Good quality bikes

On 5/31/2021 7:53 PM, jbeattie wrote:

Joerg can get closer to the durability of an inexpensive car, but it will cost as much as an inexpensive car -- like a Rohloff Speedhub with a 6 speed chain. With the ebike tire market going great guns, there are plenty of durable tires on the market (that ride like rocks). Joerg has a sketchy transmission on his road bike, and it could be improved -- or he could dump the museum piece and buy a https://www.trekbikes.com/us/en_US/b...alr-5/p/24385/ Great value. Or https://www.specialized.com/us/en/di...ext=96220-4044. There are lots of better options than a 40 year old sport racing bike for riding in the Sierra foothills.
Do you think the chain and cogs would last long enough to satisfy Joerg?

No. I just picked a couple of budget bikes that would be appropriate for the kind of riding he's doing. He'd have to spend more than twice as much to get a Speedhub/6sp chain set up -- or he could just get a Checkpoint or Diverge aluminum frame and build a nice 3X6, although that would mean downgrading to cable discs, which still work fine. Getting along on a sport racing bike seems odd. There are also a lot of nice steel options. I always liked the Soma Fog Cutter, too. https://www.somafab.com/archives/pro...tter-frame-set There are many other steel options. He could buy that Thorn that Andre posted.

Joerg is pretty unique, from what I can tell. But speaking of "tech" -

It's pretty well accepted that 10 or 11 speed derailleur systems don't
last as long as, say, 8 speed systems.

If Joerg hypothetically wanted to, would it be feasible to convert an 11
speed to an 8 speed system that would accept that longer life type of
chain?

I'm sure he'd be fine with friction shifters. What would have to happen
back at the cassette?

--
- Frank Krygowski

On 5/31/2021 8:03 PM, John B. wrote:
On Mon, 31 May 2021 17:40:32 -0400, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 5/31/2021 1:52 AM, pH wrote:
On 2021-05-31, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 5/30/2021 8:59 PM, jbeattie wrote:
On Sunday, May 30, 2021 at 4:21:31 PM UTC-7, John B. wrote:
On Sun, 30 May 2021 13:19:02 -0400, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 5/30/2021 11:04 AM, Wolfgang Strobl wrote:
Am Wed, 26 May 2021 12:12:25 -0400 schrieb Frank Krygowski
:


I can understand owning different bikes with greatly different purposes,
e.g. a bike for loaded touring, a bike for trails in the woods, a bike
for getting groceries, a folding bike for traveling.

But I don't understand owning several bikes for "fast" riding,
especially if a person is too old or two slow to compete in actual races.

This isn't an either/or-situation. One of my sons owns und uses two
bikes for fast riding, both of the racing type. He doesn't compete in
actutal races and doesn't compete at all. For doing more than 100 km for
visiting us here, he needs a decent bike, though. A well maintained
and well equiped racing bike is a perfect fit for that purpose.

On the other hand, living in a large town means not having much choice
for parking a bicycle when riding around, so he uses a racing bike for
that purpose too, but a different one. It is an old racing bike,
somewhat worn, he bought it cheaply. Good enough for getting around,
light enough to carry it around, but expendable enough for taking the
risk of chaining it to a lamp post with a simple lock. A racing bike is
a perfect fit for that purpose, too.

I can understand that strategy. Those bikes are serving different
purposes and chosen accordingly: one is used for long fast rides where
he will never leave it alone, and the other is a much more expendable
"just getting around" or "beater" bike.

That's different than a person saying "Hmm. I'm going to do a quick
100km ride. Should I take the red one with Shimano, or the green one
with Campy, or the black one with SRAM?" At some point, too much
similarity equals useless duplication.

I'm not saying it should be illegal, but it seems strange to me.
You (and I) are undoubtedly too old to understand. After all we grew
up with only one bicycle and somehow "made do" with that one bike
whether we wanted to ride downtown to the "movies", deliver the
newspaper to earn a bit of money, or even in one case I knew about,
ride out in the pasture to herd the cows home for milking.

What we didn't realize was that we were "deprived" and had we had more
then one bicycle we would have grown up as better people. Had you been
the owner of a multitude of bicycles who knows how far you would have
gone. Even all the way to the top of the heap there in Washington
might have been possible.

You see, modern Americans really do need many bicycles. I mean, what
would the neighbors think... only one bike? Goodness, perhaps they've
lost their job?
--
Cheers,

John B.

What a load of sentimental nonsense. We're not a bunch of ten year-olds doomed to our single balloon tire bike to deliver newspapers a three AM in the driving snow, our fingers bleeding -- having to turn over our meager collections to Mr. Fagan, the evil manager for Olde Tyme News.

We're adults, and we can buy as many bikes as we want, and many -- if not most -- of us have more than one bike. IIRC, you have more than one bike. Frank has more than one bike. Who here as only one bike?

Again, I'm not questioning multiple bikes per se. I'm questioning
multiple bikes that are near duplicates and used for the same type of
riding.

For many years, I had one bike, a "sport touring" Raleigh Super Course.
In my view, that basic design is acceptable for many purposes, although
these days people would want much fancier components. I used it for slow
to fast recreational riding, centuries, a couple low-level road races,
some time trials, some fairly long tours, shopping and commuting. Heck,
even some riding on forest trails.

I suppose we could discuss how many different types of riding we each
do, what type of bike would be best for each, and how much better each
type would be compared to a general purpose bike.


One bike?!!?

Wow, one might as well have only one Coleman stove...or lantern.
Unthinkable!

I think I have around 35 lanters--stop me before I restore again! and
something like 7 stoves (not all Coleman, but don't tell).

I have a Tour Easy recumbent and my good old 1980's Cannondale touring style
frame.
It also appears that my daughter has returned/abandoned the old Mountain
bike I gave her (Specialized Rock Combo, I think?)
Maybe I'll put a bafang on that.

I'd still like to hear from people with experience with Bafang add-on
e-drives. My friend is very unhappy with hers, and I've still been
unable to find a user's manual online. I've gotten no help from Bafang
USA or bafang-e.com

Perhaps an hour or two browsing the settings will help, but she's quite
a distance away from here. I'd prefer to have some guidance ahead of time.

You didn't say what Bafang model but try
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/00...C18-EN.pdf?107
or
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/00...ebikes.pdf?112

That first link may be what I was looking for! I can't be sure, but it
looks promising.

I phoned my friend last night and urged her to take the unit back to the
(tiny) bike shop that installed it, and ask them to try tweaking the
settings.

But I also offered to spend more time with it when I get the chance on a
dry day. Your link may help. Thanks!


--
- Frank Krygowski

On Tuesday, June 1, 2021 at 7:45:22 AM UTC-7, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 5/31/2021 7:53 PM, jbeattie wrote:

Joerg can get closer to the durability of an inexpensive car, but it will cost as much as an inexpensive car -- like a Rohloff Speedhub with a 6 speed chain. With the ebike tire market going great guns, there are plenty of durable tires on the market (that ride like rocks). Joerg has a sketchy transmission on his road bike, and it could be improved -- or he could dump the museum piece and buy a https://www.trekbikes.com/us/en_US/b...alr-5/p/24385/ Great value. Or https://www.specialized.com/us/en/di...ext=96220-4044. There are lots of better options than a 40 year old sport racing bike for riding in the Sierra foothills.
Do you think the chain and cogs would last long enough to satisfy Joerg?

No. I just picked a couple of budget bikes that would be appropriate for the kind of riding he's doing. He'd have to spend more than twice as much to get a Speedhub/6sp chain set up -- or he could just get a Checkpoint or Diverge aluminum frame and build a nice 3X6, although that would mean downgrading to cable discs, which still work fine. Getting along on a sport racing bike seems odd. There are also a lot of nice steel options. I always liked the Soma Fog Cutter, too. https://www.somafab.com/archives/pro...tter-frame-set There are many other steel options. He could buy that Thorn that Andre posted.
Joerg is pretty unique, from what I can tell. But speaking of "tech" -

It's pretty well accepted that 10 or 11 speed derailleur systems don't
last as long as, say, 8 speed systems.

If Joerg hypothetically wanted to, would it be feasible to convert an 11
speed to an 8 speed system that would accept that longer life type of
chain?

I'm sure he'd be fine with friction shifters. What would have to happen
back at the cassette?

I think his current set up is 8 speed or 9 speed -- but certainly not 11 speed. That's why my theoretical drive train for him is either an IG system or 3X6. Respace the rear hub to get near zero dish; use some bomb-proof deep aero rims and ebike tires. A Tiagra 3X crank with steel rings and an outboard BB. Even if he mungs that up, replacements are cheap and easy to install. If he wants a robust rear wheel, he'll have to spend some money on a good hub -- maybe an old XTR that he can respace or something more arcane.

-- Jay Beattie.

On Tuesday, June 1, 2021 at 4:45:22 PM UTC+2, Frank Krygowski wrote:


It's pretty well accepted that 10 or 11 speed derailleur systems don't
last as long as, say, 8 speed systems.

Not by me.

Lou, life is too short to ride crap bikes or tires.

On 5/31/21 4:13 PM, John B. wrote:
On Mon, 31 May 2021 12:45:24 -0700, Joerg
wrote:

On 5/25/21 10:38 AM, Tom Kunich wrote:
The Airborne looks like it will be about a half lb less weight than the Trek Emonda in the same size. One might suppose that the Trek might be more Aero but like the Airborne, it has large diameter tubes that had no attempt at being aero in design. Also one would have to question whether small diameter round steel tubes are less aero than the much larger diameter of, say, the Pinarello frameset. I can't say that I ever noticed any difference between the late Basso Loto I had and the Trek Madone which was supposedly quite aero.

Of course I'm not a pro rider and I very seldom even approach the speeds that the pros commonly get in the peloton.

But isn't that the entire point of Aero? To give you that very small gain when you ride at those sorts of speeds all day long? You sure as hell aren't going to put out these sorts of power and my entire reason for posting this is to tell you that you sure as hell aren't going to gain enough to even consider spending large amounts of money on a fantasy bike to make it worth your while.

Another point - Components are now more expensive than good frames. But China is invading that space as well. You can get a Sensah 11 speed group complete for $200. They have been working their way up from not very reliable and seem to have now hit a high enough reliability standard that I will give them a test. The failure points seem to be the levers on the previous versions but that supposedly has been reengineered to be reliable. And if it weren't so you could always buy SRAM levers which have the same pull ratio and we know that those levers are reliable. And you would still save a pile of money. I'll see after I get rid of all of my extraneous bikes.


I wish bikes would achieve at least the quality of a cheap car. But they
don't and that includes expensive stuff. Every few hundred miles
something needs maintenance, wears out of needs service. Our cars go
tens of thousands of miles without a lick of trouble, all they needs is
an oil change every 4000-5000mi.

Yesterday the MicroShift derailer on the road bike began biting the
dust. The freehub is announcing its demise as well. Same for the bottom
bracket which began noise messaging, again. For both I bought the most
expensive ones from Shimano that I could find and that would fit. Not
going to do that again.

And don't get me started on tires. Hurumph, grumble.

Well, this has been discussed before buy I would suggest (again) that
if you are willing to pay as much for a bicycle as you do for your
auto then it is highly likely that you will be able to get one that
will last practically for ever.

But you are the guy that brags about using the cheapest tires that you
can get, aren't you?


No, I buy cheap tires because with lots of bike stuff you simply do not
get what you pay for. I found out that $15 road bike tires do not last
any less on average than $50 ones. Same on the MTB. I had really
expensive tires on the rear. Lasted 800mi. Now I use $20 tires and they
last ... 800mi. Then the tread is gone.

My SUV tires cost me $80 and they last well over 50,000mi even when
often schlepping half a ton of firewood across rutty dirt roads. Now
that's what I call a good price/performance ratio.

All I am asking for is, for example, this: Offer a derailer that has
ball bearings in the linkages, a really strong cage and then charge 2x
the usual price for it. Not 10x. To heck with the extra 200 grams, offer
people some reasonable choice. There are a lot of people who aren't
weight weenies but they simply want to arrive on time. Just like they
can with their cars.

I am aware there are things such as Rohloff hubs. However, I have known
people who have crunched those or had other issues with them such as
erratic shifting and gears not holding. That simply does not happen on a
car. When I inquired about the cost that took the cake. They wanted
$1500 just for the hub. Plus tax. Plus shifter. Plus cable. Plus labor.
Crazy.


--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

On 2021-05-31, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 5/31/2021 1:52 AM, pH wrote:
On 2021-05-31, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 5/30/2021 8:59 PM, jbeattie wrote:
On Sunday, May 30, 2021 at 4:21:31 PM UTC-7, John B. wrote:
On Sun, 30 May 2021 13:19:02 -0400, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 5/30/2021 11:04 AM, Wolfgang Strobl wrote:
Am Wed, 26 May 2021 12:12:25 -0400 schrieb Frank Krygowski
:


I can understand owning different bikes with greatly different purposes,
e.g. a bike for loaded touring, a bike for trails in the woods, a bike
for getting groceries, a folding bike for traveling.

But I don't understand owning several bikes for "fast" riding,
especially if a person is too old or two slow to compete in actual races.

This isn't an either/or-situation. One of my sons owns und uses two
bikes for fast riding, both of the racing type. He doesn't compete in
actutal races and doesn't compete at all. For doing more than 100 km for
visiting us here, he needs a decent bike, though. A well maintained
and well equiped racing bike is a perfect fit for that purpose.

On the other hand, living in a large town means not having much choice
for parking a bicycle when riding around, so he uses a racing bike for
that purpose too, but a different one. It is an old racing bike,
somewhat worn, he bought it cheaply. Good enough for getting around,
light enough to carry it around, but expendable enough for taking the
risk of chaining it to a lamp post with a simple lock. A racing bike is
a perfect fit for that purpose, too.

I can understand that strategy. Those bikes are serving different
purposes and chosen accordingly: one is used for long fast rides where
he will never leave it alone, and the other is a much more expendable
"just getting around" or "beater" bike.

That's different than a person saying "Hmm. I'm going to do a quick
100km ride. Should I take the red one with Shimano, or the green one
with Campy, or the black one with SRAM?" At some point, too much
similarity equals useless duplication.

I'm not saying it should be illegal, but it seems strange to me.
You (and I) are undoubtedly too old to understand. After all we grew
up with only one bicycle and somehow "made do" with that one bike
whether we wanted to ride downtown to the "movies", deliver the
newspaper to earn a bit of money, or even in one case I knew about,
ride out in the pasture to herd the cows home for milking.

What we didn't realize was that we were "deprived" and had we had more
then one bicycle we would have grown up as better people. Had you been
the owner of a multitude of bicycles who knows how far you would have
gone. Even all the way to the top of the heap there in Washington
might have been possible.

You see, modern Americans really do need many bicycles. I mean, what
would the neighbors think... only one bike? Goodness, perhaps they've
lost their job?
--
Cheers,

John B.

What a load of sentimental nonsense. We're not a bunch of ten year-olds doomed to our single balloon tire bike to deliver newspapers a three AM in the driving snow, our fingers bleeding -- having to turn over our meager collections to Mr. Fagan, the evil manager for Olde Tyme News.

We're adults, and we can buy as many bikes as we want, and many -- if not most -- of us have more than one bike. IIRC, you have more than one bike. Frank has more than one bike. Who here as only one bike?

Again, I'm not questioning multiple bikes per se. I'm questioning
multiple bikes that are near duplicates and used for the same type of
riding.

For many years, I had one bike, a "sport touring" Raleigh Super Course.
In my view, that basic design is acceptable for many purposes, although
these days people would want much fancier components. I used it for slow
to fast recreational riding, centuries, a couple low-level road races,
some time trials, some fairly long tours, shopping and commuting. Heck,
even some riding on forest trails.

I suppose we could discuss how many different types of riding we each
do, what type of bike would be best for each, and how much better each
type would be compared to a general purpose bike.


One bike?!!?

Wow, one might as well have only one Coleman stove...or lantern.
Unthinkable!

I think I have around 35 lanters--stop me before I restore again! and
something like 7 stoves (not all Coleman, but don't tell).

I have a Tour Easy recumbent and my good old 1980's Cannondale touring style
frame.
It also appears that my daughter has returned/abandoned the old Mountain
bike I gave her (Specialized Rock Combo, I think?)
Maybe I'll put a bafang on that.

I'd still like to hear from people with experience with Bafang add-on
e-drives. My friend is very unhappy with hers, and I've still been
unable to find a user's manual online. I've gotten no help from Bafang
USA or bafang-e.com

Perhaps an hour or two browsing the settings will help, but she's quite
a distance away from here. I'd prefer to have some guidance ahead of time.


I've spoken to three people with Bafangs so far. One was a 750 watt kit and
don't know the other two--older gentleman and wife.

All of them were pleased with the performance and none of them mentioned any
issues with smoothness, un-intended acceleraion, etcetera.

It appears she might have a 'notchy' throttle or controller issue.
I don't know if Bafang has a troubleshooting page.

You might have her do a search on "endless sphere" for her issue she's
experiencing. It's a site for do-it-yourselfer electric bikes...don't have
the url saved.

electricbike.com is another one, but they are more product/review/news
oriented.


pH in Aptos

On Tuesday, June 1, 2021 at 11:12:31 AM UTC-7, Joerg wrote:
On 5/31/21 4:13 PM, John B. wrote:
On Mon, 31 May 2021 12:45:24 -0700, Joerg
wrote:

On 5/25/21 10:38 AM, Tom Kunich wrote:
The Airborne looks like it will be about a half lb less weight than the Trek Emonda in the same size. One might suppose that the Trek might be more Aero but like the Airborne, it has large diameter tubes that had no attempt at being aero in design. Also one would have to question whether small diameter round steel tubes are less aero than the much larger diameter of, say, the Pinarello frameset. I can't say that I ever noticed any difference between the late Basso Loto I had and the Trek Madone which was supposedly quite aero.

Of course I'm not a pro rider and I very seldom even approach the speeds that the pros commonly get in the peloton.

But isn't that the entire point of Aero? To give you that very small gain when you ride at those sorts of speeds all day long? You sure as hell aren't going to put out these sorts of power and my entire reason for posting this is to tell you that you sure as hell aren't going to gain enough to even consider spending large amounts of money on a fantasy bike to make it worth your while.

Another point - Components are now more expensive than good frames. But China is invading that space as well. You can get a Sensah 11 speed group complete for $200. They have been working their way up from not very reliable and seem to have now hit a high enough reliability standard that I will give them a test. The failure points seem to be the levers on the previous versions but that supposedly has been reengineered to be reliable. And if it weren't so you could always buy SRAM levers which have the same pull ratio and we know that those levers are reliable. And you would still save a pile of money. I'll see after I get rid of all of my extraneous bikes.


I wish bikes would achieve at least the quality of a cheap car. But they
don't and that includes expensive stuff. Every few hundred miles
something needs maintenance, wears out of needs service. Our cars go
tens of thousands of miles without a lick of trouble, all they needs is
an oil change every 4000-5000mi.

Yesterday the MicroShift derailer on the road bike began biting the
dust. The freehub is announcing its demise as well. Same for the bottom
bracket which began noise messaging, again. For both I bought the most
expensive ones from Shimano that I could find and that would fit. Not
going to do that again.

And don't get me started on tires. Hurumph, grumble.

Well, this has been discussed before buy I would suggest (again) that
if you are willing to pay as much for a bicycle as you do for your
auto then it is highly likely that you will be able to get one that
will last practically for ever.

But you are the guy that brags about using the cheapest tires that you
can get, aren't you?

No, I buy cheap tires because with lots of bike stuff you simply do not
get what you pay for. I found out that $15 road bike tires do not last
any less on average than $50 ones. Same on the MTB. I had really
expensive tires on the rear. Lasted 800mi. Now I use $20 tires and they
last ... 800mi. Then the tread is gone.

My SUV tires cost me $80 and they last well over 50,000mi even when
often schlepping half a ton of firewood across rutty dirt roads. Now
that's what I call a good price/performance ratio.

All I am asking for is, for example, this: Offer a derailer that has
ball bearings in the linkages, a really strong cage and then charge 2x
the usual price for it. Not 10x. To heck with the extra 200 grams, offer
people some reasonable choice. There are a lot of people who aren't
weight weenies but they simply want to arrive on time. Just like they
can with their cars.

I am aware there are things such as Rohloff hubs. However, I have known
people who have crunched those or had other issues with them such as
erratic shifting and gears not holding. That simply does not happen on a
car. When I inquired about the cost that took the cake. They wanted
$1500 just for the hub. Plus tax. Plus shifter. Plus cable. Plus labor.
Crazy.

Crazy to you but not to all the people on expedition bikes headed to Tierra Del Fuego, which is considerably more difficult than riding a '70s Euro sport bike around the roads and trails in Cameron Park. http://www.sjscycles..com/thornpdf/T...loff_LoRes.pdf BTW, I know people (me) who have had issues with car transmissions, so I'm not surprised that some number of purchasers had issues with their Rohloff hubs -- or any other product for that matter. Every product has a failure rate.

I'm not a Rohloff fan because they're too expensive for my needs, but you apparently need a bomb-proof road bike. Get ready to pay and quit moaning about how a 3,000 pound car is more durable.

Other cheaper options include six speed and a triple and friction shift. I don't think there was an STI/Ergo 6speed system, so you're stuck with friction -- maybe some bar-ends. You can use old Deore derailleurs, which are the true survivor cockroaches of derailleurs.

-- Jay Beattie.

On 6/1/2021 2:24 PM, pH wrote:
On 2021-05-31, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 5/31/2021 1:52 AM, pH wrote:
On 2021-05-31, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 5/30/2021 8:59 PM, jbeattie wrote:
On Sunday, May 30, 2021 at 4:21:31 PM UTC-7, John B. wrote:
On Sun, 30 May 2021 13:19:02 -0400, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 5/30/2021 11:04 AM, Wolfgang Strobl wrote:
Am Wed, 26 May 2021 12:12:25 -0400 schrieb Frank Krygowski
:


I can understand owning different bikes with greatly different purposes,
e.g. a bike for loaded touring, a bike for trails in the woods, a bike
for getting groceries, a folding bike for traveling.

But I don't understand owning several bikes for "fast" riding,
especially if a person is too old or two slow to compete in actual races.

This isn't an either/or-situation. One of my sons owns und uses two
bikes for fast riding, both of the racing type. He doesn't compete in
actutal races and doesn't compete at all. For doing more than 100 km for
visiting us here, he needs a decent bike, though. A well maintained
and well equiped racing bike is a perfect fit for that purpose.

On the other hand, living in a large town means not having much choice
for parking a bicycle when riding around, so he uses a racing bike for
that purpose too, but a different one. It is an old racing bike,
somewhat worn, he bought it cheaply. Good enough for getting around,
light enough to carry it around, but expendable enough for taking the
risk of chaining it to a lamp post with a simple lock. A racing bike is
a perfect fit for that purpose, too.

I can understand that strategy. Those bikes are serving different
purposes and chosen accordingly: one is used for long fast rides where
he will never leave it alone, and the other is a much more expendable
"just getting around" or "beater" bike.

That's different than a person saying "Hmm. I'm going to do a quick
100km ride. Should I take the red one with Shimano, or the green one
with Campy, or the black one with SRAM?" At some point, too much
similarity equals useless duplication.

I'm not saying it should be illegal, but it seems strange to me.
You (and I) are undoubtedly too old to understand. After all we grew
up with only one bicycle and somehow "made do" with that one bike
whether we wanted to ride downtown to the "movies", deliver the
newspaper to earn a bit of money, or even in one case I knew about,
ride out in the pasture to herd the cows home for milking.

What we didn't realize was that we were "deprived" and had we had more
then one bicycle we would have grown up as better people. Had you been
the owner of a multitude of bicycles who knows how far you would have
gone. Even all the way to the top of the heap there in Washington
might have been possible.

You see, modern Americans really do need many bicycles. I mean, what
would the neighbors think... only one bike? Goodness, perhaps they've
lost their job?
--
Cheers,

John B.

What a load of sentimental nonsense. We're not a bunch of ten year-olds doomed to our single balloon tire bike to deliver newspapers a three AM in the driving snow, our fingers bleeding -- having to turn over our meager collections to Mr. Fagan, the evil manager for Olde Tyme News.

We're adults, and we can buy as many bikes as we want, and many -- if not most -- of us have more than one bike. IIRC, you have more than one bike. Frank has more than one bike. Who here as only one bike?

Again, I'm not questioning multiple bikes per se. I'm questioning
multiple bikes that are near duplicates and used for the same type of
riding.

For many years, I had one bike, a "sport touring" Raleigh Super Course.
In my view, that basic design is acceptable for many purposes, although
these days people would want much fancier components. I used it for slow
to fast recreational riding, centuries, a couple low-level road races,
some time trials, some fairly long tours, shopping and commuting. Heck,
even some riding on forest trails.

I suppose we could discuss how many different types of riding we each
do, what type of bike would be best for each, and how much better each
type would be compared to a general purpose bike.


One bike?!!?

Wow, one might as well have only one Coleman stove...or lantern.
Unthinkable!

I think I have around 35 lanters--stop me before I restore again! and
something like 7 stoves (not all Coleman, but don't tell).

I have a Tour Easy recumbent and my good old 1980's Cannondale touring style
frame.
It also appears that my daughter has returned/abandoned the old Mountain
bike I gave her (Specialized Rock Combo, I think?)
Maybe I'll put a bafang on that.

I'd still like to hear from people with experience with Bafang add-on
e-drives. My friend is very unhappy with hers, and I've still been
unable to find a user's manual online. I've gotten no help from Bafang
USA or bafang-e.com

Perhaps an hour or two browsing the settings will help, but she's quite
a distance away from here. I'd prefer to have some guidance ahead of time.


I've spoken to three people with Bafangs so far. One was a 750 watt kit and
don't know the other two--older gentleman and wife.

All of them were pleased with the performance and none of them mentioned any
issues with smoothness, un-intended acceleraion, etcetera.

It appears she might have a 'notchy' throttle or controller issue.
I don't know if Bafang has a troubleshooting page.

I haven't found one - at least, not yet.

You might have her do a search on "endless sphere" for her issue she's
experiencing. It's a site for do-it-yourselfer electric bikes...don't have
the url saved.

electricbike.com is another one, but they are more product/review/news
oriented.

Thanks. I'll check those out if we can't resolve the problem.

--
- Frank Krygowski

On 6/1/21 12:14 PM, jbeattie wrote:
On Tuesday, June 1, 2021 at 11:12:31 AM UTC-7, Joerg wrote:
On 5/31/21 4:13 PM, John B. wrote:
On Mon, 31 May 2021 12:45:24 -0700, Joerg
wrote:

On 5/25/21 10:38 AM, Tom Kunich wrote:
The Airborne looks like it will be about a half lb less
weight than the Trek Emonda in the same size. One might
suppose that the Trek might be more Aero but like the
Airborne, it has large diameter tubes that had no attempt at
being aero in design. Also one would have to question whether
small diameter round steel tubes are less aero than the much
larger diameter of, say, the Pinarello frameset. I can't say
that I ever noticed any difference between the late Basso
Loto I had and the Trek Madone which was supposedly quite
aero.

Of course I'm not a pro rider and I very seldom even approach
the speeds that the pros commonly get in the peloton.

But isn't that the entire point of Aero? To give you that
very small gain when you ride at those sorts of speeds all
day long? You sure as hell aren't going to put out these
sorts of power and my entire reason for posting this is to
tell you that you sure as hell aren't going to gain enough to
even consider spending large amounts of money on a fantasy
bike to make it worth your while.

Another point - Components are now more expensive than good
frames. But China is invading that space as well. You can get
a Sensah 11 speed group complete for $200. They have been
working their way up from not very reliable and seem to have
now hit a high enough reliability standard that I will give
them a test. The failure points seem to be the levers on the
previous versions but that supposedly has been reengineered
to be reliable. And if it weren't so you could always buy
SRAM levers which have the same pull ratio and we know that
those levers are reliable. And you would still save a pile of
money. I'll see after I get rid of all of my extraneous
bikes.


I wish bikes would achieve at least the quality of a cheap car.
But they don't and that includes expensive stuff. Every few
hundred miles something needs maintenance, wears out of needs
service. Our cars go tens of thousands of miles without a lick
of trouble, all they needs is an oil change every 4000-5000mi.

Yesterday the MicroShift derailer on the road bike began biting
the dust. The freehub is announcing its demise as well. Same
for the bottom bracket which began noise messaging, again. For
both I bought the most expensive ones from Shimano that I could
find and that would fit. Not going to do that again.

And don't get me started on tires. Hurumph, grumble.

Well, this has been discussed before buy I would suggest (again)
that if you are willing to pay as much for a bicycle as you do
for your auto then it is highly likely that you will be able to
get one that will last practically for ever.

But you are the guy that brags about using the cheapest tires
that you can get, aren't you?

No, I buy cheap tires because with lots of bike stuff you simply do
not get what you pay for. I found out that $15 road bike tires do
not last any less on average than $50 ones. Same on the MTB. I had
really expensive tires on the rear. Lasted 800mi. Now I use $20
tires and they last ... 800mi. Then the tread is gone.

My SUV tires cost me $80 and they last well over 50,000mi even
when often schlepping half a ton of firewood across rutty dirt
roads. Now that's what I call a good price/performance ratio.

All I am asking for is, for example, this: Offer a derailer that
has ball bearings in the linkages, a really strong cage and then
charge 2x the usual price for it. Not 10x. To heck with the extra
200 grams, offer people some reasonable choice. There are a lot of
people who aren't weight weenies but they simply want to arrive on
time. Just like they can with their cars.

I am aware there are things such as Rohloff hubs. However, I have
known people who have crunched those or had other issues with them
such as erratic shifting and gears not holding. That simply does
not happen on a car. When I inquired about the cost that took the
cake. They wanted $1500 just for the hub. Plus tax. Plus shifter.
Plus cable. Plus labor. Crazy.

Crazy to you but not to all the people on expedition bikes headed to
Tierra Del Fuego, which is considerably more difficult than riding a
'70s Euro sport bike around the roads and trails in Cameron Park.
http://www.sjscycles.com/thornpdf/Th...loff_LoRes.pdf
BTW, I know people (me) who have had issues with car transmissions,
so I'm not surprised that some number of purchasers had issues with
their Rohloff hubs -- or any other product for that matter. Every
product has a failure rate.


Buy a classic Japanese stick-shift SUV and the chances of such
transmission failure are near zero. Even US vehicles are good in that
respect when they are stick-shift.


I'm not a Rohloff fan because they're too expensive for my needs, but
you apparently need a bomb-proof road bike. Get ready to pay and
quit moaning about how a 3,000 pound car is more durable.

Other cheaper options include six speed and a triple and friction
shift. I don't think there was an STI/Ergo 6speed system, so you're
stuck with friction -- maybe some bar-ends. You can use old Deore
derailleurs, which are the true survivor cockroaches of derailleurs.


I've got friction shifters on the road bike and the new Deore XT stuff
on the MTB. The shifters are ok, it's the derailers that are too wimpy.
All it takes is a twig or some other minor debris to be picked up and
hitting it and it's bent. Happened on Sunday. Again.

My dream would be a shaft-driven bike. A German tractor manufacturer
used to build them but they don't look sturdy enough to me:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/94791513@N04/14033652688

Anyhow, can't get those in the US.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

On 6/1/2021 3:14 PM, jbeattie wrote:

Other cheaper options include six speed and a triple and friction shift. I don't think there was an STI/Ergo 6speed system, so you're stuck with friction -- maybe some bar-ends. You can use old Deore derailleurs, which are the true survivor cockroaches of derailleurs.

Right. I doubt there's ever been a derailleur with ball bearing
linkages. It's inappropriate technology. If anything, you might want
replaceable bushings.


--
- Frank Krygowski