Getting a few things off my mountain biking chest.
Sometimes it’s good to moan. It can help get rid of frustrations. A problem shared is a problem halved and all that. Clear the air and move on.
With that in mind, these are the 10 main things that have been bugging me with bikes for the past few years.
Semi-lightheartedly, here goes nothing…
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Carbon (apart from rims)
Let’s kick things off with a biggie. Aside from the ecological argument (that I don’t want to get sidetracked by), I just don’t think carbon is worth the money. The amount of extra £-pounds you have to spend to save one or two lb-pounds is faintly outrageous. Arguably most of that weight saving is due to the bike industry seemingly having given up on even trying to make metal bikes light(er), especially North American brands. And a lot of the time I think it’s a worse performing material than metal. The one exception is wheel rims. Carbon rims can be the best rims available. Still loads of money, mind.
High-set helmet peaks
I’m going to pin this one on Specialized. Although other brands are hopping on board this aesthetic, I think Spesh was the first to bring out helmets with peaks set bizarrely far-too-high. High to the point of actually being pointless. Even if you don’t live anywhere that sunny, these high peaks now make dusk rides an exercise in squinting and, quite frankly, dangerous.
Thru-headset anything
Yep, the classic. People may be bored of moaning about thru-headset cable routing but we need to keep up the pressure. Not only does it add complexity and cost to routing service jobs, it doesn’t even look better than regular routing. It’s a disease that’s drifted over from dropbar bikes and it can drift off back there thanks.
Torx bolts
Is it just me, or are torx bolts more prone to rounding out than Allen key bolts? Especially on items that aren’t disc rotor bolts. Any test bike from torx-tastic Scott, for example, usually ends up heading back post-test period with all of the torx bolts looking scratty and mashed. Hex FTW.
Disc mounts on chainstays
Am not exactly sure if brands are putting calipers on the chain stay for suspension-v-braking reasons but I am sure that such a location makes it much more difficult to get at the caliper mount bolts, especially with a multi-tool. And as for the introduction of the patently awful flat-mount standard coming in from roadie world… No. Just no. Can’t we just bring back I.S.? That was clearly superior.
Tokenistic adjustments
One reason why I don’t pick on brands that don’t offer proportional chainstays or flipchips, is because the brands that do offer these things very rarely do it to a sufficient degree. 11mm difference in chain stay length between Small and XX-Large? 0.5° change in geometry via a flipchip? Hardly worth it. If you’re going to market sizing/adjustments, at least make it justifiable.
Curvy rates
Whether this is suspension frame leverage or air springs, I rarely get along with curves that aren’t consistent. I can get them to function okay but in a world where most riders (understandably) don’t want to spend hours and hours setting up a pushbike, these curves are often a recipe for extremely poor bike setup and thus handling. The marketing idea of ‘supple at sag, rampy at the end’ is not what a lot of riders end up sat on.
Silicone grippers
Helmets. Knee pads. Liner shorts. Any of these that have silicone grippers frequently get on my wick. Sometime literally. Essentially using hot glue to keep cycling apparel in place. Ugh.
Car industry aping
All these ‘Works’ bikes. Or eebs with stronger motors in the top tier models. Feels very Beemer M Series. Naff.
And finally…
The tenth slot is open to you. Add your suggestions below!
Seen as this has turned into an Ebike thread…
Why do most ebikers I encounter that are up here on holiday in the Tweed Valley appear to be mute when riding?
It’s a very odd phenomenon.
Were they already mute or did it only happen after they got an ebike? 😉
Back on topic.
I simply avoid anything that i don’t like that’s new bike wise.
If enough other folks do the same it normally disappears a few years down the line.
See press fit BB’s as an example.
Not always.
Good point.I’d like the bike industry to stop churning out stuff that doesn’t fit properly… perhaps I’m weird. 🤷♂️
I would like the bike industry to…. Stop publishing adverts that shows the rider several feet off the ground and being rad*
It perhaps gives the viewer the wrong idea of the fun that can be had with an ATB. A more appropriate picture would be a rider slogging through mud or riding through beautiful countryside with a big grin on their face. Or, a group of friends and family enjoying a ride as a mutually inclusive and friendly event.
*I have no idea what “rad” means but I’ve heard it mentioned!
I would like the Industry to…. stop chasing profit margins by ever inflating the top-end barriers of pricepoint, and do so instead by getting more bums on bikes.
A lot of the recent tech innovations pushing prices skyward are just not necessary for the simple task of having fun on a bike. Top tier groupsets coming in at £3-4k with high wear items such as cassettes at £400 can go do one for starters…
No one has ever accused me of being mute😉. Even after a thyroidectomy that damaged some nerves and affecting my speech/volume I still never shut up (apparently), I’ve just lost my booming Brian Blessed volume. I’m teaching my kids the rule of “be nice, say high” when out in the country.
That’s like asking someone if they would like to stop breathing. It’s always about the margin especially as more and more private equity works its way into the industry
My strong hunch is that while its worked up to now, it’s something that is time limited due to the discrepancies in spending power across age demographics. Unless there’s some radical shift in economic trajectory for most, the future dominant styles will likely be much simpler and necessarily affordable.
Probably too late imho. The mainstream of MTB is E-MTB now. Not quite default and debateable if the majority but it’s becoming a powered sport b/c manstream MTB was always about the thrills over the pedalling (eg unlike road riding that has a pedalling/fitness culture).
There’s a good article on the dumber approaches the e-bike ‘industry’ takes on the EMTB site – https://ebike-mtb.com/en/regulatory-dilemma-facing-the-e-bike-industry/Being dumb when it comes to e-bike spec, promotion and marketed use? It does seem like one thing the bike industry needs to think about.Personally fwiw .. I don’t think it matters if ‘MTB’ changes. It doesn’t change what we do ourselves, not if we don’t want to take up the new options or be seen as following the mainstream. Do we identify as a ‘mountain biker’ or someone who just likes bikes? Personally / fwiw there’s too much to bikes to only be into one genre or identity. Like music, why only be into one thing. I think there’s always been XC/out for a pedal and Enduro/out for thrlls riders and their bikes, hang-outs and riding spots ect have always been different. MTB hasn’t been a ‘all in one’ thing since the perhaps the early 90s.
This.
Why are carbon bikes or E-MTBs so popular with big brands? Because small brands can’t meet the MOQs for that stuff, it takes bigger investments. Can’t sell 3,000+ Bosch units a year? They aren’t interested. All the tech the bike industry promotes as ‘must haves’ or aspirational is also all the tech the smaller brands struggle with. What’s marketed by the big brand mainstream is an affective barrier to the future competition and that’s something that’s changed signficantly in the last 15 years.
This i agree with so much necessary damage happens from bad design.
Back to the ebikes.
My misses uses one as a fitness crutch so we go away for long weekends cycling she can keep up and enjoy it rather than dying, which is a good reason to use it, and this applies to everyone, they have removed the barriers to what made a course or route challenging, what used to be a technical black climb they just brute force straight up, fine, but then all of the skill and finesse which is needed and learnt the hard way is lost.
Not a feature as such but a philosophy….and I’m sure marketing bods have a term for it. We see the same with phones and all manner of sectors selling the public.
Flooding advertising/social media/reviews etc with ludicrously high end bikes you don’t anticipate selling more than a handful of to change perception of what ‘normal’ and ‘necessary’ is. People see a £10K+ bike that they clearly can’t afford but knowing that exists feel that anything less than the £6K version means they will be buying something not up to the job. When in reality to the £6K version could and should be plenty bells and whistles for anyone and the £2K version more than adequate.
That’s a similar argument to that used in downhill / anything technical on a descent though.
What you used to have to finesse (or walk!) down, any idiot can now plough down it on a decent full sus because bikes now are way more capable than anything from the 90’s / 00’s. The argument has been going on with literally every new bit of tech along with a bit of a gatekeeper attitude that “we" had to do it the hard way, “we" didn’t have all this supporting tech but now any young whippersnapper can come along and ride stuff that “we" took years to learn.
I even got told that I should learn to ride road bikes on downtube shifters because these newfangled STIs made things too easy.
Unfortunately, you do need to try a really old road bike with downtube shifters, its a very different world, but its also a very nice place to be!!
I think this may be more about the lack of fear that ‘Whippersnappers’ don’t have, but I am not saying the improvements in geo/tech its more around the issue that they end up stopped/ slow/walking down some dangerous tracks
Well you can ask, but I think you know the answer. Until the bike industry becomes miraculously uncoupled from capitalism, it’s always going to be driven by faux innovation and the need to increase profit / drive growth until we’ve consumed every resource we can lay our greedy 21st Century fingers on. Ocean floors and Mars, we’re coming for you soon…Fwiw, Shimano’s LinkGlide seems like a laudable attempt to increase durability and is barely even acknowledged by the cycling media, see unbridled consumerism etc. So basically:10. I’d like the bike industry to stop focussing on more and more new things and growth to the detriment of everything else. See also pretty much every other industry you can think of.
Stop calling eBikes “eeb"
Stop calling non eBikes “acoustic"
Hear hear. tbh I think at the big company level it’s as much about them competing with each other for attention as anything else. “Does anyone want this, does it solve real problems?" “We’re not sure… but it’s gonna be huge, it does new things! They will want it"
I think there are parts of the ‘industry’ that are doing a better job of making more durable products (in both use and appeal), we just need to look past the big brands with all the shiny new tech sold by influencers and big press launches. We need to do those small brands the favour of looking for them since the marketing machine thing tends to push the big budget kit in front of us first.
No, and isn’t it us that call them that – not the industry?
can we call them performance enhancing bikes, that may take the edge off
The niche complaint I have about e-bikes is that it allows/encourages erosion is some previously out-of-the-way trails. Some I used to ride were ‘quite hard’ to get to, so they were a once a while trail that you tackled when you felt you had the legs, this had two positives, trail use was quite limited and as a consequence, trail widening and erosion were limited. Last time I went to one of these spots I was surprised to see an increase in tyre tracks, but all became clear when I met the 5 or 6 e-bikers gathered at the start of the descent, one said to me “You did well to get up here on that, I’ve never seen anyone on a regular bike up here" The trail was obviously well ridden, and had gone from a narrow ribbon through the heather to a gouge in the hill-side…That’s pretty much my only complaint about e-bikes though.
Other than that, I’d very much like whoever was responsible for flat mount brakes to be publicly shamed, and for it to become grounds for instant dismissal for any product manager that specs them on a mountain bike.
Slight tangent but there is a phrase in design philosophy called “emotional durability". Brighton Uni did a lot of good work on it a few years ago – making products more desirable to the user as they age so users are more likely to keep and value their goods more rather than less as they mature.
For example, a cup that starts white but has a glaze designed to pick up tannins gently as it is used with tea or coffee so over time a pattern emerges.
It wouldn’t work for the big player box shifters of the bike industry but for smaller niche brands the idea that your bike evolves and wears it’s scars with pride and possibly looks better. When combined with a trigger’s broom mentality to a constantly evolving bike for life it ‘could’ be a winner.