collective shrugging of shoulders from the industry when challenged by angry customers.

?

The Industry = dozens of competing companies, or at least the few most influential and competitive? I’m frustrated by it but it’s less a shrug from anyone and more about acceptance that it happens. No hope of standardising anything, there’s no reason to. Why accept a loss of competitive advantage in a fast moving sports-fashion industry? As long as there’s competition and riders think that new=better we’ll have a lack of compatibility, change + obsolescence.

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.

It’s not so much the progress that anyone objects to, it’s the obsolescence of perfectly good (expensive) kit for debatable benefits.

Boost – could have done that with offset. But it’s here now and offset would only really have helped those of us re-using hubs. As for the front hub, fox obsolesced the 110x20mm standard, that was actually lighter than 100×15 because you need much thinner walls.

Giant “overdrive” headtubes, no one wants a 1.1/4 stem/headset interface. If it has any advantage at all it’s incredibly small, so why bother making kit that won’t fit anything else or be upgradeable without replacing multiple parts (headset, stem and fork)?

Stuff like brake pad shapes, or shock lengths are neither hear nor there, worst case your choice ends up a bit limited or you have to phone up a tuner/shop and ask for something a little bit custom.

No hope of standardising anything, there’s no reason to. Why accept a loss of competitive advantage in a fast moving sports-fashion industry?

While this is a useful inside perspective, I think some brands have moved towards making things more user-friendly with threaded BB shells, external cable routing and stuff that makes like easier for the home mechanic/privateer racer.

And I think some of them earn brand loyalty as a result of that. But perhaps not enough to make an overwhelming business case for such things.

Anyway, does external cable routing count as a standard? Would it be possible to make internal routing illegal, apart from for droppers?

Just stop using the term ‘standard’…..

Pedal axles are the last untouched country

It will be glorious.

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.

WTF difference does that make? why not 178mm for 7″ and 153mm for 6″

(I seem to remember Hope used to sell 165 and 185mm, and at some point pretty sure I had a 183mm disc as well)
Even the Americans have accepted metric measurements for shocks, lets just have all disc sizes metric. Also radial disc mounts to avoid the nonsense of some adaptors not working on some forks…

No standards.

Encourage innovation. The cycle industry has been stuck in a self-imposed rut for too long.

Pedal axles are the last untouched country

It will be glorious.

i’ve got no problem with lots of different options – as long as there is one place where you can look up a single name that defines what you have so you can buy an appropriate replacement.  So, if you can define the hub you need by a measurement of spacing and axle type then fine.  If you can define the freehub you need from something you can see externally without having to know that xxxx hub uses yyyyy freehub then I’m completely fine with that.  You get the idea

The word “standard” and the term “new standard” should both be standardised to mean a detail or technical specification that bears no similarity to any other available component designed to do the same job.

I think some brands have moved towards making things more user-friendly with threaded BB shells, external cable routing and stuff that makes like easier for the home mechanic/privateer racer.

And I think some of them earn brand loyalty as a result of that. But perhaps not enough to make an overwhelming business case for such things.

I can happily say I’ve never specced a PF BB. Evans mechanics like Pinnacle a bit more for that, so avoidance as marketing does work. Man shouting at cloud image aside, in reality customers do win in the end if we vote with our wallets, just has a 3-5 year cycle to take effect either way.

Anyway, does external cable routing count as a standard? Would it be possible to make internal routing illegal, apart from for droppers?

Please do if you can. It’s faff for fashion and holes in frames are just best avoided.

as long as there is one place where you can look up a single name that defines what you have so you can buy an appropriate replacement.

Yes. I know a very good, diligent guy who’s working through a big project like that right now. Quality of info from many companies isn’t up to standards (sorry).

20mm front axles. It was the first example of complete horseshit standardisation I came across when i got back into riding- 20mm maxles were lighter than QR15 as well as stiffer, and most front hubs that were convertible could do all 3 so there was no weight saving there either. But OEM buying power and a constant stream of lazy journalism helped 15mm to win out. (I remember a brilliant MBR grouptest that said “15mm is lighter” and had a picture under it of a 20mm and 15mm axle on scales… and the 20mm one was lighter. It’s not like it ever reduced the number of standards since not even Fox did a dh fork with 15mm (and in the same year that Rockshox finally gave up on 20mm, Fox put out a convertible 20/15mm 36 fork, which unsurprisingly was lighter and stiffer in 20mm mode)

Boost is obviously bollocks of course.

I’d say 31.8mm bars except I’m scared to draw attention to bars in case someone at Trek realises that they’ve not yet randomly changed the diameter of the outer part of the bars. 23.3mm PLUSBOOSTDOUBLEGOOD grips ftw!

simons_nicolai-uk

WTF difference does that make? why not 178mm for 7″ and 153mm for 6″

(I seem to remember Hope used to sell 165 and 185mm, and at some point pretty sure I had a 183mm disc as well)

Next to none, it’s 1.5mm radius, a washer more or less. Big Shimano rotors are 203mm, SRAM are 200. Hope recently added both 200 and 180 to the range, they still make 203, 183 and 160. Not many better examples of a lack of standardisation.

These corporate power struggles can be quite distasteful eh! My current bikes are SRAM free zones. Not that I think Shimano group brands are any better when they have the whip hand over the OEM market.

Hey and what’s wrong with quill stems? I love them. No spacers, can move bars to whatever height you like when you like.

Apart from being too skinny to stay pointed in a straight line, that is.

Hope recently added both 200 and 180 to the range, they still make 203, 183 and 160. Not many better examples of a lack of standardisation.

I think Hope have always been a follower on disc sizes and the nature of their manufacture means it’s easy for them to make a lot of sizes – you can get a Hope rotor to fit your existing brakes. They originally went with 165 and 185mm from memory but when the big guys went for 160/180 they altered their range.

There are some oddities – IIRC I bought a Hope 200mm disc and adaptor to fit the front of my Fox 36s and it didn’t work. Could have bodged with washers but exchanged for different adaptor and 203mm disc.

Still got some XT 170mm disc rotors in the spares box. Perfect middle ground size to reintroduce? 🙂

20mm front axle. 135 mm vertical dropout qr rear axle. 1 1/8 straight steerers. BSA threaded BBs. IS mount brakes. 26″ wheels whatever normal skinny bars are. Everything interchangeable

this is the correct standards. Every other one can get in the sea. The only MTB I have owned that was not this is my fatty

I miss IS brake mounts, taking the brake off n back on again without re-centering the caliper.
20mm axle is the correct size, just a shame they didn’t make it boost the first time, so now we have two versions of 15mm & 20mm.
And what was wrong with the pre existing 150mm rear standard instead of boost.
Threaded bb is king and should never disappear.
Pick a headtube and seattube standard and stick to it.
And I’d lock up the person responsible for press fit bottom brackets.

they’ve not yet randomly changed the diameter of the outer part of the bars

Smaller grips without having to resort to thinner grips? Sounds like an idea… someone must have already tried…

I’m with you on 20mm axles though.

Scotroutes for King of the World!

Don’t stifle progress – even if it takes the occasional wrong evolutionary dead end.

The wonderful thing about standards: there’s so many of them!

Yep, you could have 1,000 standards just to cover hub specifications. The problem is if you have picked the standard that nobody bothered following and you can only buy one hub and then only after hours of searching and it isn’t really a nice hub and it is overpriced.

I am lucky in that I only ride track bikes and they are stuck in the past. It makes it a lot easier to know that I can pick any track hub, any track crank/BB, any cog and they will all fit as axle size/width and BB are all the same as they were 40 years ago.
Only thing that has changed is headset but they are typically all 1 1/8 still.

Headset is actually okay as is, 3 common sizes with decent enough availability.
BB – BSA thread, width as necessary, Shimano mtb shells should be road compatible, single tool.
Hubs – 100/110mm conventional front, 135/142mm conventional and 150mm DH rear.
Brakes – post mount

I think some brands have moved towards making things more user-friendly with threaded BB shells, external cable routing and stuff that makes like easier for the home mechanic/privateer racer.

Moved… …towards??

I miss IS brake mounts, taking the brake off n back on again without re-centering the caliper.

Bit of a faff with spacers if you swap for a wheel with different alignment though.

On rotor sizes, original Hope sizing was 145, 165, 185, 205 and 225*. This was then rounded down (and I’m pretty sure 220 never happened) when the Mono series was introduced and then 183 and 203 introduced for cross compatibility (I think) when they adopted Post Mount. Fairs fair though, they stick by their kit and I think they will still make you a 4 or 5 bolt rotor if you ask for one.

*IIRC this was a special order to work with the original Fox 40 mounts and the adaptor, by the time the Mono came out I think they had adopted IS fixings)

None of them are really a “Standard”, more a dimensional thing that at least one manufacturer has, for the time being,  adopted due to some perceived performance or manufacturing benefit.

I dont know why the bike community has this feeling that everything should work with every bike though its most likely because thats how it was generally for many years. Before that is, the recent rapid evolution gave us the ripsnorting bikes we have today, which of course none of us wanted or enjoy……..

Pedal axles are the last untouched country

It will be glorious.

0.5″ chain pitch