riders don't even think about, but is happening. Several other companies have produced rigid or suspended struts, most notably USE.
- bikes with upside down bottle cages
- bikes that rattle or creak
- internal cable routing ports that pop out or don't fit properly
- forks and frames covered in bikepacking, rack or fender mounts like warts
- hubs with cup and cone bearings. Also hubs with bearing preload adjusters that have no sweet spot between bearing play and binding. Older Mavic and Newmen hubs for example.
Bikes that are annoying - Bromptons! No idea why but they just get on my tits.
On the storge front, I just bought a 3m long scaffold pole and a couple of socket wall brackets and fixed it up spanning between the garage walls high up, at the moment I have 4 road/gravel bikes and my wifes rigid mtb hanging up there with room for another. Other mtb's are on the floor below them stood with a wheel in a cycle rack.
hubs with cup and cone bearings. Also hubs with bearing preload adjusters that have no sweet spot between bearing play and binding
In my experience, if they you can't remove the play without them binding then the bearings are worn out. New bearings, nice round balls, this doesn't happen.
Rim brakes are crap!
Internets high five!
Totally agree on Bromptons - British success story they may be, innovative and very foldy they are but thats no excuse to make them out of scaffold poles. Even the ti bits weigh more than any other ti bits I know of! How can a tiny bike weigh sooo much?
Or the days of youth gone by, when a bike was a bike, just a means to go and explore, adventure and have fun. When nobody got snobbish as about whos cost more etc etc
Your specs are far too pink. Everybody gets snobbish about everything, teenagers especially.
I remember seeing John Tomac racing a bike like that late 87 round a XC course, with drop bars. Margam Park I think. He won, but did look daft.
I can pretty much guarantee that it wasn't Margam, and while you may have seen him race in 1987 he didn't use drop bars until a few years later, and that was only for a season.
Proprietary components on bikes. My Trek is basically a write-off as the shock is worn out and no spare parts available. Normally a new shock would sort it but it uses an odd length and is a trunnion mount so there's nothing that fits without spending a lot of money in getting it modified to either restrict the travel or bodge it with less.
Any bike with 141mm QR rear axle.
Seconded.
Or the days of youth gone by, when a bike was a bike, just a means to go and explore, adventure and have fun. When nobody got snobbish as about whos cost more etc etc
Anodising, Paul's anything, who had the most gears, whose was the lightest...
burner
Free MemberCannondale’s Lefty forks…. WHY!? There’s no need and no point and they just look s**t.
Ah, I love a lefty, they just look so weird. OK so most times that's not good but on the right bike that can be fantastic. The Cannondale fatbike with the lefty on is just awesome
In my experience, if they you can’t remove the play without them binding then the bearings are worn out. New bearings, nice round balls, this doesn’t happen.
They were new straight out the box from both companies, so can't have been worn out. IMO a cartridge bearing hub that needs a preload adjuster is a bad design. DT Swiss and others have no problem keeping things tight yet spinning freely without.
Not had any issue with *counts* 5 Newmen hubs!
Bikes with stupidly long seat tubes above the top tube. Mostly because pivots on seat tube stop droppers going low enough. For us with short legs, this is a really pain.
My Ibis (L) 210mm dropper no problem. Bro's Post Cannondale (L) 120mm and only just!
Agree with cartridge hubs that also have preload adjusters, it's a weird worst-of-both-worlds design and most of all it just doesn't really do anything. You only have to look at all the cartridge hubs without it to see it's daft.
Your specs are far too pink. Everybody gets snobbish about everything, teenagers especially.
Yep, as a teenager when I got my 89 Tufftrax and my pal got his 90 Palisades we laughed at the lads we knew that rode Emmelle Dolomite's. The year after they both got Alpinestars, one an Al-Mega XT and they laughed at us.
I remember seeing a couple of blokes ride up Skipton High Street on 90 Team Marin's and wondering how on earth anyone could afford them.
It was no better back then, probably worse.
Not had any issue with *counts* 5 Newmen hubs!
But are they from before or after Newmen changed the design because there were so many issues? 😉
- bikes with remote fork lockouts. Don't see the need for them. Added weight and clutter as well.
- suspension frames with loads of pivot bearings. Current Norco Sight has 16!
Bicycles that cost the same as a new Suzuki GSX-S1000F
I don't care if its carbon and has xtr bits. ITS OVERPRICED
Bikes that are annoying – Bromptons! No idea why but they just get on my tits.
They annoy me because they're so hateful to ride.
That Whyte is minging.
Erm, it's a well-proportioned, plain HT that looks like every other Whyte HT from recent memory. What could you possibly think was minging about it? The wheels should be 29in though.
All the uk full suss bikes that can’t fit a full size water bottle, or worse still put it under the down tube to get covered in crap.
Apart from Oranges, because they are Oranges. And who'd want to spoil their graceful, elegant lines with a water bottle anyway?
I’ve just moved house this year and got a nice big new garage, my car fits in really well but what I’m struggling with is where to fit the MASSIVE 29″ wheeled, long wheel base, wide barred trail bike.
As above, get the car back outside where it belongs.
😉