Spurred on by TAFKASTR’s thread, which “improvements” to bikes are genuinely worthwhile, and which are just “different” – so we can all keep spending £££ upgrading, when manufacturers don’t have any genuinely new ideas that are worth buying?

My view: 31.8mm bars, 8 & 9 speed, 15mm, hollow chainrings on Dura Ace etc (FFS!), the numerous variations on the basic suspension concepts and no doubt many, many others.

I’d say the stand-out, genuine steps forward, worth the £££, are: indexing, hyperglide, suspension, spd, discs brakes, camelbaks, tubeless. (no doubt I’ll have missed a few!)

1 Disc Brakes, you can go a lot faster when you can stop
2 Pro Pedal/Pedal Platform – rescued the single pivot from the bin
3 10 Speed (and maybe 11) brought 1x gearing to the masses
4 Dropper posts (or uppy posts) smoothing the ride out allowing for more flow and less faffing
5 Longer travel, lightweight, strong all day bikes – the fact I can have a sub 30lb bike that has 140/160mm travel will ride up and down anything all day long, pedals well, sucks up the hits well has brought us to the world that is Endurom/AM riding.
6 The Chairlift that works without snow – best thing to happen to mountain biking

Good innovations off the top of my head: Quick release bits, LED lights.

Never used one, but predict a few will mention dropper posts on this.

Aheadset/Threadless headset. Can anyone imagine trying to keep a quill stem with a threaded headset adjusted on an MTB with 6+” of suspension?

Cartrige BBs. How long did adjustable BBs stay in adjustment? (I won’t mention ISIS, BB30, or the numerous pressfit varieties though… 🙄 )

Cartrige BBs

Shimanos square taper bbs, since then they have all been a backwards step

Very few a first timers nowadays eg Aheads were about pre war.
Nowadays everything is about refinement or modifying. That’s doesn’t include, of course, “progress” purely for commercial reasons ie to keep so called ahead of the rivals.
Pretty well everything is subjective. An extreme example might be suspension. It modifies how you ride not changes. we still went down hill before. Interesting to find something totally new.

Dropper posts, wide bars, usable 1×10 set ups, clutch mechs – all great innovations from the past few years
And of course the lightweight/ strong 150mm everyday bike.
The ‘innovation’ no rider ever asked for – 27.5 wheels.

Strava 😉

From riding a heavy old rigid gate of a Scott with canti brakes 20 odd years ago, to a carbon framed, sub 30lb, 6″ travel £4k bike now – the single thing that has transformed my riding enjoyment the most….

Dropper post – wouldn’t be without one.

Been riding my old Lava Dome (with V brakes) recently alongside my mates on their 6″ bikes and the dropper was the thing I missed the most.

Aerobars on TT bikes

Quick links and mini tools that work.
What I really miss though is the wtb greaseguard stuff. That really helped keep the bike in shape with the minimum of hassle

STI shifters once they became reliable

Led lights

Powerful front lights made night riding possible.

Arse butter

29er and the surly 29+ krampus format… This is something special, I reckon you will see a lot more of these oversized tyred bikes next year, being used really effectively in DH situations.

Splash maps are brand new and excellent. Maps have been around for years, fabric too. These are tough and so easy to stow away, just scrunch them up and stuff them in a pocket.

Kinky linky

Isg05 tabs.
Big bikes which are comfy all day – coverts/ mega etc
2.4 rubber queens
X9/XO cranks with the removable spider

Shimano MW80s. Winter boots that actually keep you warm and dry. Been waiting almost 30 years for those

Monocoque carbon frames. Metal tube frames have almost reached the end of their evolutionary life whereas carbon fibre is still getting better. I have a 2006 Roubaix and a 2013 Roubaix and the improvement in the feel, stiffness and handling is remarkable – the 2006 is a collection of carbon tubes whereas by 2013 they’ve really got the stresses and the layup sorted.

Decent reliable GPS. Load route and follow. No more nav faff.

Most of these things are just personnel preference and not game changers

Dropper posts (used by the minority), OS bars, heavier and in some situations inferior, numebr of gears, travel lengths blah blah blah are just evolutionary changes

Real game changers

Tubeless, lighter, lower pressures, more grip no more flats what’s not to like

Wheel size, whatever your preference there is now a choice which is only a good thing

Disc brakes, rim brakes sucked in the wet and mud

Suspension, Not a fan myself these days but has transformed the types of riding you can do so great to have a choice

I like matsccm’s point about suspension. I went back to rigid over the winter to save my stanchions wearing out and I’m still riding it now, in the middle of summer. Don’t really want to start a whole new debate (!) but I’m having just as much fun without shelling out the insane amounts of money suspension costs these days…

One more thing! While I’m on my soapbox, has anybody noticed any difference with tapered headsets? Or are they there to annoy us?

Certainly clipless pedals. Possibly disk brakes.
GPS is an amazing invention.

Yes it means I can fit a tapered fork into a tapered headtube 🙂

Just a reminder how far we have come

For me, The advent of cheap LED lights which has brought night riding to a lot of people that would never of ridden with 15w Electrons or afford a Hope HID.

Nick

Seeing that retro bike photo made me think of how much bike geometry has evolved. Think there is a much better understanding now of what works for various disciplines. Sure someone will be along to point out the genuine innovative steps in this evolution.

that retro bike photo made me think of how much bike geometry has evolved.

Agreed although that old stumpy does appear to have a modern slack head hangle – Don’t fancy the standover height though!

Rohloff bottom brackets…. Oh – hang on a few years…

Shimanos square taper bbs, since then they have all been a backwards step

Square taper wasn’t great. Creaked and kept coming loose.

Did someone mention SPDs yet?

I feel like anything that already exists that has simply changed sizes is fashion (31.8mm and now 35mm bars, wheel sizes, headtube sizes after 1 1/8″, BB shell sizes etc.) with the exception of s’pension travel and bar width.

Genuine innovations in the last few years I reckon are few and far between-

Full suspension XC race bikes that’re good
6″ full suspension bikes you can ride up a hill
Shimano Dyna Sis (more for the improved shifting than the 10 gears)

Everything else (carbon used for the sake of it, propedal, clutch mechs, Uppy/downy seatposts) is just fluff- nice, but not essential or life changing.

Full suspension XC race bikes that’re good

That’s evolution not innovation.

Big modern bike is broken at the moment so been back on my 10 year old enduro
It’s less travel and a good few lb heavier.
So just evolution between the two

But genuine game changer tubless

Lock On Grips. simple, brilliant and so far in this thread totally absent!

for those that remember the early 90’s mtb, it was a right of passage to pull up on the bars on a wet ride and lose a grip from the bars.

I discovered them in 1998 in a very wet Morzine after one too many crashes from grips sliding off my bars.

I have never gone back to slip on grips. never will.

after that, Hydraulic Disc brakes, why its taking so long for other bikes (namely road)to adopt them is beyond me.

5 Longer travel, lightweight, strong all day bikes – the fact I can have a sub 30lb bike that has 140/160mm travel will ride up and down anything all day long, pedals well, sucks up the hits well has brought us to the world that is Endurom/AM riding.

^ This + lots.
It’s the whole package of parts and frame design which gives us bikes which are bloody excellent.

Seeing that retro bike photo made me think of how much bike geometry has evolved. Think there is a much better understanding now of what works for various disciplines. Sure someone will be along to point out the genuine innovative steps in this evolution.

Theres a degree of chicken and egg. If we’re talking about droppers, and suspension, and disks, and platform shocks and wide bar – we’re describing trail centre bikes. Trail centres weren’t about when that bike was built, and the centres and the bikes to ride them have developed hand in hand over the years.

When those bikes were built people went out with a map and might carry their bike as often as ride it. They wouldn’t have found any berms to rail while they were out there.

UST.
(An innovation that seems to have been dropped with 29ers in favour of the inferior tubeless ready version)

Disc brakes …

I can remember careering down Lakeland hills in Novemeber, hitting the bumpy bit, appraoching the road to Elterwater and just hoping that a car wasn’t coming around the corner … cos theer was no way I was ever going to stop.

Even with my Onza Mega Bastard cantilevers with arms the size of a small child. Brake blocks were awful in mud, rain and grit …

Front suspension

The most is fad / evolution

Marketing, the idea you need lots of bikes one for dh, one for trail centre, a cross bike, a single speed etc.

for those that remember the early 90’s mtb, it was a right of passage to pull up on the bars on a wet ride and lose a grip from the bars.

Us motorcyclists solved that problem years before the 90s. Glue. And for racers, lock wire. Lock on grips are the most utterly pointless weight adding innovation I can think of. Apart from mudguards.

If we’re talking about droppers, and suspension, and disks, and platform shocks and wide bar – we’re describing trail centre bikes.

Nope, disagree.

When those bikes were built people went out with a map and might carry their bike as often as ride it.

Again no. I was riding in the early and mid 90s, and the hike-a-bike folk pre-dated even that. I was tearing around my local woods which were chock full of great natural trails, and periodically heading out in to the mountains and doing long rocky technical descents there. I just did them a lot slower than I do today.

lock on grips are brilliant, yes you can use glue and wires and mongoose sweat but it’s faff, it takes time and it fails, locks on’s work all the time and don’t discriminate against the newcomer or technically incompetent.

Not a very long list so far. Though there must be loads of ground breaking innovations out there in suspension design alone if the number of patents is anything to go by 😉

Call me a luddite..

to

Not convinced that much really needed to change, looking at the contact points relative to axles and basic geometry. Revision of road-derived parts to take extended off-road use was needed, but so many innovations have been more evolution than innovation and few are really essential. ‘things that make us faster’ would be a longer list. Things that are innovative and allow ‘better’ off-road riding is a trickier one.

Innovation imo has been tubeless tyres, discs and indexed gears. The move to bigger rims and tyres is welcome and I hope it gains some momentum, I think Keith Bontrager is a design legend but those re-rolled road rims were a low point, we got fixated on weight and went down an evolutionary dead-end for MTBs around that time. Suspension is a good option to have, that was a major innovation, Horst Leitner, Bob Girvin and John Whyte deserves a lot of credit for that.
Bike-packing luggage has been the biggest revolution in riding (in terms of scope and possibilities) in the last 10 years for me though.