If you were in charge, what “standard” bike industry “standards” would you keep and which would you ditch

Hate boost ? Pine of the old inch and eighth threaded steerer?

Personally I’d be happy if they made a choice between metric and imperial, and stuck to it….

The 130mm dropouts, symmetrical flanges and radial brake caliper on the back of the Hope HB.160 should be on every MTB.

threaded bottom bracket.

I’ve no particular emotional fondness for BSA or T47 so either would be fine.

Hubs should be standard.

Boost is an absolute piss take.

100 x 15mm front

142 x 12mm rear.

Done

27.5″ wheels/tyres… Just say no!

Various tweaks on the tapered front headtube dimensions… Why?

Valve types… Presta ftw \o/

Why did they change from Rear Disc Spaced front fat hubs to Front Disc Spaced? 😆

35mm stem clamps… Really needed?

Accessory clamp diameter difference between mtb and road bars… WTH?

Not fussed.

To take the hub example above, it wouldn’t accommodate 4″+ tyres.

I don’t know why cyclists (MTBers) in particular are so fussed about this. Rigid adherence to standards stifles innovation. We really can’t expect one standard to suit all use cases. No one cares that every car has a different type of windscreen wiper or that there are multiple wheel sizes or that you can’t take a gearbox off one car and just fit it to any other.

Why can’t all seat posts be 31.6. Do we really need 30.9 as well. And nobody other than Liteville uses the oversize one any more do they? So keep 27.2 for road and adopt 31.9 for MTB. End of.

And all BBs should be threaded BSA.

Threaded BBs.

One of the current headtube dimensions, I don’t really care which.

31.6mm seat tubes.

31.8mm bar clamps.

And let’s just stick with boost now we’ve got it, eh?

Threaded BBs. 44/56 head tubes. 34.9mm seat tubes for bikes with dropper posts.

I don’t know why cyclists (MTBers) in particular are so fussed about this. Rigid adherence to standards stifles innovation.

I get what you mean Scotroutes, I just think there’s genuine innovation and then anticompetitive wasteful tinkering.

The current case of the apple iphone charge is a good one. Apple can make a case why its better from a pure electronic engineering point of view. Does it offer any advantage or utility to the end user? No. But it does help drive a market for apple in OEM accessories and help lock people into that ecosystem. Yes. Not to mention the downsides for sustainability, waste.

A lot of bike innovations don’t actually solve any end user problems. They create waste and drive sales of slightly different but the same parts. It also erects barriers to entry for smaller outfits in retail and manufacturering.

For me, threaded BBs, hub (142×12 11×15), freehun, bars, steerers, headset, seat post diamters would benefit from some standards. 27.5 can GTF as well.

Through Axle thread pitch and, depth, seating. What a **** nightmare. 12*142 should not need an Turing Machine to figure out the right combination. It’s impossible for a bike shop to stock all of the various combinations.

Hub Standards:

142*12 and 12*100 for road/cx/gravel.
148*12 and 110*15 for MTN

Both of these standards allow for 7-12s cassettes with various freehubs.

Through axles make sense and it leads to less variability in brake spacing/touching over QR.

Done any “gains” from other “standards” are minute and should not be included in mainstream bikes.

The current case of the apple iphone charge is a good one. Apple can make a case why its better from a pure electronic engineering point of view. Does it offer any advantage or utility to the end user? No. But it does help drive a market for apple in OEM accessories and help lock people into that ecosystem. Yes. Not to mention the downsides for sustainability, waste.

That’s a bad example actually. The lightning connector does have a number of end user advantages over USB C as the propensity for dust/dirt to erode the connectors and block the port is fa less. It also has a disadvantage in that i’s a live cable with visible and touchable contacts, so you do get small electric shocks from it.

I think the boost ship has sailed, and for lightweight rims on 29ers 135/142 just doesn’t give you enough spoke tension. So I’d happily see road bikes adopt it or an offset 135/142. For the front hub it never made any sense though. They could have achieved exactly the same with 5mm thicker dropouts.

Axles, why are they all different? just pick a standard overall length, thread length and pitch. If someone want’s to make a steel frame with thin dropouts, just supply it with a couple of washers.

Headtubes should have been 44mm for headset cups, or integrated, nothing else makes enough sense to justify a different standard.

Threaded BB’s. I’ve got a working BB30, which kinda made sense for lightweight aluminum frames, which is probably why cannondale did it, but for carbon when you’re not restricted by each tube having to be the same size or smaller than the ones it’s welded to why?

Seatubes should be redesigned for dropper posts. Just come up with a way of integrating the dropper that means you don’t need a structural seatube and seatpost lower.

12×142 rear should always have a captive nut in the frame not a removable serrated thing not that I dropped mine in the weeds honest.
All frames should have bosses available for mudguards and/or racks. You don’t have to use them.
All BBs threaded.
Every derailleur should have a split cable adjuster fitted and a means of getting the cable off without cutting the crimp off.
Nothing should be Torex.
Headsets just get it sorted.

No one cares that every car has a different type of windscreen wiper or that there are multiple wheel sizes or that you can’t take a gearbox off one car and just fit it to any other

Good point and tend to agree although that is probably because most people don’t change car wheels (or any other components) that often but if they did it would be much better if all wheels were same bolt pattern, number of bolts and offset wouldn’t it?

That’s a bad example actually. The lightning connector does have a number of end user advantages over USB C

If the comparison in question is Lightning vs USB-C then the main reason it’s a bad example is because Lightning appeared two years before USB-C did. You can hardly blame Apple for not using something that didn’t exist.

Can the bike industry please pick a hanger design and a brake pad shape please

The current case of the apple iphone charge is a good one. Apple can make a case why its better from a pure electronic engineering point of view. Does it offer any advantage or utility to the end user?

I don’t understand the fuss about Apples connector. They’re both USB, the only potential ‘waste’ is the cable, not the charger, and they have a finite life anyway. USB-C on both my laptop and as charger for headphones, while infinitely better than previous USB connectors (how many tries has it needed to get this right – ffs – I have far fewer redundant Apple cables around than I do earlier versions of USB), still seems to have more trouble making a reliable connection than Lightning

Torx bolts

Great in theory, but in practice I find them harder to ‘read’ the right size than Hex and seem no less likely to actually round off. The unholy mix of Torx and Hex used by some manufacturers is worst of all.

radial brake caliper on the back of the Hope HB.160 should be on every MTB.

this seemed really smart but haven’t hope dropped it from the next version of the bike?

-Boost (110/148), superboost and other permutations can die a death
-34.9 post, gives more space for the dropper guts
-Post mount is fairly sorted
-Thread BB or pressfit, but one of each please, it isn’t necessary for the myriad of others.
-Disc sizes, 220 203 180 160 140

-Headsets should be standard sized bearings top and bottom, then either internal or external cups, nothing else.

If standards were standards we’d still be on 1″ quill stems. What folk are asking for/suggesting is to freeze development at some “golden age” that confirms to their particular ideal.

None of them. Standards are for testing and process or auditing not limitation of engineering and design.

The companies that get a bad result, fail to support them or use if for inbuilt obsolescence? Don’t buy from them in future.

Threaded BB
20mm front axle
142×12 rear
31.8 bars
31.6 seatpost with a 34.9 clamp
And let’s pick one **** headtube standard and be done with it

What folk are asking for/suggesting is to freeze development at some “golden age” that confirms to their particular ideal.

Exactly. The bike industry has just made a poor job of all this in the last few years from a customer’s pov so no way would we want to freeze it on what’s around right now.

scotroutes

Member
If standards were standards we’d still be on 1″ quill stems. What folk are asking for/suggesting is to freeze development at some “golden age” that confirms to their particular ideal.

I don’t think people have an issue with genuine progress – but 15mm was a step backwards from 20mm, as shown by torque caps and other halfway house attempts to improve stiffness since. All the assorted pressfit standards are backward steps from threadded BBs, which benefit manufacturing and production lines, not riders. Boost is largely pointless, mainly benefits EBikes and plus bikes only, we could have managed fine without those theoretical benefits.

IF there’s real progress that justifies a change, fair enough.

Boost is largely pointless, mainly benefits EBikes and plus bikes only, we could have managed fine without those theoretical benefits.

So you want at least two “standards” for rear hubs? Why not just use Boost for everything?

Boost can absolutely GTF. Mainly because it’s making me pigeon toed when I walk.

Cobblers

As in – maybe see a cobbler to get corrective footwear.

ill go with no standards. Im happy that things are changing. Yes some of it isnt great (press fit bb’s) but some of it is.

keep on going bike industry

Most tweaks have some sort of benefit.

The multitude of nearly identical headset bearing sizes can go bum themselves sideways with a 12 foot barge pole though.

Sod it

Bring back 12×150 and 83mm bb for proper mud clearance
I’d personally like to see larger stantioned forks ie a newer (27.5+29) version of the rockshox totem air with its 40mm legs and 20mm axles
I’d also like to see something like a larger/stronger version of the tapered system to accommodate the bigger forks.. Something like 1 1/8th top tapered out to 2″ at the csu end.

Tyres.

Just one standard tread. It would put an end to all the what tyre threads…

If standards were standards we’d still be on 1″ quill stems. What folk are asking for/suggesting is to freeze development at some “golden age” that confirms to their particular ideal.

Exactly. Where do we freeze development? Rod brakes with leather blocks on steel rims? Wicker baskets for bikepacking? Dandy horses with no pedals?

That said, the current array of slightly different hub, BB, headset and bar clamp standards is annoyingly complicated. Alas, that’s the price of progress and only some ‘standards’ will prevail.

Tyres.

Just one standard tread. It would put an end to all the what tyre threads…

What tyre (compound)?

The last ten years have been a piss-take.

Tapered steerers, not one but four new axle standards, a multitude of BB standards and a collective shrugging of shoulders from the industry when challenged by angry customers. There are certain brands that I actively avoid because they’ve foisted new and expensive standards upon us with very little in the way of evidence to support claims of improvement. Despite many requests, neither Fox nor SRAM can explain why a tapered steerer is better than the existing 1.5″ headtube standard, or why all forks cannot simply be 110mm x 20mm, why a BB cannot simply be 83mm wide with a threaded interface and why we have a grand total of four different rear axle widths that vary by as little as 2mm.

If genuine progress does indeed mean a new standard, then it would be good to see some actual supporting data instead of marketing hyperbole. Progress is a good thing, merely forcing obsolescence onto a marketplace and ratcheting up prices isn’t.

What folk are asking for/suggesting is to freeze development at some “golden age” that confirms to their particular ideal.

That’s one interpretation of the OP, but I was taking it as picking out the best of the current plethora of “standards”.

The only one that gets me is up there^

Discs are 140 160 180 200 220mm….NOT QUITE!!!! Where did 203 come from????

A standard ability to understand what is on your bike should be mandatory so you don’t get people complaining about why the thing they just bought over the internet doesn’t fit.

What folk are asking for/suggesting is to freeze development at some “golden age” that confirms to their particular ideal.

Exactly. The bike industry has just made a poor job of all this in the last few years from a customer’s pov so no way would we want to freeze it on what’s around right now.

Agreed, I like everyone else get cheesed off when my ‘perfect’ bike is slightly less perfect because something new has come along an made it ‘obsolete’ over-night and anyway, the new thing is worse, or maybe just the same, bloody money grabbing bastards.

Sadly though, it’s not true, it’s easy to think that “Yeah, new bikes are better, but they could still be better without all those new stupid standards”, well actually some riders think perfection was discovered at some arbitrary point in history which aligns with the year their favourite bike was made, but it’s not true.

The problem isn’t the new standards, or the bike makers, or even the evil ‘Marketing Dept’ it’s the Americans, or rather the fact that the North American market is so huge and the Industry largely based there.

Boost, Super Boost, Metric Shock, DUB, Eagle etc etc etc. These are all marketing terms designed to excite the Bold, Brash American market, big on impact, low on detail it’s like music to their ears.

We don’t like stuff like that, we don’t generally trust anything told to use by sales or marketing and a flash graphic / name is only going to have us searching through the small print to work out exactly what it means and finding, as usual with these sorts of things, the marketing is making a bigger deal of stuff that it really deserves which only goes to prove it’s all nonsense.

I think that’s why we’ve adapted to new frame geometry so gladly whilst bemoaning other stuff, it’s harder to bullshit, you get a graph with some angles and lengths and whilst few of us really understand stuff like that, we trust it ‘because engineering’.

I’ve been buying MTBs for 15 years now, not long compared to a lot of people, but still long enough. I’ve had daft stuff like ISIS BBs, 1.5″ Headtubes, 150mm rear hubs and 35mm bars, but even with those Standardised cul de sacs I’ve never been left with a broken bike that I cannot find parts for.

lister

The only one that gets me is up there^

Discs are 140 160 180 200 220mm….NOT QUITE!!!! Where did 203 come from????

203mm is 8″ – and there are very few 200mm discs out there, 203 is the norm.

I can understand the need for different diameter brake discs, not all of us are 65Kg and not all of us ride XC bikes. The mounting interface for the discs is one of two standards – either six bolt or centre lock. To Shimano’s credit, their preferred brake disc interface isn’t foisted upon us, they make their discs and hubs in both of the standards, as it should be.