cudak888 

Di2 sure as hell isn't easier, faster, or cheaper (at least in MSRP)

I'm sure that 45 years ago, someone said "suppliers and companies only want easier, faster and cheaper so they can keep paying less and less to work on the crap that continues to drag the standards down." while replacing the fourth broken Simplex Prestige on their watch.

I think we both know that even 20 years ago, we could easily get most local mechanics to debate the existence of French headset threads, even if they seemed knowledgeable at first. There's one guy at an LBS who has sworn up and down for a decade to me that such a thing doesn't exist. Just wait until he discovers a constructeur bike.

-Kurt

philpeugeot 

16mm crank bolts. Who in their right mind thought this was a better alternative to 14mm and 15mm crank bolts?

merziac

Maybe so but in these two particular cases, both have been in play for far longer than that, they both require skill and patience especially when things go south.

I wouldn't be so sure about Di2, sure its not cheaper but it is cookie cutter, planned obsolescence, disposable, throwaway tech that will never be the amazing, reliable, lasting C+V vein we know and love.

A broken Simplex is pretty straight forward, cup and cone bearings not so much.

Minion1

I'd get rid of Di2:

10 speed Di2 got wedged in terms of batteries, inter compatibility especially with cables and only being on the market for short time before being superseded by 11 speed, but you weren't able to get parts for those components a scarily short time after they were introduced, which was very poor form, but given the circumstances was kind of forgivable. Then Shimano changes the ports for their cables, and a whole other generation of components went to the wall.

That may seem bad, but check this out: at the shop I work at, we have had the first generation Shimano E-bike motors clapping out and not being supported by Shimano - no replacement parts, no service support, just a bricked heavy bike. Shimano's solution: buying a $2,500 (AUD) replacement kit that has to include the battery. That is a really, really short product cycle, especially considering the last bike we worked on was 6 years old. Pretty much the opposite of C and V, sorry for being totally OT but I'd still get rid of Di2. How many S Works tarmacs are going to be unridable in 10 years, without a complete new drivetrain? How many Steel race bikes are still ridable with their original wheels and mechs?

pastorbobnlnh 

Only because you are such a fashion snob. Neal and cudak888 must be two of the best dressed cyclists I've ever had pleasure to ride a bike alongside.

C9H13N 

the company that invented the square taper crank thought 16 mm bolt heads were better, don't blame Stronglight for the knockoffs being oddly sized

cyccommute 

Not in my experience. Personally, I’ve never had a cartridge bearing bottom bracket of any kind from square taper to external wear out in the roughly 25 to 30 years I’ve been using them. I see very few worn out ones at my local co-op…and I’ve handled thousands of them. On the other hand, I have worn out dozens of spindles in the 10 to 15 years before cartridge bearings became ubiquitous.

As to the knockoffs, I have many horror stories of loose bearing bottom brackets made of Slagesium on HellMart bikes. Hemispherical bearings, cups that pull apart when you try to remove them, and crack spindles like the one below are common. Note that both ends of the spindle are cracked. I have seen some similar slagesium cartridge bearings but the issue isn’t with design of the part but with the materials of construction in both cases



Compared to the typical fixed cup tool like the Park HCW-4? The splined tool is parsecs better than fixed cup tools. I’ve developed a way to make it easier to work with the HCW-4 and the Shimano tool can be improved by using a Pedro’s BB holder or just a bolt, spring, and fender washer but the fixed cup tool everything you want to do to the spline tool should be done to the HCW-4 twice and then done to it twice again.

Well that just Shimano. Shimano should have given us cogs so that we could make any gearing we want for the freehub but nooo, can’t have that. Shimano has kind of done what you want with the Hollowtech II system…only better.

Paramount1973 

First thing I do with a newly acquired bike is yank out the old cup/cone bottom bracket and install a modern sealed bearing unit. I don’t install bottom brackets with a plastic cup.

merziac

That's too bad, I hope you don't just scrap the old stuff.

Not really talking about just the plastic cup but yes they suck even more.

I never use a sealed one when the original can still be used and will do everything I can to make it happen.

Paramount1973 

Only one of my bikes had a cup/cone bottom bracket in good condition. It was a former police bike that had been well maintained. The rest had pitting and/or scoring in the cones so out they went.

cudak888 

My experience has been the opposite, strangely enough. I've worn out one (not a Shimano unit though) and have replaced quite a few of them.

I've also replaced far fewer cup-and-cone and have been able to salvage a few BBs for folks whose only transportation is a bicycle and would barely have the funds for a cartridge replacement.

Perhaps it is a regional thing - maybe unsealed cup-and-cone BBs take a greater hit in the winter salt in Denver than the wet summers of Florida.

I was speaking of decent-quality Shimano knockoffs - including equipment found in share bikes, i.e., copies, but quality copies. That's where I'm seeing some variations on Shimano's design that sometimes make more sense than the current UN-series BBs.

Wally World-quality stuff isn't even worth discussing; it's just not representative of quality versions of the same. That goes for both cup and cone and sealed bottom bracket designs too - either of them can be made cheaply or of high quality, and we all know the big box bunk will represent the former. Plus, a great deal of cup-and-cone BBs on Wal-Mart bikes are improperly adjusted from new, making them more prone to failure on the basis of adjustment alone.

I wasn't comparing it with anything else, I was criticizing the Shimano spline on it's own design flaws irrespective of any other design. Honestly, I don't think there's a single perfect BB removal tool designed yet.

The Park HCW-4 is a piece of crap, but that's a function of Park designing a lousy tool and never bothering to improve it over 40+ years, because cheap sells.

This is what I consider a proper fixed cup removal tool that won't slip out of the bottom bracket when I torque it. It also costs 10+ times that of the HCW-4 and is hard to find. Somewhere between the HCW-4, the VAR BP-03000, and the "it's a kludge and yet it's super smart" Pedro's supplement tool is a happy medium: A tool that actually works on its own without a second tool to make it better, and is simple enough to be affordable. It just doesn't exist yet.



Except that they haven't done it with square tapers.

-Kurt

Minion1

Also, with Di2, and hydraulic, and sram's electronic stuff, the internal gubbins are going to be the same across the range of parts - road to mtn, up and down the group sets. So, that's far fewer small parts to supply, fewer part codes in inventory, plug and play the same servo into the same housing across all the groups and change the window dressing, rather than keep tying themselves in knots every year trying to differentiate and improve some pretty good mechanical components. And, when it breaks, I.e when it doesn't talk to the shifter, or battery, or junction box, it is dead forever.

RiddleOfSteel

Man the salt levels are HIGH for Di2. I had one of them Ultegra 10-speed groups that was about 10 years old. Worked beautifully when I hooked it all up! I now have a Dura-Ace 9070 group, and after a component update, it's happy as a clam. 9070 debuted 10 years ago. To update that component, I had to find out what PC-to-bicycle interface to get, picked it up, and then did some more research to find out what version of Di2-specific (free) software I needed to download, did that, and all is good. It was a bit of a saga, but learning curves go that way. And for all the annoyance with the whole group being poison, it's just the shifters and derailleurs that are affected. Crankset, wheels, brakes are just fine.

The PC-to-bike interface for Di2, of which there are only two thus far, is, at the end of the day, a tool, just like a BB adjustment tool (or the half a dozen or more that were made for various 'standards' 30-40 years ago). It requires knowledge to operate, searching to find, and knowledge to know which components worked with it. I have a Suntour cartridge bearing bottom bracket adjustment/installation tool. That is arguably muuuuuch rarer to come across, let alone coming across one of those BBs in the first place. Somehow I have two bikes with them all of a sudden...

Anyways, more electronic shifting for me in the future. I'll let you all know how it goes, right after I keep riding my 42 year old Trek. with it's 40 year old components along side it.

Bianchi84

Not a piece of technology, but a decision: whatever/whoever caused the demise of Suntour as we knew it.

Minion1

Oh sigh - I think Di2 has set something off in my lizard brain I wasn't previously cognisant of .

For current GRX Di2 and current 12 speed groups, to fully adjust your derailleurs there is a shop only version of E-tube, not available to consumers. The micro adjust option only troubleshoots a very limited range, so if your indexing goes out its 40 bucks to the bike shop thanks. It's a function that was in the previous version of e-tube, that has been stripped from the current version. I've observed this stuff up to now, and given Shimano a bit of a pass, but the rate of incidence of things I'd give Shimano a pass for is accelerating and I am getting a bit saltier about it. Electronic shifting is a wonderland of opportunities for monetisation, from a bike company's perspective, though that's not always good news for consumers. Imagine if your ten speed Di2 was compatible with 11 and 12 speed. MINDS BLOWN!

I think ROS did it right though - get one of the most popular groups, at the beginning of the life cycle and take good care of it. Right now I'd get ultra Di2 12 speed, although I'd still have the niggles in the back of my mind about Shimano's behaviour to date.

Minion1

My running joke at the moment is that I have a lifetime supply of Suntour Barcons. I have 2.

52telecaster

I probably have ten sets. It's my favorite way to shift a bike. Every bike.

cyccommute 

The durability of loose bearing bottom brackets…not really a “cup and cone” system…is somewhat dependent on where you use them. I blew through dozens of them in the early days of mountain biking when the seals were either missing or rudimentary. It’s less about salt and more about sand. Cartridge bearing bottom brackets were a significant advancement in durability when they came out.


I’ll agree that some of the copies are bad but they are bad for the same reason HellMart bottom brackets are bad. They are made from inferior materials for people who don’t understand that the most expensive tool is the one you buy twice. As long as you buy a cartridge bearing BB of quality, it will last up. I can’t say the same about loose bearing bottom brackets in my experience. I bought very good quality ones back in the day. They lasted only a little while longer than the cheap ones of the day.

The HellMart bikes with bottom bracket problems that I have found aren’t because they are improperly adjusted. Often the bottom bracket is loose after only a few miles but that is a function of the ball bearings being made of a material that probably starts to break apart in the first mile of riding. I don’t have pictures but I’ve seen many caged bearing sets where the cage is flattened and the bearings (that are left) are hemispheres at best. The bottom bracket in filled with bearing dust. The cups tend to pull apart as you unscrew them so they are a bear to get out of the frame. The bikes are of such low quality that both co-ops I volunteer at just recycle all of the HellMart bikes that are donated.

I don’t have any problem with the design. It’s fairly easy to hold it in place with the heel of your hand or to use a bolt to keep it in place. Some of mine can be fitted to a 3/8” or 1/2” socket drive. I use a breaker bar which holds it in place nicely.

I disagree. They have been improved. The “improvement” is the BBT-22 that you dislike. Not too many modern bottom brackets use the HCW-4 now so they don’t sell that many.

While a beautiful tool, I have done something similar with the HCW-4, an old axle, a couple of axle nuts, and some kickstand parts





It worked well enough but I improved it here with a crank bolt, a BB bearing cup, and a fender washer. I’ve used this set up, along with removing the fixed cup first, to remove several of those slagesium HellMart BB cups.





​​​​​​​

Because, as with the HCW-4, there is no need. You could follow the external bearing BB’s lead and just use a 73mm BB with spacers.

cudak888 

That's not an improvement, that's a new tool for a different purpose. You can't use a BBT-22 for what the HCW-4 is designed fir.

Yep, saw the photos before. I concocted something similar long ago too before I had my VAR tool. It only justifies that the HCW-4 should come from factory with a formal version of that adapter as part of the tool.

-Kurt

Unca_Sam

Well, in an alternate timeline, the AI determined that a united manufacturing standard was too risky, so it sent back a terminator to end the Shimano pitch 10 concept.

Unca_Sam

Did you shear that spindle?? Someone heavy try downhill on a BSO??

gaucho777 

On several occasions, I have been unsuccessful in persuading LBS mechanics that French-threaded spokes are a thing.

cudak888 

Every bicycle mechanic worth their salt should, if unaware of a specific example, automatically assume there's a French-threaded version of anything on a bike that can be threaded.

-Kurt

Korina

Electronic shifting. It's doing horrible things to the bike industry; more toxic materials, much more expensive, nothing is compatible with anything, limited life span, more toxic materials... It does nothing to improve the bike or the rider; all it does is improve the mfrs profit margins.

iab

My friend has etap on a Litespeed gravel bike. He let me ride it. It's really cool, great fun.