It’s not an age it’s an attitude atmo
Shartmo, different freehub splinings for the sake of walled garden are spiritually different than competing national bb threading standards.
It’s the same thing. Mavic, Campy, and Shimano all had different splines before HG ultimately won out.
I don’t know if Park still maintains all of the freewheel tools, but those were also a pain in the ass.
I bought a hard tail a few years ago with some stuff like that. And I haven’t really had to mess with any of it. There is simplicity in that. It’s the bike I’ve done the least to and tbh probably ride the most. It’s fun and I don’t even have to think about it.
I still have my cabled and threaded bikes and there’s simplicity in that too. But also a lot of complex dithering.
I think it’s good to be happy with the bike you buy. Maybe pick a middle of the road modern proprietary bike. Like I kind of draw the line at special stems but the other stuff doesn’t matter so much to me. I’ve had no issues with the bb so who cares what it is.
Its certainly a bit like modern cars , which are an absolute proprietary dog to work on but do (compared to the 1970s) last for a very long time
on an hydro+beep-boop bike that doesn’t burn through headset bearings, internal routing is alright ATMO
it’s pretty crummy to sell a new bike with mech shifting and internal routing though
I feel like one is either submitting to a brand new appliance bicycle
or one is knee deep in the dither and sifting through the compatibility matrices
Then something wears out or breaks and you’re stuck searching eBay for NOS stuff.
the fact that Shimano and SRAM both have subtly different drivers for 12-speed road and MTB cassettes is pretty infuriating, though.
I get why sram has their weird chain but it’s annoying to mix and mingle parts (Shimano wear parts on sram pusher dangler)
Yea but the picking is the hard part
Which one is this?
This is why I posted the link - Cc SAYS their bearings are sealed, so I might go with them
no specific headset or bike, just saying that if you have a bike that regularly needs headset service you probably want a) hydro couplers or b) external routing
I went on a little bit of a ride with this recently when I found that both the rim and hub of my 135mm 36h tubeless rim brake wheel were busted. Ended up having to get a disc brake hub and pretending the centerlock nub isn’t there, and then learning how to build a wheel, but that’s dither life.
I thought someone was making a blinged out spline cover, but all I can find is the rubber Shimano jawn.
Yeah I left the rubbanub on there, turns out I don’t look at my rear hub much when I’m riding so it doesn’t make a big difference to me lol
This looks interesting. Shimavens.
less dithering means more riding ![]()
yeah it was really simple before with 4 types of BB threading and a dozen different bottom bracket spindle lengths.
and your bars might be 25.4 or 26.0 or 26.4… or maybe 7/8ths..
my first road bike had 8-speed campy with 3ttt bars/stem. and it some internal routing from the 90s. proprietary crank bcd, proprietary freehub that didnt even fit any other number of speeds from campy, and proprietary bar/stem size so i couldnt get a shorter stem without finding the right weird bar clamp or changing bars.
I don’t think bikes have gotten more difficult (OK, assembling them is more difficult due to internal routing, but the standards themselves aren’t), we’ve just forgotten about all the difficulties of the past.
we used to have to ask for 1 1/4” schwinn tires so we didn’t accidentally buy 1 1/4” tires. it’s always been this way. that’s why we all found Sheldon
10 years ago we had new bikes coming with bb30, pf30, osbb (of which there are multiple types), bb95, bb92, bb86, BBRight, BB30A, BB386, multiple widths of BSA.. i think i’m forgetting a few.
at least we’ve largely consolidated bottom bracket holes back down to a few sizes.
Trying to buy a CX frame from 15 years ago makes this especially obvious. So much stuff I never knew existed that’s been dead for a while.
Recently I found a PDF copy of the Sutherland’s manual in my downloads folder and was blown away by how important it was for many years of my bike-nerdery and then suddenly useless overnight.