Frank Krygowski writes:

On 10/21/2019 11:34 AM, jbeattie wrote:
On Monday, October 21, 2019 at 7:47:07 AM UTC-7, Sir Ridesalot wrote:
On Monday, 21 October 2019 10:41:09 UTC-4, wrote:
On Thursday, October 17, 2019 at 12:22:06 AM UTC+2,
wrote:
On Wednesday, October 16, 2019 at 3:12:32 PM UTC-5, jbeattie wrote:
On Wednesday, October 16, 2019 at 11:59:37 AM UTC-7, Tom Kunich wrote:
Everyone always grinds lawyer's lips off as a first order of maintenance.

Really? On CF forks? Not me.

-- Jay Beattie.

As much as it pains me, I'll sort of agree with Tom on this. On
all but one of my bikes I have ground off the tabs on the fork
ends. The only fork I did not grind off is a carbon fork with an
aero blade so the fork end is about 2 inches long. Can't grind
that much metal off. All my carbon forks have aluminum dropouts,
not carbon dropouts. So grinding is safe.

Even on carbon dropouts I grind off the laywer lips. On my CF
bikes it is just a little carbon blob. Grinding, actually filling,
off that little blob doesn't compromize the strength of your
fork. It is as save as shorten your CF steerer tube or MTB
handlebar. There is no load on that part.



Which brings up an irritation. With no fork tabs, you do not
have to unscrew the dropout nut. Just flip the lever and the
wheel falls out and goes back in perfectly. But sometimes when
getting rides from friends, they will take the front wheel off my
bike to put it on a rack. And when they take the front wheel
off, the very first thing they do is start unscrewing the quick
release nut. Which messes up my quick release width and I have
to then readjust the dang thing when putting the wheel back on.
Most bicyclists have been made stupid and dumb from this dumb
fork tab feature. They no longer know how to correctly remove a
front wheel on a bicycle.

+1 Laywer lips is an incredible stupid safety feature. Every time
you take out your frontwheel creates a safety hazard.

An inconvenience, yes, but I don't think they're a safety hazard.

Not a huge hazard, but I think the hazard is there. Lawyer lips exist
specifically for the benefit of people who don't know how to adjust
and operate a quick release. But they force those people to re-adjust
the quick release every time they use it! That's just weird.

Admittedly, I haven't tried riding with a wheel loosely held in just
by the lawyer lips, so I don't know how much stability is lost. But to
me, it seems like a bad solution.

I think of it as perhaps the first "racing bike" feature that
marketing trickled down from enthusiasts to JRA folks, for no real
practical reason.

By feature I guess you mean quick release axles. How about drop bars?
Multi-speed freewheels as opposed to internally geared hubs? Toe clips?