Technology is cool and all, and the Shimano setup is drool worthy. But... I really worry that when it comes to racing, we're creeping away from the manual, purely mechanical tradition of cycling. Safety I can understand, but adding electricity and computers I just can't get used to. Perhaps I'm a young Luddite.
Shimano wants to make your bike as smart as your car
91–100 of 113 posts
Re: Shimano wants to make your bike as smart as your car
#92The bike is the most elegant mechanical systems in history, elevating humans from earth's least efficient creatures to it's most efficient. Electronic shifting and other boondoggles completely undermine the reliability, elegance and simplicity of bikes. I've fixed my bike while on the side of a mountain a hundred miles from home and ridden home. What happens when my derailleur firmware crashes?
Beyond singlespeeds, I don't think bikes are that reliable or elegant, at least for 2017. The drivetrain is especially bad, I'm open to any proposed improvements there (gearboxes! i'm similarly meh on electric shifting, but it can solve some real problems). There are so many issues - exposed mechanical parts which collect dirt, bad/sticky cable housing, cable stretch, chain stretch, gear wear, floppy derailleur which…
Oh goodness, have you ridden a full carbon dura ace racing bike? I've had one for 13 years and it's still as reliable, and elegant as the day I got it. No electronics. The bicycle equivalent of a super car.
Re: Shimano wants to make your bike as smart as your car
#93The grumpy old man in me likes my bike to be as mechanical as possible, I don't want to remember to charge my shifters, power meter, gps, etc. Maybe that's why I still ride a 1989 Trek 1200 with down tube shifters and biopace chain rings.
I'm 30, but I have been riding the same 1983 Motobecane since high school as my main commuter bike (~50 miles a week). Down tube friction shifters make maintenance on the road very easy. That said I can't vouch for the biopace rings...
Motobecane! May I interest you in something perhaps 30 pounds lighter? ;-)
Re: Shimano wants to make your bike as smart as your car
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
Electronics, if weatherproofed properly, will last a very long time. They don't have any wear and tear like mechanical parts so I'm not sure what would degrade other than the battery or misc connectors.
Capacitor electrolytics. Air bubbles in silicon, thermal expansion, and a zillion day night cycles. Humidity and dust enter, contributing to occasional momentary shorts. Oxidation anywhere you have electromechanical connections. Magnetic stresses on any coil, any rectifier.
Transistor aging: https://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/processors/transist...
(Not likely to affect anything you'd mount on a bicycle, over any span of time relevant to a bicycle.)
Re: Shimano wants to make your bike as smart as your car
#95Bicycles are one of the few remaining non-trivial, non-electric machines that ordinary people use. I'd prefer to leave them alone. Seriously, I have a hard time thinking of many machines that fit that description.
We can totally have both "old" bikes and new ones.
Until governments start deciding that these are mandatory safety features.
Re: Shimano wants to make your bike as smart as your car
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
Turn signal would be useful. Just yesterday morning I was almost hit by a car when I was merging from bike lane to left turn lane.
You can just use your hands to indicate your intention to turn, this is done all over the world and AFAIK the accepted method of indicating without having any electronics.
Yeah of course I did that, but some drivers just know nothing about cyclists. Give them something they are more familiar with would certainly help.
Re: Shimano wants to make your bike as smart as your car
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do people have three hands in Copenhagen, because last time I checked my bike had two handbrakes, and I have to use both of them to stop safely?
Not a professional bike mechanic (I build bikes as a hobby) but in general your front brake should be set up to be powerful enough on its own. This requires clean rims, and clean, non-worn, non-hardened brake pads.
But the front brake is normally controlled by the left brake lever, and signals are supposed to be given with the left hand. I've seen it argued that since most people are right-handed, and the front brake does most of the work and therefore deserves the most careful modulation, the usual practice is backwards: the right level should be for the front brake. I guess this is another reason. It makes sense to me, I guess, but not so much that I've actually bothered to swap the cables on my bike :-)
Anyway, in the wet it isn't always safe to use only the front brake.
Re: Shimano wants to make your bike as smart as your car
#98Dunno if Shimano is ever going to live down BioPace. At the same time I’m glad clever people kept at it. https://absoluteblack.cc/oval-104bcd-chainring.html
This is the second comment in this thread criticizing the biopace, what exactly was the problem with it? It seems to me that the oval chainring is seeing a resurgence lately (in the MTB community at least).
I never tried one, but I was told they were hard on the knees.
Re: Shimano wants to make your bike as smart as your car
#99Dunno if Shimano is ever going to live down BioPace. At the same time I’m glad clever people kept at it. https://absoluteblack.cc/oval-104bcd-chainring.html
This is the second comment in this thread criticizing the biopace, what exactly was the problem with it? It seems to me that the oval chainring is seeing a resurgence lately (in the MTB community at least).
A couple bikes in my family's fleet have Biopace rings, both having been made around the same time period. What I recall at the time was that they were greeted by a collective yawn because they weren't eccentric enough to have much of an effect.
I just measured a 48T Biopace ring that was in my spare parts bin, and the ratio of major to minor diameter is about 3 percent.
The only annoyance I can think of is that you can't use those rings with a single-speed or gearhub without a chain tensioner.
If they're wrecking your knees, don't push such long gears. Or, rotate the ring by 72 degrees on the crank to pretty much negate the effect.
Re: Shimano wants to make your bike as smart as your car
#100Anything you strap to a bike has to be reliable. If there is one thing you can say about mechanical systems it is that we know how to design them so they last the lifetime of a bike (wear parts excluded), anything electrical or electromechanical will have a shorter life than the equivalent that uses only mechanical parts. Just look at your average bicycle light set, even after I don't know how long we still can't mak…
Electronics, if weatherproofed properly, will last a very long time. They don't have any wear and tear like mechanical parts so I'm not sure what would degrade other than the battery or misc connectors.
Or shock causes a supercap lead to shear off, etc. I guess everything could be epoxy potted but then it isn't repairable.