TALKING POINTS
• All brake cables and all spokes are stainless steel • 99% of our bikes use good old Shimano square taper bottom brackets • 99% of our bikes use Shimano eight-speed drivetrains, with top-quality chains
In short, this is a mechanic’s bike, designed to be easy to service and maintain. This is a bike for the real world, designed to be used in all weathers for thousands of miles. This is a bike which will still be going strong after the current crop of fashionable headsets and bottom brackets are discontinued and unobtainable.
In my experience, the average rider is just as happy with an eight-speed 11-36 cassette as an 11-speed 11-36 cassette. It’s the range that really matters, not the number of increments in between.
Because modern cassettes have so many sprockets packed
into the same small space, modern chains must be very narrow: the outer width of a vintage 3/16” chain was typically 12mm, and even a six or seven-speed 3/32” chain was around 8mm wide. But the chain for new 11 and 12-speed cassettes is less than 6mm wide. This can only be achieved through the use of narrower side plates which wear much more quickly. And mid-drive e-bikes make the problem worse. The same customer who liked the sound of a shiny new 12-speed bike is understandably not so happy to learn that they need a new chain and cassette after less than 1,000 miles – and at a cost of perhaps £150 or £200.
Cheap chains As well as the width of the chain, in real-world testing we have found there to be a big difference in wear rates between cheap and expensive chains. The brand of chain does not seem to make a huge difference; the model of chain within each brand’s range does. Fair enough if the cheap chain is only used on a low-end bike, but we frequently see quite well-equipped bikes with really budget chains which will wear prematurely and take the cassette and chainrings down too.
Rant over. What is the solution? At Bicycleworks, we have decided enough is enough. We are not going to take part in this proliferation of incompatible standards, and bikes which wear out in no time, and aren’t designed to be serviceable: • We only use 1-1/8” external-cup headsets • We only use threaded 68mm bottom bracket shells • All of our gear or brake cables are externally routed
www.bikebiz.com January 2022 | 41
Quiz answers: • (b) MegaEXO bottom bracket, but only if it’s the 24mm type • The cranks and bearings are the same, but BB30 bearings press directly into the frame, whereas PF30 bearings sit in a cup that presses into the frame • Overdrive. The others are all (mutually incompatible) types of splined bottom bracket for a standard threaded frame • Omega cranks have a 19mm spindle and are not compatible with MegaEXO 24mm, even if some of them are called MegaEXO. Confusingly, some BB30 cranks are now also labelled MegaEXO but are not compatible with MegaEXO 24mm or MegaEXO 19mm • I have no idea… n
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