Change come hard in the cycling community

[classic33]

Speaking of helmet tech, this popped up in my news feed. Now we all need one, perhaps two.......a spare for when we have a fall?

Clever helmet!!

Not cheap at £11,066.

 

[ColinJ]

Not cheap at £11,066.

Ha ha - that was my reaction until I realised that it is the total amount raised so far!

The actual prices are down the page. Still fairly expensive but there is a lot of extra functionality built in.

Hopefully, crashed riders never end up with bits of electronics stuck in their head!

 

[Punkawallah]

Ha ha - that was my reaction until I realised that it is the total amount raised so far!

The actual prices are down the page. Still fairly expensive but there is a lot of extra functionality built in.

Hopefully, crashed riders never end up with bits of electronics stuck in their head!

It has a lifetime guarantee - when it goes, your head explodes.

 

[kingrollo]

Personally I've not encountered the kick back in real life - in fact quite the opposite. People I know and ride with there is a high % of tubeless adopters and those portable electric pumps are getting very popular.

The kickback Imo is more noticeable on forums - where the OS maps, anti electric shifting, seems to congregate.

Imo the crux of matter is that any gains from the tech are marginal - especially in isolation and of course you may just prefer a steel bike with down tube shifters - you will still most likely arrive at your destination !!!

However IME having a bike with all the latest bells and whistles does make cycling more enjoyable - indeed I sometimes treat myself to a bit of kit to keep my motivation going.

It's just how we all perceive things - if you gave everyone £5k to spend on cycling kit - we'd most likely all turn up with different bikes.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

However IME having a bike with all the latest bells and whistles does make cycling more enjoyable

Only if it’s reliable and non faff. Technology is one of those things that’s great when it works, and an exercise in frustration when it doesn’t.

 

[kingrollo]

Only if it’s reliable and non faff. Technology is one of those things that’s great when it works, and an exercise in frustration when it doesn’t.

Is that tech related though ? - back in the late eighties my steel 653 with down tube shifters spent the whole summer going back and forth to the shop for a knackered headset and cross threaded forks .....

 

[Ming the Merciless]

Is that tech related though ? - back in the late eighties my steel 653 with down tube shifters spent the whole summer going back and forth to the shop for a knackered headset and cross threaded forks .....

The latter is incompetence. Tech (electronic) has a known history of not working for no known reason or easy way to diagnose / resolve.

 

[Andy in Germany]

of course you may just prefer a steel bike with down tube shifters - you will still most likely arrive at your destination !!!

Pretty much...

I'd argue I'm more likely to get to my destination because I'm less reliant on complex technology; I can repair most of the mechanical issues that will come up during a ride with a very basic tool kit. That doesn't include blowing a chain and shredding a rear wheel last year, which was entirely my own fault; tech or the lack thereof clearly doesn't cure stupid. (Edit: But low tech is cheaper to fix...)

I'm currently having lots of fun learning to repair and test some very high end and expensive bikes with all the bells and whistles, but every day I'm very happy to return to my own low tech transport for the ride home. It probably helps that I prepare the invoices for the repairs to these bikes, and my goodness, they can get expensive fast.

I'm also astonished how often we have to delay a repair because this specific part isn't available, or go down to the metalwork department to see if they can help us design a workaround for something... This is all the more remarkable bearing in mind we're within a few kilometres of the main Bosch and Magura factories.

I appreciate the freedom of not being reliant on the good graces of one or two big companies to provide highly specialised parts and constant 'software updates' so I can keep riding.

 

[SpokeyDokey]

But what really goes wrong with 'high tech' kit?

9 years of MTB's and 6 of road bikes with hydro discs and not one of the 4 bikes has ever missed a beat.

Clipless pedals, 9,10,11 speed divetrains & thru axles have all performed as they should with no hassles at all.

Not tried electronic shifting or tubeless tyres yet.

 

[Rhythm Thief]

You’d rather grab a big handful and keep moving at speed on a collision course?

Well, yeah. As long as you're rubber side down, you can manoeuvre, but once you're on the deck, it's game over.

 

[Rhythm Thief]

But what really goes wrong with 'high tech' kit?

Let me say at the outset that my main use of a bike is as a means of transport. I have a reasonably serious commute (which I enjoy), and I occasionally do a 100k+ ride, and I wear lycra, but mostly it's about getting to work cheaply and without the costs associated with a car for me.
So with that in mind, when I bought a secondhand road bike with Di2 gears and they didn't work, I spent a couple of days trying to diagnose the problem using various versions of Shimano's diagnostic software before admitting defeat and giving the thing to a bike shop to sort out. After a new battery (and a £250 bill), I was on the road. Bear in mind that I could have sorted out any issues with a mechanical groupset in about half an hour, for the cost of a couple of quid on cables. Ultimately, the electronic gears (admittedly an older version from 2016) did nothing my mechanical gears don't do, but came with a significant serviceability penalty.
Likewise disc brakes: I tried them, found that I only had to think about lubricating the chain for them to start squealing like a dying pig for (when all's said and done) no great advantage over rim brakes, given the fact that the only way to stop the things squealing seemed to be to spend a fortune on new pads to replace the barely-worn pads I'd already spent a fortune on.
I think the main point I'm trying to make is that I've never found rim brakes to be inadequate in any scenario through 40 years of regular riding. Granted, it helps that I'm comfortable replacing worn out rims every few years, but I do think that for the cyclist who simply requires a cheap and cheerful means of transport, with absolutely no importance attached to the performance gains that come with discs or electronic gears or whatever innovations are aimed mainly at the racing cyclist, older and cheaper tech is very much the way forward.

 

[PaulSB]

But what really goes wrong with 'high tech' kit?

I do know a few people who have had battery issues with di2 but I think they're very much in the minority. One of them just has problems with her bikes. Period. No matter how often I urge her she won't go to a decent LBS, preferring to use mobile mechanics working out of their garage. I've given up on that one.

@Andy in Germany @Rhythm Thief I'm not someone who rushes out to buy the latest technology but I'm happy to use what I consider relevant to me. No matter what system or tech I've ridden over the past 30 years I have only once failed to finish a ride.......apart from a couple of ambulance trips. On that ocassion my free hub failed. I doubt any CCer carries the kit to fix that problem.

Good, regular maintenance is the key. There is no reason why a well maintained bike, regardless of tech, should fail. Please don't think I'm suggesting your bikes are poorly maintained.

I did once have a bottom bracket start to get very iffy about 10 miles from home but made it back.

 

[Rhythm Thief]

No matter how often I urge her she won't go to a decent LBS...


Good, regular maintenance is the key. There is no reason why a well maintained bike, regardless of tech, should fail.

That's a fair point, but the flip side is that, while I'm more than comfortable building bikes and doing any job required on them (including on hydraulic disc systems), my experience of Di2 as detailed above is that it requires some investment in diagnostics software; disc brakes, while simple enough in principle, are simply too vulnerable to contamination to be suitable for use in bikes, where the smallest amount of chain lube from the other side of the hub is enough to set the things squealing in a teeth-gratingly irritating manner. (And no matter how careful you are to avoid contamination, it does happen.) Fine, if the performance gains provided by disc brakes are important to you then that's something you can live with, but for me using the bike to get to work and finding rim brakes to be in no way inadequate - certainly not inferior to discs for the sort of riding I do - it wasn't. I tried discs and genuinely didn't get along with them: since selling the bike and going back to rim brakes, my riding has been entirely trouble-free and my bikes significantly easier and cheaper to service. And I've never once struggled to stop in time, in any circumstances.

 

[Smokin Joe]

Many people seem to be under the impression that technology stops when it suits the type of riding they themselves do. A previous forumer used to sneer at anything that wasn't a steel frame with down tube friction shifters, ridden while wearing a donkey jacket and boots. Most of his riding seemed to be down to the pub with the occasional epic of a twenty miler. Try that when you're trying to keep up with clubmates on a hundred mile jaunt.

Cycling is a broad church where we all ride for different reasons, one man's more money than sense kit is what another will find improves his performance, whether it is in an elite category race or a fourth cat fish and chipper. We should try not to sound like the non-cyclist who says, "£X hundred quid for a bloody bike? You were ripped off mate, you can get one in Argos for ninety nine."

 

[StuAff]

Many people seem to be under the impression that technology stops when it suits the type of riding they themselves do. A previous forumer used to sneer at anything that wasn't a steel frame with down tube friction shifters, ridden while wearing a donkey jacket and boots. Most of his riding seemed to be down to the pub with the occasional epic of a twenty miler. Try that when you're trying to keep up with clubmates on a hundred mile jaunt.

Cycling is a broad church where we all ride for different reasons, one man's more money than sense kit is what another will find improves his performance, whether it is in an elite category race or a fourth cat fish and chipper. We should try not to sound like the non-cyclist who says, "£X hundred quid for a bloody bike? You were ripped off mate, you can get one in Argos for ninety nine."

See also, 'I were right about that saddle'.