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After my pro Shimano thread, how about listing some of shimano's failings and mistakes.
The alloy granny ring on my XT chainset (it was a few years ago) which was chewed up in after only few rides, I replaced it with an old steel one I had lying around which was only a few grams heavier and outlasted the crank arms.
Non serviceable disc brakes.
Cup and cone hubs, some love them though.
And the even more forgettable rim brake version.
Biopace
I'd say non serviceable disc brakes was probably a marketing decision not a design mistake.
My original rapid fire STIs disintegrated in fairly short order. There's also the flappy brake/ gear shifters: what were they called?
Never tried Duel control levers. I had a pal who had XT ones and loved them. Work well on the road bike though.
Did biopace ever work? I could see that climbing would be worse but the philosophy should work on the flat if in the right gear, shouldn't it?
Airlines
Rapid rise
Most of their groupset wheels of old.
Non serviceable disk brakes
But your not having cup and cone. Genius stuff - but those that can't service them don't like em. Beauty is if you can they go for ever for a few pence of grease.
I still have those Shimano MTB dual-control shifters one a few of my bikes, including XTR ones on my Epic and LX on my Enduro I think. I prefer them to the more normal shifters!
Drop bar gearing options were terrible for ages. No granny ring on a road chain line triple. GRX has at least in part resolved this
Their freehub/cassette spline interface. Granted they work fine if the freehub body is steel, but when aluminium is used then they end up badly damaged by the cassette.
Road brifters. Ergonomically not as good as the competition.
Their bonded together crank arms that fall apart.
Many of their components (freehubs, disc brakes, bridters etc.) that can't be serviced at home, with spares unavailable. I've used DT Swiss, Hope and Campagnolo for years; spares are available and can be serviced at home relatively easily.
Weak rear derailleur springs.
The Dual Control levers were flawed, fine for road use but as soon as you hit the rough stuff they're a handful, in the wrong way.
Airlines weren't a design mistake, they worked very well for what they were intended for. What they got wrong was the size of the market. How many people do you know who only ever do race runs but are happy to recharge the cylinder almost every run? Commercial mistake yes but not a design one.
The only one I can think of from recent times were the original release of their IceTech rotors. They seemingly got their temperature specs wrong and that led to quite a few instances of the aluminium core melting. Notice how the road releases all had fins and that they now recommend you run the finned pads with any laminate disc now.
Non serviceable disc brakes.
I can kinda see the logic though.
An SLX caliper is £25, a set of hope seals is £8. Not enough to really make Shimano any money on, not even enough that you could pay an LBS to swap them for you. Chuck the calliper in the recycling bin and fit a new one.
Spin it the other way and it's manufacturing brilliance that they can churn them out for that price.
Don't say it's bad for the environment, there's probably more embedded energy in your bottle of craft IPA.
The joining pin on chains.
Airlines weren’t a design mistake, they worked very well for what they were intended for.
Correct. Airlines was/is excellent for the intended purpose. Amazing shifting.
Granted they work fine if the freehub body is steel, but when aluminium is used then they end up badly damaged by the cassette.
Road brifters. Ergonomically not as good as the competition.
Shimano freehubs are steel, not their fault if others use cheese/ alu. I find their road STIs to be vastly superior to Campag and SRAM.
Spin it the other way and it’s manufacturing brilliance that they can churn them out for that price.
Yes, they're too cheap, as demonstrated by the fact they seem to fail so often.
Getting Deore, Dior and Deer mixed up.
Freehub on XT M788 hubs. I've had 3 fracture and disintegrate. Wheels were/are great, but freehubs are rubbish.
105 5700 shifters. Utter bobbins out of the box.
An SLX caliper is £25, a set of hope seals is £8. Not enough to really make Shimano any money on, not even enough that you could pay an LBS to swap them for you. Chuck the calliper in the recycling bin and fit a new one.
Based on a sample of having 8 bikes worth of hope between us..... Seals seem to last 15 years.
Our foray into Shimano xt and xt servo wave lasted less than a Year for both sets. So 25 quid *15 or 8 quid for a set of hope seals.
My XT free hub did the same. My 2 sets of deore freehubs are very tough though. I was told (can't remember who now) that it's because the XT hubs have more pawls that the deore ones that somehow means they're more prone not engaging properly which destroys the freehub.
105 5600 left shifter broke after about 18 months, I was too tight to replace it right away so just rode it in the big ring all the time. Eventually found a cheap Ultegra one which almost looked the same.
After doing a bit of research it seemed to be a common problem.
Now on 5800 and it has been very good, not impressed with how the inner ring tightens into the soft alloy outer ring though but can see that they did it to lose a few grams. Loctite is your friend here
Alloy pedal threads on chainsets, but strangely you get a much more robust steel thread on some lower groupsets. Only a problem if you change take your pedals off regularly and are a bit ham fisted. Or in a rush like me when putting my pedals back on after extracting my bike from my small ish boot in a trail centre carpark whilst my pals are waiting.
All my current Shimano kit works fine with one exception, the current Ultegra front mech (cable mech hydraulic STI shifter). It has more screws to adjust than any other I've seen and no combination will stop the mech rubbing on either big small or small big.
BR-RS505 brifter white plastic cable guide as gear cable passes through hoods section. Wears and eventually shears gear cable.
E8000 ebike motors torque sensor issues and it not being serviceable
Rapid rise
How very dare you. RR were the best mechs and I miss them. Much more intuitive.
They do have a daft idea about cable entry points on rear mechs at times, now more sorted but still not optimal.
And was this a mistake?
Lack of direct mount chainrings so limiting the smallest ring you can fit to 32t.
I like my Hope hub when riding on the canal path as it saves me needing a bell. I am intrigued though by the silent hub as it would make a sneaky early morning ride all the more stealthy.
Dual Control levers (flappy paddle) are amazing, I've still got a set on my MTB.
The design flaw was using them with rapid rise. Where they really excelled was using them with a regular rear mech.
Rapid rise
How very dare you. RR were the best mechs and I miss them. Much more intuitive.
+1. Still using them on my bar end shifter tourers. Means both shifters go the same way fr a low gear and the end of the shifter is pointing forward out of the way of kneed when climbing out the saddle in a low gear. Got two on the shelf for when the ones on my tourers wear out.
Freehub on XT M788 hubs. I’ve had 3 fracture and disintegrate. Wheels were/are great, but freehubs are rubbish.
Yup, me too. Cracked 2 in 3 months. Madison were struggling to get hold of them as well. Suspected I wasnt the only one with issues. 3rd replacement arrived , but found a replacement Easton hub and built the rim onto that instead.
Cup and cone are not great. Either they set up well or you end up with a hub with rattle or stiff. Glad to get rid of my micro adjust wheelset a month ago and gone sealed bearings.
But other than rubbish freehub cone sealing , my commuter bike deore hubs still go round , even if the freehub likes to make cracking and creaking noises on regularity and dont expect to get home or to work , but it does.
Still prefer Shimano over Sram.
XT brakes with the wandering bite point. Confused the hell out of me when it first happened.
Have Zee brakes now, which are great.
It's always bugged me that when Shimano things break, they're basically junk. Other manufacturers of similar components seem better at building in at least some repairability.
I'm not sure how much of that is a design fail, so much as a business decision though.
i-spec - need I say more?
Rapid Rise x2 - I've never found myself needing to block shift up the way. It was an evolutionary dead end.
Any freaks interested in swapping me something normal for my M760 GS? Honestly, I hate it so much, I must have had it for 10 years now and I still manage to to screw up block shifts.
The shifters around that time were pretty crap as well as I recall, both the 9sp kits I have from new are running SRAM Attacks (still use that model for the current X5) which, along with the nicer Rocket, they lost interest in after a while.
I have a wheel with a silent clutch on! Never tried it to see if it works or not.
Agree cup and cone are fine if you treat them well, bit of a bugger if the races get shot though.
Chain link pins went with the dodo, the smart kids used powerlinks regardless. Chainrings are now direct mount.
If I'm not mistaken, the non-compatibility of Tiagra 4600 components with other 11-speed Shimano drivetrain parts.
How were chain pins a design mistake?
They worked absolutely fine, the replacement is an improvement but thats progress not bad design?
Actually alot of this isn't bad design, its just design decisions.
Actually alot of this isn’t bad design, its just design decisions.
I was thinking exactly that. Airlines, Rapid Rise, the chain place pins, all functioned well and did what they were designed to do.
I’m not sure I can think of a single tyre design mistake.
Lunge.
Some would argue skinwall/tanwalls were a mistake....
They'd be wrong obviously they make any tyre better.
All my current Shimano kit works fine with one exception, the current Ultegra front mech (cable mech hydraulic STI shifter). It has more screws to adjust than any other I’ve seen and no combination will stop the mech rubbing on either big small or small big.
Same here, having used all sorts since 95 STX RC, Dual Control and Rapid Rise on an old Epic, the silent LX freewheel the only thing that has left me scratching my head was when they changed the front mech from 6800 to the current 7000, I can't stop the chain rubbing.
Still better than SRAM though....
It’s always bugged me that when Shimano things break, they’re basically junk. Other manufacturers of similar components seem better at building in at least some repairability.
Eh? SRAM?
Famed for repairability?
Hope is everyone's favourite example, but it's not really directly comparable is it, that repairability costs significantly more up front and they only really do brakes and hubs (don't much fancy their cranks).
I think shimano have stopped trying new ideas out on customers in the 15 years or so, everyone is mentioning stuff like rapid rise and dual control which were a fair old while ago now. As much as those things weren't hits, they did actually work, just not to the tastes of mist users at the time.
I get the feeling Shimano is created by engineers and they forget real world end user testing or focus groups to see if there is actually a customer base for what they're designing.
Thinking about it, have they become a follower? They seem very slow to keep up with trends but usually make the best products possible when they finally catch up. When was the last time they released a game changing product? Their 12 speed was copying SRAM but just refining it. Clutch mech is the most recent innovation I can think of.
I believe Sram was first with the clutch mech as were they first with the narrow/wide chainrings
Given how long Shimano have been going and how many different products they've brought to market I'm surprised that there aren't more "mistakes".
Shimano design, test, fix the problems then test some more, fix again then test again then release. Hence being seen as "slow".
I think the fact they've done so much to be able to pick a few examples out says a lot about how good Shimano actually are. Some daft uses of materials for daft weight savings in places but generally, imo, they're consistently among most capable and impressive Industrial design companies in the industry. I don't always agree with the design direction but I can see how the conservative approach and 'slow' pace is part of their success and character.
It’s always bugged me that when Shimano things break, they’re basically junk.
Brakes pretty much the only area where Hope can supply spares that Shimano can't? Shimano spare parts info lists and availability in most other areas is excellent. It's a headache to manage for distributors but Madison's Shimano spares are impressive and just look at a good retailer like SJS's Shimano spare parts list. I recently revived an old broken M952 mech to perfect mechanical order with a couple of low cost parts.Was able to get some spares to keep an old Ultegra hub set running a while back.
Rapid rise... I like that they tried it. I have a NOS XT set in a box, sort of waiting for the right bar shape. For a pure XC bike I quite like it and right now road and XC is meeting on gravel bikes. Maybe they weren't that far off in some ways.
Cup and cone hubs, I love them. Pick them every time over SB when I can. A real pleasure to work on, pro-active maintenance done at a time I choose and with finesse, rather than hitting things with a mallet once they've got wobbly and you're forced to do it. What I'd do for some older Dura Ace hubs now. I have Record hubs on one bike and they're just perfect. Feel free to disagree : )
Edit to add - Mistakes. Main one is cross-compatibility between road and MTB as a design driver, imho, though I understand why they don't. TBH I struggle to think of much that they do wrong/make mistakes on, only things I'm not keen on personally which is different.
I too have XTR dual controls
Probably over 10 years old
And i do really like them
StuE
Subscriber
E8000 ebike motors torque sensor issues and it not being serviceable
Amen to that. 3 months now I've been waiting for my motor to be warrantied.....
Brakes pretty much the only area where Hope can supply spares that Shimano can’t?
My experience with Hope brakes via Shimano is that it's just as well you can get Hope spares as you'll probably need them.
I've started to use my mountain bikes again after most of them not being used much (or in some cases, at all) in the last 8 or 9 years. In every case the Shimano brakes have worked fine, but in every case of the non-Shimano brakes (Magura, Avid and Hope) they haven't. So much so that nearly all the bikes are on Shimano brakes now.
My experience with Hope brakes via Shimano is that it’s just as well you can get Hope spares as you’ll probably need them.
+1
They just seemed to corrode so easily they needed endless maintenance, in the end I swapped them all out for Magura which were just much better made, never needed spares, other than pads, after that.
Really? My old MTB that I passed on to my nephew had Hope Minis. The bike's at least twelve years old and the brakes are fine. Had a phone call the other week about how to push the cylinders back to replace the pads, other than that they are fine.
Only problem with Shimano brakes is the micro leak that happens just around the time the warranty runs out. If/when it does then you might as well bin the brakes.
Here's the thing: once you get above 1% or so returns on any product (in reality probably an order of magnitude less) then you'd either do a recall or stop producing it. I.e. sell ten thousand brakes/anything and 1% represents 100 items, meaning you'd have someone spending significant parts of their time answering the phone/emails, receiving goods, fixing them or getting them fixed, posting them back, etc.
I-spec is my personal bugbear. They've had four or five attempts at it now, managing to make almost all of them incompatible with each other, and the shifters for the most part can't be converted either, or used with brakes from a different model year.
Meanwhile, for SRAM, if you want direct mount, just unbolt the clamp from the shifter.
Their high end cup and cone hubs are beautiful engineering, adjustable with 2 x 5mm allen keys and your fingers, no guess work, no trial and error.
Octalink bb's
They just seemed to corrode so easily they needed endless maintenance
Mine are from 2007 and have had a new set of seals in that time, and that was only a refresh, they hadn't leaked or anything. I hardly ever bleed them either, they just keep working. No corrosion evident when I changed the seals about 6 months ago.
Oh, I did snap a lever clamp through overtightening over the years - but CRC had a spare.
If I’m not mistaken, the non-compatibility of Tiagra 4600 components with other 11-speed Shimano drivetrain parts.
4600 is 10 speed.
I think you probably mean the compatibility of 4700 with other 10 speed parts, but I reckon it's a nice feature that 4700 uses the same shift ratio as Shimano road 11 - means there's a upgrade path that's a bit more gradual.
My Hope brakes are 15 years old. No corrosion, haven't been used for 8 years. I just rolled out the wife’s bike snd they're working perfectly. My XTR brakes lasted less than 6 months in identical circumstances (I've now scrapped 11 callipers) and my XTR wheels got water into the hubs and the races corroded whilst it was hanging on the wall. £800 worth of totally useless, non-serviceable, top drawer components. If a King hub did that (and they haven't in 15 years), I could buy a bearing, a hubshell, damn, almost anything in it, but on an XTR, the only thing I can buy are the bloody balls.
I will never buy another Shimano hub until they move to a better bearing system. I think one of the new XTR MS hubs actually has done this.
I loved rapid-rise, mainly for the reason of being able to quickly dump hard gears with frozen hands when my thumbs had given up the ghost and ready to cry.
Road brifter internals when you can't work out which bit isn't doing what it should to shift to the big ring.
There was some sense to Rapid Rise, juat an easy click for an easier gear.
How very dare you. RR were the best mechs and I miss them. Much more intuitive.
Agreed, Rapid Rise was ace.
XT bottom bracket adapter is total piece of sh*t. Fitted one tonight and was reminded of how poorly it works.
RE hubs,
but on an XTR, the only thing I can buy are the bloody balls.
You can buy axles, cones, etc also? The inner fixed cups are harder than the cones and bearings. If they corroded in storage they might have been have been quite worn already, surface worn down?
XT bottom bracket adapter is total piece of sh*t. Fitted one tonight and was reminded of how poorly it works.
Reminds me to get a proper-sized cup spanner. I'll put up with the adapter for now as the BBs themselves are a big improvement over the old HT2s, last a lot longer ime so far.
The silly barrel adjuster on R8000 rear mechs is ghastly.
Hope is everyone’s favourite example, but it’s not really directly comparable is it, that repairability costs significantly more up front and they only really do brakes and hubs
So....
-Rims
-handlebars
-stems
-grips
-seatclamps
-headsets
-chainrings
-cassettes
-jockey wheels
-pedals
-bottom brackets (of pretty much every type)
-brake mounts
-brake rotors
-hed doctor
-stem spacers
-their sht shifter
- you mentioned cranks already
-they used to do QRs
-oooh, they also do some chainguides and bash guards.
That's excluding their 2 full bikes they make, which also include axles.
Yep, just brakes and hubs then.
They just seemed to corrode so easily
Yeah but the year was 1999 and at the time everything else was still pish.
The corrosion pretty much stopped dead when the mono systems started.
So much so that I still have 2004 (stamped on the brakes) brakes in regular use....and they just had their first rebuild so yeah your right it's a good job they make all the parts as enevitably when a product lasts so long it will need serviced at some point.
Shimano brakes ime are lucky to last the warranty and then are junked due to poor design.
Road direct mount brakes?
I think they were inevitable as the post and is mount look a bit ugly on a road bike but there doesn't seem to be much love for them for people that bought into disc road frames early on. Mind you they will probably also have 15mm front axles and 135mm qr rear.
Hopefully the standards have settled down for a bit (naive thinking I'm sure) so bikes are not near worthless at 5 years old due to them having an outdated 'standard' in them.
Rapid-Rise was brilliant and should have been how all mechs worked - using the spring (mechanical) force (aid) to help move the chain to a larger sprocket is far better than relying on just finger force. You don't need the same force to move the chain to a smaller sprocket, so have the spring force working then?
Direct mount is a rim brake thing.
Flat mount is the road disc standard and I don't think there's much wrong with it.
anagallis_arvensis
MemberOctalink bb’s
First thought! Shimano took something that was not without flaws (square taper), but had been used reliably for donkey's years, and replaced it with something that just b*ggered more quickly.
As I understood it, the problem on square taper was standing on the pedals, one back, one forward, any looseness whatsoever in the crank would wear the taper, trashing the crank.
Octalink solved this by... having a narrower surface for the crank/ BB interface, and numerous splines to properly trash the crank when it went. I went through 2NDS Octalink cranks on my Kona before going back to square taper.
Fortunately they fairly quickly realised pinch bolts were a necessity, and HTII has worked well ever since.