Maybe don’t go to the pub with Benji if you’re a bike industry engineer…
Words: Benji
When I say ‘new’ I’m going to be talking about any standard that came out since the turn of the millennium.
Also, I’d like to say that I don’t think I am a reactionary bore. I don’t want the return of ’90s mountain biking. Sure it was great and everything, but it was great almost despite the bikes not because of them. The things that have made 2020s mountain biking so much better have nothing to do with standards. The improvements we’ve seen in frame geometry and suspension could arguably have all been done using 1990s standards.
The list of 21st century standards that have been worth it is very short. You can count them on the fingers of one hand. Possibly not even requiring the attendance of the thumb.
What are my worthwhile 21st century standards?
• 31.8mm handlebars/stems
• Tapered steerers
• XD/Micro Spline freehubs
• 29in wheels
I could maybe include a fifth choice but, to be frank, I can’t remember when it came out. ‘It’ being 150mm bolt thru rear axle spacing that was found on downhill bikes. So forgive me if 150 back ends came out in the 2000s. Regardless, we should never have been force-fed Boost axles. We could all be riding round on 150mm back ends. And, for that matter, 20mm bolt thru forks up front. QR15mm? Pointless.
I’m not going to mention things like bottom brackets and shock sizings because, quite frankly, they’ve never been actual standards anyway. They’ve always been all over the show. Can someone in the cycling illuminati sort these two things out please? K thx.
What is so good about my Fantastic Four standards then?
25.4mm handlebars weren’t strong enough, particularly as handlebar widths increased. I think it’s easy to forget just how many snapped handlebars we used to see. So 31.8mm (why not 31mm or 32mm by the way? [Because 31.8mm is 1.25 inches – Imperial Ed]) bars really did solve the issue. The lily-gilding move to fatter 35mm bars just introduced us to hand and forearm discomfort.
Tapered steerers may be something of a controversial choice. “What about the 1.5in standard we already had?” you may be screaming right now. Well, I like 1.5in headtubes because they afford all sorts of geometry tweaking you can do with reach-adjusting and/or head-angle-adjusting headsets. But you couldn’t run properly short stems on 1.5in steerer forks. So they’re out. Yay for tapered. Stronger and stiffer frame and forks while being dinky stem friendly.
XD/Micro Spline freehubs is a tricky one. I wish there was only one of them. And I wish it was based on the aforementioned 150mm back ends. But I am still going to give kudos to SRAM and Shimano here (SRAM mainly for instigating the whole move to 1x drivetrains). After geometry and suspension improvements, the best thing to happen to mountain bikes was the ditching of multiple chainring drivetrains. Bye-bye front mech. Good riddance. To achieve a sufficiently wide range of gearing while only using one chainring required a move to a new freehub. XD/Micro Spline was worth it.
Then there’s 29in wheels. In some ways, the 29in standard was around in the 20th century. Essentially 29er stuff is 700c stuff, which is what road bikes have been using for decades. But 700c only really standardised sometime around the ’70s and ’80s based around much smaller volume tyres and rim widths. You could put a 29er tyre on a 700c rim, but it would be far too voluminous to fit safely. So I’m going to say that 29ers are a 21st century thang. And 29in is now the most common wheel size in mountain biking for good reason. Better for most types of riders and most types of riding. NB: Not everything and everyone… 27.5in is not dead. But it also should never have been born. It was a cowardly move by the bike industry really. We should just have 29in and 26in. Hey-ho.
Too often with the introduction of new standards they seem to arrive with factory assembly, bike journos and/or racers in mind. Very few new standards have been introduced for normal riders and/or bike shop mechanics. Two cases in point: Center Lock rotors and post mount brake mounts. Both 6-bolt and IS mount are unarguably better to live with and better performing. Center Lock rotors rock back and forth annoyingly. Post mount brake callipers just drift out of alignment.
Right. I’m signing off now. And that’s before we get into the whole cabling through the headset/stem dystopia we seem to be heading into with MY23. There’s no way that that’s going to take hold is there? Is there…?
