punctures are bread and butter for many bike shops. quick jobs, great margin and opportunity to retail some tires to the customer

a term often heard about puncture repairs in bike shops is “idiot tax”, from jaded staff who consider you shouldn’t ride a bicycle if you can’t even fix a punctured tire?

Shimano have a much bigger share of the OE market in terms of volume and value

SRAM themselves reckon they have 15% of the component market (this also includes aftermarket)

Recent figures for yearly turnover at SRAM were around $600 million. recent figures for Shimano turnover was $2.8 billion.

mountain bikes where you see more SRAM components are a small market compared to utility, road and hybrid bikes where Shimano is dominant; major manufacturers like Giant and Specialized have stopped fitting SRAM to their road bikes.

Shimano is also expanding into the rapidly growing electric bike market

@tall_martin

Thomson designed their seatpost with a “bending fuse” and considering its one of the strongest seatposts on the market, sounds like it did its job as designed rather than snapping off and puncturing your rectum!

I snapped a Race Face Diablous seatpost on my freeride bike after a very heavy landing in a quarry that also snapped the saddle, and had no qualms replacing it with a thomson

@Martinxyz

Not really. Going by concept stores about to crop up fuelled by a certain distributor of Shimano.. it’s looking the complete opposite from where we are.

if Madison are opening concept/brand stores it will be interesting to see if they can actually make them profitable? And what would stop the big on-line retailers from selling grey Shimano goods to UK consumers at lower prices?

I’ve worked in a number of concept/brand stores and from discussions with other stores in the UK, the majority just break even, rather than make profit.

For retailers who operate a concept/brand stores and also have other multi-brand stores, they often find the multi-brand stores are more successful, offering consumers real choice and having other options when single brands have stock shortages.

The concept and brand stores are franchises with the operator taking the financial risk, often the brand invests in the store fit out using marketing money from the overseas parent company but is not responsible for operating costs or losses.

The “brands” love these concept stores as they are a great showcase for the product range with staff trained specifically by that brand, but many consumers actually want choice, and by focusing on a single brand you can potentially turn off 80% of customers.

Consider that the new owner of S+R / Cycle Surgery took a good look at the figures for the Specialized Concept Store in Covent Garden, tore up the contract with SBC UK and turned it into a “Cycle Surgery” stocking predominantly Specialized but also a number of other high end road bike brands

That store was considered to be the most successful Concept store in the UK in terms of S-Works sales (holding the global sales record for S-Works Maclaren Venge bikes) but that does not mean it was a viable proposition for the actual operator rather than for the “brand”.

@mikewsmith

the problem with the factories is they just don’t care as long as their factory is busy pumping out branded goods and getting paid.

The figures I have seen for Shimano is that only 5% of their bicycle component manufacturing is official aftermarket

The bulk of their output is sold to OE customers and this does not affect their turnover whether those OE goods are being bolted onto bicycles in assembly plants or finding their way into the aftermarket via clearance “agents” operating in Asia or Europe.

One company I worked for had contact with a sales agent in Amsterdam who could obtain shipping containers of high end Shimano components as long as a bank transfer minimum of £45,000 was involved. This company was cash flush and could do this several times a year and then offer discounted parts whilst maintaining a useful margin.

As anyone who works in the bike trade knows, grey imports and OE stock leaked into the after market has caused havoc for retailers still buying stock from official distributors. The distributors probably have little power over this situation, apart from ending their relationship with the brand.

The easiest solution for retailers is to stop buying this stock, and concentrate on selling bicycles and branded goods from companies who don’t support discounters, and increase workshop and bike fitting operations which is something the internet has yet failed to offer customers!

Interesting comments have been made by some in the trade that within the next year it may be rare to see Shimano components stocked in a bike shop, apart from cheap workshop service parts.

The rise of the smartphone and comparison tools have meant that even casual consumers are commonly shopping on price; as with my previous example of the RS81 Shimano wheels I bought last week, £80 cheaper from Wiggle than through our trade supplier means its completely pointless to hold these in stock as we could not recover even our cost price if forced to price match to clear the goods.

@jameso

not evans, but the “other” well known chain retailer 😉

it was felt by many workshop people in the London bike trade that it was a real shame when Evans stopped doing Cytech in house at LCW / Bermondsey once Jules left.

it was good for Evans and good for the bike industry in general, providing quality training and certification for the mechanic work force.

Its debatable whether its worth individuals paying for their own Cytech bearing in mind the limited earning potential for mechanics, and the relatively high cost of undertaking Cytech or C&G on your own cost.

something else I should add.

a good friend on mine is quite senior at a well known chain retailer, and responsible for bike fitting across the entire company

he recently commented that chain stores just don’t care about having good mechanics any more, they will get away with paying as little as possible to retain staff.

the new “thing” in stores is the bike fitter, which he said has surpassed the bicycle mechanic as the latest money spinner for cycle shops, and since good bike fitters are in short supply, wages are higher.

Now my friend is not an idiot by any means, and completely understands the value of good mechanics, but was commenting on the internal thinking in the company. You’d also be shocked by how many mechanics, although time served, have no formal mechanic qualifications.

Since Evans stopped putting workshop staff through Cytech a few years back, Cytech mechanics in London are becoming more of a rarity.

I’d strongly suggest mechanics get trained in bike fitting if possible, I certainly did and have 100+ bike fits to my name, which really helps amp up the wages when going for a new job and the employer finds out you can custom build bikes and then fit the customer to that bike

it adds a huge value to workshop staff during the quieter Winter months; however based on my experiences of having worked with and employed many mechanics over the years, not all mechanics are good “people-people” as many are excellent “thing-people” which explains their affinity for the spannering

I’ve worked as a mechanic and workshop manager for a number of independent shops (Freeborn, Cyclopedia, Sigma Sport, Giant Docklands) and chain retailers (Evans Cycles, Cycle Surgery) in the South-East, specifically in Surrey and London.

I’ve seen the shops really struggle with attracting good workshop staff (and sales staff), and then struggle even harder to retain them. The constant staff churn does no business any favours. But people cannot afford to live on unsustainable incomes.

At chain retailers they will pay the minimum that they can get away with; however in a well managed and busy store you can take home an additional £100-200 a month in bonus, based on bike building and service performance.

At Evans there used to be a strict hierarchy of bike builders on minimum wage, mechanics on a little more and the workshop manager around £16-17K.

Bear in mind, this could be running the workshop in a store turning over £2-3 million PA with responsibility for 2-3 bike builders and 2 mechanics, shows you how little they want to pay!

Cycle Surgery was no better in terms of pay, and now they employ even supervisor roles on zero hour contracts.

Independents vary massively depending on their setup and turnover.

High end road retailers like Sigma pay above the norm because they need the best workshop staff, even in Winter we had huge amounts of high end work going through the workshop including many custom builds.

A good mechanic could earn 18-20K depending on experience. As workshop manager my salary could top out around £30K with performance bonus. However, 10-12 hour days were not uncommon.

In my current role I earn mid £20’s, my mechanic £16K. He can’t afford to live in London on this salary and is moving to Berlin in 3 weeks.

It won’t be easy to find a replacement as £16K in London is just not sustainable. The business cannot afford to pay more as sales are slack as more and more customers shop on-line.

I certainly do..I bought a pair of Shimano RS81 road bike wheels last week from Wiggle. It was £80 cheaper than buying them through our store by using the trade account with Madison.

Makes you wonder really?

yes, last two bikes were bought “blind” with no test

Specialized Stumpjumper 29’er hardtail

and

Cannondale Super Six Evo road bike

read really great reviews on both bikes, and from looking at the geometry and knowing my bike fit, I knew they would both work out well.

With the 29’er I really wanted to see what all the fuss was about.

Very surprised with both bikes, in a good way.

all the Giant FS mountain bikes we sell come with tubeless valves, tubeless tape and all the manuals for the bike plus suspension, plus any additional cable guide spares (if the bike is setup 1 x 11 it will have guides for 2 x 11, etc.)

we tend to bag all these items and then seal the bag along with the bike frame number / stock number so its specific to each bike we sell.

when I worked for Evans, there wasn’t any mechanism to store these items, so they were often lost, as bikes would be moved between multiple stores before being sold. the manual would often be given from a huge pile in the corner of the workshop, if we could find a manual for that specific bike brand!

my 2015 Defy advanced pro came with Giant 25c tires and i fitted a variety of tires including:

Conti gator 28c
S-Works Turbo 26c
Conti 4 seasons 25c
Vittoria Open Pave 27c
Conti GP4000 in 28c

The bike has good clearance in the rear, but the fork has restricted clearance for anything bigger.

But, it depends on the actual tire as the 27c Vittoria came up small and the Gator 28c where more like a 26/27

whilst the GP4000 in 28c actually measured at 31.2mm wide when inflated on the Giant disc wheels and just cleared the underside of the crown, certainly no room for mudguards.

Your bike will suffer more corrosion from being ridden on winter roads than a quick bath with fairy liquid during cleaning, especially as you knock off the detergent during the rinse.

I’ve never found Muc-Off (a.ka. Truck Wash) to be very effective at cleaning, but with repeated use it certainly changed the black colour of some anodized components on my mountain bikes, and turned them a coppery colour!

I recently spoke to an industrial chemist who has worked for some of the largest chemical companies, he’s recently retired and is now a consultant for an up and coming new UK lube company that has been getting rave reviews for their products.

He was asked to come up with the “perfect” bike washing product, and after much experimentation created something that was essentially dish washing detergent 😉

heard good things about these from actual users, but never tried any myself, only a quick spin on Rotor rings and of course you have to adjust the pedalling style over time so they just felt weird..

540/550 die really quick with regular use, even with timely maintenance, the bearing assembly always “flog out” and go sloppy / rough and start clicking

Ultegra pedals can be picked up cheap (got cycle surgery in London to price match CRC £68?) and are much tougher in the long term, and have a much more solid feel when clicking in and out

always find vehicles give me a very wide berth as I ride this around our area!

@nuttysquirrel

I can’t get Stan’s cheap (I work in bike trade) because we don’t deal with their distributor, and can get other “sealants” at trade price from existing distributors.

But still happy to buy Stan’s from other shops as a regular paying customer 😉

Stan’s for the win. Been using it for years. no issues at all.

have tried other “sealants” and not been impressed.

I looked into this after having a pedestrian walk out in front of me whilst riding through Kings Cross in January this year. Pedestrian was distracted, not looking for traffic and stepped straight off the pavement in front of my wheel.

Thankfully I was only going about 20 km/h and managed to react by swerving very hard, ended upside in the road with a broken bike, ripped clothing and cuts / bruises. The pedestrian saw what they had done and ran away through crowd, despite passers by trying to stop them to hold them account whilst the Police / ambulance were called.

Was told afterwards when I looked into the legal situation there have been few, if any successful legal actions against pedestrians causing accidents to cyclists.

£1000 in bike / clothing damage and hobbling round for a week, still have some nice scars to show.

After the accident I am even more careful in pedestrian-heavy areas, too many pedestrians judge traffic movement with their “ears” and don’t look before stepping out, especially with the rise of smart phones which cause people to be completely distracted from reality.

regarding “right of way” and “priority” these seem to be terms that many confuse.

What I have read (following my accident): pedestrians, cyclists and equestrians have equal “right of way” to use the public highway.

Motorists have no “right of way” but are granted an “exemption” to use the highway by the driver licensing scheme. This is why a license can be withdrawn, leaving the driver with no legal use of the highway.

“Priority” is basically a case of who should give way to whom, at junctions and crossings. What many confuse as “right of way” i.e. “it’s my right of way”, when it should be “it’s my priority”. A common one for cyclists is oncoming traffic turning across them to drive into a side road, when its clearly the cyclists priority.

From what I have read, if a pedestrian is already walking across the road, they have priority over oncoming traffic, which must slow down or stop to allow them safe passage.

This is contrary to what you see in London where motorists will accelerate at a pedestrian to “bully” them off the road. You will also see many cyclists riding at pedestrians already crossing the road, shouting to “get out of the way” when the legal onus is on the cyclist to slow or stop.

A pedestrian does not have priority if a motorist or cyclist is maintaining a safe and sensible speed and the pedestrian walks off the pavement without checking for oncoming traffic:- generally they will get run over, and its probably entirely their fault.

Canyon carbon fibre frames are made by Giant in their Taichung, taiwan factory.

Frame quality is very good. Frames then sent to Europe for bike assembly.

my favourite style of take off (and landings) to build -a “dirtbox”

time consuming to build, but lets you create elevation without using much dirt (if not dirt is available locally), its often much easier to import timber than dirt!

so much fun to ride as you are on a dirt surface rather than timber.

certainly helps if you want some protection without a full length guard?

especially if running a saddle with a pressure relieving slot in the middle, stops any spray coming up and wetting your gentlemen’s parts 😉

I run one on the rear of my MTB and the RRP neoprene guard on the front fork.

regarding tension on the Gates belt drive, there is actually a tool to set the belt tension properly, within the correct operating range

too tight and you tend to have premature wear on bottom bracket bearings and freewheel / hub bearings

too loose and you tend to get “ratcheting” where the belt teeth slip over the teeth on the rear cog under load

I dealt with a lot of the early (1st gen) Gates belt bikes when Evans sold the Trek Soho (commuter hybrid) and pretty much all of the issues we saw were related to incorrect belt tension and bad bike build quality, as shandcycles mentioned in their post, poor chainline caused the belt to “crab” (climb sideways under load).

Bear in mind these were just road going bikes, no mud was introduced into the drivetrain so I have no experience of off-road gates use.

Mechanics were uneducated on belt tension (no tool was provided to set tension) and a common issue was the aluminium alloy rear cog splines stripping against the steel freehub body and then slipping under power.

Trek then started supplying the Soho with an updated rear cog with steel core and aluminum alloy paddle. They also supplied some of the bikes with a chainring, rear toothed cog and chain in the bike box, for use as an alternative if problems developed.

regarding belt damage, I saw a couple of bikes comes back where debris (glass / flint / pieces of metal) had gotten into the drive belt whilst under power and caused the belt to split, similar to what you might see causing punctures on a road bike.

I attended a trade show where Gates had a stand and they did say you should never freely bend the belt as its very strong under tension but quite brittle if bent which can cause it to fail later on.

some of my constructions:

1/4 pipe / transfer ramp

gap to booter

tabletop

stunt ramp

gap to step down

drop to sender

had a customer brings this into the workshop a while back

said she had been riding it “with that mark” for months after riding into the back of a parked car

the mind boggles..

brake track can vary between brands / models of rotors

often brake system designed around 4-pot caliper have longer, less tall brake pads, and the rotor brake track is shallower to mate properly with that design.

you may see wear grooves when running 4-pot caliper on taller rotors, or wear on the “spokes” (connecting brake track to spider) if the other way around i.e. 2 pot on shallower track rotor

you can mix and match rotors between brands quite happily as long as you can mount the caliper in the correct place (rotor diameter and angle of caliper radius relative to frame/fork)

I always found Hayes to have the best rotors in terms of lateral trueness, and Avid (i.e. Tektro) the worst “out of the box”. Cannot say the same about Hayes brakes 😉

Shimano’s are generally very good as are Hope.

as another poster mentioned, watch out for “resin pad only” rotors designed for use on budget bikes with resin pads. Have seen a rider ruin the rotor within 1 ride by installing sintered pads.

Sigma Sport (roadie shop) offer the collect+ (if that’s what its called)

ordered some Specialized women’s bib shorts for Mrs. Esher Shore and the sizing was different compared to previous year model

Sigma emailed a return label, printed it, took to newsagent near my house, he scanned it, gave me a receipt.

email 3 days later from Sigma, fully refunded.

very impressed with the service, and my first experience of a free return service.

my 2015 Cannondale Super Six Evo 105 has PF30 with Cannondale’s own aluminium alloy cups pressed into the PF30 frame shell, and then BB30 bearings pressed into those cups

Of course after 2 weeks it was creaking like a old door so I ditched the FSA chainset and put a Wheels PF30 BB in there and Wheels nylon adapters for Shimano Ultegra HT2 crank – this stops any metal on metal (bearing to crank axle) contact which prevents fretting corrosion and creaking

If you know Shimano HT2, they designed their system with a nylon top hat on each HT2 bearing to achieve the same aim- a problem with many of the conversion BB is they have an oversized bearing with no nylon top hat, meaning the HT2 axle is against the metal bearing seat.

I’ve had conversion BB’s before and generally found after a few weeks of wet weather or bike washing any grease between crank axle and metal bearing has flushed out, creaking starts, becomes a regular boring maintenance chore to remove and refit with fresh grease

I ride 200km+ a week in London and the standards of driving is piss poor and downright dangerous at times.

Whether drivers are becoming more incompetent, more distracted by hand held cellular devices, or have realised that the chances of getting caught by an ever thinner blue line as police cutbacks, especially traffic police, become evident on the streets; I could not say?

Yes I see plenty of cyclists running red lights, on the pavement, riding at night without lights but bicycles do not require licenses or a competency test so that is another topic for a different argument.

@breadcrumb

of course there will be some haters getting on the Avid brandwagon

my own experience as the workshop manager of a number of specialist and chain retail stores is too many warranty claims on Avid brakes, often when fresh out of the box.

we are not talking about bad bleeds or bad setup (neither of which are very difficult) but design, manufacturing and QC problems. I can easily strip and rebuild an Avid Master Cylinder and Caliper, and you get to know how things should be.

This is warranty for easily 200+ customers, plus 6 different pairs of my own Elixir brakes, some of which never worked from new, some of which quickly developed issues.

You know the problems are real when SRAM Tech can’t even cure the issue, and send you brand new replacement brakes 😉

@P-Jay

good points.

at my shop we only do “fork lowers” and “air can” service – the more basic end of things, we carry appropriate oils, greases and factory replacement seals.

Anything more complex (like finding the stanchions are worn or the damper is blown), we’d send it off to TF or Mojo

Did this on the slightly wider A319 rims, with tape and sealant. 29’er tires (Fast Trak), huge fun to ride and no problem with punctures!

Vitorria have stopped manufacturing the Open Corsa and Open Pave in favour of their new graphene based range, which are called “Corsa Speed” and “Corsa” available in open tubular (clincher) and tubular versions. Corsa is available in 23/25/28 widths.

They are also doing a range of the less expensive Rubino Pro in graphene.

I’ve been running the black on black Open Pave in 27c and have bought some spares to see me through a while.

Fishers are still holding stock of current Open Corsa and Open Pave in limited quantities, the new graphene tires do not have a landing date in the UK yet

@Turnerguy

I ride 30km every day in London for my commute. SPD-SL on the road bike, SPD on the mountain bike, SPD feel like pedalling on ice-cubes in comparison to SPD-SL

Traffic lights are great for keeping track standing skills honed, with practise you shouldn’t need to unclip at any point, and you are accelerating ahead of the traffic once the lights switch to green.

regarding the OP’s question, Defy Disc 1 2016 at £999 is well worth looking at, takes mudguards and disc brakes great for wet weather commutes

@fatladridesbikes

anything from a decent brand with hydraulic disc brakes and hydraulic damper in the suspension fork should see him right.

sram…hmmm

these:

something like this is well worth considering:

http://wheelsmfg.com/bottom-brackets/bb86-92/bb86-92-bottom-brackets/bb86-92-outboard-abec-3-bb-for-24-22mm-sram-cranks-black.html

uses angular contact bearings and good sealing- stock SRAM uses radial bearings with poor sealing = short life and constant replacement

well I think you are all wrong and the best choice actually is Hayes El Camino

neither modulation, nor stopping power, nor reliability 😉

see you in a hedge / tree 😉

@richardthird

the secondary brake levers completely ruin the primary brake feel! Too stiff at secondary lever, too sloppy at primary lever (STI).

The “in-line” design of the secondary lever introduces an unwanted element (flexure) to the brake system, and the lever pull on that lever is often incorrect for road caliper or mechanical disc brakes.

I recommend removing them to any customers who buy a bike with them installed.

You can then install the primary brake properly setting lever reach and modulation to suit the rider

@stevied

well that’s two of us then 😉