Cycling industry rant

[BikeGremlin]

This is a spontaneous video (no plan or script) made out of genuine frustration.
I discussed and explained some (not all) of the problematic stuff I take into consideration when giving bicycle buying advice.

P.S.
A list of all my videos sorted by categories (with added tags) for easier finding the needed answers/tutorials/information:

bikegremlin.com/youtube/

Relja

 

[BikeGremlin]

To sum up and clarify my thoughts, based on the video comments and feedback:

Bikes are made for (and should serve) the riders. Not the other way round.

For my own bikes, I care about safety and reliability a lot more than about the budget. Even in those terms, the modern stuff is way, way worse (I ride hard, a lot, and weak things break, despite the good maintenance).

Also, the simple "cheap" bikes ride wonderfully and if I hadn't ridden those over the past decades, I would probably have believed that disc brakes (and suspension) are a must.

Still, my main "gripe" is about the lack of choice, not about the new stuff in and of itself. Many people (including some good friends, good mechanics and good riders) are happy with 1x, hydraulics and electronic shifting. That's great. But that stuff has many cons, and I don't like the lack of choice to choose the simpler stuff.

It's great to have modern stuff as an option - if you need and like it. My rant is primarily about not having an alternative option - with rim brakes getting pushed out of the market (and disc brakes and suspension being pushed even to city/commuter bikes).

From a service point of view, my experience is that many more people have problems with disc brakes compared to rim brakes, and that it takes a lot longer to service disc brakes.This video is an example - I compare that (with the self-adjusting brakes) to just turning a preload screw on V-brakes:

Now, to consider those on a budget:

Cheap, poor quality suspension forks are a lot worse than rigid forks, for example. I recommend people either buy the decent ones, or no suspension at all. Unfortunately, most reasonably priced bikes come with low-quality disc brakes and suspension.

Could you build a bike from parts then? Well, for building bikes:
Most "normal, ordniary" people (i.e. not avid cyclists or mechanics) can't build bikes for themselves (and most shops can't do that for them except maybe during slow months).

So, when people ask me for bike buying advice, it's getting more and more difficult to recommend bikes for commuting, kids' bikes or bikes for short weekend joy rides - especially if they are on a low budget and looking for easy and cheap maintenance (most people in the world are even more poor than people in Serbia, and most people in Serbia earn about $500 per month or less - i.e. Serbs are rich, an cyclists in the US and most EU countries can consider themselves to be the super-rich minority, compared to most people in the world today).

If making money were my priority, I would welcome all the new patents - they make it more difficult for people (and other mechanics) to do stuff by themselves (requiring more knowledge and tools that aren't cheap in decent quality). But I value safety, reliability, and getting & keeping riders (myself included) on the road - and enjoying cycling, without worrying about sourcing parts, long waits for fixes etc.

Relja

P.S.
I should probably make a separate video to explain the problems with the modern cranks design.

P.P.S.
There were surprisingly many comments (I wasn't expecting many people to care about this), and they've been overwhelmingly positive (one would normally expect that the industry is selling stuff that people love and prefer, but this proves that many things are practically forced on "consumers" - hate that word).

 

[VlPo]

People, for the most part, become somewhat strange... They don't want to think for themselves, or learn how to do something.
We can talk about elementary things - unscrew the nut. But this "difficult" issue can be stretched to three pages of the forum. Although, what could be easier for a normal man?
I always want to laugh at people who pay 3-4 times more money for their bike, while it is inferior in quality of components compared to my wife's fairly simple bike. And still, their more expensive "pride" does not ride as easily as my wife's
When my wife tells her friends that we rode 40-50-60 km on a bicycle, NO ONE believes her. Even when she shows tracks on her smartphone It's so "hard"...
The ideology of mindless consumption will not lead to anything good.
I don't agree with you on everything, and there's nothing strange about that. But I understand you very well in this matter.

 

[VlPo]

In the vast majority of cases, the answer to the question "why did you buy this?" sounds like this - the seller said it was "very cool"
So the manufacturer makes "cool and expensive" options instead of "convenient and simple"

 

[BikeGremlin]

In the vast majority of cases, the answer to the question "why did you buy this?" sounds like this - the seller said it was "very cool"
So the manufacturer makes "cool and expensive" options instead of "convenient and simple"

From my experience, in many (most?) cases, it goes about like this:

When people ask about "how to upgrade my bicycle," I usually ask: "what is your bicycle lacking, what do you want to change or improve?"

That gets them puzzled. It often turns out they heard that "higher end / newer" stuff "works better." But when a person says they want "better shifters," they don't always have any problems with shifting (or, just as often, their problems are with cables/housing or tuning, not with shifters or derailleurs).

Having said that, my main gripe is the lack of choice - it is getting more and more difficult to find decent steel frames with V-brake mounts and similar. Suspension and disc brakes are being pushed quite aggressively. That is good for those who prefer disc brakes (and suspension) - they do have their pros, but I prefer the simpler stuff.

 

[VlPo]

That gets them puzzled. It often turns out they heard that "higher end / newer" stuff "works better." But when a person says they want "better shifters," they don't always have any problems with shifting (or, just as often, their problems are with cables/housing or tuning).

Very often, ordinary people associate the improvement of something with the high price of it. That is, they really believe that if they put XTR instead of Tourney, then everything will work "on its own" and very well.
Although, from my own experience, I can say that the XT on my bike switches noticeably faster and harder than the Deore on my wife's bike. But Deore works noticeably softer, which is more important for an ordinary rider.
Anyway, for quite a long time I used the simplest Tourney components, and strangely enough, everything worked very well

 

[BikeGremlin]

I got an interesting question in the above-shown video's comment:

Very interesting video. Thanks. How much of your advice and technological knowledge transfers to mountain bikes? I understand the carbon frame and/pr parts problem of ‘flaking’ from the inside. I use Avid Codes from 2007 on a Turner 4-bar mountain bike. They are simply outstanding stopper. I’m 63 been riding since 1990. The Avid Code are still working

It is a great question that will, like most YouTube comments get lost in a sea of comments that can't be searched and found later on, so I'll answer it here.

Before I answer, it is fair to note that the video in this thread's title was more along the lines of what bothers me. I've made a more objective/neutral video discussing the pros and cons in a bit more detail:

There are further details in my (cycling) website articles, such as disc brake pros and cons, tubeless tyre pros and cons, 1x drivetrains pros and cons etc. (most of the relevant resources are linked in that video's description), and I also discuss these pros and cons in terms of buying a bicycle for a particular use in my bicycle buying guides (an example: MTB buying gude article).

That MTB buying guide was peer-reviewed by my friend Miloš who runs his own bike shop, and is an avid, skilled MTB rider (with road bike racing experience too). I've included his remarks in the article and briefly put: we both respect each other's knowledge, experience, and opinions - but we don't always agree (I like to think that it's a sign of maturity ).

Miloš likes and makes use of suspension, dropper seatposts, and disc brakes. We both agree they are not crucial for most riders and that it takes a certain amount of skill and experience to really make use of that stuff, and that you can ride in the mountains on simpler bikes (we both do most of our riding on rim-brake rigid bikes, that's a fact).

Another important note that has shaped my opinion to a great degree: I rode all across our local mountain, doing 100+ km in a day easily on a rigid rim-brake bicycle. Even when there is mud. During the first two decades of my riding, bicycle suspension and disc brakes were not (widely) available. If that hadn't been the case, I probably would have believed the myth that you must use disc brakes and suspension to ride off-road in the mountains (and that it is dangerous to use rim brakes). It's not - you just need to adjust your riding style and use some common sense - but that goes for disc brakes too as they also have their limits.

However, high-quality suspension and disc brakes have their pros along with their cons. It's a matter of weighing the two and deciding by oneself, for oneself, what the optimal choice is. There is also the matter of personal preference - I met a man who rides a full-suspension bicycle as a paved, flat city commuter because he likes that kind of bike. Nothing wrong with that - he knows the service and parts cost more and he's still happy.

When it comes to disc brakes, I love the mechanical Avid BB7 (and BB7 R for drop bars), because I highly value simplicity and aim to make my bikes be fast and simple to fix because there are countless bicycles I fix for other people - but high-quality hydraulic brakes do have a bit better modulation and require even less strong lever pull for the same stopping torque (all else being equal).

I should also stress that strong, durable, yet simple parts and frames are getting more and more expensive and difficult to find. Yes, they can still save you time and money in the long run (cheaper maintenance, better durability and reliability), but the costs do add up when you're building a bike (as practically no manufacturer offers fully assembled bicycles with such components). I plan to make a separate video (or an article - one not excluding the other) about that.

Relja