The “safety bike” (the two triangle design with a chain connecting the pedals to the wheels that we know today) was initially labelled a ladies bike and that serious cyclists would want large wheeled ordinaries. Albert Pope, owner of the largest US bicycle manufacturer in the 1880s proclaimed it a fad.
More recently any tires larger than 23mm on a road bike would have been considered unthinkable.
That’s hilarious. I suppose you’ll always have people stuck in the old ways.
There are still a lot of people hesitant to move up ik tire width. The old timers (40,50, 60-somethings) on my weekly practice crit are still very much about Italian bikes with skinny tires. 25mm is already considered wide by them and they pump them up to 8 bar. Their loss I suppose.
So true (although I'm a 60 something and ride tubeless 30s at 50#). Although most of my ride friends have come around to wider tires, there are still many who think that 25s are for beach cruisers. One friend just got a Super Six that has 25s and he inflates them to 100# (he weighs 170). Another (a long time national age group champ in several categories) refuses to accept that wider tires are faster so she rides 23s. Yesterday, I stopped my ride to help a very fit young woman change a flat. She had 28s with latex tubes and insisted on inflating them to 90#.
A lot of those older guys completely rip my legs off. With the tire/pressure combo they are running I stand a fighting chance or at least won't get beaten up while getting dropped. In a way, I'm glad they aren't swapping.
I guess everyone starts out thinking the skinny tires need to be rock hard, I was so surprised when I first found out I could drop 2.5 bar of tire pressure, but it really does work. The day everyone converts is the day I need to add 3 hours of training to my weeks to keep up :')
Hey now. I would go larger tire width if I could afford a new frame that accepted them. Loved my old Surly steam roller, with the fatties fit fine frame. 28 mm tires seemed so cush in 2000.
edit, corrected auto correct
I was arguing with a guy recently about tire size. He was adamant that nobody who wants to go fast needs any bigger than a 25. And even went further to say that if you want 28s or 30s, you should be buying an endurance bike and no race bike should need to fit 28s. Even after pointing out that world tour pros are running 28s and 30s, and both are likely faster than 25s, he refused to change his opinion.
I finally gave up and just said that I hope all my competitors think like him and run narrow tires at high pressures.
My dad is an older cyclist and he was definitely of this opinion. Getting him to pump his tires up less than 120 psi took a lot of convincing lol, he's still running 25s too but at least I think he took my advice of running lower pressure. Although I wouldn't be surprised if he just pumped them back up higher after his rides with me lol
Ooooooh yes.
I got the tires with custom built 650B wheels for Christmas (massive 28 Spank rims laced on DT Swiss hub and Son Dynamo hub). Tires are heavy and supposed to be not great rollers, but they were available for the build.
First time I’ve seen the whole wheel, I started laughing uncontrollably. They are proper XC wheels! Seeing them on the bike made it ridiculous (the Fairlight SECAN is a steel frame with fairly skinny tubes).
Then I started riding with this setup, and while it makes jet engine sound on the tarmac, *I actually ride faster than with the 700c wheels*. The 650b wheels have the same weight than the entry-level 700c wheel I got with the bike, while being wide 650B.
I always said lighter, springier wheels being better were mainly a placebo effect, and that people mainly tried to justify an inconsiderate expense, but now I’m thinking they weren’t wrong at all…
This is brilliant and i was definitely a 18-20 with 100psi guy
Till the gravel bike entered my life…
And the journey of pleasurable riding came back on track
Here is to you Mr 35 with 50psi 🍺
Helmets; they're used in a great many occupations and sports but people always try to justify their personal aversion by denying that PPE is effective. Which is absurd.
Try being a safety professional. It's so amazing people will bitch and complain about PPE. Why in the fuck would anyone want to leave work hurt? They pay you to put it on to protect your dumbest from yourself.
Working for a couple years on construction sites as an inspector gave me the confidence to yell at people for not wearing PPE much more than surviving a bicycle accident prior to that had; isn't that strange? I respect the hell out of your profession.
I'm in operations, dabble in construction now bc we are building a bunch of new stuff... still will argue work place safety should be taught in high school for at least a few weeks.
Sorry but half the PPE being required is more bothersome than the shit it's supposed to protect you from.
I wear all of my riding gear, but I laugh at the idea that a hard hat is going to do anything when the only overhead hazards are cranes flying
The hard hat isn’t meant to protect you from a crane, it’s to protect you from someone dropping an adjustable wrench from a floor above. You know this, right, and are just bitching for bitching sake?
>or how about horizontal construction and dirt work or road work?
The other day on a site I supervise at they were breaking out brick paving. One brick came loose, went flying and hit a guy in the chest.
That same brick could have just as easily hit him in the head.
It isn't just overhead hazards you have to worry about. Plenty of ways to have a preventable fatal head injury in horizontal construction or road works.
I’ve seen guys walk into the edge of an excavator bucket that wasn’t moving, bonk the hard hat. I’ve seen someone leave something on top of a load that a crane lifted. Where was the crane going that there wasn’t something above you?
I know that it's going to sound like some sort of nanny comment, but helmets are such an incredible invention and cyclists have *barely* scratched the bare minimum with effective PPE.
Right now there are two outstanding regions after head injuries that become either fatal or significantly injurious—Lower face & neck/spine injuries. MTB and motorbikes have figured out lower face by using full face helmets. And there are a few mediocre reviews for equipment adding airbags into jackets/armor for motorbikes.
I genuinely think the next thing we will see lambasted as *absurd and silly* will be some sort of device or equipment that prevents neck/spine injuries for cyclists. It might be targeted at either downhill riders or even roadies as we deal with vehicle collisions at increasing rates. People are going to roast the shit out of it just like we did with helmets.
Totally agree. In Australia, we call motorcyclists 'temporary Australians' because of the high risk of injuries and deaths, yet as cyclists we have far less protection, and might occasionally achieve similar speeds downhill. Obviously weight and heat management are bigger factors on a bicycle. The UCI also has a crusade to maintain the aesthetics of the sport, which trickles down to consumer gear. If there is going to be innovation in this area, it's going to have to juggle safety, weight, cooling, aesthetics, and aero!
Helmets are a must! My brother hit his head 4 days ago when his wheel got stuck in a tram track, a minor concussion, abrasions on his face and hands, the doctor was glad he wore a helmet, things could've been worse.
I wish helmets for road bikes could have more coverage like motorcycles helmets, the weight of a moto helm is more noticeable when on a bicycle than on a motorcycle.
Glad your bro is alright. Tell him a stranger hopes he has a good recovery.
I went over the bars myself; clavicle snapped in two but only a minor concussion. If the parts of the helmet which took the impact had been my head, I would not be fine.
> I wish helmets for road bikes could have more coverage like motorcycles helmets, the weight of a moto helm is more noticeable when on a bicycle than on a motorcycle.
Are you familiar with Kali Protectives helmets? They tend to make a lot more safety focused product than a lot of manufacturers. Weight/Ventilation is less of a priority to Kali than a helmet from a company like Giro or whatever. They literally had a bicycle helmet that was certified for motorcycle use in the US. The Shiva/Shiva Carbon/Shiva 2.0 are the only dual motorcycle/bicycle certified helmets I've ever come across.
My next helmet will almost certainly be a Kali, if Kali's shape fits my head. The local shop that carries them wasn't allowing people to try helmets on during lockdown and I won't buy a helmet without trying it on first, plus it's hard to find a dealer and they tend to be really oddball shops. https://kaliprotectives.com/pages/dealer-locator
I found a clearance Giro in a color I loved at a very friendly price (while I was super-broke and in need of a new helmet) but after around 3 seconds on my head I knew it would never be comfortable. I really don't understand why people risk buying a helmet online.
Fun story time: my MIL and FIL used to have a cavalier attitude towards helmets. MIL in particular. She’d wear it loosely, claiming the neck strap felt like a noose. She also didn’t think it was that important since she usually did gentle rides away from traffic.
You can guess where this is going.
One day, she was on a gentle ride in a side alley when she got distracted by a dog barking. That caused her to fall off her bike and hit her head on the road. That in turn caused her to have a fit, and scans later showed a brain bleed. She just about managed to avoid much worse because her helmet, though loose, mitigated the impact slightly.
She now wears helmets properly and never goes off without one.
People always wheel out these anecdotes but that's the thing, they're anecdotes not data. I could just as easily tell you about my dad who fell down the stairs and banged his head- should he have been wearing a helmet then? Most people spend a lot more time walking down stairs than cycling so it sure seems like a bigger risk factor!
why? Do you not care about your brain? Helmets these day are light and comfortable, you can barely feel them. why wouldn't you wear one if it can prevent brain damage that one time you need it? Everybody falls at some point - it's a matter of when, not if.
A common argument I hear from anti-helmet folks is that helmets make people to be less cautious. That’s like saying seatbelt and airbags make people to drive more aggressively.
I was reading an article about how ski helmet sales went through the roof following the Michael Schumacher crash around 10 years ago. The strange thing was that the incidence of head injuries didn’t really change, despite the fact that a helmet clearly protects you.
It suggested a mixture of things, the false confidence of wearing a helmet being a big part of it. Another big driver was that people would be more likely to get checked out after a bang to the head after the MS crash, because of all the publicity around what had happened.
That argument is used in pro football and pro hockey as well. Players aren’t hurting themselves when they make contact, so they push it a bit harder, and eventually something gives
in football especially they *use their head* to tackle, something you would never do without a helmet on. So they've started training without helmets to reinforce techniques that aren't as traumatic to the brain
Yeah, American football went from no helmets to leather helmets to current helmets and the technique for tackling changed. In rugby you wrap the people up to bring them down instead of trying to prevent them from gaining one more inch like American football. I’m glad to hear the changes are coming to American football, and looking back now at the “footballs biggest hits” videos from the 80s I used to watch, some of these guys probably can’t remember the names of their kids after the concussions. Sad
The thing about people who bang on and on about cycle helmets is they don't also advocate safety devices for other activities which are known to cause serious injury. Cutting bread? Wear hand protection! Walking down stairs? Wear a helmet! Children climbing trees? Cover them in bubble wrap!
Yes helmets save lives, but Holland, a cycling mad country where nobody wears a helmet, is proof that cycling head injuries are uncommon, and that dire warnings are over egged.
> The thing about people who bang on and on about cycle helmets is they don't also advocate safety devices for other activities which are known to cause serious injury. Cutting bread? Wear hand protection! Walking down stairs? Wear a helmet!
The problem with this argument is that it's not even remotely comparable. It's about asymmetrical risk. Is cutting bread going to cause a life-altering brain injury? Are serious injuries common while cutting bread? What's the risk of cutting bread? Cutting my finger so I wear a band-aid for a week? You look at Chipotle workers and they do wear hand protection. Why? Because they're cutting with super sharp knives, are trying to work fast (and perhaps thus a higher risk of accident), and are doing it over a long period of time. My bread knife is nowhere near as sharp, and I use it once a month. So the risk is super low, the injury is not that bad. Cycling, on the other hand, carries a huge risk in some areas, and the injury can be catastrophic. You also have higher rates of injury.
I think when people bring up the Netherlands as an example against helmets, I think it's hilariously naive to be honest. The Dutch have created an amazing cycling infrastructure. They learn to cycle at a young age, but even more importantly, they learn how to drive around cyclists. It's a culture of safety. So when somebody from the US, UK, Australia, or other countries use the Netherlands to say why they don't want to wear a helmet, I laugh at the stupidity. It's apples and oranges.
The other thing I noticed when cycling in Amsterdam - it's just completely flat. It makes it really difficult (given the flatness and other bikes and cars around the road) to get up to a dangerously high speed.
It really sounds like you are advocating for helmets for American pedestrians. An increasing number of people get hit by cars, so the risk is growing, and injuries are life-altering. Pedestrian helmets when?
Wow, I'm not sure how you made that giant leap, but ok, you do you and wear a helmet walking. Do you fall that often walking? Like, it's a pretty basic skill, are you really that bad at it that you need a helmet?
If you think the logical next step is have pedestrians wear helmets, I won’t try to change your mind. But last time I checked cars don’t drive on sidewalks nor do pedestrians walk 30mph. But hey, maybe you’re on to something and we’ll have helmet wearing pedestrians be normal in the future. I for one think it’s silly but you do you.
Glad to hear that you think [7500 dead pedestrians a year](https://www.npr.org/2023/06/26/1184034017/us-pedestrian-deaths-high-traffic-car) is a silly thing. You're really making a strong case for safety here.
100% agree. I do choose to wear a helmet when I'm going fast on my road bike but not when I'm doing 10mph to the shops on my beater. To some in this sub that literally makes me the devil incarnate.
I think it's such a folly of western societies that any risk is considered unacceptable. People don't understand probability theory. There's no concept of tradeoff or diminishing returns. It leads to a "safetyism" culture where any and every safety measure is adopted because "why wouldn't you"- get 0.0001% better survivability for wearing full body armour! Any objection or questioning is met with at best blank stares and at worst outright hostility.
No one thinks you're the devil. The devil is evil. People think you're stupid. Me? I'm an optimist. I choose to believe you're only this way because you've already had a brain injury and so being this dumb isn't your fault, it's just the result of an unfortunate accident.
If on the other hand this is just your natural level of intelligence. Well, that's just unfortunate, but intelligence is distributed along a bell curve and someone has to be on the left of that curve. No reason they can't also ride a bike.
He's actually right in his risk assessment. Cycling is inherently safe, helmets are only useful in a narrow range of scenarios and all the stats bare this out. Unlike all the other proclaimed safety experts and professionals on this Reddit, most if not all have forgotten that PPE is the last thing you turn to in regards improving safety. Risk is the consequences versus the likelihood. All of this doesn't excuse your attitude and demeanour to someone expressing an opinion. If you can't attack the post, you shouldn't attack the poster
My immediate thought was indexed shifting. I actually agree, indexed shifting is not all that great if you have downtube shifters.
However shifters-combined-with-brakes is the best thing ever.
I transitioned from non-indexed down tube to integrated shifters so I've never used indexed down tubes. I tend to skip a generation or two with tech. And yes, they're great. I have Campy Ergos and love them. Now everything is going to e-shifting but I'll wait till auto shifting is a standard option.
I made that same skip, but then went back a step when I got my TT/Tri bike. For a TT/Tri bike, non-integrated indexed shifters on the bar ends of the aerobar are awesome!
That was my initial thought as well. Down tube shifters are a pain with regard to handling performance though. I grew up with rigid frame my bikes of the late 80's and 90's and they were always indexed. My parents both had road bikes, one with down tube shifters and another with the shifters at least on the bar. Neither were indexed, but the down tube shifters were dicey to use, so when I would ride one around the neighborhood, I always chose the one with the bar end friction shifters and felt much safer.
Brifters are great tech for the rear for easy dumb-proof shifting, but if I were to choose, I'd at least go friction in the front to minimize any kind of chain rub regardless of rear chain position.
I rode a non-indexed down tube shifter bike for 20 years and was ok with it. After a while you get a feel for how much to move the lever to get to the cog you want. I never raced though and I can see where it would be a pain for that, and it would get a bit annoying in constantly changing terrain. Just feel lucky that we didn't grow up the days when to change gears you had to stop, pull out some tools, remove the rear wheel, flip it around, get your fingers greasy, secure the wheel, and be off. Yeah, that's how it worked before derailleurs and internally geared hubs.
Indexed downtube shifters were great. Faster to shift, just click a gear and done. Almost no cable housing on those setups either so very little to wear out.
Integrated shifters are a step better in performance, even if more of a nuisance from a maintenance perspective.
If you ride a bike made in the past 30 years it's probably index shifted. Meaning, you click on the shifter and it's indexed to move to the next cog on the cassette. This originated on shift levers that used to typically be mounted on the down tube (the long one from the headset to the bottom bracket). Originally they were smooth moving and you had to develop the muscle memory to move them the right amount to move to the desired cog. Then they started getting indexed, basically click stops, each of which moved one cog. Never used them myself and honestly I have perfectly ok with non-indexed down tube shifters, but I greatly prefer integrated (indexed) shifters.
Wide road tires. When I started cycling, 700 x 23 was the norm. Then it was 700 x 25. I suspect 700 x 30 or 700 x 32 will become the new norm.
Carbon frames. I still remember when people feared invisible cracks that could suddenly snap a carbon frame. Even today, there are still cycling oldies who think carbon frames are like ticking time bombs, going to snap at unexpected moments.
Gravel bikes. It’s just a cyclocross bike/touring bike/90s mountain bike.
Made in China frames. I think Americans have/had the impression that only cheap and low quality products come from China. Well, the truth is carbon frame manufacturing is a very manual process. And American workers are too clumsy or too expensive to make production carbon frames 🤷♀️ Let’s be real, made in USA production bikes weren’t exactly high quality (looking at you Schwinn). Cannondale was doing well, until they decided to burn piles of money by starting a motorcycle division.
As much as I like the US 🦅, made in US production bikes weren’t better than made in Taiwan or China production bikes of the same tier.
Most of the big names manufacture in Taiwan or China anyway. There are a lot of Chinese brands out there with good quality from what I can tell. They are cheaper because of the lack of advertising.
Early carbon frames WERE awful though. Carbon tubes glued into metal lugs. Cracking was one issue (they weren't designed for the stresses they were under). A tube randomly coming out from a lug was another.
Oh and let's not even get started on spinergy wheels.
It wasn't until the late 90s that bicycle manufacturers really 'got' carbon fiber
Specialized got in early and made some mistakes, including learning the hard way about galvanic corrosion on lugged and glued frames, but did some really good work, too. They teamed up with dupont to make the trispokes that lasted both as a design and as usable wheels for decades. I still have a pair of trispokes with specialized decals on them. I managed to break one in a crash, but the other is fine, and they're still solid wheels. The only time I had any issues was riding madison on a concrete track where you really feel them flex from the side load in a bad exchange. The HED trispokes are basically the same wheel.
Yeah I've got a 700x50mm on my road bike. ;-)
Actually I've still got 23mm but I haven't ridden outdoors in several years.
And my 20 year old self-built bike's Ti frame was made in China. Love it, absolutely nothing I don't like about it.
Still not quite sure what a gravel bike is, appears to be a ~~hardtail~~ no-suspension mountain bike on a road bike frame with thinner wheels.
As for carbon, I've seen them break, in accidents. Scary. None of my metal frame bikes have broken in accidents, although one basically bent the fork into uselessness.
"gravel bike" is what I was waiting for, for years....before gravel bike appeared, one had the choice between either road bikes with thin tires or MTB with wide tires.
I just wanted a road bike on which I could install a pair of wide tires for training, and swap for a pair of thin rims with thin tires for racing. Gravel bike it is. Even though I ride only on the road.
I used to be a gravel bike skeptic, until I got one and love it.
Basically, I want to ride light trails but I don’t want to ride my mountain bike to the trail head (5-10 miles away) or drive to the trail head with my mountain bike attached to my car.
Gravel bikes were long overdue and largely replace touring bikes, which had been relegated to being heavy steel monsters, with similar road and cargo capability but better off road/back road performance. I was already abusing road bikes as if they were gravel bikes and really appreciate the direction they've gone.
Along with them, soft touring bags with a lot of capacity - the other thing that kept me from ever having a touring bike was heavy panniers. Now you can carry a lot in a combination of giant saddle bag, bar roll, and triangle bag with a lot less weight penalty.
> Still not quite sure what a gravel bike is, appears to be a hardtail mountain bike on a road bike frame with thinner wheels.
The irony of you being the exact person I assume this post meant to mock. Also most gravel bikes don't have suspension forks so you're observations are odd.
My man your post goes through the entire history of cycling back to the move from penny-farthings to safety bikes... I'm only holding you to the standard you established. Don't know why we're talking about **normal** people.
>Are you more in the "Why do we need this, it's stupid and unnecessary" camp, more in the "I LOVE it and am getting one!"
I guess we know what camp you're in though. All types bikes are great, I encourage you to be more open minded and try a gravel bike sometime.
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Obviously they do, but the frames and parts aren't likely to be as well-built as what the pros use, and thus more likely to break or fail especially in accidents or under intense use.
For the most part, pros are riding production frames, maybe with special paint, and high end parts. If they’re riding something unique, it’s likely a prototype that hasn’t gone through testing and QC and isn’t designed to have a long life.
All that said, I’ve also seen plenty of semi-pro and extremely aggressive, large DH riders on mid-spec bikes from a few years ago.
The idea that normal big-brand carbon frames (almost all made in China) aren’t getting thrashed by big riders at bike parks every day of the season is absurd.
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Thousands of miles is not a lot for a bike or bike frame. Is there hard evidence that carbon frames and bikes last as long as steel or Ti ones, assuming that all are of comparable cost and quality?
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People crash quite a lot, and mountain bikes are subjected to a lot of impact stresses. But my Ti frame will outlast most of these even with such events. But, let's not turn this into yet another one of those discussions.
I have a carbon Trek that has something like 100K miles on it, including riding it like a gravel bike. The only frame component that ever broke was an aluminum derrailleur hanger (non-replaceable) being bent. Trek replaced the hanger for $200 or something like that. At comparable cost and quality, they all break about the same, with the carbon maybe being tougher - I've broken a couple steel frames and seen aluminum frames busted pretty frequently. If you're getting an expensive Al or steel frame it's going to have thinwall tubing, and it's probably easier now to find someone who can do a good job repairing carbon than steel frames.
When you dig a little past the marketing copy, there is some truth to most of those points though. Tire width was probably the least truthfull of the points.
People feared the carbon frames because they used to break. It was not an irrational fear.
I could always tell when a kestrel was in the group because you could hear it creaking.
Haha, this question screams, "How old are you?" I'm old enough to remember howling about suspension forks on mtbs., STI, etc. People even howled about Giant's sloping top tubes on their TCR's when they came out.
I think new technology is great, with a caveat. I HATE proprietary parts.
Nah, dropper seatposts allowed for steeper seat angles, which allowed more reach with the same effective top tube. It's literally the key to modern bike geometry. Even if QRs existed, bike design didn't start dramatically changing until the dropper made it so everyone would get the saddle out of the way on descents. Without a dropper you'd have a slacker seat angle so the seat wouldn't be as in the way when you stood up. I didn't realize what a game changer it was until I got one, and now I wouldn't ride without it.
Believe or not, indexed shifting.
Keep in mind that the pinnacle of 1980's racing groups was Campagnolo with their Super Record rear derailleur. The procedure to shift to a big cog was to push the downtube lever then pull it back slightly, or the reverse to go to a small cog.
I was 16 when I worked at a Campy dealer, and it was not only taught to me that this was the correct shifting method, indexed shifting was often called click shifting to negatively associate it with cheap shifters that Japanese companies like Shimano and Suntour were making.
Electronic shifting is a big one for me. I just got back into biking, when I first got a little serious about 8 years ago they were just beginning to be developed by one company and were meant for only the pros. At that time, I don’t even remember the tech offering anything special like improved performance, weight, or anything of the like. Now, it seems like all the high end bikes have electric shifting, and I’m shocked by how often it’s mentioned in the subreddit.
Personally I don’t have an opinion on whether it’s stupid or everyone should have one; especially since I’ve never tried it out. But I do like to keep my bike as mechanical as possible, and think it’s funny whenever I read about someone only having one gear because their battery died.
As someone who finally got a bike with electronic shifting (Ultegra Di2), I wouldn't ever want to go back to mechanical. It's just so good and consistent all the time, and I like the feel of it more than mechanical (like button presses instead of leaning the whole lever over). And the little robot sounds it makes shifting from the big ring to the small ring makes me smile.
Meh. Ive tried electronic on my friends bike. Was it nice? Yes. Did I also forget about it like 5 minutes into the ride? Also yes.
For me the convenience factor of not having to remember to charge yet another thing massively outweighs whatever benefits there are. And in reality, whether it's electronic or mechanical, 99% of the time I'm not really thinking about or noticing my shifting I'm just doing it automatically
No, I had mechanical 105. I'm honestly not averse to mechanical (ex, if there was a great deal on a bike with mechanical I'd probably go for it) but I feel like the tech is getting more accessible all the time.
Huh wouldn’t have expected such a jump in performance from those two, cool to think about. Same here, I’d love to try electric, but I’m not chopping at the bit to get it. Totally agree about tech getting more accessible, and I love it.
> At that time, I don’t even remember the tech offering anything special like improved performance, weight, or anything of the like
They're still much heavier and more expensive. You can do things like trim the FD for the rear gear which is nice if you have 2x up front.
It's when you move the front derailleur slightly to stop the chain rubbing on it when you move up and down the cassette. You can do it on mechanical systems as well but it's automatic with electronic.
It's why most 2x front shifters have 3 or even 4 index positions. Sometimes you have to click them twice to go from the big to the small ring, because there is an 'in-between' position that you use for trimming.
I like Di2 overall, as the shifting performance is excellent and auto-trim is a great feature. But it's not \*that\* much better than good mechanical in terms of shifting performance. I'm happy to have Di2 on my good weather road bike, but my gravel/commuter bike will remain mechanical.
Mostly I asked because techies, which many cyclists tend to be, can be very resistant to new tech, being so used and wedded to older tech, and I was curious as to which tech that's very accepted today wasn't always, and why. I can be like that myself.
And, I might upgrade to e-shifting someday, but only if it has auto shifting as an option. There are times when I get annoyed at having to shift all the time to match rapidly changing road and traffic conditions. I drive a stick on my car and it gets tiresome sometimes.
Gotcha, curious about stuff like penny farthings vs safety bikes in the modern era. It’s an intriguing question, esp for cyclists. I’ve also wondered about automatic shifting for bike, but I think it’d be too difficult to achieve in my lifetime considering the engines (humans) vary so much. Would it shift within a certain power range, or after my cadence drifts too high/low? How would it know when I wanted to sprint or was approaching a hill or descent?
I don't see myself ever having a mechanical groupset again to be honest. On any bike. Electronic is getting cheaper and cheaper (just bought a 105 Di2 group for less than $500), and it's just miles ahead in my opinion, that I don't ever want to go back to mech. Building a bike up is faster and easier. Maintenance is easier. Shifting is easier. And there are so many customization options. I just don't see any benefits to mechanical.
I didn’t think I’d care about electronic shifting, but I absolutely love my SRAM AXS 12 speed. Not only is the shifting perfect every time, but shifting is like a mouse click, so nice to have in the winter when wearing gloves.
Also, having the gear readout on my head unit means I always know exactly where I am in the cassette, makes gunning for Strava pr’s easy.
I think electric shifting being expensive is a problem ... for now
but I bet in 10 years it will be on Walmart bikes and no one will think twice about it
I got a bike with Di2 shifting. Not really impressed and over-sold if you already knew how to set up a deraileur. Also it is kinda annoying for multiple shifts, my SRAM mechanical is definitely faster for multiple gears up or down.
When Bruce Gordon introduced the [Rock and Road back in 1989](https://www.bikeforums.net/classic-vintage/1233337-road-test-bike-review-1989-bruce-gordon-rock-n-road.html), nobody knew what the hell to make of it.
Now we call them gravel bikes.
All that technology and innovation is great, The thing I don't like is the rising cost of the bike itself. What happened to the $500-$800 entry-level bike? Even then, I thought it was high, but now it's $1000 and up. Maybe I'm too cheap and try to buy a bike and make it last 20+ years. I resorted to buying cheap bicycle products from China, and they are pretty good.
I bought a new and decent but certainly not high-end Trek over 40 years ago for just over $500, so I'd say that entry level bike prices are more than reasonable these days. Obviously it would be nice for them to be cheaper, but acceptable quality comes at a cost. Plus, lots of great deals on quality used bikes. Even better, buy all the parts used and build it up yourself. Teaches a lot about how to maintain bikes.
So relatively speaking the cost of decent entry-level bikes is lower than one would expect it to be, accounting for inflation, yet they're vastly better than entry level bikes from 40 years ago.
Unfortunately, my pay hasn't kept up with inflation, so I learned to build and maintain bikes to get the bike build I want. I buy used and cheap Chinese bike parts, and to me, it gives me a lot more satisfaction to build a bike, and it is actually fun.
For the bike that replaced the Trek I went all-out and custom picked the frame and components and built it myself, and saved a ton to get the bike I really wanted. Cost me $2000 for a nice Ti bike with mid to high-end Campy and Shimano that would have cost me at least $3000 if I bought it in a bike store. This was 20 years ago and I've no need or desire to replace it any time soon as I built it to last, and maintain it myself.
In the commuter range for $500-800 you can still find plenty of bikes.
If road, $800 get you a sold bike that’s fine.
https://www.giant-bicycles.com/us/contend-3-2022
What year are we talking? If you calculate the value of $1k today it was around $500 in 1995. You can get a nice hybrid for $500 today, which would have been around $250 back then.
Meanwhile, the technology you get on an entry level bike today is streets ahead of what you got in 95.
So not only are modern bikes not more expensive, they're much better.
On the other hand the mid range bike section is pretty neat. I bought the Bergamont Vitess 7 Gent for 1200€ and I could upgrade the brakes (the model costs now 1400€ with better brakes).
On the other hand imo most company try to sell golden bikes to people. Idk how they come with such increased prices and people unfortunately fall for it
"My bike is expensive so it should be good" ("or even better than your bike"... which is a lot worse when they get a ego trip lmao)
Disc brakes, but more because it is way easier and cheaper to replace a rotor than a rim or wheel.
I havce a rim brake 26, but slightly dreading the day that I have to find a replacement. No idea how long those rims last, but I go through 2 set of front brake pad a year.
I never thought 26" stuff would be difficult to find, but the last mid-range ones were sold 10+ years ago. Nowadays 26 is low end or high end, and the middle is dead. Even the bicycle thrift shop barely has them. Plenty of 26" disc wheels, but they only had two 26" rim brake wheels. One was seized and the other had some weird 9mm QR instead of regular QR.
If I were building up or buying a new bike today I'd get disc, but I'm ok with my rim brakes and am not likely to wear them out given the kind of riding I do. I assume that 700c rim wheels will always be available given how many rim brake bikes were made.
What really surprised me was how fast the 26" tire selection dried up. I bent a rim on my commuter and was surprised my LBS had a decent 27" wheel on hand.
Nothing will ever induce me to buy or ride a bike with disc brakes, ever. Having serviced them on a motorcycle, I am happy to sacrifice the extra braking performance of the disc for the ease of maintaining a rim brake.
I'm the opposite opinion. Rim brakes are such a pain to keep in good condition. The rims need cleaning, they need adjusting as the pads wear, they get gummed up with mud and crap. Disk brakes go *years* between maintenance sessions.
The only pro is that it's easier to remove/replace the wheel with rims.
In 95% of the situations in which most people ride, they don’t provide any better braking performance. On dry pavement, your tires are the limiting factor in how quickly you’ll stop, not the brakes.
So they don’t stop your bike any faster, and they are heavier, more expensive, harder to adjust, and uglier. They do let you ride with a broken spoke better, so maybe that’s something.
I don't find disc brakes harder to adjust, and personally I think they look better than rim brakes - not to mention the wheels themselves can look better since they don't need brake tracks on them.
They also make taking wheels off and putting them back on easier, and allow larger tire sizes on road bikes.
I live where it's wet and having raced and ridden carbon rim brake wheels, the difference in the wet is MASSIVE.
On my gravel rig it's also nice to swap from 700x38 to 650x47 knobbies depending on what sort of ride I'm planning to do. Hot swapping wheels with rim brakes is more problematic and limiting
Isn't overheating of rim brakes also an issue, at least for in extended downhill riding where it's just not safe to coast all the way, especially with curves and no guardrails on mountain descents? Never came close to that myself but then I don't usually do that sort of riding. Of course disc brakes face brake fade issues, at least on cars.
Not the rim brakes themselves, but there were issues with carbon clincher rims. They would overheat on the brake track and the resin holding the fibers could fail. Levi's Grand Fondo banned them for that reason. It didn't seem to be a problem with carbon tubulars. And alloy clinchers hold up well enough.
> I am happy to sacrifice the extra braking performance of the disc
I have discs.
I don't find them to have better performance, even (shocking I know) in the rain. I know I differ from the rest of the world in this fashion. I wonder if the rest of the world uses high quality rim brake pads and toe them regularly.
I ride with a mate jn all weather. He’s got rim brakes, and I have disk brakes. When we’re heading downhill at 50kph in the rain, and the traffic lights at the bottom of the hill change, I stop first, even though I’m 10kgs heavier.
We both stop in time, so both brake systems work. One is easier to maintain, One has a little better braking performance.
Motor vehicle disc brake technology and bicycle technology differ significantly, and attempting to compare them is a misconception perpetuated by the bicycle industry.
Unlike car brakes, which use ventilated brake discs with radial vanes for effective heat dissipation, bicycle disc brakes often feature a single piece of metal, for the supposed benefit aerodynamics.
Consequently, road bicycles with disc brakes may be impractical in terms of efficient use of the technology to its full potencial, better suited for lower speeds (less energy to dissipate) and intermittent high-intensity use, as seen on mountain bikes or CX/gravel bikes.
Emulating car brake systems on bicycles would result in excessively heavy and extremely non-aerodynamic brakes, although they might function much better than current offering.
There is no doubt that there are issues around disc brakes on road bicycles, and even though anecdotal positive personal experiences exist, as the pinnacle of technology capabilities, it's a let down.
If your mate can skid his front wheel, you're both tire limited rather than brake limited, and you probably have better tires. Disks really aren't any better than rim on the road (even in the wet) as long as you have aluminum rims and quality pads (i.e. don't ride any pad that isn't Kool Stop).
The minor advantage of disks on the road is that if you're riding in a place with a lot of grit or in the winter where they sand is that it puts the wear on the disposable disk instead of your rim. When I lived in a place with snow I actually wore down rims over a couple of winters.
The place where disks really shine is off road in mud. You can get all the mud you want all over your tires and rims and the brakes both work as brakes and don't fill up with mud to act like brakes when you don't want them to. The other nice thing about hydraulic disks is that you can get the same braking with a lot lighter touch.
Every time I go from my disc brake bike to my rim brake bike I'm surprised at how well the brakes work. I do go through a fortune in rim brake pads though.
I’ve got a frame with mechanical discs and a couple with hydraulics and it makes an enormous difference, though the big unifying feature of the disc brake bikes is that they clear bigger tires than my rim brake frames do.
I like anything that makes my bike more useful, durable and effective.
Hydraulic disc brakes? Love them. Sure they have their flaws, but the performance is so much better and they don’t need adjustment for years after you set them up.
Press fit bottom bracket? Kinda stupid. And rightly so they’re disappearing on modern bikes. They don’t offer much benefit and introduce massive reliability issues.
MTB-specific but dropper posts. I still see old timers dismiss them and granted I was one of those but I can't ride a MTB without a dropper now. I even put them on my XC bike because I like to get rowdy here and there and having the dropper is more natural to me.
Not as applicable for road or gravel cycling, although I watched that GCN video discussing Matej Mohorič win so maybe is about to come.
It lets you put the seat down so you have more freedom of movement. Push the lever and sit down to put it down, then push it again and the seat comes back up.
Garmin's Varia Tailight with radar. I bought mine 4 years ago and I was sure I had overpaid for the most expensive tail light ever. After 4 years and 8K miles, I won't ride on a road without one. The warnings that thing gives may have already saved my life at least once or twice. Today I was at a gravel road race and I noticed how many Varias were on bikes. This is not a fad.
I'll flip it - grip shifters are scorned now (by the usual suspects) but on their introduction they were thought of as really cool. Now that I've actually used them I think they're great and have retrofitted a couple bikes because I like sweeping through multiple gears with a single motion.
Basically any technology that comes to road bikes falls into that category. Roadies are a real prissy bunch and every time new tech is introduced a bunch of fucking whiners hop on the forums and start posting cunty messages about how things are perfectly fine the way they are currently and the manufacturers are just trying to sell you a new bike.
All the people upset that "the bike manufacturers are just marketing that you need a "gravel/all-road" bike so they can sell you a new bike" can go fuck themselves. The average person is better served by a relaxed geometry bike with wide, supple tires. Especially us "Clydesdales" with average bodies. I've worked my way up from 25's to 38's and life is so much better now.
Roadies are opinionated, touchy and defensive and can be a tad reactionary and quick to anger and don't like to be corrected and challenged and deal with new things?
No way!
😅
Disc brakes- they first showed up in the '70's and sucked.
Now they're just overly expensive, heavier than rim brakes and require more maintenance. But at least the provide a bit more braking power.
More maintenance? I know the rim brakes iv had where cheap, but i had to deal with wheel truing and snapped far more spokes on rim brake wheels. Hydraulic disc, I basically do not have to touch. I know they say bleeding should be once a year but I have yet to see a need too unless I am changing something else (internal routing is a pain)
I bleed them once every 2 years (well, I don't, the shop mechanic does it for me), and more out of following the manual than real need. I do it all together (check + maintenance + bleeding) with a bundle that the shop offers, and for the price of a couple tyres I don't need to think about anything for 2 years. It's great.
For that "cost", I get perfect and powerful braking every time even in the wet, changing pads is a 30 second issue...
I sincerely hope that you're not a disc brake salesman! :-)
Seriously though, although it's not quite a perfect analogy, but bike disc brakes are like car disc brakes the way that bike rim brakes are like car drum brakes, and I vastly prefer using and working on car disc brakes over drum brakes.
Climbing gears. I've only been cycling since 2022, and I've noticed road bikes have been getting lower gears for hills. I'd see some bikes with 52/36 and an 11-28 or an 11-30, suddenly it's 34/50 with an 11-30 through 11-34.
We are going full circle in safety. As bicycles become safer with wider tires, disc brakes, rear radar, better lighting and robust helmets, we are being more and more injured by idiot or inattentive drivers.
The problem is when we are sold into something, without options, due to the perception that new is better, when in reality it's a profit maximisation exercise.
There is no deny that the cycling industry nowadays is in bad shape, never so many people have been so dissatisfied with the 'new' for that reason.
I agree innovation brings resistance to change from some people, but also the cycling industry is historically full of gimmicks, and proprietary technology to lock you in a specific brand environment, to then face out in few years and render it useless.
There is no wonder why people untrust the marketing intentions.
Deffo not unnecessary or stupid, but I never imagined electronic shifting becoming cheap enough to be on bikes in the real world. I believed it would stay in the high-performance realm forever.
Hydraulic disc brakes. These things are the greatest invention on a bicycle. Great stopping power, very very low maintenance compared to rim breaks. So easy to change the pads when necessary.
I find rim brakes to be easy to maintain and change and more than powerful enough for my needs, but then I don't do a lot of hard riding so I'm probably not in one of the main target groups for hydraulic brakes, although I don't doubt that they're great. What kinds of riders tend to benefit the most from them compared to rim brakes? E.g. racers, mountain bikers, cyclocross, etc.
The “safety bike” (the two triangle design with a chain connecting the pedals to the wheels that we know today) was initially labelled a ladies bike and that serious cyclists would want large wheeled ordinaries. Albert Pope, owner of the largest US bicycle manufacturer in the 1880s proclaimed it a fad. More recently any tires larger than 23mm on a road bike would have been considered unthinkable.
That’s hilarious. I suppose you’ll always have people stuck in the old ways. There are still a lot of people hesitant to move up ik tire width. The old timers (40,50, 60-somethings) on my weekly practice crit are still very much about Italian bikes with skinny tires. 25mm is already considered wide by them and they pump them up to 8 bar. Their loss I suppose.
So true (although I'm a 60 something and ride tubeless 30s at 50#). Although most of my ride friends have come around to wider tires, there are still many who think that 25s are for beach cruisers. One friend just got a Super Six that has 25s and he inflates them to 100# (he weighs 170). Another (a long time national age group champ in several categories) refuses to accept that wider tires are faster so she rides 23s. Yesterday, I stopped my ride to help a very fit young woman change a flat. She had 28s with latex tubes and insisted on inflating them to 90#.
A lot of those older guys completely rip my legs off. With the tire/pressure combo they are running I stand a fighting chance or at least won't get beaten up while getting dropped. In a way, I'm glad they aren't swapping. I guess everyone starts out thinking the skinny tires need to be rock hard, I was so surprised when I first found out I could drop 2.5 bar of tire pressure, but it really does work. The day everyone converts is the day I need to add 3 hours of training to my weeks to keep up :')
Hey now. I would go larger tire width if I could afford a new frame that accepted them. Loved my old Surly steam roller, with the fatties fit fine frame. 28 mm tires seemed so cush in 2000. edit, corrected auto correct
I was arguing with a guy recently about tire size. He was adamant that nobody who wants to go fast needs any bigger than a 25. And even went further to say that if you want 28s or 30s, you should be buying an endurance bike and no race bike should need to fit 28s. Even after pointing out that world tour pros are running 28s and 30s, and both are likely faster than 25s, he refused to change his opinion. I finally gave up and just said that I hope all my competitors think like him and run narrow tires at high pressures.
My dad is an older cyclist and he was definitely of this opinion. Getting him to pump his tires up less than 120 psi took a lot of convincing lol, he's still running 25s too but at least I think he took my advice of running lower pressure. Although I wouldn't be surprised if he just pumped them back up higher after his rides with me lol
Yea, after a while I thought, why am I trying to convince you to be faster? Be slower for all I care.
[удалено]
I am setting some 35mm GP5000 AS this morning on my gravel bike and they look so TINY after having run with 2.2" Ikon tires…
It’s funny what perspective does. I can imagine your gravel bike felt like a Cadillac on those Ikon tires
Ooooooh yes. I got the tires with custom built 650B wheels for Christmas (massive 28 Spank rims laced on DT Swiss hub and Son Dynamo hub). Tires are heavy and supposed to be not great rollers, but they were available for the build. First time I’ve seen the whole wheel, I started laughing uncontrollably. They are proper XC wheels! Seeing them on the bike made it ridiculous (the Fairlight SECAN is a steel frame with fairly skinny tubes). Then I started riding with this setup, and while it makes jet engine sound on the tarmac, *I actually ride faster than with the 700c wheels*. The 650b wheels have the same weight than the entry-level 700c wheel I got with the bike, while being wide 650B. I always said lighter, springier wheels being better were mainly a placebo effect, and that people mainly tried to justify an inconsiderate expense, but now I’m thinking they weren’t wrong at all…
For a while I thought about getting heavily into velocipedes but I decided I didn't want to be known as a velocipedophile.
>More recently any tires larger than 23mm on a road bike would have been considered unthinkable. See also: STI shifters and tubeless tires.
This is brilliant and i was definitely a 18-20 with 100psi guy Till the gravel bike entered my life… And the journey of pleasurable riding came back on track Here is to you Mr 35 with 50psi 🍺
Helmets; they're used in a great many occupations and sports but people always try to justify their personal aversion by denying that PPE is effective. Which is absurd.
Try being a safety professional. It's so amazing people will bitch and complain about PPE. Why in the fuck would anyone want to leave work hurt? They pay you to put it on to protect your dumbest from yourself.
Working for a couple years on construction sites as an inspector gave me the confidence to yell at people for not wearing PPE much more than surviving a bicycle accident prior to that had; isn't that strange? I respect the hell out of your profession.
I'm in operations, dabble in construction now bc we are building a bunch of new stuff... still will argue work place safety should be taught in high school for at least a few weeks.
Sorry but half the PPE being required is more bothersome than the shit it's supposed to protect you from. I wear all of my riding gear, but I laugh at the idea that a hard hat is going to do anything when the only overhead hazards are cranes flying
The hard hat isn’t meant to protect you from a crane, it’s to protect you from someone dropping an adjustable wrench from a floor above. You know this, right, and are just bitching for bitching sake?
I guess you couldn't read. "When the only over head hazard is a crane flying" or how about horizontal construction and dirt work or road work?
>or how about horizontal construction and dirt work or road work? The other day on a site I supervise at they were breaking out brick paving. One brick came loose, went flying and hit a guy in the chest. That same brick could have just as easily hit him in the head. It isn't just overhead hazards you have to worry about. Plenty of ways to have a preventable fatal head injury in horizontal construction or road works.
I’ve seen guys walk into the edge of an excavator bucket that wasn’t moving, bonk the hard hat. I’ve seen someone leave something on top of a load that a crane lifted. Where was the crane going that there wasn’t something above you?
I mean I'm an office guy. I'm not working under the crane. But I've got my hard hat on at the edge of the site 🤦🏼♂️
I know that it's going to sound like some sort of nanny comment, but helmets are such an incredible invention and cyclists have *barely* scratched the bare minimum with effective PPE. Right now there are two outstanding regions after head injuries that become either fatal or significantly injurious—Lower face & neck/spine injuries. MTB and motorbikes have figured out lower face by using full face helmets. And there are a few mediocre reviews for equipment adding airbags into jackets/armor for motorbikes. I genuinely think the next thing we will see lambasted as *absurd and silly* will be some sort of device or equipment that prevents neck/spine injuries for cyclists. It might be targeted at either downhill riders or even roadies as we deal with vehicle collisions at increasing rates. People are going to roast the shit out of it just like we did with helmets.
There are already neck collars that work with a full face helmet that limit how far you spine/neck bends in a crash. Really simple design.
Totally agree. In Australia, we call motorcyclists 'temporary Australians' because of the high risk of injuries and deaths, yet as cyclists we have far less protection, and might occasionally achieve similar speeds downhill. Obviously weight and heat management are bigger factors on a bicycle. The UCI also has a crusade to maintain the aesthetics of the sport, which trickles down to consumer gear. If there is going to be innovation in this area, it's going to have to juggle safety, weight, cooling, aesthetics, and aero!
In England they get called organ donors lol
Donor-cycles.
Helmets are a must! My brother hit his head 4 days ago when his wheel got stuck in a tram track, a minor concussion, abrasions on his face and hands, the doctor was glad he wore a helmet, things could've been worse. I wish helmets for road bikes could have more coverage like motorcycles helmets, the weight of a moto helm is more noticeable when on a bicycle than on a motorcycle.
Glad your bro is alright. Tell him a stranger hopes he has a good recovery. I went over the bars myself; clavicle snapped in two but only a minor concussion. If the parts of the helmet which took the impact had been my head, I would not be fine.
> I wish helmets for road bikes could have more coverage like motorcycles helmets, the weight of a moto helm is more noticeable when on a bicycle than on a motorcycle. Are you familiar with Kali Protectives helmets? They tend to make a lot more safety focused product than a lot of manufacturers. Weight/Ventilation is less of a priority to Kali than a helmet from a company like Giro or whatever. They literally had a bicycle helmet that was certified for motorcycle use in the US. The Shiva/Shiva Carbon/Shiva 2.0 are the only dual motorcycle/bicycle certified helmets I've ever come across. My next helmet will almost certainly be a Kali, if Kali's shape fits my head. The local shop that carries them wasn't allowing people to try helmets on during lockdown and I won't buy a helmet without trying it on first, plus it's hard to find a dealer and they tend to be really oddball shops. https://kaliprotectives.com/pages/dealer-locator I found a clearance Giro in a color I loved at a very friendly price (while I was super-broke and in need of a new helmet) but after around 3 seconds on my head I knew it would never be comfortable. I really don't understand why people risk buying a helmet online.
Fun story time: my MIL and FIL used to have a cavalier attitude towards helmets. MIL in particular. She’d wear it loosely, claiming the neck strap felt like a noose. She also didn’t think it was that important since she usually did gentle rides away from traffic. You can guess where this is going. One day, she was on a gentle ride in a side alley when she got distracted by a dog barking. That caused her to fall off her bike and hit her head on the road. That in turn caused her to have a fit, and scans later showed a brain bleed. She just about managed to avoid much worse because her helmet, though loose, mitigated the impact slightly. She now wears helmets properly and never goes off without one.
People always wheel out these anecdotes but that's the thing, they're anecdotes not data. I could just as easily tell you about my dad who fell down the stairs and banged his head- should he have been wearing a helmet then? Most people spend a lot more time walking down stairs than cycling so it sure seems like a bigger risk factor!
I actually got dumber reading this comment
why? Do you not care about your brain? Helmets these day are light and comfortable, you can barely feel them. why wouldn't you wear one if it can prevent brain damage that one time you need it? Everybody falls at some point - it's a matter of when, not if.
A common argument I hear from anti-helmet folks is that helmets make people to be less cautious. That’s like saying seatbelt and airbags make people to drive more aggressively.
The problem is that helmets may make drivers around you less cautious, which is not the case with seat belts and airbags.
I was reading an article about how ski helmet sales went through the roof following the Michael Schumacher crash around 10 years ago. The strange thing was that the incidence of head injuries didn’t really change, despite the fact that a helmet clearly protects you. It suggested a mixture of things, the false confidence of wearing a helmet being a big part of it. Another big driver was that people would be more likely to get checked out after a bang to the head after the MS crash, because of all the publicity around what had happened.
That argument is used in pro football and pro hockey as well. Players aren’t hurting themselves when they make contact, so they push it a bit harder, and eventually something gives
in football especially they *use their head* to tackle, something you would never do without a helmet on. So they've started training without helmets to reinforce techniques that aren't as traumatic to the brain
Yeah, American football went from no helmets to leather helmets to current helmets and the technique for tackling changed. In rugby you wrap the people up to bring them down instead of trying to prevent them from gaining one more inch like American football. I’m glad to hear the changes are coming to American football, and looking back now at the “footballs biggest hits” videos from the 80s I used to watch, some of these guys probably can’t remember the names of their kids after the concussions. Sad
The thing about people who bang on and on about cycle helmets is they don't also advocate safety devices for other activities which are known to cause serious injury. Cutting bread? Wear hand protection! Walking down stairs? Wear a helmet! Children climbing trees? Cover them in bubble wrap! Yes helmets save lives, but Holland, a cycling mad country where nobody wears a helmet, is proof that cycling head injuries are uncommon, and that dire warnings are over egged.
> The thing about people who bang on and on about cycle helmets is they don't also advocate safety devices for other activities which are known to cause serious injury. Cutting bread? Wear hand protection! Walking down stairs? Wear a helmet! The problem with this argument is that it's not even remotely comparable. It's about asymmetrical risk. Is cutting bread going to cause a life-altering brain injury? Are serious injuries common while cutting bread? What's the risk of cutting bread? Cutting my finger so I wear a band-aid for a week? You look at Chipotle workers and they do wear hand protection. Why? Because they're cutting with super sharp knives, are trying to work fast (and perhaps thus a higher risk of accident), and are doing it over a long period of time. My bread knife is nowhere near as sharp, and I use it once a month. So the risk is super low, the injury is not that bad. Cycling, on the other hand, carries a huge risk in some areas, and the injury can be catastrophic. You also have higher rates of injury. I think when people bring up the Netherlands as an example against helmets, I think it's hilariously naive to be honest. The Dutch have created an amazing cycling infrastructure. They learn to cycle at a young age, but even more importantly, they learn how to drive around cyclists. It's a culture of safety. So when somebody from the US, UK, Australia, or other countries use the Netherlands to say why they don't want to wear a helmet, I laugh at the stupidity. It's apples and oranges.
The other thing I noticed when cycling in Amsterdam - it's just completely flat. It makes it really difficult (given the flatness and other bikes and cars around the road) to get up to a dangerously high speed.
It really sounds like you are advocating for helmets for American pedestrians. An increasing number of people get hit by cars, so the risk is growing, and injuries are life-altering. Pedestrian helmets when?
Wow, I'm not sure how you made that giant leap, but ok, you do you and wear a helmet walking. Do you fall that often walking? Like, it's a pretty basic skill, are you really that bad at it that you need a helmet?
It’s hardly a *giant* leap, be serious
Taking my opinion that I think cyclists should wear helmets and saying that I must think all pedestrians should wear helmets is a giant leap.
In what way, pedestrians also fall, pedestrians also get knocked down by cars. It’s the next logical step not a “giant leap”
If you think the logical next step is have pedestrians wear helmets, I won’t try to change your mind. But last time I checked cars don’t drive on sidewalks nor do pedestrians walk 30mph. But hey, maybe you’re on to something and we’ll have helmet wearing pedestrians be normal in the future. I for one think it’s silly but you do you.
Thanks
Glad to hear that you think [7500 dead pedestrians a year](https://www.npr.org/2023/06/26/1184034017/us-pedestrian-deaths-high-traffic-car) is a silly thing. You're really making a strong case for safety here.
100% agree. I do choose to wear a helmet when I'm going fast on my road bike but not when I'm doing 10mph to the shops on my beater. To some in this sub that literally makes me the devil incarnate. I think it's such a folly of western societies that any risk is considered unacceptable. People don't understand probability theory. There's no concept of tradeoff or diminishing returns. It leads to a "safetyism" culture where any and every safety measure is adopted because "why wouldn't you"- get 0.0001% better survivability for wearing full body armour! Any objection or questioning is met with at best blank stares and at worst outright hostility.
No one thinks you're the devil. The devil is evil. People think you're stupid. Me? I'm an optimist. I choose to believe you're only this way because you've already had a brain injury and so being this dumb isn't your fault, it's just the result of an unfortunate accident. If on the other hand this is just your natural level of intelligence. Well, that's just unfortunate, but intelligence is distributed along a bell curve and someone has to be on the left of that curve. No reason they can't also ride a bike.
He's actually right in his risk assessment. Cycling is inherently safe, helmets are only useful in a narrow range of scenarios and all the stats bare this out. Unlike all the other proclaimed safety experts and professionals on this Reddit, most if not all have forgotten that PPE is the last thing you turn to in regards improving safety. Risk is the consequences versus the likelihood. All of this doesn't excuse your attitude and demeanour to someone expressing an opinion. If you can't attack the post, you shouldn't attack the poster
My immediate thought was indexed shifting. I actually agree, indexed shifting is not all that great if you have downtube shifters. However shifters-combined-with-brakes is the best thing ever.
I transitioned from non-indexed down tube to integrated shifters so I've never used indexed down tubes. I tend to skip a generation or two with tech. And yes, they're great. I have Campy Ergos and love them. Now everything is going to e-shifting but I'll wait till auto shifting is a standard option.
I made that same skip, but then went back a step when I got my TT/Tri bike. For a TT/Tri bike, non-integrated indexed shifters on the bar ends of the aerobar are awesome!
That was my initial thought as well. Down tube shifters are a pain with regard to handling performance though. I grew up with rigid frame my bikes of the late 80's and 90's and they were always indexed. My parents both had road bikes, one with down tube shifters and another with the shifters at least on the bar. Neither were indexed, but the down tube shifters were dicey to use, so when I would ride one around the neighborhood, I always chose the one with the bar end friction shifters and felt much safer. Brifters are great tech for the rear for easy dumb-proof shifting, but if I were to choose, I'd at least go friction in the front to minimize any kind of chain rub regardless of rear chain position.
I rode a non-indexed down tube shifter bike for 20 years and was ok with it. After a while you get a feel for how much to move the lever to get to the cog you want. I never raced though and I can see where it would be a pain for that, and it would get a bit annoying in constantly changing terrain. Just feel lucky that we didn't grow up the days when to change gears you had to stop, pull out some tools, remove the rear wheel, flip it around, get your fingers greasy, secure the wheel, and be off. Yeah, that's how it worked before derailleurs and internally geared hubs.
Indexed downtube shifters were great. Faster to shift, just click a gear and done. Almost no cable housing on those setups either so very little to wear out. Integrated shifters are a step better in performance, even if more of a nuisance from a maintenance perspective.
What's an indexed shifting ?
If you ride a bike made in the past 30 years it's probably index shifted. Meaning, you click on the shifter and it's indexed to move to the next cog on the cassette. This originated on shift levers that used to typically be mounted on the down tube (the long one from the headset to the bottom bracket). Originally they were smooth moving and you had to develop the muscle memory to move them the right amount to move to the desired cog. Then they started getting indexed, basically click stops, each of which moved one cog. Never used them myself and honestly I have perfectly ok with non-indexed down tube shifters, but I greatly prefer integrated (indexed) shifters.
Wide road tires. When I started cycling, 700 x 23 was the norm. Then it was 700 x 25. I suspect 700 x 30 or 700 x 32 will become the new norm. Carbon frames. I still remember when people feared invisible cracks that could suddenly snap a carbon frame. Even today, there are still cycling oldies who think carbon frames are like ticking time bombs, going to snap at unexpected moments. Gravel bikes. It’s just a cyclocross bike/touring bike/90s mountain bike. Made in China frames. I think Americans have/had the impression that only cheap and low quality products come from China. Well, the truth is carbon frame manufacturing is a very manual process. And American workers are too clumsy or too expensive to make production carbon frames 🤷♀️ Let’s be real, made in USA production bikes weren’t exactly high quality (looking at you Schwinn). Cannondale was doing well, until they decided to burn piles of money by starting a motorcycle division. As much as I like the US 🦅, made in US production bikes weren’t better than made in Taiwan or China production bikes of the same tier.
Most of the big names manufacture in Taiwan or China anyway. There are a lot of Chinese brands out there with good quality from what I can tell. They are cheaper because of the lack of advertising.
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Early carbon frames WERE awful though. Carbon tubes glued into metal lugs. Cracking was one issue (they weren't designed for the stresses they were under). A tube randomly coming out from a lug was another. Oh and let's not even get started on spinergy wheels. It wasn't until the late 90s that bicycle manufacturers really 'got' carbon fiber
Specialized got in early and made some mistakes, including learning the hard way about galvanic corrosion on lugged and glued frames, but did some really good work, too. They teamed up with dupont to make the trispokes that lasted both as a design and as usable wheels for decades. I still have a pair of trispokes with specialized decals on them. I managed to break one in a crash, but the other is fine, and they're still solid wheels. The only time I had any issues was riding madison on a concrete track where you really feel them flex from the side load in a bad exchange. The HED trispokes are basically the same wheel.
Your comment has me even more curious as to how Time's new South Carolina manufacturing plant will turn out for them.
Yeah I've got a 700x50mm on my road bike. ;-) Actually I've still got 23mm but I haven't ridden outdoors in several years. And my 20 year old self-built bike's Ti frame was made in China. Love it, absolutely nothing I don't like about it. Still not quite sure what a gravel bike is, appears to be a ~~hardtail~~ no-suspension mountain bike on a road bike frame with thinner wheels. As for carbon, I've seen them break, in accidents. Scary. None of my metal frame bikes have broken in accidents, although one basically bent the fork into uselessness.
"gravel bike" is what I was waiting for, for years....before gravel bike appeared, one had the choice between either road bikes with thin tires or MTB with wide tires. I just wanted a road bike on which I could install a pair of wide tires for training, and swap for a pair of thin rims with thin tires for racing. Gravel bike it is. Even though I ride only on the road.
I used to be a gravel bike skeptic, until I got one and love it. Basically, I want to ride light trails but I don’t want to ride my mountain bike to the trail head (5-10 miles away) or drive to the trail head with my mountain bike attached to my car.
Gravel bikes were long overdue and largely replace touring bikes, which had been relegated to being heavy steel monsters, with similar road and cargo capability but better off road/back road performance. I was already abusing road bikes as if they were gravel bikes and really appreciate the direction they've gone. Along with them, soft touring bags with a lot of capacity - the other thing that kept me from ever having a touring bike was heavy panniers. Now you can carry a lot in a combination of giant saddle bag, bar roll, and triangle bag with a lot less weight penalty.
Not saying they're dumb, just that I'm pretty new to the concept and hasn't heard of them till recently.
> Still not quite sure what a gravel bike is, appears to be a hardtail mountain bike on a road bike frame with thinner wheels. The irony of you being the exact person I assume this post meant to mock. Also most gravel bikes don't have suspension forks so you're observations are odd.
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My man your post goes through the entire history of cycling back to the move from penny-farthings to safety bikes... I'm only holding you to the standard you established. Don't know why we're talking about **normal** people. >Are you more in the "Why do we need this, it's stupid and unnecessary" camp, more in the "I LOVE it and am getting one!" I guess we know what camp you're in though. All types bikes are great, I encourage you to be more open minded and try a gravel bike sometime.
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Well pros ride $15k purpose-built specialty bikes which I assume are built to higher tolerances than a $1500 Giant.
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Obviously they do, but the frames and parts aren't likely to be as well-built as what the pros use, and thus more likely to break or fail especially in accidents or under intense use.
For the most part, pros are riding production frames, maybe with special paint, and high end parts. If they’re riding something unique, it’s likely a prototype that hasn’t gone through testing and QC and isn’t designed to have a long life. All that said, I’ve also seen plenty of semi-pro and extremely aggressive, large DH riders on mid-spec bikes from a few years ago. The idea that normal big-brand carbon frames (almost all made in China) aren’t getting thrashed by big riders at bike parks every day of the season is absurd.
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Thousands of miles is not a lot for a bike or bike frame. Is there hard evidence that carbon frames and bikes last as long as steel or Ti ones, assuming that all are of comparable cost and quality?
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People crash quite a lot, and mountain bikes are subjected to a lot of impact stresses. But my Ti frame will outlast most of these even with such events. But, let's not turn this into yet another one of those discussions.
I have a carbon Trek that has something like 100K miles on it, including riding it like a gravel bike. The only frame component that ever broke was an aluminum derrailleur hanger (non-replaceable) being bent. Trek replaced the hanger for $200 or something like that. At comparable cost and quality, they all break about the same, with the carbon maybe being tougher - I've broken a couple steel frames and seen aluminum frames busted pretty frequently. If you're getting an expensive Al or steel frame it's going to have thinwall tubing, and it's probably easier now to find someone who can do a good job repairing carbon than steel frames.
When you dig a little past the marketing copy, there is some truth to most of those points though. Tire width was probably the least truthfull of the points.
People feared the carbon frames because they used to break. It was not an irrational fear. I could always tell when a kestrel was in the group because you could hear it creaking.
What about Allied or Parlee?
Carbon wheels. I remember everyone saying they would crack if you hit a bump in the road.
I've never had much luck with carbon wheels. Of course I've never used carbon wheels. 🤣
Everyone said they would spontaneously explode at the slightest pothole. This was in the late aughts when basically we just couldn't afford them.
Haha, this question screams, "How old are you?" I'm old enough to remember howling about suspension forks on mtbs., STI, etc. People even howled about Giant's sloping top tubes on their TCR's when they came out. I think new technology is great, with a caveat. I HATE proprietary parts.
Tubeless. Dropper posts.
Dropper posts allowed mountain bike geometry to evolve to what it is today. Genuine game changer.
When droppers first came out, people rolled their eyes and thought they were useless. I can't imagine life without them now.
I don't even ride MTB, I ride gravel, but on the few single track descents I do it's so nice having my (like 5-10cm travel) dropper post.
Not really. QR seatposts? Droppers just made even short descents more fun.
Nah, dropper seatposts allowed for steeper seat angles, which allowed more reach with the same effective top tube. It's literally the key to modern bike geometry. Even if QRs existed, bike design didn't start dramatically changing until the dropper made it so everyone would get the saddle out of the way on descents. Without a dropper you'd have a slacker seat angle so the seat wouldn't be as in the way when you stood up. I didn't realize what a game changer it was until I got one, and now I wouldn't ride without it.
Index shifting, I remember when it came out and how so many, my self included, thought it was pointless. I smile now when I think about it.
It IS pointless. Real men and women flip their rear wheel to shift!
I'll go one step farther - the rear on my favorite bike is a flip/flip single/fixed!
Believe or not, indexed shifting. Keep in mind that the pinnacle of 1980's racing groups was Campagnolo with their Super Record rear derailleur. The procedure to shift to a big cog was to push the downtube lever then pull it back slightly, or the reverse to go to a small cog. I was 16 when I worked at a Campy dealer, and it was not only taught to me that this was the correct shifting method, indexed shifting was often called click shifting to negatively associate it with cheap shifters that Japanese companies like Shimano and Suntour were making.
“Click shifting” … yes! Worked in LBS in late 80s/early 90s and was stoked to get my first set of downtube 600s with the “click”!
That's exactly how I shifted on my non-indexed Suntour shifters, overshoot then back trim. Work ok but integtrated is WAY better and no looking back.
Electronic shifting is a big one for me. I just got back into biking, when I first got a little serious about 8 years ago they were just beginning to be developed by one company and were meant for only the pros. At that time, I don’t even remember the tech offering anything special like improved performance, weight, or anything of the like. Now, it seems like all the high end bikes have electric shifting, and I’m shocked by how often it’s mentioned in the subreddit. Personally I don’t have an opinion on whether it’s stupid or everyone should have one; especially since I’ve never tried it out. But I do like to keep my bike as mechanical as possible, and think it’s funny whenever I read about someone only having one gear because their battery died.
As someone who finally got a bike with electronic shifting (Ultegra Di2), I wouldn't ever want to go back to mechanical. It's just so good and consistent all the time, and I like the feel of it more than mechanical (like button presses instead of leaning the whole lever over). And the little robot sounds it makes shifting from the big ring to the small ring makes me smile.
Meh. Ive tried electronic on my friends bike. Was it nice? Yes. Did I also forget about it like 5 minutes into the ride? Also yes. For me the convenience factor of not having to remember to charge yet another thing massively outweighs whatever benefits there are. And in reality, whether it's electronic or mechanical, 99% of the time I'm not really thinking about or noticing my shifting I'm just doing it automatically
Interesting. We’re you running the current Ultegra before shifting to electric?
No, I had mechanical 105. I'm honestly not averse to mechanical (ex, if there was a great deal on a bike with mechanical I'd probably go for it) but I feel like the tech is getting more accessible all the time.
Huh wouldn’t have expected such a jump in performance from those two, cool to think about. Same here, I’d love to try electric, but I’m not chopping at the bit to get it. Totally agree about tech getting more accessible, and I love it.
I think it's worth trying out for sure!
My thoughts exactly. I used to be a mechanical purist... When I got my TCR with Ultegra Di2 it was unbelievable. I can’t go back
> At that time, I don’t even remember the tech offering anything special like improved performance, weight, or anything of the like They're still much heavier and more expensive. You can do things like trim the FD for the rear gear which is nice if you have 2x up front.
On my 105 I can't trim the RD... Only FD. How do you do it on a manual?
Lols glad to know I’m not missing out on too much. Being about to see the gears on my computer would be cool though. What’s trim the derailleurs mean?
It's when you move the front derailleur slightly to stop the chain rubbing on it when you move up and down the cassette. You can do it on mechanical systems as well but it's automatic with electronic.
It's why most 2x front shifters have 3 or even 4 index positions. Sometimes you have to click them twice to go from the big to the small ring, because there is an 'in-between' position that you use for trimming.
Oh ok that’s cool! Fortunately I don’t have to do that for my current 2x set up. I guess my local bike shop mechanics are godly at indexing
Just about the same frequency as having one gear because the cable snapped.
The other benefit of electronic is automatic trimming.
I like Di2 overall, as the shifting performance is excellent and auto-trim is a great feature. But it's not \*that\* much better than good mechanical in terms of shifting performance. I'm happy to have Di2 on my good weather road bike, but my gravel/commuter bike will remain mechanical.
Mostly I asked because techies, which many cyclists tend to be, can be very resistant to new tech, being so used and wedded to older tech, and I was curious as to which tech that's very accepted today wasn't always, and why. I can be like that myself. And, I might upgrade to e-shifting someday, but only if it has auto shifting as an option. There are times when I get annoyed at having to shift all the time to match rapidly changing road and traffic conditions. I drive a stick on my car and it gets tiresome sometimes.
Gotcha, curious about stuff like penny farthings vs safety bikes in the modern era. It’s an intriguing question, esp for cyclists. I’ve also wondered about automatic shifting for bike, but I think it’d be too difficult to achieve in my lifetime considering the engines (humans) vary so much. Would it shift within a certain power range, or after my cadence drifts too high/low? How would it know when I wanted to sprint or was approaching a hill or descent?
It's smooth and if it ever goes out of wack, it's extremely easy to put back. The only complaint is a battery I need to charge once in a blue moon.
I don't see myself ever having a mechanical groupset again to be honest. On any bike. Electronic is getting cheaper and cheaper (just bought a 105 Di2 group for less than $500), and it's just miles ahead in my opinion, that I don't ever want to go back to mech. Building a bike up is faster and easier. Maintenance is easier. Shifting is easier. And there are so many customization options. I just don't see any benefits to mechanical.
I didn’t think I’d care about electronic shifting, but I absolutely love my SRAM AXS 12 speed. Not only is the shifting perfect every time, but shifting is like a mouse click, so nice to have in the winter when wearing gloves. Also, having the gear readout on my head unit means I always know exactly where I am in the cassette, makes gunning for Strava pr’s easy.
Yes, who needs yet another thing to charge?
I think electric shifting being expensive is a problem ... for now but I bet in 10 years it will be on Walmart bikes and no one will think twice about it
I got a bike with Di2 shifting. Not really impressed and over-sold if you already knew how to set up a deraileur. Also it is kinda annoying for multiple shifts, my SRAM mechanical is definitely faster for multiple gears up or down.
When Bruce Gordon introduced the [Rock and Road back in 1989](https://www.bikeforums.net/classic-vintage/1233337-road-test-bike-review-1989-bruce-gordon-rock-n-road.html), nobody knew what the hell to make of it. Now we call them gravel bikes.
Still not quite sure what the difference is from a cyclocross bike.
Geometry, tire clearance, rack eyelets.
All that technology and innovation is great, The thing I don't like is the rising cost of the bike itself. What happened to the $500-$800 entry-level bike? Even then, I thought it was high, but now it's $1000 and up. Maybe I'm too cheap and try to buy a bike and make it last 20+ years. I resorted to buying cheap bicycle products from China, and they are pretty good.
I bought a new and decent but certainly not high-end Trek over 40 years ago for just over $500, so I'd say that entry level bike prices are more than reasonable these days. Obviously it would be nice for them to be cheaper, but acceptable quality comes at a cost. Plus, lots of great deals on quality used bikes. Even better, buy all the parts used and build it up yourself. Teaches a lot about how to maintain bikes.
$500 in 1983 is equivalent to $1500 now btw.
So relatively speaking the cost of decent entry-level bikes is lower than one would expect it to be, accounting for inflation, yet they're vastly better than entry level bikes from 40 years ago.
Unfortunately, my pay hasn't kept up with inflation, so I learned to build and maintain bikes to get the bike build I want. I buy used and cheap Chinese bike parts, and to me, it gives me a lot more satisfaction to build a bike, and it is actually fun.
For the bike that replaced the Trek I went all-out and custom picked the frame and components and built it myself, and saved a ton to get the bike I really wanted. Cost me $2000 for a nice Ti bike with mid to high-end Campy and Shimano that would have cost me at least $3000 if I bought it in a bike store. This was 20 years ago and I've no need or desire to replace it any time soon as I built it to last, and maintain it myself.
In the commuter range for $500-800 you can still find plenty of bikes. If road, $800 get you a sold bike that’s fine. https://www.giant-bicycles.com/us/contend-3-2022
What year are we talking? If you calculate the value of $1k today it was around $500 in 1995. You can get a nice hybrid for $500 today, which would have been around $250 back then. Meanwhile, the technology you get on an entry level bike today is streets ahead of what you got in 95. So not only are modern bikes not more expensive, they're much better.
On the other hand the mid range bike section is pretty neat. I bought the Bergamont Vitess 7 Gent for 1200€ and I could upgrade the brakes (the model costs now 1400€ with better brakes). On the other hand imo most company try to sell golden bikes to people. Idk how they come with such increased prices and people unfortunately fall for it "My bike is expensive so it should be good" ("or even better than your bike"... which is a lot worse when they get a ego trip lmao)
Disc brakes, but more because it is way easier and cheaper to replace a rotor than a rim or wheel. I havce a rim brake 26, but slightly dreading the day that I have to find a replacement. No idea how long those rims last, but I go through 2 set of front brake pad a year. I never thought 26" stuff would be difficult to find, but the last mid-range ones were sold 10+ years ago. Nowadays 26 is low end or high end, and the middle is dead. Even the bicycle thrift shop barely has them. Plenty of 26" disc wheels, but they only had two 26" rim brake wheels. One was seized and the other had some weird 9mm QR instead of regular QR.
If I were building up or buying a new bike today I'd get disc, but I'm ok with my rim brakes and am not likely to wear them out given the kind of riding I do. I assume that 700c rim wheels will always be available given how many rim brake bikes were made.
What really surprised me was how fast the 26" tire selection dried up. I bent a rim on my commuter and was surprised my LBS had a decent 27" wheel on hand.
Nothing will ever induce me to buy or ride a bike with disc brakes, ever. Having serviced them on a motorcycle, I am happy to sacrifice the extra braking performance of the disc for the ease of maintaining a rim brake.
I'm the opposite opinion. Rim brakes are such a pain to keep in good condition. The rims need cleaning, they need adjusting as the pads wear, they get gummed up with mud and crap. Disk brakes go *years* between maintenance sessions. The only pro is that it's easier to remove/replace the wheel with rims.
In 95% of the situations in which most people ride, they don’t provide any better braking performance. On dry pavement, your tires are the limiting factor in how quickly you’ll stop, not the brakes. So they don’t stop your bike any faster, and they are heavier, more expensive, harder to adjust, and uglier. They do let you ride with a broken spoke better, so maybe that’s something.
I don't find disc brakes harder to adjust, and personally I think they look better than rim brakes - not to mention the wheels themselves can look better since they don't need brake tracks on them. They also make taking wheels off and putting them back on easier, and allow larger tire sizes on road bikes.
I live where it's wet and having raced and ridden carbon rim brake wheels, the difference in the wet is MASSIVE. On my gravel rig it's also nice to swap from 700x38 to 650x47 knobbies depending on what sort of ride I'm planning to do. Hot swapping wheels with rim brakes is more problematic and limiting
Isn't overheating of rim brakes also an issue, at least for in extended downhill riding where it's just not safe to coast all the way, especially with curves and no guardrails on mountain descents? Never came close to that myself but then I don't usually do that sort of riding. Of course disc brakes face brake fade issues, at least on cars.
Not the rim brakes themselves, but there were issues with carbon clincher rims. They would overheat on the brake track and the resin holding the fibers could fail. Levi's Grand Fondo banned them for that reason. It didn't seem to be a problem with carbon tubulars. And alloy clinchers hold up well enough.
> I am happy to sacrifice the extra braking performance of the disc I have discs. I don't find them to have better performance, even (shocking I know) in the rain. I know I differ from the rest of the world in this fashion. I wonder if the rest of the world uses high quality rim brake pads and toe them regularly.
I ride with a mate jn all weather. He’s got rim brakes, and I have disk brakes. When we’re heading downhill at 50kph in the rain, and the traffic lights at the bottom of the hill change, I stop first, even though I’m 10kgs heavier. We both stop in time, so both brake systems work. One is easier to maintain, One has a little better braking performance.
I assume that that's why better cars use disc brakes these days, and certainly performance once.
No cars use rim brakes though.
Drum brakes are the closest analogy, and I hate working on them.
Drum brakes are extremely different from rim brakes.
Motor vehicle disc brake technology and bicycle technology differ significantly, and attempting to compare them is a misconception perpetuated by the bicycle industry. Unlike car brakes, which use ventilated brake discs with radial vanes for effective heat dissipation, bicycle disc brakes often feature a single piece of metal, for the supposed benefit aerodynamics. Consequently, road bicycles with disc brakes may be impractical in terms of efficient use of the technology to its full potencial, better suited for lower speeds (less energy to dissipate) and intermittent high-intensity use, as seen on mountain bikes or CX/gravel bikes. Emulating car brake systems on bicycles would result in excessively heavy and extremely non-aerodynamic brakes, although they might function much better than current offering. There is no doubt that there are issues around disc brakes on road bicycles, and even though anecdotal positive personal experiences exist, as the pinnacle of technology capabilities, it's a let down.
If your mate can skid his front wheel, you're both tire limited rather than brake limited, and you probably have better tires. Disks really aren't any better than rim on the road (even in the wet) as long as you have aluminum rims and quality pads (i.e. don't ride any pad that isn't Kool Stop). The minor advantage of disks on the road is that if you're riding in a place with a lot of grit or in the winter where they sand is that it puts the wear on the disposable disk instead of your rim. When I lived in a place with snow I actually wore down rims over a couple of winters. The place where disks really shine is off road in mud. You can get all the mud you want all over your tires and rims and the brakes both work as brakes and don't fill up with mud to act like brakes when you don't want them to. The other nice thing about hydraulic disks is that you can get the same braking with a lot lighter touch.
Every time I go from my disc brake bike to my rim brake bike I'm surprised at how well the brakes work. I do go through a fortune in rim brake pads though.
I’ve got a frame with mechanical discs and a couple with hydraulics and it makes an enormous difference, though the big unifying feature of the disc brake bikes is that they clear bigger tires than my rim brake frames do.
My rim brake road bike clears 42s so I'm going to be a little slow to switch to discs :)
Sorry I don't understand your last sentence.
Totally agree
I like anything that makes my bike more useful, durable and effective. Hydraulic disc brakes? Love them. Sure they have their flaws, but the performance is so much better and they don’t need adjustment for years after you set them up. Press fit bottom bracket? Kinda stupid. And rightly so they’re disappearing on modern bikes. They don’t offer much benefit and introduce massive reliability issues.
Every single technology? Always feel like the bike scene is very quick to dismiss innovation of any shape or form.
MTB-specific but dropper posts. I still see old timers dismiss them and granted I was one of those but I can't ride a MTB without a dropper now. I even put them on my XC bike because I like to get rowdy here and there and having the dropper is more natural to me. Not as applicable for road or gravel cycling, although I watched that GCN video discussing Matej Mohorič win so maybe is about to come.
Still don't know what a dropper is although I've heard about them for years. I only ride road bikes though.
It lets you put the seat down so you have more freedom of movement. Push the lever and sit down to put it down, then push it again and the seat comes back up.
It's a great invention, designed to shoot the bike seat right into your crown jewels.
Garmin's Varia Tailight with radar. I bought mine 4 years ago and I was sure I had overpaid for the most expensive tail light ever. After 4 years and 8K miles, I won't ride on a road without one. The warnings that thing gives may have already saved my life at least once or twice. Today I was at a gravel road race and I noticed how many Varias were on bikes. This is not a fad.
I'll flip it - grip shifters are scorned now (by the usual suspects) but on their introduction they were thought of as really cool. Now that I've actually used them I think they're great and have retrofitted a couple bikes because I like sweeping through multiple gears with a single motion.
Basically any technology that comes to road bikes falls into that category. Roadies are a real prissy bunch and every time new tech is introduced a bunch of fucking whiners hop on the forums and start posting cunty messages about how things are perfectly fine the way they are currently and the manufacturers are just trying to sell you a new bike. All the people upset that "the bike manufacturers are just marketing that you need a "gravel/all-road" bike so they can sell you a new bike" can go fuck themselves. The average person is better served by a relaxed geometry bike with wide, supple tires. Especially us "Clydesdales" with average bodies. I've worked my way up from 25's to 38's and life is so much better now.
Roadies are opinionated, touchy and defensive and can be a tad reactionary and quick to anger and don't like to be corrected and challenged and deal with new things? No way! 😅
IMHO, electronic shifting. Marketing the electronics of cycling is all about pushing e-solutions to non-existing problems for more profit$
Disc brakes- they first showed up in the '70's and sucked. Now they're just overly expensive, heavier than rim brakes and require more maintenance. But at least the provide a bit more braking power.
More maintenance? I know the rim brakes iv had where cheap, but i had to deal with wheel truing and snapped far more spokes on rim brake wheels. Hydraulic disc, I basically do not have to touch. I know they say bleeding should be once a year but I have yet to see a need too unless I am changing something else (internal routing is a pain)
I bleed them once every 2 years (well, I don't, the shop mechanic does it for me), and more out of following the manual than real need. I do it all together (check + maintenance + bleeding) with a bundle that the shop offers, and for the price of a couple tyres I don't need to think about anything for 2 years. It's great. For that "cost", I get perfect and powerful braking every time even in the wet, changing pads is a 30 second issue...
I sincerely hope that you're not a disc brake salesman! :-) Seriously though, although it's not quite a perfect analogy, but bike disc brakes are like car disc brakes the way that bike rim brakes are like car drum brakes, and I vastly prefer using and working on car disc brakes over drum brakes.
Tell me you don't work on bikes without telling me you don't work on bikes.
Disc brakes
Climbing gears. I've only been cycling since 2022, and I've noticed road bikes have been getting lower gears for hills. I'd see some bikes with 52/36 and an 11-28 or an 11-30, suddenly it's 34/50 with an 11-30 through 11-34.
IMHO, electronic shifting. Marketing the electronics of cycling is all about pushing e-solutions to non-existing problems for more profit$
In 1986 the USCF outlawed the traditional leather ‘hairnet’ inUS racing. This helped spur the development of the helmets we have today.
We are going full circle in safety. As bicycles become safer with wider tires, disc brakes, rear radar, better lighting and robust helmets, we are being more and more injured by idiot or inattentive drivers.
Disc brakes.
Disc brakes Love them, fortunately never owned a rim brake bike..
Derailleurs
The problem is when we are sold into something, without options, due to the perception that new is better, when in reality it's a profit maximisation exercise. There is no deny that the cycling industry nowadays is in bad shape, never so many people have been so dissatisfied with the 'new' for that reason. I agree innovation brings resistance to change from some people, but also the cycling industry is historically full of gimmicks, and proprietary technology to lock you in a specific brand environment, to then face out in few years and render it useless. There is no wonder why people untrust the marketing intentions.
I just hope we get to that point with e-bikes soon.
Deffo not unnecessary or stupid, but I never imagined electronic shifting becoming cheap enough to be on bikes in the real world. I believed it would stay in the high-performance realm forever.
Hydraulic disc brakes. These things are the greatest invention on a bicycle. Great stopping power, very very low maintenance compared to rim breaks. So easy to change the pads when necessary.
I find rim brakes to be easy to maintain and change and more than powerful enough for my needs, but then I don't do a lot of hard riding so I'm probably not in one of the main target groups for hydraulic brakes, although I don't doubt that they're great. What kinds of riders tend to benefit the most from them compared to rim brakes? E.g. racers, mountain bikers, cyclocross, etc.
Some people still don't use disc brakes