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It's interesting that after 140 years, the behavior of a chain drive safety bicycle with pneumatic tires is still the gold standard. Virtually everything that's

It's interesting that after 140 years, the behavior of a chain drive safety bicycle with pneumatic tires is still the gold standard. Virtually everything that's noticeably better on my bike is related to the materials used. Although, variable speed gearing was a nice invention, but still, 100+ years old.

sudosysgen 5y ago
Indeed, the chain+derailleur system is incredibly lightweight, efficient, simple, and also fairly reliable. It's one of the most elegant solutions in mechanical engineering, imo.
- aidenn0 5y ago
  I find the chain+derailleur system to be less reliable than drive-shafts, but it's trivially repairable for a 10 year old with no tools, which is a huge win.
- brnaftr361 5y ago
  I disagree, I find chain and derailleurs to be annoying and unreliable in the worst way. I'll grant them their crown of efficiency, but I hope to see more refined CVTs. I currently have a bike with a NuVinci and I strongly prefer the way it functions over the clunky must-be-pedalling shifts of a derailleur. As an added benefit the system is contained, presumably hardening it against damage and reducing maintenance.
  - potta_coffee 5y ago
    I have 30 year old derailleurs with thousands of miles on them that are still going strong. I don't really understand the reliability complaint here.
  - asdff 5y ago
    How do you find it unreliable? I put a couple thousand miles on mine a year and it sits outside. Occasionally it gets hit with wd40 then lube and a rag. That's all I do with this thing. I don't get all the complaints from people on the fiddling with derailleurs. I've never had to fiddle despite years of riding. Just some shimano components mostly 105 and ultegra but nothing special or too new. I'm still riding 2x8 actually. Maybe the fewer rear gears leads to fewer issues with alignment? I do find that I can shift into any of the rear cogs easily with either front cogs, very permissive groupset to being in the wrong gear at the wrong time too and sloppily finding another one (a lot of chaos sharing the road). Maybe I'm just not attuned enough to feel when the gearing is going out though.
    - thghtihadanacct 5y ago
      I think the key is matching up the right parts. I ride with a 1x11 mid grade set up that was made for each other and after dialing it in I have no issues either.
      - skeeter2020 5y ago
        Today's mid and even sub-mid tier Shimano drivetrains are an amazing combination of performance, reliability and price. 4-piston disc brakes are also fantastic and suspension forks are great too. There's a lot of BS in bike manufacturing (ex: new standards) and carbon frames need a serious rethink but bikes today rock!
    - brnaftr361 5y ago
      Maybe I've just had bad luck, but two of the bikes I've had have come apart. The derailleur gets misaligned for whatever reason. One of them I had to take to a shop because despite extensive experiment I could not get it to properly align, and I don't know that they did either. The other was perhaps just old - an '80's era steel frame road bike from a Sears catalogue I donated to a repair shop, and it eventually got exploded for parts. I suspect the third would've succumbed to the same fate. It may just be me mishandling them, but if they can't handle this style they're not fit to ride. :cool: Also I hate dropping gears in the middle of an intersection.
      - bagels 5y ago
        They got a lot better if you were buying quality bikes (not department store bikes) in the 2000s. I have a road bike that has 20k miles that never needed shifting adjustments besides replacing worn out chainrings and chains.
        brnaftr361 5y ago
        I busted a Kona Splice's drive train, started ghost shifting and I couldn't figure out how to get it adjusted. I had a Cannondale that I never had problems with but it didn't get used a lot. Maybe it's hopping curbs? Can't be helped here, the roads just aren't designed for bike commuting and everybody has a lifted 3/4 ton they can't fineagle into their garage. It's lovely.
- redprince 5y ago
  I have left this behind for a Rohloff Speedhub 500/14 and I'm not looking back. The chain runs inside a Hebie Chainglider protected from the elements and is lubricated with a nice mineral oil. I can run this setup without any maintenance whatsoever for 2000km in every weather. The Rohloff itself will likely outlive me, provided it gets its oil change every 5000 km or so. I do utility cycling and long distance tour cycling.
hyperbovine 5y ago
Same thing with spoked wheels. The same design we use today would instantly be recognizable to someone from 150 years ago. (e.g. https://www.thehistorypress.co.uk/articles/from-discomfort-to-joy-dunlop-s-pneumatic-bicycle-tyre/ https://www.thehistorypress.co.uk/articles/from-discomfort-t...)
- thghtihadanacct 5y ago
  I imagine spoked wheels would be recognizable by ancient chariot riders even.
  - lkbm 5y ago
    True. One difference is that bicycle week spokes are tension-based, whereas I assume chariot wheel spokes were mostly about resisting compression.
  - wolverine876 5y ago
    They wouldn't recognize them if they looked closely. Chariots, I'm guessing, had radial spoked wheels - the spokes are radiuses from the hub to the rim. Those were tried in early bicycles but didn't stand up well to usage. That led to two innovations in the late 1860s - mid-1870s that persist today: * Tension method of spoking: Invented by Eugene Meyer in Paris in 1869. * Tangential spokes: If you look closely at bicycles, the spokes are tangential to the hub, not radial. The tangent-tension combination (and maybe tangential spokes independently) were patented by James Starley in 1874. The "spokes are placed so as to be tangential to the hub in both the forward and the backward direction, thus forming a series of triangles that brace the wheel against torque during either acceleration or braking." [0] The improved spokes were introduced before chains and gears, allowing larger wheels. Larger wheels served as a subsitute for gearing, increasing the ratio between linear distance traveled and one rotation of a pedal, and thus the big-wheeled 'penny-farthing' or 'ordinary' bicycles were born. However, knowing the history, I haven't yet grasped the mechanics of how tension and tangents benefitted wheels, beyond general concepts. Does anyone know a good technical source (not Wikipedia)? [0] "Bicycle Technology" by SS Wilson (Stewart Wilson, afaik) in Scientific American (March 1973)
scoofy 5y ago
Ehh... not entirely true. It's the "gold standard" because of cost and (lack of) need. It's an elegant solution for non-functional cycling. Band-drive systems with internal hubs are superior for commuters who need reliability over anything else. Tubeless tires are now the standard for riding on irregular terrain. Disc-brakes are not the standard for hilly areas or people who ride at high speeds. Meanwhile, single chain-drive fixed/free gear bikes are still perfectly serviceable for most use cases (even if you need to select from a few different cog sizes to fit your area). The reason why "chain drive and pneumatic tires are the gold standard" is that most people don't ride bikes. If people did, you'd see much, much more variation in technology on the street, as they would be used for functional purposes, rather than recreational purposes.
- wolverine876 5y ago
  Some places have lots of functional riders, such as in northern Europe, and AFAIK they mostly use the gold standard.
  - analog31 5y ago
    It can work both ways. If there are already lots of functional riders, they they probably have lots of functional bikes which means: They're confident about getting reliable use out of existing technology and are less likely to see new components as a silver bullet. In my case, none of the new developments are exciting enough to motivate me to replace my bikes, which work just fine. Off road cycling is its own beast, with the development of specialized bikes for that use, and also the design of trails that challenge both your skill and your technology. But the old footpath through the woods, or gravel road, is still the same as it ever was, and a regular bike handles it just fine. In the US, there's a perpetual effort by the bike companies to get people out riding, when everybody's already got a nearly brand new bike hanging in the garage. They want to sell new bikes, so of course the silver bullet is new technology. I think the rapid adoption of e-bikes shows that the real barrier was not the detailed performance of particular components, but physical effort. Who knew?
    - 5y ago

sudosysgen 5y ago

Indeed, the chain+derailleur system is incredibly lightweight, efficient, simple, and also fairly reliable. It's one of the most elegant solutions in mechanical engineering, imo.

aidenn0 5y ago
I find the chain+derailleur system to be less reliable than drive-shafts, but it's trivially repairable for a 10 year old with no tools, which is a huge win.
brnaftr361 5y ago
I disagree, I find chain and derailleurs to be annoying and unreliable in the worst way. I'll grant them their crown of efficiency, but I hope to see more refined CVTs. I currently have a bike with a NuVinci and I strongly prefer the way it functions over the clunky must-be-pedalling shifts of a derailleur. As an added benefit the system is contained, presumably hardening it against damage and reducing maintenance.
- potta_coffee 5y ago
  I have 30 year old derailleurs with thousands of miles on them that are still going strong. I don't really understand the reliability complaint here.
- asdff 5y ago
  How do you find it unreliable? I put a couple thousand miles on mine a year and it sits outside. Occasionally it gets hit with wd40 then lube and a rag. That's all I do with this thing. I don't get all the complaints from people on the fiddling with derailleurs. I've never had to fiddle despite years of riding. Just some shimano components mostly 105 and ultegra but nothing special or too new. I'm still riding 2x8 actually. Maybe the fewer rear gears leads to fewer issues with alignment? I do find that I can shift into any of the rear cogs easily with either front cogs, very permissive groupset to being in the wrong gear at the wrong time too and sloppily finding another one (a lot of chaos sharing the road). Maybe I'm just not attuned enough to feel when the gearing is going out though.
  - thghtihadanacct 5y ago
    I think the key is matching up the right parts. I ride with a 1x11 mid grade set up that was made for each other and after dialing it in I have no issues either.
    - skeeter2020 5y ago
      Today's mid and even sub-mid tier Shimano drivetrains are an amazing combination of performance, reliability and price. 4-piston disc brakes are also fantastic and suspension forks are great too. There's a lot of BS in bike manufacturing (ex: new standards) and carbon frames need a serious rethink but bikes today rock!
  - brnaftr361 5y ago
    Maybe I've just had bad luck, but two of the bikes I've had have come apart. The derailleur gets misaligned for whatever reason. One of them I had to take to a shop because despite extensive experiment I could not get it to properly align, and I don't know that they did either. The other was perhaps just old - an '80's era steel frame road bike from a Sears catalogue I donated to a repair shop, and it eventually got exploded for parts. I suspect the third would've succumbed to the same fate. It may just be me mishandling them, but if they can't handle this style they're not fit to ride. :cool: Also I hate dropping gears in the middle of an intersection.
    - bagels 5y ago
      They got a lot better if you were buying quality bikes (not department store bikes) in the 2000s. I have a road bike that has 20k miles that never needed shifting adjustments besides replacing worn out chainrings and chains.
      - brnaftr361 5y ago
        I busted a Kona Splice's drive train, started ghost shifting and I couldn't figure out how to get it adjusted. I had a Cannondale that I never had problems with but it didn't get used a lot. Maybe it's hopping curbs? Can't be helped here, the roads just aren't designed for bike commuting and everybody has a lifted 3/4 ton they can't fineagle into their garage. It's lovely.
redprince 5y ago
I have left this behind for a Rohloff Speedhub 500/14 and I'm not looking back. The chain runs inside a Hebie Chainglider protected from the elements and is lubricated with a nice mineral oil. I can run this setup without any maintenance whatsoever for 2000km in every weather. The Rohloff itself will likely outlive me, provided it gets its oil change every 5000 km or so. I do utility cycling and long distance tour cycling.

hyperbovine 5y ago

Same thing with spoked wheels. The same design we use today would instantly be recognizable to someone from 150 years ago. (e.g. https://www.thehistorypress.co.uk/articles/from-discomfort-to-joy-dunlop-s-pneumatic-bicycle-tyre/ https://www.thehistorypress.co.uk/articles/from-discomfort-t...)

thghtihadanacct 5y ago
I imagine spoked wheels would be recognizable by ancient chariot riders even.
- lkbm 5y ago
  True. One difference is that bicycle week spokes are tension-based, whereas I assume chariot wheel spokes were mostly about resisting compression.
- wolverine876 5y ago
  They wouldn't recognize them if they looked closely. Chariots, I'm guessing, had radial spoked wheels - the spokes are radiuses from the hub to the rim. Those were tried in early bicycles but didn't stand up well to usage. That led to two innovations in the late 1860s - mid-1870s that persist today: * Tension method of spoking: Invented by Eugene Meyer in Paris in 1869. * Tangential spokes: If you look closely at bicycles, the spokes are tangential to the hub, not radial. The tangent-tension combination (and maybe tangential spokes independently) were patented by James Starley in 1874. The "spokes are placed so as to be tangential to the hub in both the forward and the backward direction, thus forming a series of triangles that brace the wheel against torque during either acceleration or braking." [0] The improved spokes were introduced before chains and gears, allowing larger wheels. Larger wheels served as a subsitute for gearing, increasing the ratio between linear distance traveled and one rotation of a pedal, and thus the big-wheeled 'penny-farthing' or 'ordinary' bicycles were born. However, knowing the history, I haven't yet grasped the mechanics of how tension and tangents benefitted wheels, beyond general concepts. Does anyone know a good technical source (not Wikipedia)? [0] "Bicycle Technology" by SS Wilson (Stewart Wilson, afaik) in Scientific American (March 1973)

scoofy 5y ago

Ehh... not entirely true. It's the "gold standard" because of cost and (lack of) need. It's an elegant solution for non-functional cycling. Band-drive systems with internal hubs are superior for commuters who need reliability over anything else. Tubeless tires are now the standard for riding on irregular terrain. Disc-brakes are not the standard for hilly areas or people who ride at high speeds. Meanwhile, single chain-drive fixed/free gear bikes are still perfectly serviceable for most use cases (even if you need to select from a few different cog sizes to fit your area). The reason why "chain drive and pneumatic tires are the gold standard" is that most people don't ride bikes. If people did, you'd see much, much more variation in technology on the street, as they would be used for functional purposes, rather than recreational purposes.

wolverine876 5y ago
Some places have lots of functional riders, such as in northern Europe, and AFAIK they mostly use the gold standard.
- analog31 5y ago
  It can work both ways. If there are already lots of functional riders, they they probably have lots of functional bikes which means: They're confident about getting reliable use out of existing technology and are less likely to see new components as a silver bullet. In my case, none of the new developments are exciting enough to motivate me to replace my bikes, which work just fine. Off road cycling is its own beast, with the development of specialized bikes for that use, and also the design of trails that challenge both your skill and your technology. But the old footpath through the woods, or gravel road, is still the same as it ever was, and a regular bike handles it just fine. In the US, there's a perpetual effort by the bike companies to get people out riding, when everybody's already got a nearly brand new bike hanging in the garage. They want to sell new bikes, so of course the silver bullet is new technology. I think the rapid adoption of e-bikes shows that the real barrier was not the detailed performance of particular components, but physical effort. Who knew?
  - 5y ago