With money tight and riders demanding tougher gear, the cycling industry is shifting its focus to durability and practicality. From stronger wheels to rebuildable derailleurs, brands are stepping up to create products that last—and keep cyclists coming back for more.
HJF, fuck the industry. I get it, people want to make money and people want the new hawtness. But people really need to stop falling for this shit.
Eat of buffet of dicks, Bicycling Magazine, you astroturfing shitrag. You know what will far outlive 99.9% of cyclists lives? A properly built 32h cartridge bearing disc wheelset. If it were built properly, with double-butted spokes, spoke washers, brass nipples, and stress-relieved spokes, the hubshell and/or rim will fail before a spoke fails*. You know what other carbon fiber wheels had a “lifetime replacement warranty?” Mad Fiber. Yeah, go ahead and look up that mess.
*If you ever broke a spoke, it’s because your wheel was built improperly. And no, I’m not talking about intrusion to the point of catastrophic failure. I’ll spare you the stories, but even a lot of common intrusions shouldn’t even make your wheel flinch.
So the article also goes “into” derailleurs. Who has ever worn out a derailleur, front or rear? I sold a bike with 125,000 miles with the same Deore XT derailleur, Shimano C101 (super low end) front derailleur. The C101 was still going strong, including a decade of intentional neglect just to see when it would quit. I gave up and decided it should be nurtured into its twilight years. Still going strong AFAIK/ last I talked to the new owner. That kit is over 20 years old now, as are the wheels I built.
To paraphrase Chris Rock: “THAT’S what you’re supposed to do! What you do you want? A fucking cookie?!” Dear bike industry: don’t stand by your stuff in perpetuity? We won’t buy it.
I get it. A 9-speed triple drivetrain just ain’t the sexy hawtness. And some people don’t want to learn how to use TWO shifters. But it’s bulletproof, always interchangeble, (mostly/potentially) non-proprietary, and will outlive three of us put together. Bar-end shifters? Sure! Brifters? Yep. Thumbies? That too, friend! Want hydraulics? A plethora of options! Oh, is something not quite right? Switch to friction mode, diagnose it later. Oh, and the parts are cheap if you crashed and need to replace something.
My rant aside, I think Shimano is really onto something with the CUES system, especially the Linkglide system. Sure, it’s proprietary, has all the Shimano lock-in it can manage, and that chaps my ass like most things about the modern bike industry. But CUES has a scheduled support lifespan, so one can make an informed decision about group selection. And Linkglide actually delivers on the shifting experience we should have had with Hyperglide. Shimano seem to have recognized what a mess they made and seem to be remedying that with CUES. I have lots of vitriol for Shimano (and SRAM, and Campy), but I can recognize a great product when it comes along. Especially when it’s priced for average wage grunts like us.
And let me return to calling out Bicycling. Notice they said nothing about CUES or any of a wide array of quality parts companies often within the buy-once-cry-once territory. Oh, right, because those aren’t big-ticket, whizz-bang hawtness. Seriously, if it’s in Bicycling, it should always be met prima facie with skepticism, if not outright derision.
Edit: typos, formatting
I wanted to upvote this twice. Instead I’ll leave this comment.
Great rant. Would read again.
125,000 miles? That doesn’t seem right. If that’s true that bike has one hell of a story
Yes, 125,000 miles. I was car-free for about 20 years, and I’m recently back to not owning a car. My partner has a car, but we are a very car-lite household. I was averaging More than 13,000 miles per year, in part because my commute was 25 miles each way and in part because I do randonneuring (long distance, unsupported cycling with time limits) and lots of bike touring. As a result, I have an intimate understanding of rates at which bike bits wear out and how to maximize value and longevity.
20 years makes sense. I was trying the math on it and was getting crazy numbers
You can go reeealllly far on a bike if you aren’t in a big hurry. I have thousands of miles on my low end Trek 820 and the OG derailleurs are still going strong. The frame will probably outlast me and maybe even my grandkids.
The fact that it was lasting 125,000 miles wasn’t the surprising part. It was more someone knowing they had put that kind of milage on a bike that was hard to believe. With 20 years of daily commuting, it makes sense
I have absolutely no idea how many miles are actually on my unpowered bike because I never fit it with a computer or odometers. All my maintenance is pretty much, “Yeah, I guess it’s worn enough to replace.”
I’m probably going to need new cassettes in the next year or so, on my third chain with them now.
Preach
Hahahaha those prices xD
This is why I love 90s bikes.
Simple parts. Easy (and affordable) to maintain. Can easily last another 30 years. 😀
I’ve got a steel hardtail from maybe the mid-2000s: This thing is getting handed down to my grandkids lol
Internal hub gears are so much nicer, a little less efficient but honestly the difference has been pretty minimal in my experience
Completely agree. Derailleurs have always seemed to me such a fragile technology. In decades of experience cycling I don’t think I have ever encountered a derailleur where the chain turned completely smoothly, without rubbing, in all 7 or 8 gears. There’s always a couple of gears that are good and couple you have to avoid. Even if you do manage to fine-tune the thing so that it works perfectly, good luck keeping it that way once the bike gets bashed around a bit.
all 7 or 8 gears
This is an adjustment/tune problem often compounded by user error. Full stop.
And drive belt <3
Meanwhile they show the longest cage gear and most complex set up while asking the most simplistic of setups to judge
