Bike companies all seem to offer the same kind of product lineup. The high end models have all the expensive parts. Down in the upper mid range are the really good values, where material and workmanship are good enough to perform well and heavy enough to last a while. From there down, the bikes just have increasingly shoddy knock-offs of the features on the higher-priced models.
Are consumers driven enough by appearances to make that the most profitable approach?
Bikes are not like other consumer goods. The rider has to bring something to the machine. Let the discount stores sell the hideous facsimiles of full suspension. The independent bike dealer has to deal more personally with the customer. We have to answer questions, sometimes very pointed questions.
A better approach to the product continuum would be to make the lowest price bikes have the fewest features and add features on the way up the price scale. Don't have a heavy, crappy suspension fork. Have no suspension fork. The bike will be lighter and more nimble. Give it nice enough geometry to make a fun ride.
Keep models to a minimum and adaptability to a maximum. With open-face stems and threadless headsets, position modifications are quick and easy. Quill stems had their advantages, and could still fit into a quickly customized format with multi-bolt clamps, so either way works.
Make rigid fork MTB-based models suspension ready. This allows the rider to make incremental upgrades and means the factory can produce a standard frame for multiple models.
At the moment, outfits like Surly, Soma and Pake offer parts of this concept, but they are still enthusiast bikes. Affordability is relative.
Maybe I don't shop enough, and some plucky little company is already doing this. I haven't seen it yet. Most small companies target the eccentric but already committed cyclist or offer slimmed-down versions of the big-company business model.
Osobike has one model that begins to do what I'm talking about, but it's one bike. That seems to be their sole product. A good start, certainly. They're thinking in the right direction.
Some components would have to come back from the grave, most notably mid-grade top-mount MTB shifters, indexed with friction option. If someone wants trickier shifting, buy the model that comes with it or upgrade your current bike to it. Business competition Shimano-style would ruin it, because constant change and compatibility issues would make upgrading difficult or impossible.
For the road the task becomes a little more difficult, since the barcon shifter is the current compromise between down tube and brifter. Suntour had the Command shifter in the 1990s, but the company went down soon after that, so the shifters didn't really get a full-on test in the marketplace.
The point of the truly minimalist bike company would be to offer the best quality at each price point by offering fewer features, of higher quality, not the same number of features made to lower standards. I'd rather ride a nimble 8-speed than a clunky 30-speed. And I think the new cycling consumer would appreciate the ride and the longevity, given the chance to compare.
Good thing I don't have any money, eh? I'd probably lose the whole wad, betting on substance over image.
Tuesday, June 03, 2008
Last Thoughts on Wheel Failure
It could be a form of what happened with Telemark boots and bindings. With old leather boots, they would get all broken down and soft. Then boot makers came out with burly plastic boots. At that point, boots held up well, but people started ripping bindings out of skis. So then we went to beefier screws. So then binding toepieces started cracking. And so on. Each improvement pushed the weakness of another component.
Maybe strong spokes that are more reluctant to break pass on stress to rims already potentially compromised by anodizing and heat treating processes. I NEVER break spokes, but I'm a rim killer. I guess miles of trouble-free riding is some compensation, compared to the annoyance of constantly breaking spokes, but it seems like there was a time when you could get a wheel to last without breaking either one.
On a couple of fixed gear wheels built with Weinmann concaves, I literally rode the races right out of the hubs without breaking a spoke or a rim. That included brakeless kickback stops and plenty of rough roads. It gets hard to keep track of all the substitutions as parts wear out or get damaged, but I know I've laced at least one replacement hub into a Weinmann concave, and may have done it twice. I've only ever replaced a concave due to crash damage. And that was just for aesthetics because I didn't want to keep riding what I'd bashed and tweaked back to acceptable straightness for the brakeless rear of a fixed gear. Sheer indulgence. I did ride it for several years, six or more, before changing it out.
My big weakness is that I can't really stand to ride a crappy bike. Even my beaters have character and become friends.
Maybe strong spokes that are more reluctant to break pass on stress to rims already potentially compromised by anodizing and heat treating processes. I NEVER break spokes, but I'm a rim killer. I guess miles of trouble-free riding is some compensation, compared to the annoyance of constantly breaking spokes, but it seems like there was a time when you could get a wheel to last without breaking either one.
On a couple of fixed gear wheels built with Weinmann concaves, I literally rode the races right out of the hubs without breaking a spoke or a rim. That included brakeless kickback stops and plenty of rough roads. It gets hard to keep track of all the substitutions as parts wear out or get damaged, but I know I've laced at least one replacement hub into a Weinmann concave, and may have done it twice. I've only ever replaced a concave due to crash damage. And that was just for aesthetics because I didn't want to keep riding what I'd bashed and tweaked back to acceptable straightness for the brakeless rear of a fixed gear. Sheer indulgence. I did ride it for several years, six or more, before changing it out.
My big weakness is that I can't really stand to ride a crappy bike. Even my beaters have character and become friends.
Critical Minuscule
How do you like it when drivers patronizingly wave you through a maneuver that the rules of the road already give you the right to do?
"Go ahead, little cyclist. Do what I wouldn't think twice about letting someone in a motor vehicle do without gesture or comment."
They really don't get it, do they? And they never will, so enough said. But it reveals the motive behind Critical Mass. I've been critical of the mass in the past because episodic confrontations don't really improve the overall climate for individual cyclists in traffic. They just prove we can be assholes too. But maybe something does penetrate the windshield and the thick, bony forehead behind it from time to time. Properly done, the rides can present a positive image and graphically demonstrate both the numbers of transportation cyclists and the extent of their rights to the road.
It could backfire if enough motorists decided to make political noise about how much of the road has been legally ceded to pedalers. A local driver in this area complained, "the road was narrow, with traffic coming the other way. I actually had to SLOW DOWN AND WAIT to get past this bicycler!"
Well DUH. New Hampshire law gives cyclists the right to close off the lane if it's not safe for a motorist to shove past. You'd slow down for a hay truck. You'd slow down for a tractor. You'd slow down for someone on a horse. Sometimes you just have to sloooooow dowwwwwn, Pardner.
Slowing down is not American. Pushing, shoving, grabbing and racing are American. Single-mindedly pursuing your personal agenda is the prime directive. Sacrifice for the common good begins and ends at military service. Riding your bike because you can, and because, in addition to personal financial and health benefits it saves resources, improves traffic flow and frees up parking for people who really have to drive does not count as social contribution. Money spent improving transportation infrastructure so that more people can use alternative methods is a waste of money on a special interest. Billions of dollars spent devastating foreign nations with fabulously expensive explosives is just good foreign policy.
A friend of mine put it well. "Instead of dropping a two million dollar bomb on some mud hut, why don't we just drop the two million dollars? It might make those people happy enough to quit making trouble."
Meanwhile, here at home, a few billion for nationwide road improvements would mean that cycling in the land of the free would not just be limited to the brave.
"Go ahead, little cyclist. Do what I wouldn't think twice about letting someone in a motor vehicle do without gesture or comment."
They really don't get it, do they? And they never will, so enough said. But it reveals the motive behind Critical Mass. I've been critical of the mass in the past because episodic confrontations don't really improve the overall climate for individual cyclists in traffic. They just prove we can be assholes too. But maybe something does penetrate the windshield and the thick, bony forehead behind it from time to time. Properly done, the rides can present a positive image and graphically demonstrate both the numbers of transportation cyclists and the extent of their rights to the road.
It could backfire if enough motorists decided to make political noise about how much of the road has been legally ceded to pedalers. A local driver in this area complained, "the road was narrow, with traffic coming the other way. I actually had to SLOW DOWN AND WAIT to get past this bicycler!"
Well DUH. New Hampshire law gives cyclists the right to close off the lane if it's not safe for a motorist to shove past. You'd slow down for a hay truck. You'd slow down for a tractor. You'd slow down for someone on a horse. Sometimes you just have to sloooooow dowwwwwn, Pardner.
Slowing down is not American. Pushing, shoving, grabbing and racing are American. Single-mindedly pursuing your personal agenda is the prime directive. Sacrifice for the common good begins and ends at military service. Riding your bike because you can, and because, in addition to personal financial and health benefits it saves resources, improves traffic flow and frees up parking for people who really have to drive does not count as social contribution. Money spent improving transportation infrastructure so that more people can use alternative methods is a waste of money on a special interest. Billions of dollars spent devastating foreign nations with fabulously expensive explosives is just good foreign policy.
A friend of mine put it well. "Instead of dropping a two million dollar bomb on some mud hut, why don't we just drop the two million dollars? It might make those people happy enough to quit making trouble."
Meanwhile, here at home, a few billion for nationwide road improvements would mean that cycling in the land of the free would not just be limited to the brave.
Monday, June 02, 2008
Many Wheels to Build
New rim on commuter rear wheel. New rim on road rear wheel. New wheel for Traveler's Check.
I'm going round and round.
One thing about cracked rims: there's nothing ambiguous. With some mere wobbles you go through that awful period of indecision, nursing it along. Just bust it outright!
Not recommended for front wheels. I knew a guy who had folded up a front wheel in a sprint, or at least that was the story. Can you say "post traumatic stress?" He still sort of raced, but he never really went for it. Can you blame him?
Waiting for the orders to come in is the hardest part. Finding time to do major work on my own bikes is the second hardest part.
I'm going round and round.
One thing about cracked rims: there's nothing ambiguous. With some mere wobbles you go through that awful period of indecision, nursing it along. Just bust it outright!
Not recommended for front wheels. I knew a guy who had folded up a front wheel in a sprint, or at least that was the story. Can you say "post traumatic stress?" He still sort of raced, but he never really went for it. Can you blame him?
Waiting for the orders to come in is the hardest part. Finding time to do major work on my own bikes is the second hardest part.
Something weird in blogland
My browser keeps giving me an empty window when I try to open Citizen Rider. Every way to link to it except through the dashboard yields the same result.
Let's see if this post brings it back.
Let's see if this post brings it back.
Sunday, June 01, 2008
Dead round, dead straight and dead
Just in case spoke tension was a factor, I threw the road bike's rear wheel into the stand so I could knock about three-eighths of a turn off all the nips. Too late! Every drive side spoke hole has started to crack.
The wheel is still round and true. I had no idea it was starting to fail until I took a close look. Too bad I didn't look before Friday when I fired off another order for a rim. Maybe I should just stock up.
This should get my whole fleet caught up. I have no more rear wheels in regular service.
This string of gear failures is my punishment for buying the Travelers Check, a bike I did not need. Hell, now that the airlines will be charging for every checked bag, what's the point? And how likely am I to really do any traveling? When the S and S coupling instructions say to cover the couplings in wet conditions, there goes the idea of using the bike for the normal fixed gear niche. Guess I should have done more research and bought a normal Cross Check frame. I could transfer the multi-gear setup to the new Cross Check to take advantage of the improvements since 2000 and make the old green machine into the new fixie.
Yeah. No. I still like the idea of the TC. And a glance at the S and S website makes me think a coupled steel frame might actually be better than a traditional one in wet conditions, because you can open it up and blow-dry it.
I think I'm through with Sun rims for a while. This latest cracker is another ME14A. I've had at least one of those fail on a customer's wheel, plus the 0 Degree XC that just died on my Cross Check. It's Velocity's turn now. Got me a Razor on order. And I guess I should quit pounding 32-spoke road wheels down dirt roads under my porcine bulk. I weigh 10 pounds more than I did when I was racing, and it isn't going away. I like to blame cross-country skiing and kayaking for it, but sour cream coffee cake muffins and upper middle class beer contribute a lot.
I felt okay until I read a guy's forum post in a thread about rim failures and he described himself as "stout" at 165 pounds. Shut up, you anorexic #^%, unless you're five feet tall and 165.
The worst part is finding each problem just after I'd ordered similar parts to take care of the previous problem. I should have inspected the fleet back in April so I could make one big order and have everything ready for the season.
The wheel is still round and true. I had no idea it was starting to fail until I took a close look. Too bad I didn't look before Friday when I fired off another order for a rim. Maybe I should just stock up.
This should get my whole fleet caught up. I have no more rear wheels in regular service.
This string of gear failures is my punishment for buying the Travelers Check, a bike I did not need. Hell, now that the airlines will be charging for every checked bag, what's the point? And how likely am I to really do any traveling? When the S and S coupling instructions say to cover the couplings in wet conditions, there goes the idea of using the bike for the normal fixed gear niche. Guess I should have done more research and bought a normal Cross Check frame. I could transfer the multi-gear setup to the new Cross Check to take advantage of the improvements since 2000 and make the old green machine into the new fixie.
Yeah. No. I still like the idea of the TC. And a glance at the S and S website makes me think a coupled steel frame might actually be better than a traditional one in wet conditions, because you can open it up and blow-dry it.
I think I'm through with Sun rims for a while. This latest cracker is another ME14A. I've had at least one of those fail on a customer's wheel, plus the 0 Degree XC that just died on my Cross Check. It's Velocity's turn now. Got me a Razor on order. And I guess I should quit pounding 32-spoke road wheels down dirt roads under my porcine bulk. I weigh 10 pounds more than I did when I was racing, and it isn't going away. I like to blame cross-country skiing and kayaking for it, but sour cream coffee cake muffins and upper middle class beer contribute a lot.
I felt okay until I read a guy's forum post in a thread about rim failures and he described himself as "stout" at 165 pounds. Shut up, you anorexic #^%, unless you're five feet tall and 165.
The worst part is finding each problem just after I'd ordered similar parts to take care of the previous problem. I should have inspected the fleet back in April so I could make one big order and have everything ready for the season.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)