Overcomplicating the Most Efficient Transportation Machine
I started wrenching on bikes from an early age. From changing flats on my original Mongoose 20" bike to overhauling loose-ball headsets and bottom brackets on my dad's old Cannondale, wheels-up on the basement floor. Those times taught me basic but fundamental skills that landed me a job as a mechanic in high school, got me through almost a decade of working on bikes, and ended up with me here at VO. While most of those times and much of my early mechanic years were filled with changing flats, basic 7spd derailleur adjustments, and regreasing simple older tech, times are oh-so different now, and so are the bikes.
My dad's copy of Todd Downs' 2005 encyclopedia of bicycle repair- the foundation of my wrenching as a yoot
Even back then, as 11spd was beginning to make the rounds on production road and MTB bikes, the unattainably high end Dura Ace and SRAM Red gear that seemed so intricate and flawless then, now looks and feels no different than any other gear of its time when on a bike in the repair stand - especially looking through the scope of what's available on the market today. Much of which, folks are having a harder and harder time even approaching as a home mechanic.
SRAM Red 11spd rear derailleur. The best of the best at the time, while still taking design cues from far cheaper and simpler gear
Bikes, from the early stages of mass production through to the 1990s, had been largely the same. Rigid frame, pressed-in headset on a straight tubes, one-piece or three-piece cranks, and rim brakes. Nit pick and identify the outliers all you like, but that describes most of the bikes during that time. However, with the trickle-down effect of materials engineering into cycling in the late 2000's, things began to change - and get more exclusive. Suspension forks became normalized on off road bikes, cartridge bearings found their way into everything from headsets to jockey wheels, carbon became the gold standard for racing bikes, and model-year innovation became the standard.
I'm not one to groan about progress, though. Aside from the anecdote of "chasing the past," (e.g. riding a rigid hardtail mountain bike or pulling out your old downtube shifter bike) to gain some fleeting taste of the "good ol' days" of bikes, you'd be hard pressed to convince me that new bikes coming out today from almost any manufacturer aren't some of the best bikes made yet. Disc brakes, quality frames, excellent suspension design and kinematics, and tubeless tires offered in virtually every size imaginable. If you think about it, there are more options for folks looking to buy a proper bike today than ever before.
But with that innovation comes an increase in the level of technical know-how required to even attempt to maintain modern bikes. Shimano has a virtual school devoted to teaching mechanics how to work on their products. SRAM has something quite similar. Want to bleed your hydraulic brakes? You'll need to buy a proprietary kit and oil, and you better not screw it up or it'll be a mess. The same goes for suspension forks and frames. I've owned probably 5 full-suspension bikes, none of which I, personally, serviced the shock or fork on. I'm fortunate to have a shop nearby that specializes in suspension service, another area of bicycle servicing that has become specialized in the last 15 years.
This is on your bicycle.
Bikes of the 1950's to 2000's could once be stripped down with nothing but a tri-tool and a 15mm box wrench, assuming you hadn't lost your 10mm. Aside from a very short list of special tools (which you could pick up at any bike shop) like a crank puller, bb lockring wrench and puller, and a cassette tool, there really was nothing to it. As I started my time as a mechanic affordable two-piece cranks flooded the market, and with them came every bottom bracket standard under the sun. 142 Thru-axle spacing was quickly followed by Boost 148, and subsequently Super Boost and thus an arms race of new, bike specific tools and components began.
I type this all out not as a protest (though I come from a fortunate position of well over a decade of technical experience), but rather as an illustration of how complicated things got, so quickly. If you bought a road or mountain bike in 1985, you had a considerable number of options in terms of models, but you could take any bike home and maintain it properly yourself with a minimal number of special tools or specialized technical knowledge. Heck, that rings true even for bikes as new as the early 2010's.
My first 'real' mountain bike- a 2008 Vassago Bandersnatch, with SRAM X9 and BB7M brakes
Today, however, if you wanted to purchase a mid-grade road bike off a shop floor, you'd be likely ending up with something that uses a press-fit bottom bracket, internal routing that goes into a void, tubeless tires, hydraulic disc brakes, and maybe even electronic shifting that needs an app and special software for diagnosis and updating.
Heaven forbid you want to service your bottom bracket in a year or two. You'll need the proper tapered punch, an oversized bearing press, a torque wrench and bravery to take that on without fear you'd crack your carbon or destroy your aluminum alloy shell. It gets worse when you consider mountain bikes of today. We haven't even touched on e-bikes! There's just too much special knowledge and risk tolerance required for the average at-home mechanic.
An example of my most recent rig, a Norco Revolver FS 120. Quite removed from what now seem like "humble beginnings"
That being said, many shops offer lifetime free basic services and tune ups with the purchase of a new bicycle. They did at my shop at least, and it feels like this is the direction the whole industry is moving: "pay a premium up front, we'll cover you for most stuff." In tandem, the manufacturers are designing bikes that are less and less consumer-maintenance friendly, knowing that the customer is likely going to roll it into the shop 9 times out of 10 before attempting to fix it first. This makes the product more expensive, and leaves those of us who like to fix our own stuff hanging out to dry, in a way.
From an environmental perspective, making things obsolete or too difficult or expensive to fix, means that people will buy new things - which means more waste and emissions.
I think shops are going to be more essential than ever with the industry moving towards higher-end, direct-to-consumer business. It's just that their business model is being forced through a change, and they'll need to be mindful of that fact.
What are your thoughts? Do you work only on bikes of a certain vintage or are you able/willing to maintain all your bikes regardless of their complexity?
Without a doubt bikes are too complicated these days. Less about performance improvements and more about improved ability to siphon cash from the customer to the manufacturer. ‘Perfection of what?’ is my question to the companies. Good geometry, quality bearings, fewer standards, and parts that are light enough but are durable…that’s all one really needs. I know everyone wants to pretend they’re a racer, but the frame/components arms race has taken us to a point of such increased costs that purchasing a new mid-range bike is prohibitive. Don’t even get me started about Shimano CUES and how that’s going to make so much of our old, non-electronic and non-disc but high quality and durable drivetrain parts obsolete and difficult to replace in a decade or two. Replacable with tiagra level equipment, at best. It’s time to start hoarding parts, unfortuantely. Unlikely that 3rd party manufacturers like microshift will be able to be profitable forever by only focusing on old standards, they’ll have to pivot to embrace the new, too.
Progress is important, without Shimano we wouldn’t have had indexing and STIs so quickly or so well done. But I think the bicycling industry is ripe for some regulatory management from the likes of Europe to enforce standardization similar to what they’ve done with usb cables, and to guide components to be more repairable like they were not too long ago.
I stick with a combination of old/new. Old steel frames with some modern ease-of-use improvements, like cartridge bottom brackets. Though I may be moving back to cup/cone square taper or swap to hollowtech now that high quality cartridge bottom brackets are becoming scarce.
Guess I’m officially a retrogrouch now. I was OK with threadless headsets and Octalink, but the wholesale revamping of BB standards was off-putting to me, and while I understand the rationale of disk brakes, their wide-spread adoption was kind of the last straw. I love my old bike, and I’m gonna keep riding it for a long time.
I’m pretty new to home mechanics at the tender age of 50 so I tend to find myself hedning my bets by having a bike that has a mixture of old tech combined with new, stuff that feels familiar while at the same time creating a curiosity for the new. What streck me most about this blog is how a lot of people are saying the same about cars, many not even able to change a light bulb which was taken as a given just a few years ago. Maybe a sign of the times in that we are over complicating a lot in life and Cali g it progress.
I think it’s unfortunate when developments that make it difficult to maintain a bicycle yourself push out simpler technology. If the simpler technology could remain available, I’d have no problem with such changes, but that’s unfortunately not the case. Where you draw the line is a bit arbitrary, though. It seems you’re drawing the line in brake technology right between mechanical disc brakes and hydraulic disc brakes, but I’d like to be able to buy, for instance, a Polyvalent with rim brake posts. Why not include them? It’s getting to the point where the options for rim brake bikes are either entry-level bikes from large manufacturers like Giant, or considerably more expensive bikes with very specific geometry, like Rivendell.
Wholeheartedly agree! I’ve built and maintained singles and tandems for some 60 years. Have a huge investment in Park tools but with the advent of electronic shifting and ebikes the tools, digital interfaces, software, applications has become burdensome. There are few standards, most electronic components require proprietary software, applications and interfaces. I’ve made that leap for Shimano and SRAM but it remains a headache. Even worse is that unless you are a dealer, obtain repair parts is near to impossible. I have two Shimano E8000 motors (out of warranty) on the bench that need torque sensors but Shimano will not sell replacement circuit boards to either dealers or individuals. Shimano’s solution: buy another motor versus Shimano selling replacement parts. Sometimes, progress is not progress.
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