OPINION
are sent home with a generic tick-box, safety guide that’s written more to provide “told you so” protection from litigation for the bike brand, than it is to provide the rider with any useful information they might use over the lifetime of the bike. Do they tell you what chain or brake pads you might need when they wear out? Of course not. What about tyre and tube sizes? Don’t be silly. Even high-end bikes that have a fantastic ‘frame manual’ don’t always provide the details you need to replace simple components on the bike. Why? Because they’re made as a summary document for a family of bikes whose specific models all differ in components.
When it comes time to replace components on a
bike, the customer is met with a web of bike specs and tech docs, technical specifications and manuals, some of it hidden and the rest of it vague and incomplete. A search for some of the most basic components can take considerable time as the customer is bounced between bike and component brand sources as they try to decipher the soup of model numbers, marketing speak and tech specs. We expect bike owners to conduct their own in-depth research thesis, and we judge them based on how successfully they managed to find and fit a component to a bike, like a cruel prank played on the ‘work experience kid’. Why is it this way? Why do we
As someone from outside the bike industry, you’d be
forgiven for thinking that a BB86 was a similar bottom bracket to a BB30, or that a Press-Fit 41 was in fact different to a BB86. No one could blame you if you thought a headset pressed into the headtube was a press-fit, or bottom bracket bearings that fit directly into the BB shell were ‘integrated’. You surely couldn’t be expected to know that there is more than one type of ‘Tapered’ steerer or that ‘Integrated’ crown races on forks were all the same. Most people wouldn’t dare fit a 29 x 1.75” tyre to their gravel bike because it’s designed for 700/45C, which again is surely not the same as 45-622.
As an industry, we should be asking ourselves,
what makes us think that ‘Sealed
Cartridge’ is a sufficient level of detail for a bottom bracket? How long will we continue to ignore the SHIS system that can be used to
not provide the rider of a new bike with the knowledge they’ll need to keep that bike running in optimal condition for the life of the bike? Why don’t we give that rider the power to purchase any replacement or upgrade part they might need, if they choose to? Why is it so hard to find the right information? And why, when we do find some useful information, is it so hard to make sense of it, and compare specifications between components? In the bike industry, we use different names to describe similar attributes, and similar names to describe two totally different concepts. There are marketing terms mistakenly adopted to describe attributes or ‘types’ of almost every product category and we choose to ignore some of the most obvious and clear ways to define products that already exist. We provide incomplete specifications and vague definitions, and we often use terms where they should not be used, and refer to things out of convenience rather than clarity.
www.bikebiz.com
“WE NEED TO AGREE ON SOME CLEAR EXPECTATIONS ON THE PUBLIC AVAILABILITY AND LEVEL OF DETAILS FOR BIKE SPECIFICATIONS AND TECHNICAL DOCUMENTATION SO THAT WE, AS AN INDUSTRY, CAN SERVICE RIDERS OF ANY BIKE BRAND OR MODEL, YEARS AFTER IT WAS SOLD.“
provide sufficient headset information? How long will it take for us to create and adopt a similar system for bottom brackets? Why do we regularly quote the length of crank spindles without arms fitted rather than a ‘finished’ spindle length with the arms fitted? Why do we never talk about the native chainline of a 1x crankset, and only ever refer to the chainline with a chainring fitted, but then don’t detail the offset of the fitted chainring? How many of us really know what BSA stands for? Why is there more than one brake mount standard referred to as ‘flat mount’? Whether we like it or not, our industry is not like the Automotive industry, where parts are specific to one, or at the very least, very few applications, and compatibility is determined by cross referencing
part numbers or identifying the exact application. The bicycle industry has many ‘Open’ standards and methods of fitment, which is one of the great things about bicycles. To effectively understand if a part is the right part for an application on a bicycle we must be able to compare the method of fitment or actuation by comparing attributes. Doing this currently is like comparing Apples to Oranges. Many in the industry moan and complain about the number of ‘standards’ and have you believe that they’re to blame for all the confusion, but it’s not the standards, it’s the way we communicate them. There
September 2025 | 13
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68
