Plus Ca Change...

[althebike]

I still miss my old 531 campag fitted bike. It was the first adult bike I purchased, and it kept me going until I sold it to raise funds for marriage.
It was orange with chrome ends nice shiny groupset, center pull brakes , large flange hubs. It had a brookes saddle which has not changed much over the years, I still use the same model. The gear shifters were in the bar ends but they often unscrewed themselves, and that was just about the only maintenance I gave it, other than some oil on the chain. I like the fact it had colour and shiny bits, so many modern bikes are just bland black.
The chainset was 54/42. I am not sure what ratio cassette I used, but cycling around the chilterns or pennines, there was not a hill I could not cycle up. With my modern go faster bike, light, and more than double the amount of gears I am never quite sure if I am going to make it up some hills. Maybe I pine for my old legs as well as bike

[[XAP]Bob]

With the UCI fighting any genuine attempt at innovation... no wonder so little has changed...

[peetee]

I am fortunate enough to ride modern expensive bikes regularly. My own collection, however is firmly entrenched in 20th century steel frames and hand built wheels. The difference in performance is not as great as most people in the business would have you believe and so small as to make not a jot of difference to the vast majority of riders who are capable of choosing a machine that fits them and their needs.

[iandusud]

Personally I think the threadless headset is an abomination. The idea that you have to preload the bearing to get the play out of it is IMO bad engineering practice. The only situations where bearings are preloaded as a normal procedure is where the assembly is going to heat and expand to remove the preload in normal use (eg Velocette M series engines, some differentials...).

How else would you get play out of a bearing? All head bearings, like other bearings, need preload for proper function. That includes threaded headsets that are loaded by screwing down the threaded race and holding it there with the locknut. I guess you mean something else by “preload” here (maybe just unusually high preload?).[/quote]

What I am describing is what I imagine you are referring to as "unusually high preload". In practice what I mean is that a good quality headset can be adjusted so that there is no discernible pressure exerted on the bearings and at the same time no discernible play. When setting up a good headset I would adjust it so that there was no play and at the same time I could spin the forks in the frame. I cannot achieve this with a threadless headset. If I set it up so that the forks spin there is always play. If I remove the play there is always resistance which, I believe, is detrimental to the bearings. It may be the case that a Chris King threadless headset can be set up to offer no resistance and no play, I cannot comment as I have never fitted one. But at £100 + if that is the cost of a headset that works properly to my way of thinking it's too much for most people's needs.

Ian

[Canuk]

100% agreed on the preload on headsets. My friend in my lbs is forever going on about the preload applied to threaded headsets as its mostly hit and hope. If you're lucky it'll be relatively correct and you can ride a while without problems, but too much one way or the other and you'll be looking at new bearings /cups in short order. I love the easy set up of ahead, and I've never had to throw one away yet. Change bearings maybe every 4-5 years.

Ball bearings IME have no place in a headset.

[Samuel D]

In practice what I mean is that a good quality headset can be adjusted so that there is no discernible pressure exerted on the bearings and at the same time no discernible play. When setting up a good headset I would adjust it so that there was no play and at the same time I could spin the forks in the frame. I cannot achieve this with a threadless headset.

I see. This should be possible with a good quality ball-bearing headset of any sort, assuming the head tube is properly prepared, etc. I accept that too often it’s not. Perhaps it is easier with threaded headsets not because the steerer tube is threaded but because it is usually narrower (1 inch), and so the bearing drag acts on a shorter lever to resist free steering? This effect should be small, however.

Depending on wall thicknesses and materials of steerer and head tubes, there may also be changes in axial elasticity (beneficial or otherwise for the purpose of preload adjustment).

I think that the classical dimensions of steel bicycles up to a couple of decades ago were pretty sound. They were chosen long ago when bicycles were more culturally and economically important than they are today, leading to more great engineers working on their problems. They were proven by time.

In the last couple of decades too many of these dimensions have been casually thrown out by marketing-led companies with dubious engineering chops. Sometimes that has been necessary to allow the use of new materials (e.g. you cannot safely make a JIS-sized square-taper bottom bracket spindle in aluminium or even titanium), but we could argue about the point of the new materials. The new dimensions and standards have sometimes been found wanting in a year or two and changed again.

My friend in my lbs is forever going on about the preload applied to threaded headsets as its mostly hit and hope.

How so? Do you mean because the locknut can affect the preload?

Ball bearings IME have no place in a headset.

Ball bearings have several advantages in bicycle head bearings. That’s why Cane Creek and others use them. What don’t you like about them?

[fastpedaller]

I've never had a problem setting up either a threaded or threadless ball bearing headset - one with tapered top and lower bearings, however, defeated me!

[drossall]

I agree, the only threaded headsets that caused me real problems were cheap ones. The rest have been almost fit and forget (well, regrease very occasionally). I did have an issue once with a 105 headset that came on a second-hand frame, but it turned out that the top race had, for some reason, collapsed a bit. I replaced that one part from my spares box, and it's been fine.

And I still have a 1983 Holdsworth Mistral from the latter the days of 5-speed friction gears. It's a really good ride. The big difference, as said above, is brakes - the Mistral ones are OK, but not great.

[thelawnet]

I reckon you'll be hard pushed to buy a new bike in 18 months time without disc braking.

hardly. there's a hefty premium for Shimano's hydraulic road brakes, there's still no Tiagra hydraulic setup, nothing below Tiagra level

Flat bar bikes get over the 'early adopter' tax by using mtb brakes, but for road, disc brakes are still sufficiently expensive to cause manufacturers to put out hybrid abominations and what not.

Disc brakes will trickle down to Claris, but not for another 3 years at least.

[Canuk]

If you look at some of the big box name producers catalogues for next year at least half of the road bikes feature disc braking. And the Tour de France rumour mlll has it that disc braking will be pretty much ubiquitous on the Tour next year. Where the Pros lead the manufacturers will doggedly follow. So I stick to my 18 month prediction for disc braking overtaking everything else by the summer of 2020. I'd stick my neck out and saw on all likelihood tubeless also.

[Brucey]

it is as well to remember that lots of bicycle parts -many of which changed relatively little from ~1960 to about 1990- didn't so much get made fully formed and perfect first time out as 'evolve' by virtue of lots of (mostly failed) experiments in the decades prior to that. Forces such as racing, touring, market economics and yes even fashion played a role in determining certainly what might be described as 'normal' and in many cases what might be described as 'good' too.

In good times prior to that, manufacturers got 'experimental' and brought all kinds of weird and wacky things to market. Most of these things simply didn't work as well as normal equipment, or were too expensive, or never acheived racing success, etc and thus fell by the wayside. Some good ideas were stillborn because the market was essentially conservative at times.

Arguably we are in another 'experimental' phase right now; manufacturers feel free to introduce new -often here-today-gone-tomorrow- things they call 'standards' and there are enough people buying new bikes (who think they need 'the benefits' but perhaps have a poor grasp of or choose to ignore the drawbacks) that they don't go broke in the process.

Indeed bicycles are 'consumed' by some like mobile phones are and this type of consumer expects to see 'innovation' else their new scoot isn't considered 'new enough'. I don't think that many of these 'innovations' actually make much difference to most cyclists, and many (most?) of them will inevitably fall by the wayside, either abandoned altogether or shuffled into 'budget bike hell'. More failed experiments then, doomed to the dustbin of history.

Quite a lot of things that are new and exciting for racers never 'trickle down' and become commoditised products in the mass market, but it isn't always easy to tell which way it will go.

However most of the stuff that is 'new' in any one year, and much of the stuff that is 'current' (in racing circles especially) will be abandoned within a decade (or less) and practically forgotten a decade after that. Sometimes a 'new product' has a really short life before it is replaced or abandoned; for example 8s uniglide anyone? Or 10s Di2? 1" A-head headsets? The list goes on.

The net effect of this is that I for one am reluctant to immediately embrace new developments wholeheartedly unless they clearly solve a long-standing problem in a pretty unequivocal fashion, ideally whilst remaining compatible with the extant architecture of a bike as we know it. So I was pretty keen on shimano cassette hubs, because I'd broken numerous axles in hubs for screw-on freewheels, and the hubs were compatible with extant wheels and frames. By contrast I remain much less enthusiastic about the seemingly endless n+1 gears conveyor, because there are only so many gears you need and you can't carry on making the back end of the bike wider and/or making the chain and sprockets skinnier for ever. I already don't like (and have avoided like the plague) standard road bike wheel dishing for about 35 years because it gives wheels that are either light or strong, not both. Current 11s road wheel dishing is even more ridiculous; some rims that build into perfectly reliable undished wheels build into perfectly unusable wheels if they are dished for 11s 'road' use.

BTW comparing 1970s bikes with steel wheel rims/ weinmann 730 brakes with top quality modern bikes is just daft; the only reason you ended up with those in the first place is because you didn't know any better and/or you didn't want to spend a lot of money.

cheers

[PT1029]

By and large I find adjusting A headsets no problem - the only ones that tend to be loose or tight (or both at the same time!) with nothing in between I usually find are gunged up (bearings and/or spacers/races on fork column) or defective in some way or another, or the top cap has bottomed out on the fork column.
I start with the headset a little loose, tighten down the top cap bolt while simultaneously swinging the stem slightly from side to side on the fork (fork/wheel held rigid between my knees), when the swinging side to side gets just a bit of stiction/friction, adjustment is (usually) spot on (so headset swings freely while having no play). Sometimes all the cables make it seem tight, but if you slacken/disconnect them, you then find it swings easily.

Best development over 30 - 40 years? As a tourist, low ride front racks, rigid rear racks that don't sway, cassette hubs that don't break axles.
As a commuter, lights!

[Canuk]

I think it's fair comment to say that the majority of posters (especially in this section Bikes & bits) are a pretty rarified bunch, vis a vis people who ride touring bikes. This is after all just the alter ego of the CTC. The clue is in the title! So, if you use numbers as a guide probably represent a fairly small percentage of the bike buying (and regular bike riding) public.

If any proof of this were needed take a walk round your local bike shop, or Evans/Halfords or trawl a site like Wiggle and you'll be lucky to find a single touring specific bike on offer. 99% of the bikes will be multi geared, thin tyres, carbon framed and priced £600 and above.

So, it would apposite to suggest to new members or people new to cycling not to take too seriously the critique of modern bikes and 21st century cycling technologies around here. Think pinch of salt.

I'm not 'comparing' a 1970's middle of the road bike to a modern ride, I'm simply stating that when I look at the two in direct context I do find that the only real similarities and things that have gone unchanged are the brake cables and the chain. Even both of these have evolved, but not in the same exponential way as say braking, indexed shifting or tyre technology.

You can argue on the head of a pin (and many do) about the usefulness of such developments, but you can't easily dismiss the effectiveness to the general cycling population and increase in 'bums on saddles' in recent years, which I say would not be possible if the bicycle had not evolved.

So, new forum member or indeed new cyclist don't be scared or cowed in this section by the constant decrying of new tech and carbon frames and wheels and everything (r)evolutionary. Bikes and cycling is a glorious melange of users, technology and applications. This forum should be viewed down the lens as an outpouring of a very specific, albeit minority view of cycling, from its fair to say the 1%.

And its worth reminding the 1% that you don't increase your membership and /or the popularity of cycling by shouting at the 99% your antiquated or fixed 'preferences' for one particular niche of the sport.

You can shoot the messenger all you want, but this a shot across the bows: its not in the spirit of the cycling I grew up with to be so critical of anything new or indeed useful to a new cycling generation bamboozled by choice. Choice is everywhere, it simply didn't exist in the 70's of you wanted a good frame it was 531, good kit you bought Campagnolo. It was simple.

Rather than batter the daylights out of tech and new developments you 'just don't like' would it not be 100% more productive to argue the pros and cons of what's available and help people (especially new cyclists) navigate their way to a best choice bike or piece of kit for a best choice cycling activity?

There's a barrage of criticism and negative consequence on this section which is not helping anyone. It may feed your ego to be 'right' all of the time but you are turning away new users and the 99% of those who do not ride touring bikes, but commute or exclusively ride sportive, or who race, or the indeed the spoiled for choice mamils out there. Buying a bike now is a very confusing exercise.

This is becoming a purposeful exclusion, whereas it should be a purposely inclusive forum.

I also think that a copy and paste dissection of this post and/or critique is fundamentally unhelpful. Rather take a look at your own posts and reflect for a moment are they genuinely useful to the 99%? You are broadcasting your views (albeit to a fairly small audience) but if you want to increase your chances of success of this organisation and cycling in general, think twice before you go off on a halcyon days pursuit of luddite proportion, and think on, put the needs (mostly sage advice) of your readers first.

[David9694]

Maybe it’s the rose coloured spectacles, but my teenage 10 speed Raleigh Medale was reliable, in a way that my current 30 and 22 speed mounts don’t seem to be. I’m a better and more diligent mechanic now than then, yet I sometimes feel beset by drivetrain problems, having had some real calamities over the past six years, although I am probably riding longer then I did back then.

I’ve run brifters for the past 10 years and am unconvinced by them - I get on fine with down tube levers for my riding.

I’m a plus one on the 1” vs 1 1/8” headset question, having never experienced any problems with even bog standard headsets. How did we invent a system where height adjustment is so complex??

I quite like the Shimano outboard b/b system as I seem to be strong enough these days to cause bending that makes the chain chafe the front mech, which happens more on my more recent Stronglight chainset builds,

Elsewhere is linked the BTF Rugby CTC day out film - interesting so see what people are wearing and riding all those years ago. Then there’s the 87 year old doing LEJOG on his Brompton and not looking like him and Lycra have ever been introduced.

[pwa]

What aspects of "serious" bikes have definitely improved significantly since the 1970s. And by "serious" I mean chosen because they are good enough to do a job, and not because they are cheap. I'm thinking £500 or something like that.

Tyres. Today's tyres are better than those from the 1970s. I don't think that can be disputed.

Lights. Today's bike lights (battery and dyno) make the old ones look like a bad joke.

Potential gear range. While a lot of modern bikes fail to make use of it, there is the potential to have a very wide range of gears, wider than I had access to in the 1970s. Even in the late 1980s I was struggling up the Col del la Bonette with a double chainset and a smallest ring of about 38!

Braking. Braking on cheap bikes can be much better than it was on cheap bikes in the past, and good bikes can have excellent braking.