[Closed] Shimano design mistakes?

It’s always bugged me that when Shimano things break, they’re basically junk. Other manufacturers of similar components seem better at building in at least some repairability.

Eh? SRAM?
Famed for repairability?

Hope is everyone's favourite example, but it's not really directly comparable is it, that repairability costs significantly more up front and they only really do brakes and hubs (don't much fancy their cranks).

I think shimano have stopped trying new ideas out on customers in the 15 years or so, everyone is mentioning stuff like rapid rise and dual control which were a fair old while ago now. As much as those things weren't hits, they did actually work, just not to the tastes of mist users at the time.

I get the feeling Shimano is created by engineers and they forget real world end user testing or focus groups to see if there is actually a customer base for what they're designing.

Thinking about it, have they become a follower? They seem very slow to keep up with trends but usually make the best products possible when they finally catch up. When was the last time they released a game changing product? Their 12 speed was copying SRAM but just refining it. Clutch mech is the most recent innovation I can think of.

I believe Sram was first with the clutch mech as were they first with the narrow/wide chainrings

Given how long Shimano have been going and how many different products they've brought to market I'm surprised that there aren't more "mistakes".

Shimano design, test, fix the problems then test some more, fix again then test again then release. Hence being seen as "slow".

I think the fact they've done so much to be able to pick a few examples out says a lot about how good Shimano actually are. Some daft uses of materials for daft weight savings in places but generally, imo, they're consistently among most capable and impressive Industrial design companies in the industry. I don't always agree with the design direction but I can see how the conservative approach and 'slow' pace is part of their success and character.

It’s always bugged me that when Shimano things break, they’re basically junk.

Brakes pretty much the only area where Hope can supply spares that Shimano can't? Shimano spare parts info lists and availability in most other areas is excellent. It's a headache to manage for distributors but Madison's Shimano spares are impressive and just look at a good retailer like SJS's Shimano spare parts list. I recently revived an old broken M952 mech to perfect mechanical order with a couple of low cost parts.Was able to get some spares to keep an old Ultegra hub set running a while back.

Rapid rise... I like that they tried it. I have a NOS XT set in a box, sort of waiting for the right bar shape. For a pure XC bike I quite like it and right now road and XC is meeting on gravel bikes. Maybe they weren't that far off in some ways.

Cup and cone hubs, I love them. Pick them every time over SB when I can. A real pleasure to work on, pro-active maintenance done at a time I choose and with finesse, rather than hitting things with a mallet once they've got wobbly and you're forced to do it. What I'd do for some older Dura Ace hubs now. I have Record hubs on one bike and they're just perfect. Feel free to disagree : )

Edit to add - Mistakes. Main one is cross-compatibility between road and MTB as a design driver, imho, though I understand why they don't. TBH I struggle to think of much that they do wrong/make mistakes on, only things I'm not keen on personally which is different.

I too have XTR dual controls
Probably over 10 years old
And i do really like them

StuE
Subscriber
E8000 ebike motors torque sensor issues and it not being serviceable

Amen to that. 3 months now I've been waiting for my motor to be warrantied.....

Brakes pretty much the only area where Hope can supply spares that Shimano can’t?

My experience with Hope brakes via Shimano is that it's just as well you can get Hope spares as you'll probably need them.

I've started to use my mountain bikes again after most of them not being used much (or in some cases, at all) in the last 8 or 9 years. In every case the Shimano brakes have worked fine, but in every case of the non-Shimano brakes (Magura, Avid and Hope) they haven't. So much so that nearly all the bikes are on Shimano brakes now.

My experience with Hope brakes via Shimano is that it’s just as well you can get Hope spares as you’ll probably need them.

+1

They just seemed to corrode so easily they needed endless maintenance, in the end I swapped them all out for Magura which were just much better made, never needed spares, other than pads, after that.

Really? My old MTB that I passed on to my nephew had Hope Minis. The bike's at least twelve years old and the brakes are fine. Had a phone call the other week about how to push the cylinders back to replace the pads, other than that they are fine.

Only problem with Shimano brakes is the micro leak that happens just around the time the warranty runs out. If/when it does then you might as well bin the brakes.

Here's the thing: once you get above 1% or so returns on any product (in reality probably an order of magnitude less) then you'd either do a recall or stop producing it. I.e. sell ten thousand brakes/anything and 1% represents 100 items, meaning you'd have someone spending significant parts of their time answering the phone/emails, receiving goods, fixing them or getting them fixed, posting them back, etc.

I-spec is my personal bugbear. They've had four or five attempts at it now, managing to make almost all of them incompatible with each other, and the shifters for the most part can't be converted either, or used with brakes from a different model year.

Meanwhile, for SRAM, if you want direct mount, just unbolt the clamp from the shifter.

Their high end cup and cone hubs are beautiful engineering, adjustable with 2 x 5mm allen keys and your fingers, no guess work, no trial and error.

Octalink bb's

They just seemed to corrode so easily they needed endless maintenance

Mine are from 2007 and have had a new set of seals in that time, and that was only a refresh, they hadn't leaked or anything. I hardly ever bleed them either, they just keep working. No corrosion evident when I changed the seals about 6 months ago.

Oh, I did snap a lever clamp through overtightening over the years - but CRC had a spare.

If I’m not mistaken, the non-compatibility of Tiagra 4600 components with other 11-speed Shimano drivetrain parts.

4600 is 10 speed.

I think you probably mean the compatibility of 4700 with other 10 speed parts, but I reckon it's a nice feature that 4700 uses the same shift ratio as Shimano road 11 - means there's a upgrade path that's a bit more gradual.

My Hope brakes are 15 years old. No corrosion, haven't been used for 8 years. I just rolled out the wife’s bike snd they're working perfectly. My XTR brakes lasted less than 6 months in identical circumstances (I've now scrapped 11 callipers) and my XTR wheels got water into the hubs and the races corroded whilst it was hanging on the wall. £800 worth of totally useless, non-serviceable, top drawer components. If a King hub did that (and they haven't in 15 years), I could buy a bearing, a hubshell, damn, almost anything in it, but on an XTR, the only thing I can buy are the bloody balls.

I will never buy another Shimano hub until they move to a better bearing system. I think one of the new XTR MS hubs actually has done this.

I loved rapid-rise, mainly for the reason of being able to quickly dump hard gears with frozen hands when my thumbs had given up the ghost and ready to cry.
Road brifter internals when you can't work out which bit isn't doing what it should to shift to the big ring.

There was some sense to Rapid Rise, juat an easy click for an easier gear.

How very dare you. RR were the best mechs and I miss them. Much more intuitive.

Agreed, Rapid Rise was ace.

XT bottom bracket adapter is total piece of sh*t. Fitted one tonight and was reminded of how poorly it works.

RE hubs,

but on an XTR, the only thing I can buy are the bloody balls.

You can buy axles, cones, etc also? The inner fixed cups are harder than the cones and bearings. If they corroded in storage they might have been have been quite worn already, surface worn down?

XT bottom bracket adapter is total piece of sh*t. Fitted one tonight and was reminded of how poorly it works.

Reminds me to get a proper-sized cup spanner. I'll put up with the adapter for now as the BBs themselves are a big improvement over the old HT2s, last a lot longer ime so far.

The silly barrel adjuster on R8000 rear mechs is ghastly.

Hope is everyone’s favourite example, but it’s not really directly comparable is it, that repairability costs significantly more up front and they only really do brakes and hubs

So....

-Rims
-handlebars
-stems
-grips
-seatclamps
-headsets
-chainrings
-cassettes
-jockey wheels
-pedals
-bottom brackets (of pretty much every type)
-brake mounts
-brake rotors
-hed doctor
-stem spacers
-their sht shifter
- you mentioned cranks already
-they used to do QRs
-oooh, they also do some chainguides and bash guards.

That's excluding their 2 full bikes they make, which also include axles.

Yep, just brakes and hubs then.

They just seemed to corrode so easily

Yeah but the year was 1999 and at the time everything else was still pish.

The corrosion pretty much stopped dead when the mono systems started.

So much so that I still have 2004 (stamped on the brakes) brakes in regular use....and they just had their first rebuild so yeah your right it's a good job they make all the parts as enevitably when a product lasts so long it will need serviced at some point.

Shimano brakes ime are lucky to last the warranty and then are junked due to poor design.

Road direct mount brakes?

I think they were inevitable as the post and is mount look a bit ugly on a road bike but there doesn't seem to be much love for them for people that bought into disc road frames early on. Mind you they will probably also have 15mm front axles and 135mm qr rear.

Hopefully the standards have settled down for a bit (naive thinking I'm sure) so bikes are not near worthless at 5 years old due to them having an outdated 'standard' in them.

Rapid-Rise was brilliant and should have been how all mechs worked - using the spring (mechanical) force (aid) to help move the chain to a larger sprocket is far better than relying on just finger force. You don't need the same force to move the chain to a smaller sprocket, so have the spring force working then?

Direct mount is a rim brake thing.

Flat mount is the road disc standard and I don't think there's much wrong with it.

anagallis_arvensis
Member

Octalink bb’s

First thought! Shimano took something that was not without flaws (square taper), but had been used reliably for donkey's years, and replaced it with something that just b*ggered more quickly.

As I understood it, the problem on square taper was standing on the pedals, one back, one forward, any looseness whatsoever in the crank would wear the taper, trashing the crank.
Octalink solved this by... having a narrower surface for the crank/ BB interface, and numerous splines to properly trash the crank when it went. I went through 2NDS Octalink cranks on my Kona before going back to square taper.

Fortunately they fairly quickly realised pinch bolts were a necessity, and HTII has worked well ever since.