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Planned obsolesence?!
People love to roll this out. From what I can tell it seems to be a conspiracy theory, with perhaps a few examples. It goes all the way back to the suggestion that they could make lightbulbs that last forever but they don't. This in turn may come from the existence of really old light bulbs that lasted for a century or so. My dad saw a few of these but they were in applications like cinemas where they were slowly brought up and down, which is what made them last a long time. But then, hey, they did start making lightbulbs that last for far longer, and used much less electricity. The scoundrels.
People go on about white goods not being repairable because planned obsolescence which is really not true. What they do is make them cheap, and that means that repair companies go bust because it costs more to pay someone to work out what's wrong than it does to buy a new one. But that's a reflection of the efficiency in manufacturing and the difference in cost of living between where it's made and where the repair person lives. I have fixed loads of white goods in my time, and in most cases it was pretty easy. The parts are generally readily available on eBay.
So I think that things sometimes LOOK like planned obsolescence if you are a grumpy arse and want something to moan about and sound all superior and make yourself feel better that everything was better in your day and everything's gone to pot these days wah wah wah but you don't really want to analyse the situation. Whilst enjoying your £250 washing machine that uses a fraction of the power and water, whilst riding your amazingly capable bike and driving your 150k mile car that is as good as the day it was made, that you only paid £3k for, that does 60mpg and has 150bhp and aircon, completely unlike back in the day. And for which spares are still totally available, incidentally.
“3 or 4 pages ago someone suggested 27.5 was a significant improvement over 26″”
That’s the second time you’ve said that. I actually said that 26” MTB tyres happened by accident (because they were already available for beach cruisers) and that if the first MTB manufacturers had had the money they’d started out with bigger diameter tyres. Most of those who started modern MTBing are still around and have said this in interviews.
Bike buyers forced the change to a large degree. Cotic kept making 26” wheeled frames ‘till absolutely no one was buying them.
Cotic kept making 26" because 27.5 made no sense from an engineering point of view and Cy Turner has said as much.
The problem was customers saw that Giant, Spesh, and Trek were saying '26 is dead' and they quite rightly believed them because once those three have decided on a direction that is the direction the industry is moving in.
If 27.5 was such a no brainer, why was it available but on the fringes for 7 years until suddenly it was the new 'standard'?
When 27.5 came along (after being pushed a few niche brands for 5+ years) brands moved onto it much faster out of fear of being left behind again for a model year or two more than anything else.
This sounds right.
People love to roll this out. From what I can tell it seems to be a conspiracy theory, with perhaps a few examples
I know. Just like climate change. May I suggest you read up a bit on the Right to Repair movement? It's not just a few isolated examples.
That’s the second time you’ve said that. I actually said that 26” MTB tyres happened by accident (because they were already available for beach cruisers) and that if the first MTB manufacturers had had the money they’d started out with bigger diameter tyres. Most of those who started modern MTBing are still around and have said this in interviews.
Well, then, would a 'Yeah, 27.5 is bollocks' have killed you?
Anyway, most of the inventors of mountain biking started off with more or less the 'right' geometry and then turned them into road bikes with slightly fatter tyres.
It's only now we're returning to the original geometry so I'd take what Gary Fisher et al say with a pinch of salt.
The problem was customers saw that Giant, Spesh, and Trek were saying ’26 is dead’
But it isn't just a one way process. The public demand for 29" XC bikes in the early days outstripped bike, fork, and tyre manufacturers making them
Cotic kept making 26″ because 27.5 made no sense from an engineering point of view and Cy Turner has said as much.
History is littered with companies that stuck to their engineering principles and ignored market forces. You can't run a company like that.
It’s only now we’re returning to the original geometry
Hmm, in terms of head angle, perhaps, but not in terms of basically everything else about the bikes.
May I suggest you read up a bit on the Right to Repair movement?
I'm well aware of it - it's about the RIGHT to repair. That doesn't mean things weren't repairable before this came out. I can give you a list of all the stuff I easily fixed with OEM parts if you like?
listening to a bunch of forumites who are trying to justify spending several months wages on a bike to play in the woods on
That's what it's really about. We got there in the end!
You're wrong anyway as it's more like a few days income for me, and I never thought of justifying it....until YOU mentioned it.Reverse snobbery and bitterness. The perfect forumite's driver. And projections, plenty of them. Mostly not even conscious.
The public demand for 29″ XC bikes in the early days outstripped bike, fork, and tyre manufacturers making them
And conversely, the hold outs, like the cotic BFe, Kona 167(?) Orange Alpine didn't sell very well.
All the online moaning turned out to not be "I want to buy another 26" bike", but rather "I like my current bike that I already own and I don't like that it has become obselete and I'm going to moan about it"
There's a lot of Spesh hatred in this thread, which is odd because they were one of the last to convert (probably due to stock/financial rather than perfomance/engineering reasons) but they were commitnig to sell every model in 26 and 29, and saying 27.5 was pointless for quite some time.
It was Giant that went full in on 27.5
History is littered with companies that stuck to their engineering principles and ignored market forces. You can’t run a company like that.
It wasn't market forces. The public were not clamouring for 27.5. 27.5 had been available for 7 years with very little traction.
It's just that one day they went to the bike shop and there wasn't a 26" bike to be seen.
Hmm, in terms of head angle, perhaps, but not in terms of basically everything else about the bikes.
In terms of head angle, in terms of wheelbase, in terms of rim width, in terms of handlebar width...
Do you know how we got the first 'lightweight' mountain bike rims? Gary Fisher split a road rim, cut a section out, carefully increased the bend, and then reconnected the ends.
Let's face it, the original guys found mountain bikes. They invented gravel bikes.
Gary Fisher split a road rim, cut a section out, carefully increased the bend, and then reconnected the ends.
That was Keith Bontrager, re-rolled Mavic MA40s
Geoff Apps would have gone 650B from the start
Anyway, to the OP,
Here's my 27.5 Banshee Rune halfway through a 100km gravel loop.
It was fun, if a bit slower, but who cares. I certainly don't care about 29ers.
The public were not clamouring for 27.5
Actually, they were. Might have started off slow, but eventually everyone was asking if they could squeeze 275 tyres into 26 bikes, and sales of 275 bikes completely took over from 26 bikes where direct equivalents were available.
It was Giant that went full in on 27.5
This. And some of their claims are why people still think it was all marketing bullshit, because they pushed so much marketing bullshit in a failed effort to make 275 replace 26&29.
The public were not clamouring for 27.5
Hmm. After 29 became the thing, 26 started to look really flippin small. And a lot of people buy bikes on how they look.
A 26er earlier. Much, much earlier. Look at those teeny tiny wheels!
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I feel like the very fact we all refer to 27.5 wheels as 27.5, when they are less than an inch bigger than 26", demonstrates to some degree the success of the marketing departments
That said, I'm def in the bigger wheels are better camp. I won't go smaller than 29er again even at my very average height. The issue to me is that 27" wheels weren't different enough from 29 to be worth it
I still don't get boost though. My 142mm rear end 29er fits at 2.6" tyre and 36t oval chainring with a reasonable 440mm chainstay length. And if wheel strength was such an issue why do so many 29er wheels nowadays only have 24 or 28 spokes?
And if wheel strength was such an issue why do so many 29er wheels nowadays only have 24 or 28 spokes?
Because of the extra 3mm each side that Boost 148 gives you, means you can build a wheel as strong as 26" used to be on a 135/142mm hub with fewer spokes - although wheels with 24/28 spokes won't be as strong as wheels with 32 spokes. Previously 29" had 135/142 hubs and they were mostly cheese BITD. Fine for XC, toast if you showed them anything remotely chunky. DH didn't move to 29" until what? 2017? (I remember the Mondraker Insta of Fox 49 dual crown that caused a minor kerfuffle )
Sounds like they could have just gone for 36 spoke instead of creating a whole new hub and frame standard. Even Mavic Deemax are only 28 spoke nowadays
Back to the wheel size thing though. I wonder who could tell the difference between 26" and "27.5" if they were moving back from a 29er?
I remember the one thing that's made me consider going back to 27.5 would be to run G-One 2.8" plus tyres
Sounds like they could have just gone for 36 spoke
Nah, you still need to sort out the space around the BB, that point needs to be wider as it's the main pivot, as early 29" were too flexy with longer chain stays and no space for wider tyres that were becoming popular. The 3mm difference just about allows for all of that, while still keeping the Q-factor reasonable; it's why 142mm (just introduced at the time) had to go when folks started looking at manufacturing useful long travel full suss. 29" bikes.
I think it's part of the reason why Boost148 was/is so unpopular, 135mm had been around for a couple of decades, then along comes 142, and it's junked almost as soon as it hits the shops for 148mm along with everything else changing as well. I've no idea why folks think it was marketing led; it was a total bit of a mess for 3-4 years.
I wonder who could tell the difference between 26″ and “27.5” if they were moving back from a 29er.
I reckon so. I still have all three wheel sizes and each is "different" enough. However, much of that is also down to other factors, like geometry.
But I have a Sirius 4g, with 29 x 2.6" rear, space for a 36t oval chainring (with a non-boost chainline) and 142mm rear spacing. With the sliders where they are the chainstays are at about 440-445mm
Edit: ah, unless boost was needed to make clearance on full suss frame? I'm coming from a purely hardtail background
Still on 27.5 but open to anything that rides better come the time to get a new bike. Tried a 29 wheeled bike and didn't like it, but that doesn't mean I won't like the next one I try, if it's a substantial improvement over what I've got. Pretty happy with what I've got, tried it back-to-back with much more expensive bikes and it compares well if not quite as good in certain aspects, but I can live with it! My ****ing about/pump track bike rolls on 26'' wheels in 27.5'' frame and fork and I love it! Could put 27.5 wheels in there but no need as it works perfectly.
First time I noticed a speed difference between wheel sizes (26 and 29) was a road section between trails. The two lads on 29's were coasting and chatting, while us lads on 26 had to pedal more often to keep up. Although it was hardly scientific given they were different trail bikes with different MTB tyres.
It would be interesting to compare bikes with the same geometry, tyres and suspension spec, with different wheel combinations, back-to-back on the same trails with a consistent rider. But it's pretty much impossible to do! I suspect the difference would not be as much as people think, except on longer high speed trails where the advantage could be maximised.
Some of the last of the 26 bikes are still decent bikes to ride, without the latest hub spacing, 35mm handlebar, 30mm rims. I'm thinking bikes like the Transition Suppressor and a few others that weren't a million miles away from the latest bikes. There's no doubt in my mind that a 29'' wheeled FS bike, that is as long and slack as you can reasonably go, with suspension set really soft, would absolutely obliterate the famous Peak bridleways and would be the only way to keep KOM's on them.
Watch Pinkbike fails for the 29nr kiss of death in action. Although it can happen with all wheel sizes, can be mitigated by the adaptation we all do and better technique.
I choose bikes based on how they ride & what they are designed to do. Their wheel size is irrelevant. I ride 2 27.5 bikes and 2 29 bikes.
Geo trumps wheel size. The current 29er hardtail has shorter chainstays than my last, 26er, hardtail.
I think it’s also worth remembering that there isn’t “big” cycling all sitting around a table deciding what they’ll make the suckers buy next, it’s convenient but not true, Plus also; buying a frame and parts separately is not the normal way that most people buy a bike, so changing standards don’t affect the vast majority of buyers in any way.
The trouble is there is a bit of "Big cycling" to some extent, while I agree there's probably not a big table surrounded by cartoonish villains cackling as they agree to phase in one new dastardly standard and retire another to force us hapless mugs into the LBS for more toys, the various companies, especially the big ones do coordinate and co-develop some of these 'standards'.
Take for example the UDH, which I think is a brilliant thing and should have happened decades ago, fantastic idea...
Except UDH' real purpose it seems was to lay the groundwork for SRAM to sell their direct mount mechs, ensuring the necessary interface geometry was present by default on most of the MTBs made in the last couple of years and on pretty much all of them going forwards. Yes it preserves backwards/cross compatibility but I bet hanger mounted rear mechs will gradually vanish from SRAMs upper tier groups over the next few years...
Similarly Boost was about nothing more than preventing easy backwards compatibility...
Because of the extra 3mm each side that Boost 148 gives you, means you can build a wheel as strong as 26″ used to be on a 135/142mm hub with fewer spokes – although wheels with 24/28 spokes won’t be as strong as wheels with 32 spokes. Previously 29″ had 135/142 hubs and they were mostly cheese BITD. Fine for XC, toast if you showed them anything remotely chunky. DH didn’t move to 29″ until what? 2017? (I remember the Mondraker Insta of Fox 49 dual crown that caused a minor kerfuffle )
29" rims were/are fine on 135/142mm hubs and 100mm spaced fronts, if wheel builders were desperate for more spoke triangulation it would have been easier to just enlarge the flanges, instead the industry wide agreement was that dropouts needed to be splayed further apart with the claimed benefits of strongerer wheels and better chain lines. But now it's the defacto standard, and railing against it is pointless...
The important thing to remember is that the bike industry is an industry, a bunch of commercial outfits that only survive by selling stuff and then selling more stuff, so if they do engage in a bit of planned obscellence or abandon perfectly good standards just to help nudge you towards a shiny new purchase, it's not malicious, it's just business.
I get BruceWee's frustrations, but there isn't really a version of cycling/bicycles that lives in a non-commercial vacuum, they're chasing the same neverending growth as all businesses, and growth means periodically burning "legacy" standards and products...
You have to learn to live with it I'm afraid...
I'm reserving my comment until I've tried my 29er down some BPW trails. But I had a brief go on my mates 27.5 Kona Progress last weekend and felt much more at home. But that might be because my other bike is a 26" dirt jumper.
People still bought new bikes when 26 was the only size. Point is that there are other ways to do this. It’s entirely possible that they did market research and customers went ‘well, I do want bigger wheels because of the better rollover, I tried at 29er but it was too slow so can we have a medium ground?’
Yes some people bought new bikes... but they weren't FORCED to buy new bikes because they could no longer buy a fork, wheelset/tyres....
I still think it’s overly cynical to assume it was ONLY a way to force people to buy new bikes. And let’s face it, small wheels weren’t the only outdated standard on my old bike. It also had a straight steerer.
I'm not saying it was the ONLY motivation, I'm just saying it was a motivation and wasn't an accident.
OR ... if it WAS an accident at the time then it's certainly not an accident anymore.
All I'm saying is every traded company has a primary duty to provide the maximum profits and dividends to it's shareholders by ANY legal means. There are limited ways to do that ... increase market share, profit per unit or market size and their duty is to do whatever increases profits/dividends and shareprice the most within the confines of their articles.
but they weren’t FORCED to buy new bikes because they could no longer buy a fork, wheelset/tyres….
But that hasn't happened, you can still buy all those things now, and 26" bikes haven't been made now for coming up for a decade. Besides which, you know no-one is forcing you to do anything with your discretionary cash.
My 10 year old daughter is on 27.5 wheels with a 120mm fork and it doesn’t look like she’s trying to ride something too big for her. So if a child can fit that wheel size, why should we have stuck with 26”?
I know 26 is only an inch smaller in diameter than 27.5 but that’s still a ~5% difference, and anyone who’s done anything in sport or engineering knows that 5% is a significant change.
If I’d been running a bike company 10 years ago and someone had said “we’ve got these tyres that are close enough in size to 26 that they don’t have that giant 29 feel but you get a proportion of the bigger wheel upsides” I’d have thought: “how on earth am I going to persuade people who aren’t riding dirt jumps or pump tracks to buy a 26” bike anymore?”
I know 26 is only an inch smaller in diameter than 27.5 but that’s still a ~5% difference, and anyone who’s done anything in sport or engineering knows that 5% is a significant change.
I've said it before but if a 5% change was that significant we, as consumers, would be demanding some form of standardisation of tyre markings. I've got 2.25" tyres that are the same size as some 2.5" tyres. Which means that one of these tyres is out by 11%.
The actual diameter (or aspect ratio if you prefer) of the inflated tyre isn't even listed. If 5% is so important why are we blissfully riding around with absolutely no idea what our actual wheel diameter is?
I know 26 is only an inch smaller in diameter than 27.5 but that’s still a ~5% difference, and anyone who’s done anything in sport or engineering knows that 5% is a significant change.
stop measuring from zero.
an analogy/comparison is chainstays. wheelie inducing, comedically short chainstays, and bargelike downhill stability monsters are within about 10% to 15% in total length.
one thing to consider is where your feet, where you will get a lot of "feel" from (talking stood up, non pedaling riding here), are in relation to the axles, which will be the centre of the precession/gyroscopic effect of a rotating wheel.
BB height plus half the pedal thickness. (maybe plus your shoe thickness too)
If thats above the axles by a couple of mm, it will feel vastly different to being below the axles, while riding at speed.
That crossover happens *roughly* at the change from 26 to 27.5 wheels. obviously all bikes are different, and suspension sag means this isnt a fixed number anyway.
everyone who sells a FS 29″ is now on a Boost hub, it’s entirely replaced 135
Isn’t the existing ‘standard’ that’s been largely replaced by Boost - 142.
135QR and 142Thru were the same really, that was the advantage 142 had over 148.... QR and thru wheels were possible with just a swapping of hub end caps.
Let’s face it - there are a few frame ‘standards’ that just make sense.
- 20mm bolt through front hubs. Lighter and stiffer than the 15mm’s we all seem to have moved to.
- 142/148mm bolt through rear hubs. I wasn’t opposed to 150mm width though.
- Tapered headsets with a larger area where the downtube meets the headtube.
- Single chainring chainsets - makes it easier to optimise the main pivot location.
Tapered headsets with a larger area where the downtube meets the headtube
Yeah, and the larger steerer tube where it meets the crown is clearly a much better idea. When you look at older forks with a 1 1/4 steerer they look really feeble.
20mm bolt through front hubs. Lighter and stiffer than the 15mm’s we all seem to have moved to
15mm did standardise across the genres/disciplines (nearly, exclues DH bikes)
my first "proper" mtb was QR front hub, it was a 150mm travel fork. (and on a kashima fox float, so not a down specced cheap bike). the next bike had a 15mm thru axle. great improvement.
20mm might have been the choice for heavy duty freeride rigs of the era, but the trail market didnt have them.
20mm might have been the choice for heavy duty freeride rigs of the era, but the trail market didnt have them.
I don’t want to disappoint you - they were not limited to heavy duty free-ride bikes. For example forks specified on some OEM Specialized Pitches had them. A lot of Enduro forks, before that was a specific racing discipline had them - more used describing their all-mountain capability. The initial Rockshox Pikes and Manitou Minutes both had them.
my first “proper” mtb was QR front hub, it was a 150mm travel fork. (and on a kashima fox float, so not a down specced cheap bike). the next bike had a 15mm thru axle. great improvement.
I’m probably a bit older than you, my first cross-country race bike had rigid forks - and that was the norm rather than an exception.
My trail forks had 20mm axles for years. I doubt I was alone in that. Still have some 20mm thru axle hubbed xc rimmed wheels to get rid of at some point.
Whatever label my SC Nomad fell under, that had 20mm as well.
Torque caps are as close as we'll get to an admission that 15mm was stupid.
Yeah I had one as well. Worked well - but then I don't have any complaints about the 15mm axle that replaced it either.
Before too much time passes - not all frames made for 130mm diameter hubs for 7-speed cassettes could accommodate the wider 135mm rear hubs that for wider 8-speed cassettes.
For that matter the advent of v-brakes totally removed the need for a fork mounted brake hanger and made it more tricky for bike frames designed with shorter-arm cantilevers in mind. Even with my ‘95 Kona CinderCone it needed some imaginative bodging or a replacement cable clamp.
Molgrips
People love to roll this out. From what I can tell it seems to be a conspiracy theory, with perhaps a few examples. It goes all the way back to the suggestion that they could make lightbulbs that last forever but they don’t.
If by last forever you mean "over 2 centuries" then they could and can.
If you are looking at LED's then look up the Dubai bulbs...
What is more intriguing is you're classing this as a conspiracy theory.
Torque caps are as close as we’ll get to an admission that 15mm was stupid.
I understand that Shimano BITD wanted 15mm as it meant they 1. didn't have to use a SRAM standard and 2. 15mm was the largest diameter axle their hubs (cup and cone remember, not cartridge) could be machined out to without huge costs of re-tooling. Although Saint was 20mm, so I'm not sure how true that rumour is Also, torque caps are 31mm external, so even beefier than old RS 20mm axles, so rather than an admission 15mm is stupid, more like SRAM - now that they're the larger player in drivetrains and components fitted as OEM, reminding everyone that they got it right the first time.
Molgrips
@stevextc dont’ start.
I'm not the one claiming everything doesn't work like I'd like is a conspiracy theory which is just a lazy and disingenuous way to avoid acknowledging reality.
I'm not sure what part of "company wants to make as much profit as possible" would qualify as a conspiracy anyway, surely that is what is meant to happen but then you come up with something about bulbs that last forever which is obvious nonsense as quite obviously no one has designed a bulb that will continue to work after the sun expands and swallows the earth, let alone beyond so I'm assuming forever means "a long time". Why would they even if we had the technology ??
Given we had the technology in 1901 to make bulbs that still work today that seems suitably beyond "a couple of years" and given Philips make the Dubai LED bulbs it seems a weird example even if you just mean "longer than a couple of years".
I really have no idea how you can think these are conspiracy theories? You see a webcam of the bulb still working in some fire station in California... unless you are claiming they faked this?
Surely a conspiracy theory would be if the bulb mysteriously disappeared along with some claimed secret technology as opposed to a bulb acknowledged to be running continuously since 1901 anyone with internet access can see??
Just going with the light bulbs thing for a moment...longer...
It's said this guy climbs this ladder every six months to change a light bulb and gets paid $20000 to do so.