scratchpaddy

This is timely, thank you both. One of the cheap chromed-plastic end plugs that came with the tape I put on my Schwinn fell off somewhere this week, and I was wondering what to do about it. Those Cinelli plugs will cost as much as the tape, but it might be worth it. Colorful modern quality, I will buy.

madpogue 

But they'll last through several generations of worn out and replaced tape wraps, so the cost will drop to negligible over time.

RobbieTunes

Hmm...

HTupolev

Why? Dura Ace mechanical is pretty uncommon these days because most people looking at that price point go with Ultegra Di2. But R9100 isn't significantly different in price point than Super Record was back in the day. For example, Super Record rear derailleur sales prices circa 1980 were very often $200+ if adjusted for inflation. An R9100 rear derailleur MSRP is about $230, and they're often sold for under $200.

I don't think it's surprising. Not only has racing bicycle weight has changed at a pretty glacial pace since the dawn of time, in the last 20 years it's been legislatively forced. Ever since 2000, UCI rules don't allow road racing bicycles to be under 6.8kg. Since then, components and bicycles have had blatant incentive to direct their structural design and manufacturing advances toward things other than weight savings.

Oftentimes ditching weight-weenieism is worthwhile even without the rules requiring it. Weight reduction is generally good for performance all other things being equal, but all other things are not always equal. (Aerodynamics being the most obvious example. Even in criteriums with very frequent accelerations, racers don't ride the lightest wheels, they ride adequately-lightweight deep aero wheels.)

This is a bit of an opportunistic statement, since we're currently in the wake of the disc brake takeover. Disc brakes still pay a ~.5-1.5lb weight penalty (partly in the brakes but also partly in the frameset), and their "the next big thing" price premium hasn't been compensated much yet.
The red bike that I posted earlier in the thread has a showroom weight of under 19lbs, and it's right around 20lbs on the money ready-to-ride with pedals and 2 bottle cages and the repair kit in the saddle bag. It's from 2015, but in 2020 dollars it's about $1800. It's also a Trek, which isn't exactly known for spicy bang-for-your-buck weight weenieism deals.

Even with the disc brake situation, $4000 today is around $1200 in 1980 money, and that's in the range of quality racing bikes at that time.

Lower gears will absolutely get you to the top of the hill faster, if you were otherwise feeling pretty bottomed-out. I think a lot of people in the "it's fine because I didn't have to get off and walk" crowd would be surprised if they measured how much power they lose when their cadence is driven far below what they would otherwise self-select.

Being able to easily shift from a lot of postures while hammering hard - including while out of the saddle - can also aid in climbing performance, particularly on short punchy climbs with a lot of gradient variation.

Getting to the bottom of the hill quickly is also important. For most intents and purposes it's not terribly important for most riders to have super-huge gears for this, but if we're talking about "racing" components...
If a big diesel decides to go to the front on a shallow downhill and starts drilling out 45mph, and you need to put out some stupid 150W or whatever to keep up in the draft, it's vastly more restful to do that at 120rpm in a 52-11 than at 143rpm in a 52-13.

nomadmax 

For me, modern components are vastly better than the old stuff. Almost every vintage steel bike I have has modern components/wheels & Ergopower. I still have a couple true "old school" steels with period correct components but they aren't my first or second choice when it comes to picking a bike for a day's ride.

noglider 

Why do you think cassettes last shorter? They might be using softer metal, but I doubt it. It might be because they're thinner, necessarily. That would explain it. But mitigating that is the fact that there are more cogs so we would spread our use among them many cogs. Unless you tend to hang out on certain ones. I just replaced a 9-speed cassette, and it was skipping in 2nd gear. Is that weird or what? I'm talking about the 2nd-biggest! Of a 12-26 cassette! I'd never seen that before.

You're not saying 9s speed chains are flawed compared with 11s chains, are you? It was just the luck of your samples, probably.

madpogue 

But would this really have an impact on the retail side? Rules by a private club regulating equipment used by a select VERY few don't exactly have the weight of "legislative force" over what the bike industry produces; their interest is in making money, selling bikes to the public.

It's long been known that anyone can buy a lighter bike than what's allowed in international racing right off the floor (well, perhaps not now with the floors close to empty....) of any well-stocked LBS.

Salamandrine 

Yeah, that's true if you only compare the RD. Circa 1980, you could buy a Super Record 'reduced' gruppo in a box for just about $500 even. Adjusting for inflation makes that about $1600. Dura Ace 9100 seems to go for about $1900 mail order now, but doesn't include a headset, hubs, pedals, and seatpost like the old campy gruppos did. If you add dura ace pedals and hubs, and say 150 to cover the headset and seatpost, the cost goes up to ~$2500, so about 50% more than SR.

It is true that until pretty recently when the UK mail order places were forced to stop selling to the US market, it was actually pretty close.

I agree actually, weight is just one thing, but it is quantifiable and it does matter. Aerodynamics is in many cases more important. Then as now though, the clothes are the bulk of it, but not all of it. I guess you could say the same thing about weight - body weight is really the main thing, besides the motor of course.

You mean the Trek Emonda? I wasn't trying to be "opportunistic", was just looking at typical weight vs price point in current issue modern bikes. FWIW the lowest price model of current one is $2700 MSRP with a claimed weight of 20lbs. Disc brakes of course.

That sort of demonstrates the point. Many or most people seem to think there is something like a 5 or 6 lb difference between vintage bikes and modern racing bikes, but it isn't true. They are a little lighter on average for similar costs, but not that much. Those hypothetical 15 lb bikes are only the really pricey models. Even then it's the carbon frame, fork, bars etc, that has made most of the difference, not the groupset.

I'm not convinced spin climbing in a low gear is always faster. I think it depends on the individual, and some people climb better stomping, for example Marco Pantani. I've read recently of some research that saying that it can be more efficient to climb old style, but spin climbing is easier to recover from, or something like that. At any rate I agree having more gear range is an advantage, for sure. A typical I3-21 range was more of a necessity than a preference.

Being able to shift from the hoods can be an advantage in certain situations, sure. IMO it isn't a huge difference, but it's there.

AFA Joe Diesel pounding at the front on a shallow downhill in an 11T, it can be pretty dumb to do that since the cube square thing will cook him quickly, and when the road levels or starts to go up he'll be toast. Can be useful strategically to get a team mate to the front or something, true. Spinning up that high was something everyone used to train for. 143 isn't that bad. IME these modern big gears are most useful when you have two or three guys off ahead on that shallow downhill, that can be a big advantage.

HTupolev

The dominance of the body in aerodynamic and gravitational drag puts a hard limit of how much you can gain from changing the parts on a road bike, but there are still measurable differences between bike components.

I guess this boils down to what you mean by "would it cause you to be dropped." If you're on the edge of being dropped, then just about anything will cause you do be dropped. If you're in a pack that's cruising steadily along level ground and you're one of the stronger riders, and capable to hanging on comfortably in the draft on a high-end modern road bike, then switching to a vintage road bike is unlikely to change your hanging-on situation. But from a racer's point of view, I just posed the question around a potentially enormous performance range.

Yes, mine is an ALR 5 from 2015. Aluminum frame.

I agree that people often exaggerate the differences, but I think you're misrepresenting the broader historical trend by only looking at the wake of the disc brake takeover. Bikes right now are in an unusual dip in terms of weight-versus-cost, where bikes of a given spec level are both heavier and more expensive than they were a couple years ago. If you fish around for rim brakes, you often get several pounds better at a given price point than with discs. For example, it's currently out of stock, but the Canyon Ultimate CF SL 8.0 with rim brakes is a sub-17lb bike at $2700.

I'm admittedly not really sure how this will end up panning out going forward, since rim brakes are dead on new production high-end, and it's hard to guess how much weight will be trimmed with more mature disc-brake road frameset designs and how the pricing trends will look. The used market will have loads of good lightweight modern stuff, but I have a hard time guessing how cost-vs-weight will trajectorize on new bikes going forward.

I'm not talking about seated spinning versus putting on an impression of Contador ascending the Mortirolo. By "bottomed out" I'm talking about being stuck on a gear that's higher than what you'd self-select for a situation, what your legs want to use for optimal function.

Pantani nearly always stayed well on top of his high gearing, but he's also arguably the best climber of all time (not to mention blood doping like crazy). He was literally twice as strong uphill as a lot of lower-lever amateur racers. It's not an exaggeration to say that, if he was using a 44-21 to maintain good form on a given climb, many cat-4 racers should be using a gear that's not much higher than 1:1 to maintain good form on that same ascent.

Gearing adequacy depends on both the rider and the terrain, of course.

I'd contend that throughout some of the vintage steel era, it was more of a fashion problem than a technological one. Quality lightweight rear derailleurs that could shift well on drivetrains that used nearly as much wrap as modern racing drivetrains were readily available in 1980, such as GT components from SunTour. Good low-q triples also existed. People just didn't use them on racing bikes.

It's hard to characterize in simple terms. I think it can be a tangible difference when it matters, but the situations where it matters are quite infrequent.

Right, I'm assuming a situation in which Joe Diesel is doing something for the team and doesn't care about being toast. Maybe he's the first in the sprint train as the race draws close to the finish, maybe he's in a group that really needs to get somewhere fast.

Of course, the situations where this is a super-frequent issue are spirited group rides, not races. In a spirited group ride, Joe Diesel doesn't need a reason to hammer a shallow descent.

sheddle

Road bikes, then as now, are informed by competition (this has long been a bugbear of the Grant Petersen types, but that's another topic). IE why it's extremely difficult to get a UCI-illegal high end road bike with wacky illegal aerotubes/frame geometries except for recumbents, and high end triathlon bikes, where a specific market for them exists.

sheddle

I love the colors, but so many modern bikes have this "Billboard" look of just a big logo on it with no other design elements. I realize complaining about this is silly in the C+V forum where a ton of old bikes featured this design, but I grew into cycling where high end frames all had wacky paint jobs with writing and logos all over the place (especially team bikes), and I weirdly miss it. Also, my favorite period of visual design was always the 80s, when you had that weird mix of modern fade/splatter/etc paint jobs on lugged frames. Such a neat look.

Also there's this.


Trek realizing they can make the already huge logo on the Madone even bigger by stretching it to the headtube is the most ominous trend in cycling since the press-fit BB.

RobbieTunes

I doubt if Trek just realized this, as if some graphic artist had a light bulb moment.
(By the way, Klein used the ominous press-fit BB in 1984)
Graphic design wasn't born yesterday, and incorporating the logo into the entire color scheme is nothing new.
Ever since manufacturers realized we'd actually pay them to advertise their products, they've charged us for it.
And we've paid for it. Now, we'd have to pay more to not do so, like a Project One with no logos.
We're sheep/lemmings/whatever. We do it. Heck, some people even think there are still news networks and broadcasts out there.
The large logo will likely be ignored once it's out a while, just like the modern black bike with whatever color accents is now just a bike under a rider.
I hardly notice the modern bikes of those I ride with, unless they're unusual. Once there's more than one, my attention wanders.

strangdang

The question is "are modern components better". Well depends on your definition of better. I just took apart a Bendix 2 speed kickback and the cones and bearing are almost perfect inside, showing very little wear. I also recently regreased some downtube non-index shifters from the early 60's. These things last forever. Not so index shifters, where the little ball in the detent wears out. Or most of the more modern hubs that wear out the cones, and even wear through the hub surface many times. There are a lot more examples but suffice to say, modern better? NO. More convenient, more performance oriented YES. But it just seems to me the quest for weight reduction and actual quality of the metals used in modern stuff has made the modern stuff wear out, while the old stuff lasts forever.

sheddle

Keep in mind that a lot of this might just be survivor bias. Certainly I don't except the complexities of specialty stuff like DI2 to last forever, but modern 105/midrange stuff seems to be pretty reliable from the last decade or so.

PaulRivers

There's one thing I kinda miss though didn't use much...friction shifting....at the time it seemed "old" having to figure out and remember how far to slide the lever to actually shift...but what was nice you needed to get a tuneup until the gears or chain needed to be completely replaced. Indexed shifting is better when it's well tuned and working well, but when you're a more casual rider how often is that?

strangdang

Well that's why I said depends on your definition. You're talking a decade of use, I'm thinking 70-80 years of use in some cases. The metal surfaces back then, as well as the plating processes, aren't seen nowadays.

Bill in VA

I have just 2 bikes now. One is vintage 1973 French Peugeot UO-8, the other is a 2016 Bianchi Volpe. Both are steel. A 1973 Fuji has probably gone to eBay part out heaven.

Tires have gotten far better.
I started with Michelin 50s on the Peugeot and with tubulars on the Fuji, but with a new set of wheels went to the convenience of Clement hand-made clinchers. I now ride Continental GP4000SII and Rene Herse tires. They ride better than any tires I have ever ridden with the possible exception of a set of Clement silk tubulars I once had and even then given the passage of time it is almost too close to call.

Drive trains have been the greatest leap forward.
Cassettes and Freehubs are far better. I routinely will see vintage freewheel bikes converted to cassettes, but never a cassette model converted to freewheel. The number of speeds is a convenience issue more than a need. With a 12-30 10 speed cassette and a triple front I probably use 12-15 of the 30 combinations regularly.

Bottom brackets are a regression with far too many proprietary specs. I still prefer the tapered spindle BB design, but have no quarrel with the Shimano Hollowtech II. I hated cotters and replace the cottered crank on the Peugeot within 2 years of purchase.

I ride rim brakes.
I do not see any great leap on rim braking as my vintage Mafac Racers and current Shimano CX-50 cantis are both excellent and easy to setup. I had even 'upgraded' the Fuji to Mafac.

Shifting gears:
I like indexed shifting and brifters on my current bike. I also like DT shifters. Where you initiate the shift is not important to me, but the precision of the indexing is a great leap forward, especially on the front. I greatly prefer brifters for rough roads or towpaths.

My main beef with the newer stuff is the frequent updates leave many more dead ends and orphans that combined with minimal spare parts availability, make upgrading or replacing components a bit more difficult than on a vintage bike back before they were vintage.

Stems:
Newer stems may be less adjustable vertically than a quill, but I never adjusted mine after setup anyway. However the ability to replace a threadless stem and NOT have to rewrap the bars is a MAJOR plus.

Wheels:
As I have always wanted durability and strength, my wheels have always been 32 or 36 holes. I am not aero, so neither are my rims, which are selected for a more classic look.

What has gotten worse is the visuals; massive billboard logos on frames and almost all components, matte or flat paint in strange earth tones, and the lack of non-black components.

Newer bikes remind me of a NASCAR race car covered with sponsor decals or a bike Batman would ride.

bikemig 

Only 4 pages in 5 days. What is C&V coming to? This is a little disappointing.

iab

It's low-hanging troll food. The same as Is a Stiffer Frame Better? thread in the roadie forum. Entirely irrelevant gains. (ooooo.... that gives me an idea for a book )

nlerner

Only Rivendells personally assembled by Grant Petersen are better.

Salamandrine 

It wasn't my intent to represent or even address any sort of broad historical trends of complete bicycles. I was thinking exclusively about modern vs vintage components. I've noticed that many folks on this forum talk of upgrading their C&V frames with modern component groups for better performance. Yet, if you look at the numbers, modern groupsets are not significantly lighter than vintage component groups. It seems that would be worth looking into. I was curious what other folks thought, which is why I posed the topic in the form of a question.

I suppose I was thinking mostly of climbing performance at first, and that is pretty much watts vs grams, and I'm still don't think modern parts are going to offer much of a performance increase, at least as far as the normal 'groupset' components. However, if you're talking about the physically bulkier components like the bar and stem, seat and seatposts, and of course the frame and fork, modern parts have gotten dramatically lighter. Is it going to make any huge difference in climbing if you put a Dura Ace mechanical group on an old 80s Italian race bike frame? Not really IMHO. However, I agree that any tiny difference can technically get you dropped. So if you can save 100g and be more comfortable, why not.

This thread has made me realize that the main performance advantage of modern components is the gearing. That IME matters quite a lot. The reason people ran a 13-21 and not a 13-26t or something is that when you only had 6 cogs (or 5), adding a low cog meant that you had to have a bigger jump in the go fast higher gears. At high speeds over undulating terrain, when everyone is on the cusp, a big gap in your gearing could get you dropped. With modern 9, 10, 11 speeds, you always have the right gear that you need.

As a side note, I don't recall ever needing a lower gear than a 21t, BITD, though i had a coach that made me run a 24 for a while and spin climb everything. The thing is, if you had a crazy expensive bike like a Masi or Gios, or Pog or whatever, you probably rode at least a couple hours a day and were super fit, whether you raced or not. There weren't that many weekend warriors and old flabby ex racers on expensive race bikes out there like there are now, including me frankly.

Was the 13-21 or 14-21 just fashion? Maybe. It's true that a triple could have been used to get something akin to a modern race bike gear range, but no racer would be caught dead with a triple. So I guess yeah, fashion... OTOH, it just wasn't something that anyone even thought of. The 42/52 or 42/53 double was already much wider range than the 45/52 and 49/52 type set ups of earlier decades.

Note that I left stiffness out of this discussion because it's its own can o' worms.

BTW I do appreciate the well reasoned arguments and discussion from you and all the other contributors to this thread. So thanks.

Salamandrine 

Just for the record, I'm not trolling. It's a sincere question.

And also, stiffer frames are faster and planing is BS. Now that's a troll.

Salamandrine 

Yeah the NASCAR thing. That's partly why I'm even here. When I got back into cycling after some time away a few years ago, it was the peak of the NASCAR billboard thing. Every inch of everything covered in huge ugly logs and ads. Sorry no, just no way in hell I am going to ride that. While I've always liked old vintage bikes, I've always liked the cutting edge tech too. But I ain't going to ride around on a billboard.

There has been a trend away from this for the last couple years now though. Some new modern bikes are quite nice looking. I even like some newer Treks, though not the one in post #87 , ugh.

kantquit

My opinion is that the newer stuff is better in the sense that you get pretty good equipment for your money these days due to all the competition of manufacturing.For $7-or$800 bucks you can step into a darned nice bike,although the durability is probably not the same as the older models

madpogue 

Mention an empty box.